

Ask HN: Where next to take my startup, Junto - marcymarcy

Hi everyone! I'm looking for feedback on Junto – http://thejun.to<p>We're an online environment for the validation &#38; production of startup ideas (for nontechnical founding teams.) The end result of a Junto startup is what I call an MVPU (minimum viable product for users) so basically a public beta.<p>Constructive feedback would mean the world to me. If you need to ask about our roadmap or revenue model, they're open for discussion too. HN's transparency was one of our inspirations for Junto in the first place.<p>Tl;dr:  My primary concerns are how do we build an adequately-sized community so that the sample size for validation is substantial; Is there anything we need to be wary of, moving forward; What else can we do to be helpful for our nontechnical customer-base?
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revorad
As others have said, you need to more clearly define and say what exactly you
do.

From a quick look at the projects and ideas you currently have, it appears to
me that this is a really slow way to go about building products and may even
lead people down the wrong path. Couple of things stood out for me:

Spending days on logo design and "testing" - you really can't afford to do
that. It is better instead to build something and put it out. You can get 10
people to use a bad product, but literally no one will use your logo. This
must be against lean, no?

Testing assumptions such as "People are comfortable dating within their
extended friend group" - that's taking things too far. It's good to be
skeptical of one's beliefs but you can't completely throw gut feeling and
common sense out the window.

Doing such things may give one the illusion of progress but it is a waste of
time.

I'm also wondering who the project founders test their assumptions with. If
it's not with the intended users of the final product, then it's worthless.

Everyone loves giving product advice (hi!), but you can safely ignore most of
it if their answer to the question, "Will you use this?" is No.

Making new products is hard. But you can't change that by asking everything to
the users. You do have to trust your gut and build stuff. Regardless of what
people say, their actions don't follow.

 _Making decisions with more than 75% of the information is by definition
hesitation._ \- Josh James

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marcymarcy
Thanks so much for the feedback, first of all!

\- ISSUE: Our process actually being slow. It's true that spending a week and
a half on something like a logo design is not exactly lean production. But
we're actually going above and beyond that. Junto is as much about bringing in
feedback on all aspect of production as it is about providing entertainment
and developing relationships with potential users – not to mention education
about startup process. We want to create advocates earlier and give them
reason to feel connected to the startups. Allowing their feedback on things
like logo design is easy, inviting and fun for a lot of people. The amount of
time it takes is simply a by-product of leaving enough time for people to
respond.

 __And more importantly, behind the scenes, we are bustling with back-end
development, wireframing, putting together the business plan and doing a lot
of things that don't really make for good public updates... until they are
completed. So there's definitely a constant-feedback aspect but it only
publicly appears slow when many hours are being spent behind closed doors,
iterating away.

\- ISSUE: General assumption testing and not going with gut. We'd also agree
that saying something like "people are willing to date within their friend
group" is pretty general and kind of a 'duh' statement, but our assumption
tests are actually more geared towards allowing viewers to share their
experiences and gain insight from their stories. We've gleaned a nugget of
helpful insight from every test we've done so far. And again, all of this kind
of goes back to building a dedicated audience well before product launch.

So in many ways, we agree with you! And will try to be more conscious of such
as we move forward. The order in which we do things and what we show publicly
will surely change a lot in the coming months.

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noeltock
Cool project & a good concept I think works well for the people you are
targeting.

Notes:

\- Front page is tough to understand. Feel like you need a block clearly
outlining the concept right at the top, and then jumping to the current
projects. You've done great work with other illustrations on the site, why not
a visual flow of the junto process (unless I missed it)?

\- When I first saw the funding amount, it felt like kickstarter (not sure if
that's a good or bad thing for you? :) )

\- Project pages are really nice and clear, well done.

\- I like seeing faces for projects, gives it more credibility, but what about
your team?

\- Recent commenters, gravatar?

As for the primary concern, tough one. Don't think there's any easy/cheap way
to acquire a ton of users so early on. Think you'll just need to bridge the
gap with your gut feeling till it gains more traction.

Good luck, really like the idea!

~~~
marcymarcy
Hey Noel!

Yeah, our front page has come a long way but if it's still unclear what our
mission is (it's a complicated one, I admit), that's a problem. There used to
be a visual sequence on the About page but perhaps we need to bring that back
in.

Re: funding... yup, we have had a problem where people think we provide
funding as a solo feature, or that funding is our primary feature... and not
true. Troy from Excelerate Labs was great to point that out and work with us
on it, but if it still appears to be a primary feature then that's a problem.
Eventually crowdfunding might have more of our spotlight but not until our
community is of a certain size/interaction level.

Team info is at <http://thejun.to/about> (tab on right says Meet Junto Team)
but could be easier to find (other than that, it's only in the footer.)

Everything else – noted! thanks!

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jnorthrop
That's a clever idea and I like the concept of getting feedback "early and
often."

I do have some questions though. It is unclear whether I can take advantage of
your service without hiring Polymathic. Is it just an environment for
companies you are building? Also, I couldn't register
(<http://thejun.to/registration> ends as a 404) so I'm unsure, other than
offering feedback on logos and such, what I could do on the site.

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marcymarcy
Awesome, working to fix that now.

Basically, for the immediate moment there's no reason to register as you can
comment on updates using Livefyre (Twitter, FB, etc.) Once these first
projects go into alphas and betas (and need testing/feedback), registration
will come back into play and we'll also sync it with the commenting system.

Thanks so much for your feedback!

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helen842000
Hey, I just started a thread [1] offering detailed feedback on projects. If
it's helpful I can write up some thoughts on Junto & mail them across to you.

[1]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3568752>

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marcymarcy
that would be amazing! I can email you if you'd like, too. otherwise I'm marcy
at polymathic.me – thanks so much!

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junto
Personally I don't like your choice of name! As an early adopter I have a
collector like penchant for the moniker.

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Blocks8
Clickable: <http://thejun.to>

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marcymarcy
thanks, B!

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aymeric
Sorry I went on your website and couldn't understand it is about.

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marcymarcy
But if you can be more specific that'd be great too. thanks!

