I can't believe how many people are belittling this idea or strawmanning it as a couple of dollars or $5. What the page is getting at is if you can get a few customers to actually commit real money, then you've got an actionable idea on your hands. This is so much better than any wishy-washy "that's a good idea" or "I'd buy that". This is a full fledged, "Here's my money, I am buying this right now." sort of decision.
Evidenced by the fact that about 50% of the profiles are in stealth, I think this service clearly solves a problem for the founder that wants validation without revealing their idea to the whole world.
I agree. Although this may not be the 100% certainty mentioned, it's another good data point. When boostrapping, it often feels like I'm working in an opinion vacuum (I don't count friends cause they tend to be annoyingly kind about these things). I like this idea.
Or wait until you've succeeded with it of course. I see your point and agree with it though. It's better just to dive in and see if it's successful than to try to make absolutely sure it's good and see someone else take off with it.
Hey Andrew! I hope you work on this more, but it's not ready for general consumption yet. Specifics:
Social proof is a big part of why kickstarter works. The startup pages should prominently display something like "X people have committed $Y".
Discoverability is also key. It should be easy to find your users, but I can only find you.
If you haven't implemented the above because you don't have any content, that's also a big problem. If you don't seed a site like this with content (from friends, family, cold calls, whatever) it causes all kinds of problems. For one, it makes it harder to see what the site does, because content is what happens when the site is doing things. It's also really unappealing at a basic human level, like an empty room. There's not much to look at, and you want to leave.
Your users' potential users don't want to "Validate this startup!". Your copy and design should align more with their needs.
The "Pledge" buttons are broken.
Your branding must be much weaker on pages like http://upstartly.com/startups/view/1. I would move all upstartly-specific content to the footer.
It's funny/interesting how trends emerge on HN. I feel like I've seen at least 5 of what I'd call "meta" projects/startups on the front page over the last week - sites that help a minor piece of the puzzle for a startup.
> I feel like I've seen at least 5 of what I'd call "meta" projects/startups on the front page over the last week - sites that help a minor piece of the puzzle for a startup.
There have definitely been a lot of start-ups about start-ups floating around. Whether they actually help any other start-ups remains to be seen in most/all cases.
The danger with this approach is that you'll restrict yourself to products that people know that they want to buy before you even build it. It would be great you could validate every product this way, but sadly many products have to be used before people are willing to pay.
This hardly a "danger" though. I realize it's fashionable around here to create brilliant new ideas for startups, but the overwhelming majority of successful companies are selling "products that people know they want to buy."
One of the most useful pieces of knowledge I got from a longtime entrepreneur was "don't build anything until you have an order for at least one." A lot of important details emerge from that statement once you analyze it.
(Warning: outsider perspective coming) Why do all of these startup ideas always have similar web layouts? It may be "cool" in YC-land but that's no way to stand out. The idea is intriguing though.
I posted something to that effect a while ago, and got some _very_ interesting responses. They opened my eyes to css grid frameworks and other goodies, that underpin much of the new minimalist designs.
Designers take inspirations from other designers. "Wow!" becomes "Let's borrow that cool effect from example.com" to being "OMG, another damned site with round borders" in a few months to a year.
I think there's a simpler explanation: they just haven't had time to put something more attractive together. Once they get a bit bigger, they usually seem to grow progressively more fancy.
Actually I like this possible recent trend of uber-simplistic web UI designs. I'm a passionate believer that simple web designs are the best. They're the fastest and cheapest to create. They are the fastest to transmit over the intertubes and then to render. And they are the least burdensome on the enduser's eyes and brain. And they help focus on substance & functionality over flash/chrome/foshizzle/sparklies. Pretty is good. But doing something real, quickly, and then getting out of my way, is better.
This is an interesting thought. My wife rubbishes most of my ideas, but there is one that she keeps brining up as her example of an idea she thinks is actually worth trying.
It's not an idea I'm particularly keen on, perhaps even though I try to be objective I'm being mislead by the lack of shiny tech, but maybe I should focus on it for a bit and give it a chance.
Are you talking about the fact that it's CHARGING people to VALIDATE your idea? I get what they're trying to do, and I was actually on board for the first three points. But then I got to #4, and it was like slamming into a wall. So you're going to celebrate your launch by grubbing money from the people who helped you get there? Surely, there must be a better way. I say, keep thinking...
If I got it right, then point #4 is that they actually only get charged when there is a product to deliver, i.e. they get the product and you get the money.
This doesn't prove anything about the quality of a 'startup idea' It just proves that you are able to convince a small number of people to drop five bucks. I don't see how that has a correlation to the future success of a business.
This would be much more interesting if it were pitched as a way to build a group of active early adopters. Pledging to an idea should give the user some perks from the start, and you should make it easy for the companies collecting pledges to incentivize these users.
It'd also be cool to give the start-ups ideas of what kind of perks they could offer early adopters. I thought lunch with a founder was a fun idea, but I had trouble thinking of perks that were genuinely worthwhile and incentivizing.
Could this be a funding hack? It creates an economic incentive for the founder of the startup to give each of his friends $5 (say give 20 friends), to 'prove' that he has traction.
For $100, he can secure an angel/seed round of $100K.
Wouldn't be surprised if that is one of those unintended consequences that further inflates, what honestly looks like is becoming, the resurgence of a new bubble.
Good idea though, just wondering about the macro implications.
Very funny idea (not sure if it is meant to be) but I do agree with nckpark in that getting 5 people to drop a couple bucks doesn't mean much for the quality of the idea. Especially when knowing that most people aren't successful entrepreneurs that know what will work, and even if they are, 5 people doesn't give you a majority. Also I feel a big thing VCs preach is being "contrarian" so having mass belief in an idea would be contrarian to contrarian (Upstartly likes recursion right?).
> Especially when knowing that most people aren't successful entrepreneurs that know what will work,
But surely that isn't the point? Most Amazon customers, most Walmart customers, most McDonalds customers aren't succesful entrepreneurs that know what will work - but they're the guys spending the money. Hopefully on something; (on something that they presumably want, or see some value in) that will make _you_ succesful.
Wouldn't it be interesting if people could comment on the startup page and give feedback on the general idea... exactly like we are doing for upstartly.com in this thread.
Interesting idea. Although compare this to a survey (most commonly used idea research tool): even with a survey with hundreds of responses, there is the question of the sample's representativeness. Here the sample base is so small that the results (positive or negative) just cannot be regarded as statistically significant. It may be used as a complementary tool to measure the "virality", but cannot give me a 100% confidence level within 0% margin of error.
It would be helpful to know how many others believe its a good idea. I might be on the cusp of thinking an idea is good, but I don't want to back a dead horse.
Provocative idea. Agree (and upvoted swombat) that 100% is inaccurate. Here's the thing: how many applications do you use today that if they used the model upstartly.com is providing YOU would have invested in. I spend a huge amount of time in Clicky (web analytics) today and am a paying customer, but I wouldn't have given them $5 to build it. I needed to see it working—and try it—before I made that commitment.
Tell me I'm wrong, but my concern would be floating my idea out there where someone faster, I'm working on it as a side project, would beat me to the punch and launch before me.
That is very valid concern. I built in 'stealth mode' so your startup is only available to people you send a special link (with a generated key) to. Check 'stealth mode' when you create a startup.
More importantly, WHO those five are is very important. I could get five best friends to give me five dollars. That's meaningless in evaluating your idea.
I put my startup on the service. One thing I have a problem with is that it exposes my personal email by default. I think you should make it private by default.
Good point. Email addresses are now only shown to the actual user. Also, I made it so if you choose to make your startup stealth on signup, your user will be stealth too.
"Google" - A search engine that is better than others because it doesn't rely on keyword frequency but rather other sites that reference it.
"Facebook" - A social network that relies on exclusivity through both signup and connecting to others to engage customers. Stickiness is applied via user's updating their status, linking to sites or subjects of interest, discussing upcoming local events, and various methods of social graphing (i.e., how users are connected to the people they want to connect to and the people those connections are connected to).
"Wikipedia" - An online encyclopedia that is created, edited, modified, and updated by Everyone. Accuracy is mostly preserved by off-page discussion and off-site citation. It's goal will be a recreation of the Library of Alexandria [<-- that's the stinger selling point.]
