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Hmm it's a shame that's what you took away from the web page...I know it's not a good write up as is and I'm trying to work on the marketing angle because it's a pretty new type of service. I've gotten some good advice recently (approached the uni's entrepreneurship office and the director seems to like the idea. Gave me his own valuation modeling tool and advice) but haven't had time to clean it up. It'll be clear before I announce it. This isn't a quiz like that at all nor is it online matchmaking. There's a pretty big gulf between "fill out ten questions to find out how kinky you are" and a forecast. Ignoring issues of fidelity or accuracy, one is wholly subjective and the other is numerical and, beyond stated assumptions, objective. Unfortunately I don't have clean enough wireframes to show what it would look like. You can read earlier posts for a bit more on it - but in short, it uses something like an eHarmony romantic personality test along with more details about life goals to generate a forecast of probabilities of finding a relationship, comparative value of being single vs being in a relationship, and plenty of other generated data I can display/interpret. It's up to people to make relationships work. There's nothing out there that does anything like this. For now, I'll be marketing it directly to users though the SW is architected such that I can license an API out to matchmaking companies. I'm imagining a one time fee rather than a subscription service though I'm leaving the SW reqs open ended such that I can institute a subscription-based matchmaking service on a model different from existing matchmaking sites. Right now, I'm not mentioning that as I really need to distinguish myself from that market. As a tangent, I was talking to someone recently and remembered this was one of my inspirations: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/08/17/129261284/applying-academic-formulae-to-scripts-could-weed-out-hollywood-duds
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Sep 6, 2014 21:12
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guidoanselmi posted:API out to matchmaking companies This is the audience I would recommend marketing the software to. As you probably know, there are thousands of them in the US alone. I know the site is a work in progress, but I would suggest having the form fill out on the right side that follows the user scroll. This will increase email submissions since the conversion action is always on the screen. I would bet that most visitors, do not make it to the bottom of the page.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:26
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You also have a potential trademark infringement issue with "Yenta". Mark Image Word Mark YENTA Goods and Services IC 038. US 100 101 104. G & S: Electronic mail services. FIRST USE: 20030601. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20030601 IC 045. US 100 101. G & S: Dating services, computer dating services and video dating services. FIRST USE: 20030601. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20030601 Standard Characters Claimed Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK Serial Number 78476476 Filing Date August 31, 2004 Current Basis 1A Original Filing Basis 1A Published for Opposition July 12, 2005 Registration Number 3004447 Registration Date October 4, 2005 Owner (REGISTRANT) Hypothesis.com, LLC CORPORATION DELAWARE 100 Springdale Road, A3-111 Cherry Hill NEW JERSEY 08003 Attorney of Record Mark Borghee Type of Mark SERVICE MARK Register PRINCIPAL Affidavit Text SECT 8 (6-YR). Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
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Sep 7, 2014 06:50
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guidoanselmi posted:but in short, it uses something like an eHarmony romantic personality test along with more details about life goals to generate a forecast of probabilities of finding a relationship, comparative value of being single vs being in a relationship, and plenty of other generated data I can display/interpret. It's up to people to make relationships work. I'm imagining putting in all my data and then it goes "you have a 72% chance of finding a relationship in the next year" and that just seems dumb as hell. What are you actually giving users? I don't give a poo poo that it's objective data instead of subjective Cosmo writer data, I still can't do anything with it. If I'm single, I'm not going to care one bit that a program tells me being single has a higher comparative value.
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Sep 7, 2014 20:13
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Leif. posted:You also have a potential trademark infringement issue with "Yenta". Yeah. I've known about this and one of the reasons I'm not announcing things yet. I saw other variations on Yenta and thought it'd be ok to run with it but the fact its the same industry makes it pretty contestable. I'm still waiting on hearing back about which variations on are kosher (like "Professor Yenta"). If not there's a few other candidates. moana posted:Yeah, I just can't see anyone caring unless it's matchmaking company that requires all users to do this. And then it's probably quite similar to what OKC/Match uses to pair likely people up. Thanks for your opinion, really. Those are some real concerns that I should end up writing about. For whatever reason, some people see value in objective decision making over listening to anecdotes, advice columns, and whatnot. The market is large and I can't claim to address all of it but there certainly is a niche where people want affirmation, with or without, matchmaking. If you insist on the universality of your opinion, I can only say people I've met and canvassed certainly feel differently - and it's not out of politeness given other criticisms I've heard. In general, it's a decision analysis tool not a matchmaking service. If you read earlier posts on the last page, you can see it's meant to ultimately target b2b. It doesn't do what eHarmony, Match, etc, do but leverages the data they get from their users. Even the basic technology is a bit different because I bring in time and relationship dynamics. Their models, as far as I have read, are static. Why would a single person to use this decision tool for relationships? Maybe they're simply curious what the future may have to offer? Maybe they're insecure about the future and want affirmation about their life decisions? maybe it provides a reality check on how picky they are and what it means if they truly want a long-term relationship? If I get enough funding (and give or take statistics), one of the first things I'll add is personal reports with advice - such as which groups are the best for them to interact with more. That will hopefully be more instructive than just looking at a number. With enough data, there'll be a service noting which cities offer the best matches (as opposed to a generic and undescriptive "relationship formation rate" a la https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/looking-for-love/10152062261818859 .) In some sense the report tells you something you may already know - like one's interest in being single far outweighs the value of being with a long-term partner for the foreseeable future. Indeed, for lack of data - the current validation has been through looking at the limits of tautological examples. For instance, I know a test case will result in a failed relationship w/r/t the monte carlo results. Now what would have to change and by how much for it to be shifted into the fold and would the model still be consistent? Despite consistency and self-test - it's still tautologically validated. After talking to folks that know a bit more than me on the stats side, what I've done isn't bad. It's a hard problem that has no solution without data. Ultimately the most important thing for valid results is consistency across assumptions which I have. Later having the data to move to a new statistical methodology might actually nix some of that constancy, but I'll have to check and recheck methods when that data comes in. On point, there is some tautology in taking the test that is unavoidable. For responses that give a directly tautological answer (again, the value of being single being the primary example), I have notifications to inform the user that they're effectively mooting the predictive capability. But despite all of that - are people self-aware enough to really know what they explicitly want? Not always. For a few friends that I used as guinea pigs, they had more self-awareness about what they wanted out of a long-term relationship and who they were romantically (one friend commenting "Wow, I'm an rear end in a top hat.") The very act of filling out the tool may help people become more self-aware and better understand their romantic intentions. I think the personal value of this is on par, if not exceeds, the algorithm's. I'll keep in mind the distinct benefits for people who are single and in relationships and make things clearer in the future for when I update the site. Once it's announced I'll be keeping a blog on some of the statistics, engineer, and psychology that will talk about stuff like the last paragraph. At this point, I'll just wait till I sign a developer before doing new content. guidoanselmi fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Sep 7, 2014 |
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Sep 7, 2014 23:03
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quote:If you insist on the universality of your opinion, I can only say people I've met and canvassed certainly feel differently - and it's not out of politeness given other criticisms I've heard.
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Sep 8, 2014 03:52
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I have 3 other co-founders, and we've been 100% bootstrapped to date. We are not software, we make (as someone said in here) stuff that goes in a box that people buy. So far, we've done better than expected, so we're planning to increase our production run 2.5x's next time. Due to manufacturing lead times and payment due dates, we'll have sizable chunk of our current inventory still hand at the time payment for the next run is due, and we won't have quite enough cash on hand to pay it all. This is a long winded way of asking: does anyone have experience with how easy/difficult it is to secure a small business loan in the $50k range? We don't care how long the loan term is. It seems like - we'll likely have the money to repay the loan within a year. We've had $35k in gross revenue in our first 6 months and we're sitting on $35k worth of product (6 month supply assuming no growth, which is a bad assumption) and $18k in cash, with $18k owed on a 0% APR credit card (for 9 months). It's about 3 month lead time for everything...so we're looking to order soon. We have enough cash to pay the half up front required to start the first phase, but we won't have enough to finish. Would you expect troubles for a 4 man LLC securing a loan for more than our total history of sales?
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Sep 8, 2014 05:10
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So how have you tested the efficacy of this? Is it based on a review of scientific literature on what makes relationships work? It sounds like you don't have a dataset to test on. (I think an auto function word analysis would be super cool for dating sites but that's totally different and would be hard to implement) I guess I could definitely see this being useful if you provided it as an API for lower level or niche dating sites who cant afford their own OKC style algos. Like shopify's relationship to small ecom sites.
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Sep 8, 2014 06:23
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guidoanselmi posted:Yeah. I've known about this and one of the reasons I'm not announcing things yet. I saw other variations on Yenta and thought it'd be ok to run with it but the fact its the same industry makes it pretty contestable. I'm still waiting on hearing back about which variations on are kosher (like "Professor Yenta"). If not there's a few other candidates. Hear back from whom? Do you have a trademark attorney doing this clearance for you properly, or is it just a cofounder searching TESS? Feel free to shoot me a PM if you need assistance in that regard.
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Sep 8, 2014 18:02
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Leif. posted:Hear back from whom? Do you have a trademark attorney doing this clearance for you properly, or is it just a cofounder searching TESS? Feel free to shoot me a PM if you need assistance in that regard. My general counsel is a little bit like Barry Zuckerkorn, but this guy is a patent (not trademark) attorney. Even before he got back late last night, I got a lot of feedback convincing me to abandon Dr. Yenta for something that's safer, more culturally neutral, and better for SEO. Just got his first draft of my patent as well so I'll be playing around with that today. I don't have plat to send you a PM as I might have some other questions just for feedback. You can ping me at ( info at dryenta . com ) and i'll shoot you an email. I'll be taking that down as soon as I get the next domain. At least the Dr. Yenta experiment was a good experience to learn from. semicolonsrock posted:So how have you tested the efficacy of this? Is it based on a review of scientific literature on what makes relationships work? It sounds like you don't have a dataset to test on. (I think an auto function word analysis would be super cool for dating sites but that's totally different and would be hard to implement) The validation has been through self-consistency and test cases from me and my friends. I've had some substantial review of the theory which has been good. I'll actually be giving a talk on the algorithm in my department next Friday if anyone's in STL and wants to come throw me hardballs. The problems I deal with theoretically simply have no clean answer - even with inclusion of data sets there's a lot of assumptions on improved statistical methods which don't make it any more academically satisfying (getting really nerdy, defining occupied areas/volumes under PCA-derived associations requires assumptions on what space is occupied/what is an outlier in a high dimensional volume? My test-case derived normalization was enough to make the statisticians nod. It's been tweaked along with the part of my algorithm that does socialization frequency, there's some room for error here because my prototype makes testing it really tedious. Once I get it on a server as real software it'll be really easy to throw random data at the parts of the algo that are weaker in validation. That'll be done by early release as a part of V&V testing). As far as "auto function word analysis," there's something like that out there and I just pinged the guy who has that and a lot of personality data via data mining to see if we can do some sort of collaboration. Right now, one of the biggest weaknesses is self-reporting personality data. Access to data sets will only matter if I have a standardized personality test. I'm going to structure the kickstarter such that early adopter (starting at like $50) get access to the self-report, early version. If I can lock in enough funding, I can at least implement a Big 5 personality test with some integration. I'm working on finding data for that atm. Regardless, the early users should give me a fair amount of data to play around with and clean up some of the test case-derived values. quote:I guess I could definitely see this being useful if you provided it as an API for lower level or niche dating sites who cant afford their own OKC style algos. Like shopify's relationship to small ecom sites. Wow, thanks for this idea. Yeah doing matching is trivial for me but it's not what I'm branding myself as to end-users. I'm working right now with some b-school advisors at identifying market segments and I had overlooked the smaller/niche matching sites. Speaking of, going to the business school has been really good for me. I have two advisors, one of which runs a local VC fund and the other who is the director of entrepreneurship. They've been giving me a stream of homework. The director wants me to help out making early stage valuation tools because of my forecasting experience, heh. moana posted:Did they agree when you asked them right then and there to pay for it? I haven't been asking friends for money, most don't have enough to matter. The few friends I approached who do have resources have pledged a healthy amount. I should have >20% of my kickstarter goal within days of it going up. FWIW, a lot of my friends are more on the STEM side so this appeals to them more. quote:That seems to be the litmus test. I would probably tell you that the thing is freaking awesome if you actually had me sit down and do the test - I love doing surveys and looking at data and graphs and things - but no way in hell would I fork over money for it. So I had a convo with an advisor who brought up some of your issues and ways to address them. A lot about simplifying output and branding a few "scores" rather than laying down the entire forecast upfront. All users would be given "pickiness" and "sociability" scores that denote their chances of finding good matches while people in relationships get "partner score" and "relationship score" that indicate the relative value of a partner along with the value of the relationship in light of trying to find another one. I think it really simplified the output and is more brandible. Later, I could incorporate this into the pay model such that an extra few bucks can get you where those numbers came from. I know you're not warm to the idea in general but as a naysayer is this more responsive to you?
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Sep 9, 2014 16:51
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guidoanselmi as soon as it seems possible, I suggest developing a couple of stories and anecdotes. Put this intellectual property in human terms. What meaning could it have to people? I'm generally very comfortable wading into unfamiliar jargon but after scanning through the page you have I can't quite put my finger on the human dimension. What does your product make possible that wasn't possible before, through the eyes of an individual person who it is affecting? This might be the kind of concept that would benefit from a few doodles or sketches to go along with the stories. How is this product or service going to change the lives of its key constituents? Maybe that is the story of someone looking for love. Maybe it is the story of a frustrated dating site operator looking to improve results. Maybe it is a statistician looking for an engine to crunch their massive dataset. Mark Kidd fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Sep 10, 2014 |
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Sep 9, 2014 17:31
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Definitely agree with Mark Kidd -- graphs are just not going to cut it if you want to have any appeal beyond a very small niche. Also, I definitely agree that it's difficult to tell what tangible benefit the results your product has, which is a problem since it seems like the audience it will most appeal to are people who really value quantifiable results. Like, I have no idea how a percentage or a standard deviation or whatever translates into real terms. I think that's important to be able to quantify that in order to A) appeal to your core group of stats nerds looking for love and B) have the possibility of opening up your product to appeal to a larger audience. I think working in startups has made me kind of paranoid, but I also sent you an email at your dryenta address about some stuff you might want to think about. I guess you're pretty comfortable posting about this stuff on SA and so much of a startup is execution versus having a killer idea, so that's probably ok but meh NDA habits die hard. e: If you have a video of your talk I'd love to see it. e2: Wow I just sent a much too long email, apologies in advance. foutre fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Sep 9, 2014 |
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Sep 9, 2014 23:13
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RIP ZEEZ
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guidoanselmi posted:The validation has been through self-consistency and test cases from me and my friends. I've had some substantial review of the theory which has been good. I'll actually be giving a talk on the algorithm in my department next Friday if anyone's in STL and wants to come throw me hardballs. The problems I deal with theoretically simply have no clean answer - even with inclusion of data sets there's a lot of assumptions on improved statistical methods which don't make it any more academically satisfying (getting really nerdy, defining occupied areas/volumes under PCA-derived associations requires assumptions on what space is occupied/what is an outlier in a high dimensional volume? My test-case derived normalization was enough to make the statisticians nod. It's been tweaked along with the part of my algorithm that does socialization frequency, there's some room for error here because my prototype makes testing it really tedious. Once I get it on a server as real software it'll be really easy to throw random data at the parts of the algo that are weaker in validation. That'll be done by early release as a part of V&V testing). I'd be interested to see a recording of the talk/learn more if you have it. I'm working in a very data/stats heavy field atm and am curious what you've done. I still don't see a clear path to monetization. I really think you should think about marketing/user demand > product development for awhile. It's unfortunately easy to have a great product that fails. See: http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5039216/everpix-life-and-death-inside-the-worlds-best-photo-startup https://github.com/everpix/Everpix-Intelligence (this is actually a great resource)
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Sep 10, 2014 04:12
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I'll probably be taking a break from posting in this thread until I get something out there. Everything has been really helpful so far, especially the reenforcement of having good branding for something that's pretty wonky and unapproachable. For now I'll be super busy. I have statements of work from devs and a patent I need to have in. Video to make, blog posts to start writing, talks to give (been roped in on forecasting experience at NASA at bschool), "homework" from my really gracious advisors, and a too much networking. End of FY reports for two studies I manage at JPL, to boot. All super fun. I'll post the real site when it's up for comments in ~two weeks. Till then, no sleep.
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Sep 10, 2014 19:08
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I am not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I am looking to start my own Production company for some videos made toward Real Estate, Weddings, Sports and Events etc, however I am hung up at figuring out a good Company Name. I seem to feel best about having the word "Productions" in the name, but I don't feel like my last name would fit with it due to it being easy to say, but spelled completely different then what anyone would guess so telling people about it without explaining the spelling or giving them a business card would be a hassle. I have tossed around a few that end up being three words, and end as a easy acronym of VPP of sorts, but if anyone has some good experience/advise to share, that would be great. I was looking to stay away from the super internet trendy names since I plan to have a bit more of a mature client base (Real Estate mostly) that might like something a bit easier and classic to remember, but without it being old fogyish.
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Sep 11, 2014 20:15
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District Selectman posted:Would you expect troubles for a 4 man LLC securing a loan for more than our total history of sales? Can't say anything about traditional loans, but securing that much via prosper or lending club shouldn't be that hard, and the loan is 100% unsecured. May be a consideration worth looking at for short term needs.
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Sep 14, 2014 06:25
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Well it's been less than two weeks & the real site is up: http://www.nanaya.co. Just announced it for the first time on facebook to people. Time to not make a fool of myself. Got a press kit, content calendar, list of media contacts who might run a story on this, and dedicated social marketer as we work on the product and all other things. This'll be interesting. 
guidoanselmi fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 05:10
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guidoanselmi posted:Well it's been less than two weeks & the real site is up: www.nanaya.co. Just announced it for the first time on facebook to people. Time to not make a fool of myself. Too late! Bad Request (400)
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Sep 25, 2014 05:21
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 sigh, ~unsheathes kitana~
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Sep 25, 2014 05:50
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guidoanselmi posted:Well it's been less than two weeks & the real site is up: http://www.nanaya.co. Just announced it for the first time on facebook to people. Time to not make a fool of myself. I think the site looks great so far. Nice work! May I ask where you found developers to get the product off the ground? How much of a product did you have before you spoke to VCs?
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Sep 25, 2014 16:04
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I put up an ad on HackerNews, but there was a lot of noise to filter out. I boiled it down to a firm (partly outsourced) and a person. I wasn't really at ease with either (inconsistent communication with one and the other wanted equity off the bat). I was just going to choose the next day but then managed to run into someone local to make a quick landing page who turned out to be a fullstack dev looking for a real gig after just moving to town. We got along really well and she was enthusiastic to sign up for a few months of work. I haven't spoken to VC's formally yet (a business school professor does run his own fund and I've been advised a little bit by him). I'm self-funding.
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Sep 25, 2014 16:23
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guidoanselmi posted:I put up an ad on HackerNews, but there was a lot of noise to filter out. I boiled it down to a firm (partly outsourced) and a person. I wasn't really at ease with either (inconsistent communication with one and the other wanted equity off the bat). I was just going to choose the next day but then managed to run into someone local to make a quick landing page who turned out to be a fullstack dev looking for a real gig after just moving to town. We got along really well and she was enthusiastic to sign up for a few months of work. Good stuff. If you don't mind my asking, how much have you put in money wise to get this far? And what are your next steps now that the site is up?
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Sep 25, 2014 16:56
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I've saved up for a bit (two jobs and my cost of living is low in St Louis). Budgeted ~$9k for the first half of development (including marketing, etc). I'll probably be doing the kickstarter in a month or so to get the rest of the way toward a product (another $5-10K, depending on TBD work agreements after the first phase of development). I'll be asking for $10k which I should have 25% assured by day 1 or 2. A reaching $20k would be great in terms of getting testing. After a kickstarter, I'll see what interest there was and how media picked this up. I'll look into getting seed funding then. At some point toward the end of the kickstarter, I'll try to see if I can get a viral campaign going using a technology we're licensing (free for now) that does personality assessment based on facebook likes: http://youarewhatyoulike.com/ All the SW integration is set to be done around Jan 1-5ish. Gives us a month for systems testing and some validation. The real version will be incorporating data sets and will be more complex than the prototype so that portion may take a bit. I'm a little worried about the loading of the server because the algorithm takes a bit of time to run (the prototype takes ~3s on my macbook air for 10 simulation runs. I'll be simulating 1000 runs/person). We'll be using RabbitMQ to handle that but nonetheless. We joked about asking the user what their favorite animal is and drag some youtube videos into the waiting screen while the server runs the algo. The only online monte carlo tool I know of is SPENVIS: https://www.spenvis.oma.be/ calling GEANT4. (my nerdy physics stuff) I'll gradually roll out the product to people who fund me the most starting around Valentines Day. Top tier funders will have exclusive access (and perks) and be my first major set of customers, then I'll open up to people who funded at the $10-40 level after we clean up any lingering issues and try to learn from the data we received till then. I imagine by mid-late Summer 2015 I'll move to a pay model. A few options to choose from but TBD. guidoanselmi fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 17:17
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I've got a bit of a story that will probably pave the way for a flood of questions once I get my head wrapped around what I even need to ask. I've been hanging out, drinking beer and chatting about life passions with a guy who is a local urban planner. Back in June we started kicking around the idea of a food industry focused incubator based on the success of the local tech incubator which opened a couple of years ago, and the fact that he was going to work in an incubator in Vancouver for a few months. We kept in touch and created a few documents together, Skype chatted a bit. I got to talk with the director of his incubator. When he got back in august we banged out an executive summary and a short presentation. I wanted to see what the community thought of the idea, so I started having coffee with a food entrepreneur or wannapreneur each morning. We used that feedback to tweak our business model. The idea was to put together a business plan in January and then make it public so that maybe someone with some time and money would look at it and go make it a reality. My buddy is leaving the country in February and might not ever come back to our fair city. So we figured that would be the end of that. Just for kicks and giggles I decide to host a community meeting to talk about how a food incubator would serve the needs of the community as well as utilize its assets. The meeting took place last night. We were expecting maybe a dozen people, and about 40 showed up. I gave the spiel, didn't say anything embarrassing, and everyone said huzzah at the end. Afterward my friend and I got approached separately by a couple of very well dressed folks who, after asking a few nuts and bolts questions, basically said "if you don't Make this food incubator a reality then we will, but we would prefer that you did and we will help get it funded. Also, we expect you to meet with us in two days and be ready to give a pitch in three weeks." After some more small talk I got the impression that these people have more money than god and pretty much rebuilt New Orleans after Katrina Today I went to a function with a lot of local business owners, politicians, and other flavors of white people with money. They like to trot me out as the local working stiff small business success story because no one there understands my industry and they think I am vastly more successful than I am. I like to go to these things because there is free food, and one or two of the folks there went way out of their way to mentor me, help me get cra funds, pass on some great connections, and loan me money. Several folks there came up to me, told me that they heard I was starting a food industry specific incubator and either scheduled a meeting with me, or pledged to help in any way they could. I also had two strangely menacing conversation with a local business owner and a non profit group. Both of whom I think were afraid I would be going after public funding that they had their eye on. Now, I'm not really sure if all of this is just a flash in the pan because I met with a local woman who had pitched a food incubator to the chamber of commerce two years ago to a lot of fanfare and it went nowhere. I think because they just couldn't get it funded. Anyhow it will be interesting to see what comes of all this. I'm really bummed my buddy is leaving because our skillets compliment each other really well. I know the industry really well and he writes good. I'll keep the thread posted on what becomes of this. Im really curious how I should position myself to take on a role in this project that will look good on my resume if I am looking for an executive position in a small food based startup. I was going to type more, but we had a ball buster of a day in the kitchen and i need to go crash.
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Sep 26, 2014 05:38
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guidoanselmi posted:Well it's been less than two weeks & the real site is up: http://www.nanaya.co. Just announced it for the first time on facebook to people. Time to not make a fool of myself. Small bit of feedback. Your site needs more human beings. I don't see a face until I scroll way down past a bunch of numbers and graphs. There's also no narrative quality to your copy. Think why people read horoscopes. We are narcissistic beings and we love to hear stories about ourselves.
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Sep 26, 2014 05:45
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Ok.
retpocileh fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jun 9, 2015 |
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Sep 26, 2014 20:56
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Leroy Diplowski posted:Small bit of feedback. Your site needs more human beings. I don't see a face until I scroll way down past a bunch of numbers and graphs. There's also no narrative quality to your copy. Think why people read horoscopes. We are narcissistic beings and we love to hear stories about ourselves. Yes. If this is a romance tool, maybe have a picture of a couple as the banner background. Also, don't say "I". For example, " That's why I built Nanaya." Use "we" instead.
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Sep 27, 2014 07:41
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Really good points & duly noted! My artist is busy working on some animations for a movie and then she'll make the "Nanaya" character (she actually had almost finished a final "Dr. Yenta" before the switch). I'll try to take some photos or at worst get some stock photos up as background. I'll try to have an update in a week or so as my dev is really busy getting the blog and DB/user accounts ready. There'll be a blog up on Monday where I'll be shoving a lot of content of which a bunch will be humanizing (talking about psychology & relationships...admittedly a bunch about stats and math which is the opposite). I imagine the blog might be the main landing page as we broadcast that content via social media. Mid-Nov, we'll have user accounts up for personality testing and a fun tool we're trying to license for facebook-driven personality assessment. That's along with data sets...we'll see how that goes. e: VV hahaha, thanks. I'm effectively in a relationship with Nanaya now but I don't think that counts. Unfortunately, the smiling photos of me during the video shoot were blurry that was actually from a different shoot for something that was serious. I'm going to work on building that credibility with people who aren't just quant wonks. I hope the blog should go a long way in building that trust - obviously people would need to read and follow it which is a different issue. The kickstarter video will hopefully be pretty catchy to bring a bit more levity to the idea. End-user decision analysis is new world so I really don't know if people will bite but criticisms I get here are good for informing how to spin it. (Thanks, all.) The tool is the end-product/service (again, it's a fuzzy boundary here); the most equivalent type of product is something like carfax. I've done several exercises with my advisors in identifying the potential serviceable markets and there's a bit of overlap with people who'd be savvy online and with kickstarter. No doubt, there is an issue in marketing focus (this is tech but also has to do with lifestyles and romance) that needs to be tackled. I'm getting started in contacting media - hopefully there'll be some press beforehand (there's a lot of references to similar stories that have gotten a lot of attention in the press kit). People who fund the kickstarter would get access to the tool. I'm still figuring out the pay model post-kickstarter in conjunction with advisors. I'll make the kickstarter perks hopefully sufficiently attractive (e.g. all future upgrades free, no end-dated access). guidoanselmi fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 17:03
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Nanaya is interesting, but I can't imagine you having any success on Kickstarter. In my experience, things that do well on Kickstarter are end products or video games for consumers. Who do you expect to give you money via that route, and what will they get out of it? Also, are you single? If you aren't, then I'd include a smiling photo of you with your SO. If you're single, I'd also include a photo of yourself smiling. Sarah Keefe has the best photo for something like this. Your super serious stare doesn't seem real friendly to me, and it's hard for me to think that I'd consider your opinions about relationships.
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Sep 27, 2014 19:29
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Does anyone have any experience working customer service jobs in a startup environment? I would be curious to hear people's stories about the pluses and minuses of something like that, as I've been wanting to find more stimulating work. Being able to work remotely would be a bonus as well. I like the idea of getting to know a product extremely well and being able to use that to quickly and smoothly help customers with issues, and to be able to help developers figure out what needs improving and such. There seem to be a decent amount of jobs like this popping up here and there with small/medium startups that are a little more established. I've been working for the federal government for the last 4+ years, I basically do similar stuff with our beneficiary records. I've gotten very familiar with all of the ancient and obtuse systems used to make record corrections and how they interact with each other, working in a very general 'figure out whatever is wrong and fix it' position. Most of my work is solo at a computer, but I end up now and then working over the phone with beneficiaries/attorneys/other employees to figure things out and I enjoy the interactions a lot when I do. I want to switch because most of my work is fixing problems caused by other people in my position half-assing inputs or generally not giving a poo poo about their jobs and screwing everything up, which can get frustrating. I like the problem solving parts of my job a lot, but I wish I got to interact with people a little more. The programs and policy and countless acronyms are all extremely dense and unfriendly to work with, so it would be nice to work on something a little less tangled up with government policy. I know I might be giving up some pay/benefits, and definitely be giving up job security. Fortunately I'm career status, so I can at least re-apply for federal jobs non-competitively if I work for a startup that goes belly up.
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Oct 2, 2014 17:46
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Question: for people who have done this before, where do you park your money while saving up an expenses cushion in the expectation that you'll need one to start a business in the future? I am pretty sure that in 2-3 years I will want to be leaving my job to found a startup, but am not sure what the most sensible way to save for this is. Right now it's just in a regular savings account, but this doesn't seem perfect.
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Oct 5, 2014 03:49
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The most sensible thing to do would be launch the startup now as cheaply as you can and then quit your day job once you're making "enough" money at the startup.
My Rhythmic Crotch fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Oct 5, 2014 |
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Oct 5, 2014 05:49
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My Rhythmic Crotch posted:The most sensible thing to do would be launch the startup now as cheaply as you can and then quit your day job once you're making "enough" money at the startup. I actually really would like to complete 2-3 years at my current job for the experience, but this does make a lot of sense eventually.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:34
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semicolonsrock posted:I actually really would like to complete 2-3 years at my current job for the experience, but this does make a lot of sense eventually. Yeah, you really never know how much runway you'll need, because the whole point of a startup is you're testing an unproven idea that may or may not be sustainable. If you have an idea figure out how to test the idea with the resources you have available. If you don't, learn what you can from work and stash cash til you've figured out what you want to do. How you save / invest is for someone who knows money better than I.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:43
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semicolonsrock posted:I actually really would like to complete 2-3 years at my current job for the experience, but this does make a lot of sense eventually. It will probably take 2-3 of working on the startup to get you enough money to quit your current job. Start the idea on the side right now.
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Oct 5, 2014 17:38
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Devil's advocate: if your idea is unimportant enough that giving potential competitors 3 years to be first to market is totally okay, maybe there's no market for you after all.
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Oct 5, 2014 18:55
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Misogynist posted:Devil's advocate: if your idea is unimportant enough that giving potential competitors 3 years to be first to market is totally okay, maybe there's no market for you after all. Oh I don't have any particular idea yet.
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Oct 5, 2014 20:57
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If you don't have an idea right now then I wouldn't be trying to put any specific timeline on leaving your job. That's an excellent way to blow all your savings.
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Oct 6, 2014 04:08
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Juanito posted:Nanaya is interesting, but I can't imagine you having any success on Kickstarter. In my experience, things that do well on Kickstarter are end products or video games for consumers. Who do you expect to give you money via that route, and what will they get out of it? FWIW decided not to do a kickstarter. This was a part of the issue. I do have the issue of running out of personal funds (predictably) before an MVP can be developed - but I can hopefully overcome that. I should have personality testing up for people before the budget dries, which gets customer data in the system for later and hopefully a sufficient demonstration of what the product will be like.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:28
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I have an idea to put together a streaming platform accessible by mobile and standard computing devices but I have no idea where to start as I am not technologically gifted. But I want to do this and it is pretty much all I've been thinking about for the last two weeks or so... but I have no idea where to start... any advice? I know that's vague but the idea is pretty simple I just don't think anyone is doing it right now.
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Oct 28, 2014 05:30
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