Stop building apps no one wants

http://launchsky.com

by vlokshin • 14 years ago

71 140 14 years ago

launchsky.com

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

This is a new project we'll be building at DarwinApps.

I'd love to hear feedback/criticisms/advice from the HN community!

bithive123• 14 years ago

How do I browse your website? I seem to be stuck in a modal window and everything else is unclickable.

unreal373• 14 years ago

There is no web site. It's just a mockup of a website.

skisly3• 14 years ago

Looks pretty cool, but why wouldn't I just post my idea to KickStarter?

steve_j5• 14 years ago

I think your missing the point of the web site.

It could be used to find out if an idea is worth persuing and if it is, you could then go to kickstarter... that's how I see it.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Steve, that's EXACTLY how we see it being used

jlarocco• 14 years ago

Neat. I'm going to launch a site where you post an idea to see if it's worth posting it to LaunchSky to see if it's worth posting to Kickstarter...

Seriously, though, I don't see how that's not already handled on Kickstarter. If there's not enough interest in your idea it won't reach its funding goal. What's the point of a pre-screening step?

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Well, that's an assumption we're testing: early adopters / curious viewers / other entrepreneurs, will be quicker to give their support (and their email, through a secured gateway to the original poster) than their money.

We'll be investing in the traffic/exposure of those visitors and entrepreneurs, and hope this launch page can help get the creators there.

steve_j5• 14 years ago

I have loads of ideas, I have entered my e-mail and look foward to the launch :)

steve_j5• 14 years ago

Will the site be having Non-Disclosure Agreements?

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

We're trying to be smart about this. LaunchSky is to test out what you should build and what you shouldn't.

We're currently gauging that interest with the HN community.

If the interest in this product is there, we'll of course invest in the right legal grounds to do what's possible to protect some of the ideas being posted. This can get pricy, but if the interest is there, it's definitely something we're willing to invest in.

If not, it'll simply be a tool for "build it or not" without the legal backbone (at least initially).

steve_j5• 14 years ago

"Built it or not" sounds good. I have ideas but don't have the time to develop them all.

Just the worry that I/another user might share a game changer idea and someone else builds it before I/we do.

wushupork• 14 years ago

How is this different from a LaunchRock in essence? I feel like for many consumers, it's very hard for them to imagine the product w/o seeing/touching/interacting with it no matter how great you pitch or describe it. If someone were to describe to me a blog of funny cats or what's essentially Instagram, I don't think I would have cared much and never really appreciate how much enjoyment I would derive from both just from the pitch or description.

On many occasions I've asked people if they wanted x or would it be cool if it did x and lukewarm would be the best description of their reaction. But seeing the live or real version of that x gave a totally different reaction.

atte4• 14 years ago

In some ways this is similar to Launchrock from the perspective of the poster. However, whether or not it's usually true with most launch pages, when you show people your launch page you are implying that you intend to launch. The purpose of posting to Launchsky is to get feedback, in the form of interest and comments. One user might post up five ideas (basically visual elevator pitches) and be able to decide from user comments and votes which idea holds the most promise (or which ones don't stand a chance for reasons X, Y).

marek12886• 14 years ago

I used Launchrock the very first time I tried to "bring an idea to the world" and had maybe 40 signups. Mostly friends. If you're just starting out, you have no idea how to bring traffic to your site, create buzz, or do any kind of online marketing at all, so I definitely see value in being able to submit an idea to a community of early adopters and get at least an inkling if this is something worth pursuing.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Valid point.

LaunchRock takes a while. While you're waiting for DNS settings to go through, adding a favicon (still not sure why that's required), you could've tried out 10 ideas.

LaunchRock is an amazing tool, but it makes you bring your own traffic to your idea. In addition, it's not the quickest thing in the world.

We envision LaunchSky to be an outlet for trying out your ideas to a sea of evaluators who are ready for evaluating them (and signing up as early users).

caleywoods4• 14 years ago

This strikes me as a clone of Kickstarter but in place of funding you're giving people the ability to vote, and vote for free.

I think it has its uses but ultimately to me, votes hold no value because they aren't inherently valuable to a user. I would back projects all day long on Kickstarter with someone elses money but I have never backed a project myself.

Think about how downvoting on StackOverflow works. It costs you karma or points to downvote somehting, it's not free.

I think I would probably use LaunchSky as a way to make sure people didn't think it was potentially the worst idea they've ever heard of but outside of that I couldn't place any real faith in the platform for big ideas. I would probably limit myself to posting ideas which I felt I could build in a few evenings.

lutusp4• 14 years ago

Steve Jobs famously avoided asking people what they wanted, instead showing them what they wanted. His philosophy was often described as arrogant, but guess what? He was frequently right -- people often accepted his ideas about a product they couldn't imagine until he showed it to them.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Lots of people and creative entrepreneurs in the world.

1 steve jobs :)

rymith2• 14 years ago

You don't need to be Steve Jobs to be a successful visionary. It's all about what is the vision, and how you can implement that vision. Committees take shortcuts, and will approve a lesser quality product because there is no direct ownership. When its you personally responsible, you take more pride in your product. This site will be great for the leeches and bottom feeders, but I would bet everything I have that there will not be one great product that emerges from this site.

nicksergeant2• 14 years ago

I don't think this approach is appropriate for the vast majority of entrepreneurs. Mr. Jobs was a unique character with a perspective on the world that few others (appear to) share.

It seems that entrepreneurs these days are concerned with "building something awesome (to also make money)", and that's not what Steve Jobs did.

lutusp4• 14 years ago

> I don't think this approach is appropriate for the vast majority of entrepreneurs.

Only the successful ones. It's one thing to create a product that answers an existing need (and that may already have competition). It's quite another to create a product that people don't realize they need until they see it.

The classic example is the personal computer. Steve Wozniak tried and failed to interest HP (his employer at the time) in backing his personal project, a small, one-board computer that anyone could own. HP didn't see the potential, so Woz was allowed to carry the idea away from his employer and pursue it on his own.

As Jobs often said, it's the difference between evolutionary and revolutionary.

Don't get me wrong -- I personally never got along with Jobs and couldn't work with him, but in this respect, he was often proven right.

freework• 14 years ago

"unique character with a perspective on the world that few others (appear to) share"

Thats called "being a great entrepreneur". And yes I agree, few people share.

brudgers3• 14 years ago

When one has a multitude waiting eagerly for pronouncements, then, of course, solving the problem of showing may be left as an exercise for the reader.

tych0• 14 years ago

The thing is, he didn't when the iPod came out. There were a million other MP3 players; the market was well saturated and everyone had their favorite which was not an apple product. Nobody was waiting in line.

micampe2• 14 years ago

I don't understand this often repeated argument. Apple didn't suddenly appear with a million customers/fans, they started from zero.

aw3c2• 14 years ago

I would rephrase that to "making them want through marketing".

lutusp4• 14 years ago

Yes, absolutely -- often these "needs" are manufactured out of nothing by manipulating public opinion. Example: the pet rock (my favorite example).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock

highace• 14 years ago

To quote Henry Ford: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

mratzloff• 14 years ago

Ford never said this, and it isn't true anyway. At least in cities, the public didn't want horses, they wanted better cars and more financing options.

In New York City alone, hundreds of horses died in the street every day, and the owners simply unhitched their carriages and left, resulting in streets clogged with horse corpses. Horses generated over a hundred tons of manure daily, which, combined with the dead horses, was a sanitation nightmare that led to typhoid, cholera, and dysentery.

I hear this misattributed quote so often on Hacker News that it makes my head spin. :-)

vidyesh• 14 years ago

But not necessarily what you have in mind can be conveyed properly in words. Its better to get a prototype instead of pitching the idea.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Prototypes can be costly.

Prototypes no one wants can be costly AND devastating.

alanctgardner2• 14 years ago

If you're spending a lot of money on a MVP, and you're devastated when it fails, maybe you aren't cut out for this line of work. There needs to be a happy medium between devoting your life to a product nobody wants and throwing a million ideas at the wall. There's a minimum commitment level somewhere above "Just ask people", that's where you create a reasonable functional prototype and start soliciting feedback.

icoder• 14 years ago

I gave you my email address, now how can I submit my first idea, as was promised? ("Sign up now, and submit your first idea for free")

skisly3• 14 years ago

"We’ll be launching LaunchSky early 2013." I think you have to wait till 2013

toddmorey• 14 years ago

Here's my question: how do you get & keep a critical mass of people on the site to evaluate these ideas?

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Admittedly, this is one of our biggest challenges.

It's the classic chicken/egg problem (posting ideas and actually evaluating them).

Based on feedback (from this post, for example), we'd like to figure out exactly how we incentivize that "egg" side of the equation.

One idea was to have people post a (optional) perk with their idea (i.e. how we're letting anyone who signs up post a free first idea), but this may be hard for ideas that don't exist yet.

Another idea is to have a ladder of "I'll build X if Y sign up" so 1000 users interested gets you a basic web app, 10000 is iOS and Android, etc.

Outside of that, we're going to gauge the interest in the idea and translate that buying up traffic initially.

The last thing we want is a repository of awesome ideas and no one to evaluate them. Addressing that is a top concern for us as we build out the actual product.

wtvanhest• 14 years ago

Another idea:

Developer A posts there idea, and utilizes their social network to get feedback.

Developer A's social network looks at Developer A's project, then comments etc. then is forwarded to Developer B's project.

You will lose a lot of conversions between A and B, but it would add value to have completely outside people evaluating ideas and signing up for the email list.

You could create a system where the more people come through a link created by developer A, the more referrals they get. That would incentivize developer A to not be a free rider.

atte4• 14 years ago

We intend to borrow some strategies that have made Kickstarter and other sites for funding projects successful. For example, we'll devote a lot of attention to making individual concepts easy to share, which will ultimately bring more users to our site. We'll also keep the process of viewing, commenting, and voting on ideas itself simple and enjoyable. Personally, I enjoy seeing what ideas people are thinking about or working on - it's one of the reasons I spend so much time on Hacker News :)

gyazbek• 14 years ago

I for one would NOT use this service. There is a lot of mistrust in this industry, and no one wants to potentially give away an idea for the sake of third party market analysis that isn't that well known or confidential.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Point taken, and we do appreciate the feedback. The same can be said for KickStarter/Indiegogog/Everyone else.

We're trying to build the same model, but hoping (and assuming) that people are quicker to give their interest, and sign up as an early adopter for an idea if its built, than to open up their wallets to new ideas.

As far as giving away their idea, we're definitely going to try to do what we can to protect those posting from a legal side, or at least offer a VERY convenient way to say "hey! this was mine on this day"

tmh88j• 14 years ago

> KickStarter/Indiegogog/Everyone else.

Don't you generally have to show something off (as in hey, look what I'm in the process of, care to join?) with those to get backing? This is just pitching an idea, right?

phatbyte• 14 years ago

What kind of legal side can you guarantee to anyone ? Would this work overseas ? Also, ideas are just ideas until someone actually creates it.

Not to piss on your parade, but you can't protect anything.

danso3• 14 years ago

With Kickstarter, though, the "upvoters" get actual returns from their votes (the "vote" being money and "returns" being gifts)

atte4• 14 years ago

You wouldn't want to post up something like a "trade secret" on our site, that's for sure. However, living in Silicon Valley I have actually found that most people in the tech community don't have problems sharing their ideas. I like to share my ideas as often as possible, because it helps me evaluate which ones are the best, and often people offer meaningful suggestions. At the end of the day, success comes down to execution, but it's nice to have some confidence that you aren't starting down a path on false premises.

shizamdamnit• 14 years ago

I can't ever see myself using a service like this for fear of somebody developing my idea first. Many of the good 'apps' out there quickly generate copy-cat apps, this will just take the originators out of the loop :)

rplnt3• 14 years ago

Good apps generate copy-cats, not ideas of good apps. Ideas are worthless. Everyone has them.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Everyone has ideas, and some even have the ability to execute.

We're trying to marry the two.

Full disclosure: My team needs this product. We've built apps no one wants. We don't want to to do that again. We're hoping others are in the same boat.

frozenport2• 14 years ago

Good ideas are not worthless.

louischatriot• 14 years ago

That's interesting, with two caveats: - Many people may be wary of giving an idea for which they see a huge potential, but it may not be a problem for side projects - I don't see what the people giving their opinion would gain. Maybe it's just the thrill of being pitched new ideas regularly?

Cool idea in any case.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

You've nailed both of the biggest things we'll be tackling.

For people posting: quick, protected, easy, elegant, keeps early adopters so that you can reach out them if it's built.

For those evaluating an idea: Their absolutely needs to be a clear incentive. We'll get this figured out. Maybe a field for "early adopter perks" or a ladder of incentives for how soon someone supports an idea. In any case, this is definitely something we have to nail.

hdra• 14 years ago

interesting idea, just entered my email there,

one thing though, i tried clicking the area outside the 'pop-up' box there countless time trying to get rid of it and see whats behind it. I initially even entered my email in hope to get rid of the pop-up before realizing how stupid I was.. maybe this is intentional, but still, confusing.

justjimmy2• 14 years ago

Just to bounce ideas/brainstorm.

The issue is why would people come to this site to click 'I'd use this' or 'I support this'. (Ideas will flow in no problem, they're a dime a dozen.)

So we need to provide feedbackers with incentive.

1. Reward them? Oops…nothing to stop them going around and supporting them everything and game the reward system.

2. Reward them based on their choices (and limit their votes)? Nope…these are just ideas. There's no way you can tell if the idea will be successful even with enough support backers. Takes much longer to develop etc.

3. Give them the option to back good ideas (put their money where their mouth is)? Nope…then it's just Kickstarter.

4. Curate the people evaluating the apps. Gather some people that have skills and well informed about their field. Tech/Design/etc. Then you'll be able to get real feedback from those who knows what they're talking about. It's not a guaranteed hit/miss but I think the result would be better than mass voting from randoms.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Awesome feedback. And great/clear thinking. Thank you.

mnicole3• 14 years ago

Exactly. And the problem with #4 is that in trying to round up people the community trusts/knows by name, you're also going to end up bringing in people that have personal and professional connections that could also game the system.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

True, but is that necessarily a problem?

We definitely don't have the product figured out to 100% just yet, but the assumption is that people are quicker to support (and give their email if it's secured) than to pay (a la kickstarter).

The rest of the details, we surely have to figure out. That's why I've got the link here, for amazing feedback like the original comment we're both replying to :)

unreal373• 14 years ago

I would disagree about needing incentives/rewards to get people voting. You are the counterargument to your own comment. You just commented on this idea here on HN, for free, with no incentive and no reward. People like us often love to see new ideas, and comment on them and join in a discussion with the founders. "This is great", "I don't think this will work", "this would be better if...", "what are you planning to do about..."

LaunchSky is "Hacker News for Ideas Not News"

I've dreamed of having something like this before, and I would love to see LaunchSky do it. I think I would go there often enough to see other people's ideas and provide my own.

I think this is best aimed at the same people that like Hacker News, NOT the general Facebook population.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Thanks!

I'd like to think the same, but from a numbers standpoint -- we're probably going to need a fairly clear incentive for the "reviewer/early adopter" side.

It's going to be a balance of quality vs. volume of reviewers, but these will all be some fun challenges to figure out and tackle.

edit: Your comment (after re-reading) made my day.

justjimmy2• 14 years ago

Of couse there is an incentive for me to comment here on HN.

1. It's a community, there's give & take. Who knows one day I may need HN's help. I want to be treated the same way others treat me - golden rule.

2. This place is full of smart people. I'd listen carefully to what everyone has to say. If it's just mass voting from randoms, it'll get nowhere. Hence my 4th point in the original comment.

3. Being part of the community, actively, builds connects and networks. If LaunchSky is going to be community oriented, I think that'd be a great avenue to explore.

So I'd disagree about how there's no incentive or reward for me to comment here.

ollysb• 14 years ago

How about you offer some pricing with the idea and then give backers a discount? Might work with a mail list, people sign up to get an opportunity for discounts on potential products they'd like to use. Would skew the audience but that's going to be the case with any incentive.

wikwocket• 14 years ago

The obvious incentive for voters is to let them "subscribe" to an idea, so that if it launches, they get an email/beta membership/discount/etc.

The other perk to this is that idea-submitters get a home-grown email list for their new app.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

PG, or any mods -

Why did this get downvoted? It was #2 on the front page and is suddenly gone.

Can you please let me know what happened?

acabral• 14 years ago

Interesting approach. Regarding the idea that users would need something to keep coming back to the site to approve an idea,as said previously, offering a reward might be the best solution, but, to prevent them going around and voting on everything, why not give the power of giving rewards to the owner of the idea?

tchock23• 14 years ago

Once users realized that the owner of the idea was the one assigning points, they may just offer up feedback that panders to the owner in order to receive rewards.

tdtran• 14 years ago

How about using LaunchSky to verify LaunchSky idea itself? I would be interested in seeing the result report. Until then, thanks but no thanks.

friendly_chap• 14 years ago

Launchception!

__abc2• 14 years ago

Stop building movies NO ONE wants to see, books NO ONE wants to read, etc, etc.

Nothing will stop this from happening ... especially when the cost of build/deploy <= cost of comprehensive research

In regards to the site ...

Asking someone "yeah, I'd use that", vs getting them to download and use (ignoring pay, but that's also key :)) is totally different

skisly3• 14 years ago

You are kinda right. But this application just asking are you going click download or not

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

"especially when the cost of build/deploy <= cost of comprehensive research"

you REALLY think so? I agree with your first few points, but I disagree on that last (quoted) bit entirely.

Building/deploying something of real quality (and potential viability) can be very costly.

The point of the app is to make that "cost of comprehensive research" negligible in comparison to what it is today. Either you pay a ton to do it right or train yourself forever on how to do it cheap (which is a cost of time). We want to lessen that burden exponentially.

__abc2• 14 years ago

It's definitely a tool if you want "a" data point "really fast". I won't argue against that. However, I would use it for "just" that and nothing more. I wouldn't use it to drive the entire decision.

Per your point of disagreement, and depending entirely on the type of app, I stand by my point. You're anchoring the disagreement "quality". A down and dirty "test the waters" app is a lot less expensive than a "quality" app (ignoring apps that can't really have a down and dirty, like complex video games or something).

I would agree, that on average, a "quality" app would take longer then a down and dirty "test the water" app. However, so long as you can get a down and dirty out the door so easily, we will see crap in the app stores.

hiddenstage4• 14 years ago

I hate that you have to sign up before browsing the site. I'd be much more interested in signing up if I can browse with free will.

I'm assuming you can only vote if you sign up? If so, the target sign up market for LaunchSky are devs/entrepreneurs/etc which are usually not the target market of the apps that are using the service.

pydave2• 14 years ago

Is there a site to browse? It looks like it's just a demo to me ("We’ll be launching LaunchSky early 2013").

(Did not try signing up because I totally agree with you.)

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

There's no site to browse.

It's a demo / launch page. Sorry for the confusion, but I guess that means it's a decent launch page?

hiddenstage4• 14 years ago

Ha good catch. I assumed the stuff in the background were already projects on the site, tried clicking out to browse, got frustrated and clicked back.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Sorry! If the product was fully built, we'd of course let you browse.

But for a product that preaches testing before building, wouldn't that be a little bit silly? :)

hiddenstage4• 14 years ago

Do users have to be registered to vote? How will you bring in the non-developer person to sign up to LaunchSky? If I was building a SaaS type app, this would be awesome because my target market would actually be voting. But any other type of app I'd like the avg consumer to be voting.

xauronx3• 14 years ago

Yeah, there's no site there. I was fooling around with the CSS trying to get rid of the pesky modal views (sometimes it works), when I got to the page... which was just an image http://launchsky.com/img/bg-app.png. It's a good simulation but I think the author needs to make it a little clearer. I went in and put my email in thinking I was signing up and... nothing. It just refreshed the page I think. Then I went to my email thinking I had to confirm my account and there was no email. So I did it again with the same results. Maybe I'm a noob, but I think perhaps it could be a little more clear.

protomyth• 14 years ago

“Make sure decisions are fact-based, not faith based.” - Steve Blank

If you're trying to get a lot of user opinions in the US from normal people who buy stuff, that phrase at the top of the site is not going to go over so well if its also displayed on the public comment page.

pydave2• 14 years ago

Strange, this is almost like what I thought pvsh should be (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4867883) -- you're connecting people who want things with people who are making them. Except instead of letting people generate ideas for entrepreneurs to jump on, you're asking entrepreneurs to lift their skirt before they're ready for the dance. Also, you don't have the monetization I'd expect (or at least you're not talking about it yet).

Edit: I just realized that "If you sign up now, you’ll get to submit your first idea free" implies you're monetizing the entrepreneurs who use the site -- so all content is paid content.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

The monetization isn't finalized yet -- we're getting feedback now (mostly with this post).

Our hunch is to charge a minimal amount for each idea submission; something significantly less than the money/time/effort for a splash page / domain / launchrock / ads. The early adopters would never pay; we instead need to figure out a clear way to incentivize them to come to each idea, the dashboard of ideas in general, and back again.

jcomis• 14 years ago

this is frustrating, I just want to poke around and browser the site to see what is what. This seems to be quite difficult to accomplish.

aguidrevitch• 14 years ago

Ok, suppose you have entrepreneurs that are ready to use launchsky, they've created a bunch of projects to evaluate. What about end-users ? I don't really care what other entrepreneurs think about the idea, I do want to get in touch with potential users !

caleywoods4• 14 years ago

Tag line: Ideas for free.

bringking• 14 years ago

It seems to me that this will provide customer validation of questionable quality to the entrepreneur. You can't effectively gauge the viability of an idea by asking people to predict the future. When asked; "Would you use this awesome service?", most people will say "Absolutely"! However, when the time comes to pay for it/download it they will not actually do it. Great looking site, however I feel like the data generated will be less useful than talking to your customers about their past behavior.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

We've discussed the idea of gaming good vs. bad support.

Think: Angel investors, but with their likes/sign-up instead of money.

Still, this won't be an easy one to crack, but we're committed to providing feedback/support of actual value, as well as a pool of potential users, to people coming with a new idea.

Irregardless• 14 years ago

I see several fatal flaws that are already addressed by other services, like Kickstarter and focus groups:

1. No reward for participation (bad for users)

2. No promise of a finished product (bad for users)

3. Users have no personal stake in anything they "support" (bad for developers)

4. Highly biased and narrow audience (bad for developers)

What people think they want and what they'd actually pay for are often very different things. Contrary to your title, this seems like a great way to encourage developers to build even more crappy apps that no one will ever buy.

trotsky• 14 years ago

It seems to me that there is a significant group of users out there that are web app groupies for lack of a better word who will more or less express an interest in anything as long as it is pre-launch or early in the launch cycle. Since these folks are usually not your actual target market, their feedback is pretty worthless unless you're just looking for whether you fit neatly inside a web x.0 box. It seems like a website where people posted ideas for websites would be almost guaranteed to have a high population of these folks.

Of course I'm probably not your target market so my feedback is probably pretty worthless.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

I wouldn't call that worthless; it's something worth thinking about.

We have a ton of thinking/testing still left to do as we flesh out exactly what the product will be. Gaming/aggregating good vs. bad support ("I'd use it") is going to be crucial.

While traffic from said groupies would be nice, we'd like the actual feedback to be a bit more useful than a group of people marking "I'd use it". A reward system for making the right picks of apps that actually make it (whatever that definition of "make it" ends up being) is probably a worthwhile thing for us to think through.

pekk• 14 years ago

There are a lot of users on HN who are positive about new projects (A) because it is nice and often more constructive as a start for discussion (B) it counteracts a prevailing negativity and one-upmanship (C) you actually don't know what is going to pan out in the end.

danso3• 14 years ago

This concept has three competing flaws:

1. The most obvious: how do you prevent your ideas from being stolen?

2. If your idea is vague ("A site where people can post Hipstamatic-like photos, but easily share them!") then you will get a lukewarm response, even if the actual idea (and implementation) is great.

3. If you spend the time fleshing out your idea into something that excites users...then you've committed enough resources to not need a site like this. Also, see #1.

In other words, users are at a catch-22 here. Your site wants to keep them from launching half-baked ideas by providing them with audience opinion. And yet, in order to get validation, a user will have to show off a well-baked idea.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

Well said.

Hopefully we can refine the product between now and launch as best as we can to combat all 3 of those concerns. We've got our homework (and assume, test, analyze, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat) to do here.

xauronx3• 14 years ago

That was my first thought. I mean, I'm not one to try to steal someones idea. In fact, I'm pretty repulsed by the idea. So the first thing I thought of is "If I browse this for an hour and see 100 ideas, those are 100 ideas I'm ruling out from making myself". I know I could still do them, but still, I might think of an app that creates foldable printed figures on my own next week but if I saw it on there first I would just feel like I was copying and not do it.

joeld422• 14 years ago

I'd use this.

Certainly some ideas are different and exciting enough that you wouldn't want to audition them publicly. But for the most part, it's execution that matters. This site seems like a good idea to gauge reaction to those ideas.

How are you planning to get a good volume of user feedback on these ideas? That seems like a pretty big challenge.

Rather than a "yay or nah" style, I'd rather if the feedback were more open ended. Such as: "What do you like about this idea? What don't you like?"

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

I do think that's one of our biggest (if not the biggest) challenge.

Our "chicken" in the equation would be the entrepreneurs who post. We need to incentivize them to post to a safe platform that they get something out of, but in a way that saves them time and/or money (otherwise they'd use their own launchpage + adwords and/or the launchrock-esque services).

Our "egg" is the volume of (quality) users for feedback.

Then how do you get more chickens who make more eggs?

There might be a tiered posting service. Maybe one free, one cheap (feedback + full share feature + meta tags for SEO), and one more expensive -- but includes targeted keywords that you choose and targeted feedback from a group of users. Too early to tell at this point, but with enough awesome feedback like this, and eventually some initial users, I'm sure we'll get this figured out.

joeld422• 14 years ago

I don't think it's really a chicken/egg here. If you could instantly solve the problem of having lots of entrepreneurs posting that wouldn't necessarily create any value for potential users (beyond app discovery, which there are better places to go to discover existing apps, not just potential apps).

What's in it for the user giving me feedback on my app idea?

You could pay them, but then that would make it really expensive to run and end up with people gaming the system with low-quality feedback.

The best thing I can think of (and I'm not sure it would work) is to have the developer pledge, say, 20 promo codes to you. Then if someone reviews the app idea, they get the promise of a free copy once the app was released. I would be willing to do this, but I know other developers are more reluctant than me to part with their promo codes.

jmathai• 14 years ago

Some feedback. I was curious to read some ideas. Reluctantly, I put my email address in. Then I was asked to spread the word (on what exactly, I'm not sure since I haven't been able to use it yet). Dismissing that message took me back to the screen asking me if I'm interested.

So all that "hidden" content may or may not be real. I'll never know. It looked real though. But at this point I'd probably never use the site again. Felt like I was taken. At least you got my email address, I guess :).

That's all constructive criticism. I know it's hard to decide exactly how to roll out some of this stuff but hope it helps.

vlokshin35• 14 years ago

It definitely does help, and sorry that the feeling was "taken".

The product isn't there yet, so our goal is the email drop -- so that we have a way to contact a user-base once the product is built.

But your concern is definitely heard, and we'll be sure the real product never evokes that kind of emotion out of the users. Promise :).

xauronx3• 14 years ago

I think you might need some large font that says "We're not ready QUITE YET, but we'll contact you when we are... <email box>". I thought I was signing up for the site, as it currently stands.

georgeorwell• 14 years ago

How is this different from http://www.ideaswatch.com/ ?

How do you plan to make money?

marcamillion• 14 years ago

This is so meta.

azilnik• 14 years ago

I really like this. How will it work in terms of intellectual property?

OrdojanAndrius• 14 years ago

I build apps that I need so at worst I have at least one customer.

jontaylor• 14 years ago

Just a thought. You could charge for submissions to be displayed publicly as a five star rating based on some metric to obscure the exact numbers. This would protect the submitters to a degree from poachers as people can only see with low resolution if the project is desirable. It would also be a source or revenue.

I think this project is a good idea and look forward to seeing it live.

steve_j5• 14 years ago

I've been giving this some thought (this would be an idea to share on LaunchSky) ... what about a web site where people could go and ask for something to be developed? The ideas get voted and commented on and then developers could go away make it and know it's something that has a market.

It could even evolve into a competition where apps are being developed for the stuff that people want, plus the web site would give exposure to the apps.

Maybe this could be a section of LaunchSky?

Just an idea.

Stop building apps no one wants

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