iamjonlee

I don't use close.io, but here's what I'd also recommend if you haven't done them already:

1) allow the user to enter their phone numbers in whatever format they want: 4081231234, (408)123-1234, 408-123-1234 and format it after they click 'save' to (408)123-1234 or however you want it.

2)Cache the domain of the email address for autocomplete suggestions if they enter a website. For example, if you type in phil@close.io for the email, I can already suggest http://close.io if you start typing in a website address.

Thanks! Part of the reason why it was quick to develop was because of past experience + existing site files. About half a year ago, we were reiterating so much that it made sense to just start building a custom template for ourselves that we could tweak and improve so we could reiterate faster. This prototype is quick even for us, but this time we had a really clear idea of what we wanted to build, and how to get there, so this prototype is the first step.

We wanted to pivot into something else and decided to just start building last night. It's far from what we have planned, but hey, I think it's pretty good work for 10 hours.

I've been there done that, so I get the frustration you went through. Lesson # 1 What people say is cool doesn't mean that it's something that they'd use. Just because you say you're building the next Facebook will get you some "that's cool" responses but doesn't mean they'd actually use it.

One of the most useful things I do to validate an idea is to actually use YC's application- if you can't answer all the questions about your idea without any doubts, you're don't have a solid idea yet. And validating your idea means to follow up at the very least with the people that said it was "cool". Forget the stealth startups, be completely transparent in what you're building and have beta users follow you from day 1.

Good luck with your next thing!

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Thanks for the reply! It's true that these reviews might not help immensely to get us up in the charts, but they have worked for us in the past imo. We've had some of our most loyal users coming from those review sites so we're currently happy to stick with that list as our initial list to use.

I agree 110% on building relationships and finding well-known bloggers to write about your post as well as reviews on Gizmodo or TUAW being worth 10x more traffic on the list currently provided. You might've missed the last part where I mention that the list is incomplete though because we usually do end up delivering a better pitch to the mentioned top level tech news sites after a week or two.

From just our experience, we've found that doing a blast of 50+ generic "resumes, cover letters" AND posts by the top companies is a perfect combination. Not to mention, it really doesn't hurt to post to the 50+ sites either way.

Well, if you look at it that way, there are overlaps with most social networking services- Facebook also uploads photos, shares with friends, and people comment on them.

What we'd like for Persona or at least how we use it is a way to share our personal interests and connect to people through them. Sometimes when I pull in front of a starbucks in my 87 mr2, people stop me, pull out their phones and show me their mr2s as we talk about cars. I'm attempting to mimick that real life conversation by posting photos of what I'm passionate about, or what I want to talk about on my Persona, a visual diary of my life. People respond using photo comments that shows me their perspective of that shared picture.

It might be a far-fetched goal, but I hope that people all over the word would be able to bond and share a connection over a single photograph that you post. Like a real life conversation when you first meet someone, I want people to be able to recognize and find a common point of interest as a topic to converse upon.

This might be subjective, but from how I use Instagram and how I see most users use it- it's to post random pictures that you encounter, more to showcase your photographic skills rather than to show what your life is about.

Actually, it's because it shows the logo effectively.

http://www.snopes.com/business/market/clockhands.asp

I guess the old copy is showing up for everyone. It was updated last night but changes weren't saved. It'll be fixed later today.

It's not so much that people won't use it. If they won't use it or don't find use for it, you won't even get signups in the first place. I am only strictly speaking from experience but if you have a product that people don't want to try, they won't sign up for it. I've done this before- the question is- why are people signing up for it but only want to try it out in the app store?

Yuriniyazov makes a good point- maybe they're afraid of downloading it anywhere else besides the App store due to possible malware/security breaches. I'm definitely willing to take that as a strong possibility although it's just a little off from what we expected before with grooovy.

We do it via hockeyapp download link. We didn't think it was a problem considering the fact that Grooovy's beta test went well and everyone else using it currently is doing the same thing.

But I think you make a really valid point. I think your reasoning so far is the best I've gotten so far to explaining this odd trend that's never happened with us before.

Hm, for some reason, you're viewing the old copy on the site. It was updated last night but I guess something happened and the changes didn't go through. I'll have this updated shortly.

I get where you're going with this but we don't find the need to fully list out all features/functions at the point with a landing page. The purpose of the landing page was to obtain signups, which we're getting successfully. The issue is that all these people just want to wait for the stable version in the App Store. I had someone email me just 5 minutes ago telling me that he doesn't like betas because they crash. What do I say to that?

When we are ready to launch, we'll have a full site letting people know what we're about. We won't do it any earlier because there are some key features to making this app work but we don't want to disclose until we're almost ready to launch.

Agreed. To each his own.

The reason why we enforce the description of the photos is because it's usually the meaning behind the photo rather than the photo itself that matters.

If you tell people you like gummy bears, they don't give a crap because millions of other people in the world do. But when you tell them that you eat all the white gummy bears last and you have to eat them headfirst, you've provided a very intimate and personal bond to which someone else can relate to. Anyone can take a photograph, but only you can tell people the story behind it.

Thanks for the links! I'll look into it.

That's true. But at the same time, there has to be at least 1 user out of 386 signups now that would beta test right? And a lot of them are saying they'd want to use it but just want to wait till it's out in the App Store. Is it the new norm to only start using apps that's already stable and in the app store?

Friends of Friends who've used this app are still using it even now and it's slowly expanding through word of mouth. So we know that there's a market for it, but we're just not sure why our signups are unresponsive when it comes to beta testing.

I think that there's potential but the current layout of the homepage doesn't appeal to me. Just because of the homepage, I'm not inclined to continue using the app. I know you guys aren't designers but there are a few improvements that I can see.

1) Your tagline on the bottom of the homepage tells me more about your service than the copy with the "Have the best vacations humanly possible". Lists are boring, especially without visuals. Because the homepage is the most important page, I'd focus on only getting them to try search first then find out about all the other features you offer.

2) As many have mentioned, the video thing is really annoying. I click on the video to expect something to watch, but it's blank. If you don't have a video, don't put a placeholder image there yet.

3) Where do you want to go and when? default text in the searchbar. The less the user needs to type, the better. It's also MUCH more convenient for the user to select the When from a drop down list because they usually have pretty precise dates they want to travel. Because there's this extra option, I didn't know what to type at first. I had to search 3 times to realize that you do City, State and Country.

4) Because your site doesn't have any visuals, your featured lists actually take most of my attention. Those should never take away from your search bar which is your call to action.

I'm no expert on design, but I'm just listing out what I've learned the past year (my homepage for a past startup was very similar to what you have now).

I took a few minutes to make you a sample homepage mockup that incorporates a lot of the stuff I mentioned above. Design is a really subjective matter; everyone will think differently of the mockup below, so it's up to you. Just my two cents.

LINK: http://www.grooovy.me/Adioso.jpg

I applied late, and from a comment PG wrote a few days ago, they haven't started on the late applications yet.

Well, the problem that I mentioned is that you no longer have the opportunity to actually set your goal to 100% language awareness if your startup had made it BIG. You don't have the time to do that when you're managing a startup like that. Also, it'll cost your team more time to debug and fix your problems than for the programming wizards on your team. Your comment, although appreciated, didn't really respond to the post.

I've tried one too that I think should really be how HN redesign should look like.

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2tjm5GuRF1rtfgd6o1_1280.j...

Here's what I think should have been done: LINK http://www.grooovy.me/HN.jpg

Here are some thoughts on why I made mine this way:

1) Hacker news is read by hundred of thousands of people every month- to adapt to a completely new design would wreck the user experience the users have come to expect.

2) Your patterns and icons, while I appreciate the gesture takes focus away from the headlines. The most important thing should be the headlines on hacker news. That's how it was designed to be. Everything else should pale in color compared to it.

3) As SeoxyS mentioned, I designed mine as to not disrupt the functionality that everyone's used to. What I did was "design" the page to improve readability. I made the background color behind the text a light grey so it's not as gloomy as the current site and used a dark grey font rather than the black on current site to improve faster reading. Black on white is always tiring on the eyes, which is why I tried to adapt different shades of grey.

4) I don't like HN's top nav bar right now because it takes focus away from the logo. The logo should be consistent with the one found and recognized on YC's main site. A logo on the site should be loud and clear. I made the top nav bar a darker grey so that it would give focus back to the logo. 5) The selected links are now orange instead of white. By having tiny accents of color, it adds the kind of eye candy that you want but nonetheless tied in with functionality. UX comes first, then UI. You can make something pretty after think about how you'll first make it user-friendly.

6) To improve eye candy, I gave the bottom nav the bright color of HN to really lighten up the page. I felt that otherwise there would be too many grey areas.

7) I moved the search to the top and yes, this does change what the users are used to, but in my opinion a good change. I've read many posts where people (including myself) have had a hard time finding the search button. To move it to the top nav will adapt to web standards.

Normally, I'd make the search larger and start right aligned at the end of the top nav bar and instead move the username + logout link above it, but I felt that it might be too disruptive, so I sacrificed what looks the best for a better experience (this is important).

I like yours but black and white text becomes VERY tiring to read after a while.

I'd like to suggest this one:

http://www.grooovy.me/HN.jpg

I'm sorry to say this, but what SeoxyS said was exactly how I felt.

Here's what I think should have been done: LINK http://www.grooovy.me/HN.jpg

Here are some thoughts on why I made mine this way:

1) Hacker news is read by hundred of thousands of people every month- to adapt to a completely new design would wreck the user experience the users have come to expect.

2) Your patterns and icons, while I appreciate the gesture takes focus away from the headlines. The most important thing should be the headlines on hacker news. That's how it was designed to be. Everything else should pale in color compared to it.

3) As SeoxyS mentioned, I designed mine as to not disrupt the functionality that everyone's used to. What I did was "design" the page to improve readability. I made the background color behind the text a light grey so it's not as gloomy as the current site and used a dark grey font rather than the black on current site to improve faster reading. Black on white is always tiring on the eyes, which is why I tried to adapt different shades of grey.

4) I don't like HN's top nav bar right now because it takes focus away from the logo. The logo should be consistent with the one found and recognized on YC's main site. A logo on the site should be loud and clear. I made the top nav bar a darker grey so that it would give focus back to the logo.

5) The selected links are now orange instead of white. By having tiny accents of color, it adds the kind of eye candy that you want but nonetheless tied in with functionality. UX comes first, then UI. You can make something pretty after think about how you'll first make it user-friendly.

6) To improve eye candy, I gave the bottom nav the bright color of HN to really lighten up the page. I felt that otherwise there would be too many grey areas.

7) I moved the search to the top and yes, this does change what the users are used to, but in my opinion a good change. I've read many posts where people (including myself) have had a hard time finding the search button. To move it to the top nav will adapt to web standards.

Normally, I'd make the search larger and start right aligned at the end of the top nav bar and instead move the username + logout link above it, but I felt that it might be too disruptive, so I sacrificed what looks the best for a better experience (this is important).

I do give you props for trying it out, that's how we all push forward to improve.

Hey! Thanks for asking. We got about $4.2k in funding in 3 days. While this was a pretty good start, we realized a few factors.

1) We weren't going to make our Kickstarter goal at the rate we were going because at the rate the pledges were adding up, we would be short by a large sum of our initial asking $48,000. A good part of the pledges were actually from friends and family so it further adds to the possibility that the Kickstarter goal wouldn't be reached anyways.

2) With the feedback we've gotten on HN and other sites, we've realized that we really really need to cut down on our description and go over it again with the copywriter to rewrite it so that it's absurdly simple to understand how our product is different. Nobody is going to read 5 paragraphs of how why you're different and if people keep asking us why we're different, we're doing something wrong with our copy.

3) People are interested in the product but not willing to pledge. I got an email from a few people that it sounds like an amazing app but they don't want to pledge because they needed more information (our fault again- our video only showed a very basic view of the app because we had just finished a quick prototype without any features when we shot the video) and so they wanted to see if they could have a beta test or more screenshots of the app before they pledge. If they have to request this of me, again, we're doing something wrong.

I've learned a lot with the whole Kickstarter deal in the 3 days it lasted- we're going with an even better marketing plan. For now, we're looking at alternative funding and have actually applied to YC late. As you said, it's not just about the funding. We lack advice and guidance in many other areas. We also lack the connections that YC can offer you with the tech community. If need be, then we'll do Kickstarter again when our point is clarified and people understand what we're about.

Meanwhile, we're just improving, revising, and making our overall product ready for launch. It'll be amazing.

I think that it all boils down to how good your end product is. Tweets by top influencers will bring in some initial traffic but it'll quickly die out. I think it would make more sense to build a landing page to showcase your product early and then use the 2-3k to generate a slow but steady stream of signups of people that will try it. You'll get a much bigger bang for your buck and have some extra cash lying around. But like I mentioned, the % of active users will really depend on your end product.

I didn't look into this in detail, but doing a quick google search reveals a lot of plugins that allow text to speech. There seemed to be a lot of relevant results, one of htem that might be an integration within OSX and not just a browser plugin.

https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...

IMO, there are a lot more things a company needs to consider before considering expanding to other countries and regions. For example, will there be a need for translation services? what about payment issues? Is there enough of a demand in your country/region for this product? Scaling requires a lot more money- it's not just something to take lightly. Take eBay for example's failed attempt at entering China's market: http://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/09/12/how-ebay-failed...

If you can find a lot of people who really desire the same service as you, you can all email them at Wufoo. This would make a better argument that their product is needed in Pakistan rather than just saying tools must be global.

I wish you good luck though and hope it works out for you.

I get what you mean and where you're coming from but Persona's concept is still pretty different. People do post images of things they think will represent them, but that doesn't say much about who they are. Anyone can post photographs and upload them, but it's the meaning behind the photograph that creates a bond. For example: If I take a picture of Hot Cheetos and post it on Tumblr or Pinterest, people who view it will normally associate me being interested or liking Hot Cheetos. But the truth is, nobody cares because millions of people like Hot Cheetos as well. On Persona, we focus purely on things around you that make you who you are; when you post an image, we ask you "what does this mean to you?" If I were to post Hot cheetos on Persona, I'd say "Hot cheetos are musthaves for me when I'm programming." That might not mean everything to everyone, but for the people that can really relate to it, it becomes an intimate connection. It's all the small idiosyncrasies that describe who you are.

It's difficult to fully depict the differences because all apps of similar nature have some sort of overlapping. For example, most people still can't fully explain why Path is so different from Facebook. I use Path but I can't seem to tell people why it's different, aside from the fact that you have a private network vs a public one. If you're asked, "How is Tumblr different from Pinterest?", you'd have just as hard a time answering.

From what I see, Tumblr and Pinterest users don't answer the question of why they post something. I use Tumblr for the sake of killing time and just seeing what pops up and reblog and share things that I think are cool. When I post on Tumblr, I don't think "how does this relate to my life?" I used to ride a motorcycle so I like reblogging nice bikes on Tumblr but that doesn't mean anything to anyone. It doesn't tell the story of how I saved up money to get my first motorcycle, the first time I dropped my bike, or how upset my parents were with me buying it. For me, Tumblr is just a great, mindless way to kill time.

Pinterest for me, is a better way of organizing my bookmarks. I share links and photos from other sites because they interest me. Like with Tumblr, I don't necessarily stop to think why I'm putting a photo to my board- it's just a great way to visualize all the things that interest me and my friends on one page. I have a section for recipes, a section for funny stuff, another section for just cool arts and craft stuff. I browse Pinterest by categories just to find something cool/interesting that I want to go back to afterwards. It's a great service because I've use my browser bookmarking feature a lot less now.

Here's a question I asked myself for Tumblr and Pinterest: "Can you figure out what your friend would want as a practical gift for her birthday?" I wouldn't be able to; my friend shares everything from recipes to pictures of dogs to wedding gowns. But truth is- she's doesn't cook, is allergic to dogs, and is already married. It wouldn't make sense to buy her a dog or kitchenware right? Knowing that she doesn't cook, that she's allergic to dogs would be the prime examples of the kind of personal understanding you'll have of someone on Persona. It's not about what you're liking, reblogging or upvoting. It's about the real side of you, the one where you parents and only close friends know about.

Thanks for the feedback!

We did our kickstarter video for #1125. We rented a photography studio for 3 hours for a total of $225, and hired two cinematographers for $900 (Side by Side Cinema).

We wrote and direct the script ourselves- this saved the MOST money. Most of the video firms we've contacted were lazy and didn't provide any assistance into sharing suggestions or helpful tips on how to make a good demo video. They also were very pushy with the fact that we should hire professional actors so as not to waste their time. While I can understand that professional actors will make your product look better, it really depends on your product. For us, because we were on Kickstarter- it only made sense that we didn't hire anyone so our video seemed more personal.

Kickstarter video (we also did a bonus skit on the bottom of the page, which was included in the prices mentioned above) : http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imjonathanlee/persona-yo...

I think there would be a lot of personalized usernames, which is what I'm going for. Imagine having having a personalized link like domain.com/jon or domain.com/tim. There's definitely a lot of demand for such personalized usernames.

That's true, but at the same time it would make a world of difference depending on your service. I asked the question because our app Persona is like an about me Page, in pictures. Most of the requests I'm getting is because people like Paul or Bob, Tim etc want to have their personalized URL linked with our app. Imagine if you were a Paul and you were sending your friends a link: http://www.prsna.me/paul . The appeal there for a less than 5 character username would then be justified as I see it.