

The Story of My Startup.  - j0ncc
http://dailybooth.com/blog/?p=7
After an incredible amount of complications and pushing the launch date back over a year, we've finally just made the site live.<p>This is blog post documenting the entire story. I'd love to get some feedback from the HN community.
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c3o
I'd suggest you put a sample animation of the type of result people would get
on your site on the front page. I don't think the intro text "your life in
pictures" explains it well enough, but if people see even just a 5 frame
animation they'll immediately recognize the concept. In fact, I'd stick the
picture taking app on the front page and allow them to take a first snapshot
before even signing up. Having the first picture there would provide a great
incentive to follow through with the sign-up.

Also, if I may, and I know from experience it's harder than it sounds: It
seems your concept got way more complex over time, when you really should have
launched the simplest possible version as fast as possible and worried about
widgets, following, minifeeds, comments, a proper logo etc. later on. Cool
that you're online now though, good luck with everything!

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grag
I think this is a very promising idea.

I think the idea of an embeddable widget that flips through all your photos
(like the videos you describe that inspired the site) would be really cool. I
think if a widget like this is done right you could get some good viral growth
from MySpace.

I'd think about capitalizing as much as possible on the timelapse concept and
stray away from being just another photo sharing site. Right now, users
profiles are just a feed of images, which doesn't seem that compelling..

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rustartup
Great work, but ... looks like an example of completely missing the basics of
the customer needs. Do we really need good design to start taking shots? Think
about us already missing a year of pictures. Sorry for making it sound sharp.

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nopassrecover
Hi I have to ask because this is the third startup I've seen recently like
this - what do _you_ do for the startup? What value do you add? I'm not
meaning to be impolite but you hire a designer to design, a developer to
develop, someone else is funding it... So you bring the idea, management and
evangelising?

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bisi
Thats what Product Managers and Project Managers do ..

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nopassrecover
Yeah, like I thought, middle management in a startup.

I like the post, and sure I guess it's great to have someone pull it together
but if that person could also be adding some value to the actual building as
well that would be even better.

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trapper
So let me get this straight: to be valued in a startup you have to actually do
the coding or design? There's a lot to be said for the value of vision and
passion. They are probably the only two things you can't hire.

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nopassrecover
To be clear, this isn't directed specifically at the person who wrote the blog
post but from my point of view to be valued in the startup you have to do more
than tell everyone else what to do. Passion and vision are great, but you
should be able to use these to practical value. Anyone can say "let's make
this really awesome video game where you can do anything" but unless you are
actualy coming up with some practical direction for the team your "vision" is
useless.

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trapper
No one said they just stand there are shout words off a task list.

How many non-technical founders do you know? There are a ton of successful
ones out there, and when you meet them [as long as you don't say what you just
did] you'll understand why they are successful.

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nopassrecover
Fair enough. I know a couple of non-technical founders actually and they seem
to be focusing on sales and marketing + VC connections. I don't get that
impression from some of the founders I'm reading on HN though. I certainly
appreciate the stories but the impressions I get, and this may be incorrect,
is that they are taking credit for the "design" (in the overall looser sense
of the term) of their product when they have just given broad reaching goals
and let the actual employees make all the little decisions that make or break
the product.

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trapper
It sounds like you have only ever come across poor business people. It's
pretty easy though, they are about as common as poor coders and designers.

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trapper
Congrats on the launch. Most entrepreneurs know the feeling of missing
deadlines badly ;)

It's such a good concept, honestly, I would pay for a private one for my
friends and family. The site didn't make it clear if privacy was possible.

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mikeyur
One little issue I found. On the user pages if you click 'daily booth' you get
sent to /dashboard (even though I have not created an account or logged in):
[http://ul.mikeyur.com/public/sk/Fullscreen-20090212-232617.p...](http://ul.mikeyur.com/public/sk/Fullscreen-20090212-232617.png)

And when you get sent to /dashboard while not logged in you get a little
error:
[http://ul.mikeyur.com/public/sk/Minefield-20090212-232757.pn...](http://ul.mikeyur.com/public/sk/Minefield-20090212-232757.png)

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meridian
Look at twitter... how long was that around before any attempt at monetisation
emerged?

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staunch
Where's the business model?

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j0ncc
Good question. I have a few ideas that I'm going to be pursuing.

\- Setup a deal with flipclips.com (or someone similar) and let people
purchase a branded flickbook of a period of their lives.

\- Maybe potential for some kind of picwing.com affiliate deal / application.

\- Some kind of "pro" account with more features (more picture widget output
options etc).

\- Display advertising (yeah, know).

They're a few ideas I'm toying with.

~~~
sho
The pro account is the best idea. Stay away from advertising, IMO, it looks
cheap and turns people off. Personally I absolutely hate advertising and won't
use any site with it. And I doubt much would come from the book
idea/affiliations.

I would take it nice and slow. Wait until you have some serious users who have
put a lot of time into the app. Obviously you and your friends have to
catalyse that, looks like you already are which is good. Once you've got some
nice multi-month videos to show, and perfecting all the little niggly bits
about working with it (which YOU will be doing), try to get some publicity. It
would be really helpful if you know some girls who will do it, your
digg/reddit/etc-fu will be greatly increased if it's a girl.

Anyway, then start introducing new options. Pro members can get better quality
video out - free is just the flash video, pro gets a full on quicktime
version. Free has one "stream", pro can have several - they might want to do
their cat or family members or something. Free can embed the flash output on
their blog, Pro can embed _the picture taking app_ on their website and make a
"my blog visitors" stream .. or something.

Pro is $20 once off fee. Get a bit of press exposure and who knows, it could
really take off. The Pro account taking pics of their families sounds like it
could have real potential. Maybe a family package deal - $50 for a year of
photos including a printed book?

Anyway congratulations on the launch, many people don't know how hard it is to
take a decently sized project from idea to fully realised implementation and
release. It's _fucking_ hard and even more so if you're running on nothing but
your own internal motivation. Good shit and well done.

~~~
ido
> Stay away from advertising, IMO, it looks cheap and turns people off.
> Personally I absolutely hate advertising and won't use any site with it.

I don't like ads either, but we (who actually care enough to e.g. install ad
block+) are a minority.

You need money. Advertisement might help and it will only repulse a relatively
small portion of the population.

</devil's advocate>

~~~
axod
I love ads. And the cash they make. I don't think they cheapen a website at
all, and you'd be hard pressed to find that many websites without some form of
advertising.

Try them out, and see if they work, and see if your users find them useful, or
horrible.

Also do the maths - how many Pro accounts would you need to sell to make the
same amount as sticking a couple of adverts up?

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tm
Awesome story, well done, and great execution. Site looks good. Don't listen
to all the naysayers about monetization. It is important (the most important
thing), but if you are living/breathing/eating your business, you will come up
with proper revenue channels. I'm sure of it. Good luck.

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zenlinux
Thanks for sharing and being open about all the problems you encountered.
Launching an application is definitely not easy, nothing takes as long as you
hope it will (even if you pad for unexpected problems) and it's really hard to
declare something "done." Congrats on your launch.

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petercooper
This is awesome. It's great to hear a story that isn't just "we did this, and
bam, we launched and either a) lost all our money or b) we made $200m in the
first day" :)

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pclark
whoa, it's the guy that made grabup -- love that application (amusingly I
emailed them a few months ago asking to advertise (paid) on their site --
never got a reply)

great story, will be sure to track his blog and progress. Great to see awesome
projects from fellow brits :)

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matthewking
Great story Jon, I really enjoyed the read and found it quite inspirational.
The launch video at the end with the music was classic, especially the 404 at
launch and the music running out!

Best of luck with the site, looks like a lot of hard work has gone into it.

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fraXis
Great read. Congrats on the launch.

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daveambrose
Kudos on the launch. Looks really great. :)

Is there anyone else doing this? Just curious.

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c3o
I seem to recall reading an interview with SkinnyCorp (Threadless.com) where
Jake or Jeffrey said they had once built but then scrapped a similar project.
While googling for that, I found <http://www.flickaday.com>

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danw
I like it.

One thing: I can't find a way to delete my account in the settings panel.

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okeumeni
Why would you want to delete your account if you like it?

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danw
Because it didn't work for me, I already have an existing way of doing this
and I hate leaving stray accounts littered across the web.

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gstar
Thanks for sharing, very candid and interesting.

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atas
the date on your site is 13th February 2009+1900

