Ask HN: is this the "missing link" or am i hallucinating?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4131602

by methochris • 14 years ago

5 9 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hello,

I am 80% complete with a web app I'm hoping to launch in early fall that I'm calling Pinjot.com. What it is is a responsive (works nice on any screen) forum where users can post "jots" (threaded conversations or links to external sites) and other users can reply/vote/etc.

My secret sauce is this: every combination of place/group is its own seperate forum and is indexed for easy finding.

So if you go to chicago.pinjot.com/general you are posting to the general group in Chicago. Chicago.pinjot.com/chessplayers, Chicago.pinjot.com/jobs, /personals, /anything and going to Chicago.pinjot.com will list any /groups people have posted to.

But its not limited to cities. U can go to anywhere.pinjot.com. Illinois, Midwest, eastcoast, usa, northamerica, www.

There is no other system I can find like this and I think its what we all need to target specificaly the people we wish to reach.

Is this the greatest idea ever or am I just dillusional and should cut my losses now, as its tearing my family apart and destroying my life trying to make this a reality...

Thanks.

robfitz2• 14 years ago

Ideas like this can't be judged good or bad in a vacuum. If user acquisition works, then it was genius. If not, then a flop. But I don't think it can be predicted in advance. Can you scope down and get v1 out the door in days instead of weeks? All the risk is in adoption & execution -- I don't think anyone here is going to be able to offer useful advice.

methochris3• 14 years ago

Ya...I am trying. I think the responsiveness is a huge selling point and that's like building 6 different sites at once, so the going is slow. I'm alone and only have 2 days a week to commit. Now that I learned how to program enough to get it functional, things are speeding up.

Was just hoping for a little validation that maybe someone in a vacuum thinks it'd be neat.

captain_mars3• 14 years ago

From my experience, I believe having a stable life and a supportive family is very important to business success. They provide you with a strong foundation, and a way to weather the emotional lows and highs that come with startups. So, I would definitely give higher priority to family and life.

Moreover, I understand from reading others' experiences that for them "success" (however they defined it) took much longer to arrive than they had anticipated in the beginning. So, if you are counting on the "success" of your idea to make everything OK with your family again, be aware that that success, if it arrives, may arrive too late to undo the damage.

Finally, money is important, but so are your relationships. If relationships are good, I can still be content with my life, even blissful, even if I was earning below my potential. So, unless I were in a situation in which my family was already starving to death, I would not destroy my family trying to "make it big."

Good luck!

methochris3• 14 years ago

Wise words.

My family has been supportive over the past 14 months while I mapped this thing out, learned to program, design it, etc.

It's just at a point now where I have to chose leaving my day job to make the site my day job and its too risky without at least throwing the idea out there first to see if there's any response.

Thanks!

robfitz2• 14 years ago

Compliments on the internet are not validation! Fishing for them is an easy route to false positives and big heartbreak.

Don't quit your day job before launching -- that's the only way to get real data about whether it may work or not.

captain_mars3• 14 years ago

> its too risky without at least throwing the idea out there first to see if there's any response.

Even after throwing the idea out there and getting HN's feedback, it is still too risky.

It is difficult to predict the success of any venture. (If it were easy, every venture would've been successfull!) As you would already know, many ventures that looked promising in the beginning don't give as much returns as expected, while many ideas which were initially dismissed by experts go onto to become successful businesses.

And moreover, startups often "pivot", sometimes completely throwing away their original idea, while at other times making significant changes to it.

In short, it is too early to say how successful you could be with your business.

I don't know about your personal situation, but if my family were dependent upon me, I would not quit my day job for a website unless the odds of success were very, very, high, and then too, if I did have a "safety net" to fall back on.

Could you try to keep going in part time mode? Could you wait to quit your job until your website shows clear signs of gaining traction? Only you can really judge your situation and take a call.

captain_mars3• 14 years ago

Also, community-based websites often start off slowly and grow organically. This is because people don't like to register with and post content on sites that appear to be inactive. They will make their first posts on your website only if they believe that there are other people who will see those posts and will interact with them. In other words, activity attracts activity.

To get around this chicken-and-egg problem, the owners of many "forums" seed their sites with fake accounts and content, just to give an impression that their site is active, and to attract the first few "real" users.

I am explaining all this to say that it will take time for any community-based website to take off. It might take months for your website to reach any kind of traction. So, don't count on your website becoming an overnight success or "going viral". It is possible, but not probable.

debacle• 14 years ago

The idea isn't new, but it's the execution that counts.

Ask HN: is this the "missing link" or am i hallucinating?

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