

The Minimum Viable Product from our lean, bootstrapped startup - comments? - andrewstuart
http://www.powergrabber.com

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pclark
I felt bad for my observation of your title, so felt I should leave some
feedback as well, I apologize.

Your primary message: "PowerGrabber is an invitation manager. It captures the
addresses from your inbound and outbound emails, so you can invite the people
you email to join your LinkedIn™ network."

I don't know what an invitation manager _is_ , _captures_ sounds non-friendly.
How about: PowerGrabber ensures the people you email are connected to you via
LinkedIn. No more lost connections.

I'd also drop all the trademark symbols, whilst probably more legal it looks
very corporate and almost scammy as it breaks the line flow.

I'd put the benefits above the "What is PowerGrabber" (you duplicate your
appropriate primary marketing message, only with more detail)

In reality your benefits are _that the people you email are your linkedin
contacts_. I'd spell this out by a short scenario about losing a contact that
would be really valuable in the future. The benefits you list are complex and
scary and marketing speak. "Systematically".

From the application point of view - the most useful data is _who do I email
the most that I'm not connected to?_ do you offer that? A video would help.
The "how it works" image isn't clear as to how it works. Your best bet is to
make a few screens in PowerPoint and record them as a video.

Your privacy policy is a pdf, i'd put that as html.

I'd also consider changing the logo as when I see that logo I think of the
soviet union which is uhm, probably not appropriate :)

It's a neat idea and I'd use it if it worked with GMail and Mac. It solves a
problem and is of clear value to the user, I'd make sure your marketing
messages were similarly clear.

Just my $0.02

~~~
bdickason
Just to back this point up with my upvote, I don't like the 'invitation
manager' terminology. I basically read that first paragraph, didn't get why it
was useful to me, then closed the page, no offense!

The first sentence already describes what PowerGRabber is. Below that, SHOW me
why it's useful, whether it be a flowchart, a screenshot, or whatever :)

also I just scrolled down to your diagram at the bottom and still didn't get
it :X

~~~
rubinelli
I had the same reaction. For a moment, I thought 'Invitation Manager' was some
kind of automated RSVP system.

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patio11
Benefits sell software, not features. Don't tell us what it does, tell us the
concrete improvement in our lives we'll experience from using it. (Hint: the
things you have listed under benefits are not actually benefits. Nothing that
starts with "Systematically" is a benefit. To normal people, systematically
says "sounds a whole lot like _work_.")

Your button does not look like a button to me (CrazyEgg will tell you if I'm
nuts or not) and is off to the side. If your customers are like my customers,
I'd suggest supplementing that with a button in the main content.

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Aegean
Too much writing and pictures in landing page.

Also what is your future value proposition? Is it only the ability to link
emails to linked in?

~~~
petervandijck
Agree with too much writing. For example, "PowerGrabber is an invitation
manager. It captures the addresses from your inbound and outbound emails, so
you can invite the people you email to join your LinkedIn network." is too
long for a headline.

Shorter version could be: "Easily invite more people you know to Linkedin", or
something like that (you surely know the value proposition better than me ;)

And then but the most important things in bullets: the price, the fact that
it's a Windows download, etc. Edit down that text, shorter is better :)

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pclark
MVP, Lean, Boostrapped. You certainly win at buzzwords.

~~~
patio11
This is rather more snarky than usual for the top comment on a Rate My Startup
post. I would rather not see that become a trend, since they're some of the
most enjoyable (and useful) posts this community has, and -- of all people --
we should understand that getting something out and ready to show takes both
courage and hard work.

~~~
pclark
I agree. I think I probably should leave some feedback (aww, can't edit..) as
well, but at the same time felt the amount of buzzwords thrown around by
startups these days is getting alarming.

And these _are_ buzzwords. Lean, Boostrapped, MVP - tell me _nothing_ of the
product.

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JarekS
You will have tough competition from i.e. Xobni. They are free to use, well
integrated with Outlook and let you display LinkedIn info about every email
address that you are dealing with. <http://www.xobni.com/social-outlook>

~~~
erikstarck
Great! Someone else has done something similar! That means there's a market.

~~~
JarekS
You have a good point. But the next thing you need to think of is: \- is Xobni
really serving the market in an optimal way? \- Is there something we can do
better?

To be honest I don't see answers for those two questions on their landing
page. My first feeling was that it was like more complicated version of the
"connect" button in Xobni.

~~~
erikstarck
Well, that's why you should release early and pivot - to learn and explore.

I just don't want them to get frozen by the First Mover Paranoia:
[http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2009/12/21/stealth-
disease-...](http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2009/12/21/stealth-disease-and-
first-mover-paranoia/)

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kevinelliott
How about a platform independent version (i.e. web)? There are a lot of people
that either don't use Windows, or don't use an email client ON Windows.

~~~
andrewstuart
We wondered if people might feel nervous about email addresses being captured
on their machine and then sent to a database somewhere on the Internet. But
perhaps not?

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pbhjpbhj
I think the MVP here would be a comma separated list of email addresses
harvested by sniffing in/out going emails.

That product appears to be probably more useful too. The linkedin stuff moves
to a particular use whilst simple CSV email list doesn't - linkedin allows you
to invite by pasting a CSV list of email addresses, but here's the clincher,
so do many other sites.

Fair enough, have a button to open up the browser and paste in the list
(rather than use the linkedin API this seems most adaptable to other sites,
indeed the config could probably be a page address and div ID pair per site
and users would most likely adapt and upstream their configs).

Yes I expect this is badly flawed.

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jjs
Does "Viable" mean you have sales data to share? ;)

~~~
patio11
MVPs do not necessarily need to demonstrate economic viability. Some of the
best ones I've seen can't be sold at all -- for example, Dropbox's MVP was a
_video_ of someone using the prototype of the product. The thing they're
Viable at is that they're just good enough to start giving you actionable
information about those big freaking questions about the market you have.

"Will people pay money for this? In numbers sufficient to pay for my rent? In
numbers sufficient to compensate me for my risk?" are all big freaking
questions, but for some startups they are logically after questions such as
"Does anybody actually _want_ a website which tracks when their baby has an
excretory event?" (+)

\+ : Yep.

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jkahn
Seriously, Xobni is awesome and already popular. Plus, they sent me two
T-shirts. So I love them.

