JoeEntrepreneur

It really does not matter much if you are doing it part-time or full-time except for the time it takes to get the first release out. I have been working on http://www.onista.com for almost a year now and I am doing it mostly in evenings and weekends. Bear in mind that I have one and half year old kid who takes lot of time away from me (Off course I enjoy it a lot). Recently two more friends joined me and we are pretty confident on launching in November.

Based on my experience I can say that, persistence is what matters. If you work full-time and are not persistent or loose focus then you are not going anywhere. If you work part-time and are persistent and focussed then you will win. May be it will take more time than usual but you will get there with better results.

So I would say, yes go ahead and work part-time on your idea, but be very persistent to spend whatever extra time you find on the idea. It would be good idea to find group of friends who can work part-time with you. (I did that it does help a lot)

Can you please explain what you meant by "Get a friend of yours to try it out and then link to it on Digg". I did not follow. Thanks in advance,

This is GREAT advice. Thank you so much.

Any idea, who can write a nice press release? My English Writing skills are as good as MC Hammer's money management skills.

Thanks lot ed. Point very well taken. Same thing happened to me. There was a company called www.riya.com who hyped lot before launch. They were building some image comparison and search technology. I saw there demo on demo.com and signed up for beta. I was following their blog everyday and waiting for release. When release actually happened, the product was POS (Piece of Sh..) I never visited riya.com again ever.

I have profile on Facebook.

Actually after initial launch, we are planning to build a Facebook application as well. I expect our Facebook app to be out by end of the year.

Thanks for the info.

We are bootstrapping this startup. Wish I had money to spend on hot items to buy and sell on Onista. It's a great idea though.

Right. Will use that going forward.

Thanks

I am very optimistic man in general.

I know. I wish I knew the secret.

Thanks greendestiny. You have valid point. I picked a date November 1st a target for us to make sure we fix all issues and also communicate to interested folks about upcoming launch. I feel pretty confident that we can achieve November 1st (unless one of my friend convinces me to push two more features that he has been trying to push) because now we have only 139 more bugs to fix.

Thanks a lot chmac for all the suggestions.

Yes Onista is amalgam of eBay, LendingTree, Priceline and LinkedIn. We are basically trying to close the gap between social network and a marketplace.

We picked the date: November 1st. Will update the website with counter and the launch date

BTW, How do I find out who are the biggest bloggers in our area? I am trying to find on Google, TC, mashable as well.

Will start talking on different forums. Starting to search the forums now.

Thanks again for taking time and providing suggestions.

Thank you so much everybody for taking time and replying to my questions.

To make things clear, yes we are building onista as amalgam of eBay, LendingTree, Priceline and LinkedIn. We are basically trying to close the gap between social network and a marketplace. We are also not as boring as auction or reverse auction.

It is a general marketplace and not specific to any niche.

The key take away from everybody's reply is

1. Pick a date. Sure We are confident that we will launch on November 1st 2007. (139 more bugs to fix) 2. Put a day counter on front page 3. Contact Bloggers that cover social networks and marketplaces and Web 2.0 in general. (Wish I knew where to find these bloggers) 4. Post on http://www.buzzshout.com/ & http://www.launchfeed.com/ 5. Post comments on TechCrunch with a link back to our site 6. Write a personalized emails 7. Though generating lot of pre-launch hype sounds very attractive idea it may not always work. as "ed" mention in the post, "I've never, ever ever ever, seen this work out in a positive way. Once the floodgates open, users are almost invariably disappointed by what's available. The result is that you lose the (critical) attention of early adopters". 8. Use SEO press release from PRWEB.COM for $200. (Any suggestions on services that can help us write a press release? I've never written one and certainly writing is not one of my great skills. Except javascript/css and html) 9. Send a link to the uncov guys. Loved this idea. Would be interesting to read how they will tear us apart.

Now I will post specific replies to each post here.

bls, Thank you very much for all the suggestions. GREAT information.

Thanks for the information. Ae you referring to the form at http://help.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/mail/cgi_bulkmail (This link was at bottom of the article that you gave me). I submitted the form. Hope Yahoo will help us.

Yes, Gmail is really a challenge. I am trying to play around our email headers to see if it helps, but so far no luck.

Will test on hotmail and AOL soon.

Thanks again.

Hi Everybody,

We are working on developing Social Marketplace called Onista (http://www.onista.com) and we are in QA cycle right now on our test server. Most of the emails that our application is generating for users (like Invite emails or registration emails) are being delivered to bulk/spam folders on yahoo and gmail. Any idea on how can we fix the issue?

Thanks in advance.

Sure. This is a good idea. I am launching http://www.onista.com in June time-frame and would be nice to have other folks look at it and give valuable feedback.

Our team will also help out others to test their apps.

Exactly. There is no point in expecting cofounder to be competent in same areas. What is more important for cofounder is share same passion as you do. Technical stuff can be learned. Languages and technology comes and goes.

Thank you very much. You are right. There might be lot of changes after launch and thats when we will find out what users want us to deliver.

Now http://www.socializr.com/ says that they are "gamma". Does that mean, its more crap than "beta" but it is still ok.

Wouldn't it be in YC's interest to take some equity WITHOUT providing any funding in return of advice, Guidance, and a platform and connections.

LinkedIn

That shoulds like a good idea. Can you please point me to any foreign startup blogs those you know of? Appreciate it.

Thanks Lucas. You have been very helpful.

I guess I shall see when I launch it about what happens. Onista is HUGE application and I do not want to release it with any less features than originally planned. Just my UI Mockup is 200 pages. (just giving you idea on how big the application is). Onista being huge application, it has lot many features, so I believe that users will and will not like some features, but they will have lots of them to choose from.

Thanks again.

Yeah, Same thought came to my mind as well. Thanks for supporting comment.

Someone signed up using email address "you_craigslist_wannabe_will_fail@badly_publically...." Funny... Very funny. Good that I'm not developing Onista anything like or even close to Cragslist. No connection.

You are right. But in order to get the first users, don't you think people need to know that there is something called Onista that exists?

Same thing happened to www.riya.com as well I guess. I signed up for their Release, and was waiting for them to release. When they released, I noticed that it sucked. So I never used it again.

Well Onista (http://www.onista.com) is a social marketplace where anybody can buy or sell anything and also socialize, create friends and never worry about paying any listing fees, commission, auctions. It would be very simple.

I was reading this article about "8 Simple Steps to Build Traffic For Your Internet Startup" @ http://www.scoreboard-media.com/internet-startup-traffic/ and was trying to understand, but some of the stuff I could not really follow. Like "What is defensible traffic". Also it says "Build links". But then how to build links? I do not mind spending money on having Press Release, but I do not know when is the right time to have one, and also who can assist me in writing a press-release. (My Written English sucks more than MC Hammer's accountant).

When you said, "end your beta announcement mail to, say, 10 people or 50 people". Should those be my friends and contacts or I can buy email list from somewhere. No Idea. I already sent email to my friends and contacts and so far 29 ppl have signed up to see when I release the product.

I would love to apply to YC for my upcoming startup http://www.onista.com but YC had made it clear so many times that they do not like either "Single Founder" Or "Moonlighters" and unfortunately or fortunately I am both.

Not sure why YC guys think that way (May be they want to play safe bets) but I am on very well course to release my application "Onista" for public use in Summer Timeframe.

Honestly I do not even need the funding (Amount) that YC offers, but what would be great to have is their brand-name with my startup.

May be YC should start some category like "YC Certified Startup". Funding is not major worry here. I got that.