Ask HN: My startup idea, What do you think?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4698265

by imtu80 • 14 years ago

1 8 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Idea is to create a platform for buyers on how they shop for better deals or prices. It is a simple three step process

    1) Buyers can either from their phone or web make a post saying I need to buy flat screen LED 42" TV and my budget is $500.00.
    2) Sellers will response to the post by offering their prices either by matching or beating it. Buyer at this point can use the portal to ask questions or negotiate.
    3) Finally, if they like the deal they can proceed with purchase.

Benefits for buyers.

    Saves time.
    Make purchases based on the price they are comfortable with.
    Get notification when somebody makes an offer.

Benefits for sellers.

    Sellers has buyer with money and intention to buy.
    Good for small businesses who do not have resources to buy ads and SEO experts.
    Get get notified when a new request comes in.

I am surprise giants like eBay and Amazon does have this. I would call it, name your price feature. Craigslist has something similar to this but not intuitive.

redspark• 14 years ago

So kind of like Zarly? Or TaskRabbit for services?

imtu804• 14 years ago

Not really, In concept its more like 99designs. Main focus is on customers with fix budget rather than seller. BTW Zarly and TaskRabbit are interesting, never heard of them.

SABmore• 14 years ago

I was working on a very similar idea, only got as far as a prototype before getting pulled onto something else...so kudos if you are able to run with it.

In alignment with your benefits, I just feel that in this day and age, as a buyer I shouldn't have to spend countless hours looking for the best deal. Especially if I know exactly what I want, people with it should be able to give it to me and compete for my business.

I envisioned showing only information about the requested item, and then charging sellers for access to contact the person...this helps to weed out people that aren't serious about selling/don't have the item in question.

Obviously you could use this for any tangible item, but I saw a big benefit when buying a car. As the process stands today, you submit via the manufacturer's website that you are interested in model X, then you get hit with a ton of emails from dealers in your area, typically offering you everything but the exact make/model/color you want. Cut through the noise and management of those emails and get what you want.

Feel free to hit me up if I can help in any way: shawn.arnwine at gmail.com

Good luck.

imtu804• 14 years ago

I sure will email you.

dragonbonheur2• 14 years ago

Customer acquisition costs would easily escalate during the ensuing competition. It's much cheaper to make clients compete and use their time and resources to find products and sellers than the other way around. The reason that it hasn't been done before is simply that it doesn't work.

imtu804• 14 years ago

I am not sure what you mean by "It's much cheaper to make clients compete and use their time". Can you please explain?

dragonbonheur2• 14 years ago

People looking on auction sites, doing web searches and outbidding each other is them doing the work. The price remains stable because the seller only has to spend a fixed amount for the ad campaign that led the user to a particular website. Doing it your way would introduce uncertainty: what amount of time to spend, how low to bid, how many people to pay for monitoring what people want or how much computational resources to allocate to do it by machine. Investors would run the other way.

Ask HN: My startup idea, What do you think?

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