Show HN: Killed our 6-month old photo startup, and this came out of it

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6932122

by jkw • 13 years ago

34 21 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

My co-founder and I saved up enough money to quit our jobs 6 months ago and go full-time. We began working on, while bootstrapping, a photo sharing startup. Unfortunately, after many iterations, it wasn't working well enough and we decided to kill it.

However, through that process, we conducted a lot of user tests and interviews, and realized that finding users to test is a pretty hard problem.

That's why we made Gemba, Japanese for "the real place", which is a service that connects companies to testers on demand for in-person interviews.

URL: http://gemba.me

Would love your feedback!

krapp• 13 years ago

Seems like a good idea. Don't live in SF though.

patio11• 13 years ago

You appear to have references to Zenpathy, which I assume is a name which didn't make the cut. Might want to standardize on Gemba, if you're going with that name.

Also, while I think 現場 does have some sheer genius as a product name, I question the wisdom of using it in an English-speaking market. It would take me five minutes to explain why it's a really good name and, in that time, I should have been selling the actual product rather than the naming decision. Gemba isn't one of the few dozen Japanese words you can reasonably expect college-educated Americans to know. I can guarantee you that even as a Japanese speaker I will botch your romanization the next time I try to talk about this company. Additionally, expect to be "That jewelry thingamagig" if non-Japanese speakers remember the name at all.

Great idea for a service. You might consider eventually creating some resources on how to conduct one of these interviews for the maximum benefit of the company.

jkw4• 13 years ago

Thanks for the catch and feedback!

dshanahan• 13 years ago

Agree here. I've looked at the site, read this comment, and gone back up to remind myself but I'm still not sure if it's gemba or gempa. And have zero association with that word.

jdhendrickson• 13 years ago

If anyone else is curious after reading the above content, the Wiki article here -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba

destraynor• 13 years ago

Brave decision & congrats

ctruman• 13 years ago

clickable http://gemba.me

drewblaisdell• 13 years ago

I like the idea. Some feedback that is less useful than patio11's: bold, don't underline, today in the header.

jscheel• 13 years ago

Any chance of expanding down to Palo Alto and Mountain View?

jkw4• 13 years ago

It's definitely in our future plans. We started in San Francisco because we thought it was a good dense location where we can build a vibrant community.

danso• 13 years ago

Consider creating a more accommodating form for your "become a tester" link...maybe it's not a priority right now, but if recruiting good testers is key to your plan, a form that...well, for one thing, doesn't pop up my un-used Mail client when I click on it...defines through its questions what you look for in a tester would be valuable to both testers and tester-requesters...right now, the page doesn't speak enough about what you see as important qualities in a tester.

yoshyosh2• 13 years ago

Nice, my normal work flow for doing this is hanging out at the Metreon and asking people or at the starbucks near by. $5 gift cards work well if you need extra incentive, most people are pretty nice about a quick test of a feature/homepage though.

I've also started exploring craigslist for tests @ $10 gift cards/20 minutes. That has worked out well so far too! I guess the biggest issue for bootstrapped companies is how many tests you do and at what cost. I've done over 100 at this point, so the pricing you have is def a bit too high, but I imagine with some seed money this would be a no brainer in terms of time saved.

harpb• 13 years ago

when r u next doing this at metreon

yoshyosh2• 13 years ago

Won't be for a bit, the UI hasn't changed too much since then. Why do you ask?

mabbo• 13 years ago

Shopify was an online snowboard shop, until they realized the only thing they were doing well was the e-commerce stuff.

markbao• 13 years ago

Great idea. I was talking earlier with some friends trying to figure out the best way to get qualified testers for apps. This makes it so much easier, and adds screening. Nice work.

Well-priced as well, though I wonder if you would be able to drum up marketing with an introductory 3-for-2 offer.

nfm• 13 years ago

Great idea. I think the pricing is way too cheap for on-site though. You might be able to get away with < $50 for some kind of screenshare, but there is definitely a market for what you're selling and the current market is priced way higher.

usertesting.com costs $49/participant and there's nothing interactive about it - you submit a list of questions, and they send you a ~15 minute video of someone testing your product. Your service is more valuable, and your costs will be higher too.

dirktheman• 13 years ago

Nice pivot! Couple of small things: - It isn't clear to me what products you can find testers for. Is it just tech related, or do you find testers for anything? Like, do you just provide testers for apps/websites, or also for a new flavour of soda?

- Please make a form or a dedicated page for aspiring testers. What are you looking for in a tester? What will I get out of it? Whatever you do, never make a link that points to a mailto:. It's super annoying when I want to find more info about becoming a tester and instead of opening a web page (it's a link after all) it just opens a new message in Outlook, but I use gMail.

- The name doesn't bother me. It doesn't speak to me either, but so aren't 90% of all startup names. Having a seemingly nondescript name with a really cool meaning is still better than having just a nondescript name. You could consider getting genba.me to avoid confusion.

On a side note, I admire you guys for making the decision to kill your photo sharing startup. Those are hard decisions to make. Good luck!

jkw4• 13 years ago

I appreciate your thoughts. We'll be making some improvements based on your points.

petervandijck• 13 years ago

You need to answer more questions on your homepage.

- locations? - how do you select people (anyone who has done tests is familiar with the 'professional testers' problem) - more detail!

jkw4• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! We'll make it more clear and detailed.

Right now, we are focused in San Francisco.

Show HN: Killed our 6-month old photo startup, and this came out of it

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