
Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong? - cod3boy
It&#x27;s not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.<p>we recently launched Sieve PRO 
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.producthunt.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;sieve-pro<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sievehq.com&#x2F; a saas, where we provide all tools for anyone in tech to start freelancing in 15 minutes. This includes a personal website, client on-boarding, NDAs, requirement collection, eventually invoices, payments, and agreements.<p>When we had 600 people coming to our website, had 400 people click the signup but only 40 people signed up and NO ONE PAID.<p>We were asking for yearly payment $348 ($29&#x2F;mo) as a part of Elite 100 program where we give away 100,000 shares for the first 100 people and all the features coming up in the next year for free.<p>What did we do wrong?
======
arjunvpaul
Emperor Akbar, on a whim, once asked his minister Birbal to find him ten
fools. You can get the gist here (Source:
[http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202](http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202)).

Birbal stumbled across the third fool while the latter was looking for
something at night. The guy was looking under a streetlamp and couldn't seem
to find whatever he was looking for. Birbal asked him what he was looking for
so frantically. He explained that he lost his wedding ring in a dark alley a
short ways away.

Birbal is confused and asks him why he wasn’t looking in the alley, and in the
street instead. Get this. The guy replies that he’s looking under the
streetlamp because there’s more light there.

Moral of the story: dont ask on HN, go ask the folks who dropped off.

Here's a suggestion on how you could do it. Take a look at Tumblr or Intercom
and see how they collect an email first and then ask for a password and
eventually more information. Collect an email address just before anyone
clicks get started. So that you have a way to reach them in case they dropped
off and helps you figure out at what point folks are dropping of

(My thesis: Your shady credit card collection process is the culprit. Typeform
doesn't seem to fit your story of helping folks be more professional. If you
are a professional trying to help freelancers be more professional, you should
be using something more professional)

Sorry, if you felt, I called you a fool. Perhaps reading the story and
learning who the 10th fool is would make you feel better. :-)

~~~
vfulco
What's the beef with Typeform? It is a slick service, award winning, very well
thought out and designed. With Zapier it integrates to over 500+ apps
downstream including Invoice Ninja (another amazing service integrated with 40
payment vendors). A happy customer for one year. Would appreciate your take on
it.

~~~
ploggingdev
1) It should not be used to collect credit card details.

2) If you claim to cater to professionals, you should not be using typeform
for the signup process.

3) I am clearly not in the target audience, but I'll share my concerns : I
would never use a service that hacks together a bunch of third party tools.
It's great from the founders point of view (MVP, fail fast, early validation,
hustle and whatever else), but it does not inspire confidence. Why? Security
and privacy. God knows what poorly configured database, webserver or access
control mechanism will leak user data since the product was built with the aim
of getting _something_ out of the door without much thought given to security
and privacy.

~~~
nnd
What's wrong with collecting credit card details with Typeform?

~~~
riteshpatel
Not being PCI compliant, for one.

------
niko001
1\. Get a native speaker to proofread your website copy

2\. The title of the page is "Sieve Pro - The best management tool for"
(missing a "freelancers")?

3\. Some people might like it, but I'm always turned off when websites are
using SV characters as profile placeholders - makes the site itself seem like
a joke

4\. As others have said, develop your own signup form instead of using
TypeForm - TypeForm always gives me an "MVP"-feel (is the product actually
available or do they just want to harvest my email for a later launch?)

5\. The footer says "Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User
Agreement and Privacy Policy" but these aren't links and I can't find those
documents anywhere

6\. Clarify if the virtual assistant is an actual person (someone on your
team) or a chatbot - makes a huge difference in terms of value: I don't want
to scare away my clients with a dumb chatbot, but if there's a human answering
(easy) questions 24/7, I'd be impressed

Remember that traffic from ProductHunt is short-lived and the users may not be
in your target audience (but just want to check out a cool landing page) -
just because you get lots of upvotes on PH doesn't mean that these users will
stick around or are actually interested in becoming paying users of your
product. Find out where your target audience hangs out (freelancing forums,
Slack groups, Facebook communities) and speak to your (potential) users - find
out if the features you're offering are actually relevant to your target
group. If they are, invite them to try out your product and give you feedback.

~~~
noobhacker
What grammatical or typographical errors prompt the advice to get someone to
proofread the website?

I'm asking because I see this advice quite often, and most of the times I
can't find anything wrong. Could someone point out specific errors that I
miss? Perhaps I need to get an editor myself.

~~~
Veratyr
"We help freelancers become more professional with automatic streamlined
process for managerial tasks like client onboarding, signing NDA and
requirement collection right from their personal website."

"with automatic streamlined process" should probably be "an automatic
streamlined process". I don't think the way it is now is technically wrong but
it doesn't feel right.

"Never delay your client to wait for an NDA." doesn't really make sense.
"Never delay your client with an NDA" or "Never make your client wait for an
NDA" would be better.

"This will be automatically added to your calendar." technically correct but I
think native speakers would more often say "This will automatically be added
to your calendar".

"All the process" -> "The entire process"

"to call scheduling take place under 30 minutes" -> "Will take place in under
30 minutes"

"you will have all details to start a call" -> "you will have all the details
to start a call"

~~~
josephorjoe
and if you really want to get it right, you need to use proper parallel
structure when stringing clauses together:

`for managerial tasks like client onboarding, signing NDA and requirement
collection right from their personal website`

would read better as:

`for managerial tasks like onboarding clients, signing NDAs, and collecting
requirements right from their personal website`

Copyediting is largely getting eliminated as an 'unnecessary' expense in the
world of web content publishing, but when the life of your business might
depend on some marketing copy, good professional copyediting is priceless.

\--edited for alliteration, grammar, and oxford comma

~~~
cod3boy
Looks like I can get the copy changes from here too :) Thanks for this!

------
wnm
I also clicked on signup, but then didn't. Here is why: I wanted to sign up to
test the product, but after clicking on signup I get a Typeform modal.
Typeform as a signup form makes me suspicious that the product doesn't really
exists, and the startup is doing some sort of landing page -> signup
validation.

You also ask that I enter my credit card and you want to charge me 10$
upfront, without having established any sort of trust, or having shown the
product to me. I would _never_ do that. I don't even do that for established
trust worthy companies. I wan't to see and test the product before I buy.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks, Makes sense. Before we were asking $348 ;-) but then our program was
that we'd giveaway shares for the first 100 people. The whole thought process
behind that was,

We are a small team of hustlers wanting to build the best experience for
freelancers to work with their clients. Soon in our journey, we realized
building a startup is a lot of work, and it’s hard to focus on multiple areas.
This is why we’ve launched the Elite 100 program and opening our platform to
only 100 users for the first 6 months. We’ll not focus on growth, but only to
serve the 100 users in the best way.

It was also deep-rooted in my conviction that the disparity between the rich
and everyone else is larger than ever in the United States and the rest of the
world. I believe a company working with masses should also give everyone a
share of the benefits gained, this aligns with my personal mission as well,
I’ve been working with communities for many years (and even in my personal
capacity
[https://www.facebook.com/COD3BOY/posts/10155519455529473](https://www.facebook.com/COD3BOY/posts/10155519455529473))
and I believe the real success happens when we have a lot of people coming
together on a mission and everyone is benefitted. By giving away 100,000
shares of our company we stand by that, and says when we are successful
everyone who were with us will be benefited too.

~~~
macspoofing
Honestly, just don't bother with the share grants. There are massive legal
landmines as securities are highly regulated. There's no benefit to you nor to
the random people you want to give shares to. Plus the incentive is all wrong.
You want your customers to choose your product on its own basis, not because
you're giving out chachkis.

> By giving away 100,000 shares of our company we stand by that, and says when
> we are successful everyone who were with us will be benefited too.

That's not what it says to me. What it says is that you are naive and your
shares are worthless. If your company ever makes it you'll just dilute those
shares to nothing.

------
bowbles
I’m one of the people who dropped off. Your chat person told me to try hiring
your sample profile. When I went there, it was just a poorly made typeform.
Your NDA process didn’t account for anything as simple as finding out what
country the other person is in. Regions impact legal documents significantly.
Everything else was basically the same. Overall, I think your premise of “I
know we have a decent product” is flawed. Your product brings little to the
table for me, it introduces risk, and extra costs.

~~~
alangibson
> Overall, I think your premise of “I know we have a decent product” is
> flawed.

Yea, I'm not seeing $29 a month worth of value being added by this product
over, say, just using stock templates on Google Drive.

~~~
cod3boy
Can you please take a quick look, here is the actual product in the show. I
think we failed at showcasing it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c)

~~~
alangibson
This plays more like an instructional video than a demo. You spend almost the
entire time filling out forms. Consider doing a 30 - 60 sec explainer video
that just shows off the sizzle if you really want to have a video.

I would also loose Bighetti. You're pitch is 'be more professional' and the
first thing you see in the video is a character who's famous for being a lazy
idiot.

~~~
cod3boy
Noted, now that we are here, can you please take a look at this one too? We
had an explainer as well :)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S23V3LmRUb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S23V3LmRUb4)

~~~
got2surf
That's a much better video - gets the point across quickly, and looks
professional. I'd replace the "demo video" on your home page with that.

As a side note, I thought the animated video was well produced. Would you mind
sharing how you made it? (email in profile, if you'd prefer to do so off-
thread). Thanks!

~~~
cod3boy
Made it on fiverr with this guy
[https://www.fiverr.com/joeguilar](https://www.fiverr.com/joeguilar)

------
jondubois
As someone who's done some freelancing as a software dev, I don't see much
value in the product.

None of the features offered by the product resonate with me.

For managing appointments, I usually do it all over email. Most major email
clients support calendar invites.

Also, most freelancers already have a website and if not they can setup their
own site very quickly with little effort.

I think the product is in a very competitive space. All the ideas I can think
of in this space are already taken or they are impossible to monetize.

For example an invoicing app for freelancers is a great idea but already
taken. Also it's hard to monetize because there are so many free alternatives
available that it doesn't make sense for a freelancer to pay for it.

Another great idea is a SaaS solution to allow freelancers and their customers
to sign and fill out documents/forms online. That idea is already taken and
again hard to monetize because there are many free solutions already
available.

I think that ultimately if the problem is simple to solve, then the market
will be competitive and the amount that customers will be willing to pay for
it will approach $0.

If you're not among the first people to solve a specific problem or the
solution isn't able to leverage network effects, then the problem needs to be
difficult to solve... Or else your profits will be eaten away by the
competition once their product reaches parity with yours.

~~~
cod3boy
I am not sure if there is always a first mover advantage in business. There is
always an opportunity to improve/innovate and do things better.

~~~
jondubois
Not necessarily first mover, but early mover... Just try to compete against
Facebook now.

------
retrac98
> It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

Check your dissonance. It’s the product.

There are numerous things I could pick holes in here, most noteably that the
product tries to do far too much and probably doesn’t do one thing
brilliantly. Personally I’m not going to invest my valuable time in finding
out if that’s true. The ask is too big.

That said, nobody here is going to be able to give you a recipe for success.
People are notoriously poor predictors of what will and won’t succeed in
business. You’ve just got to work your way through this balancing intuition
against feedback and data. It takes time, it takes money, and it’s _really_
hard work.

Good luck!

~~~
oceanghost
If I needed their product, I wouldn't be ready to freelance.

~~~
clifdweller
That may be one of the problems is the one price for all features. The virtual
assistant may be where $20 of the $29 a month goes but and could be useful to
potential customer. However if the potential customer already has a website
and a form nda then they look at the service as a whole as useless. Would be
worth investigating splitting service categories into 'those who are just
starting' tier where you provide an all in one package and a 'make your life
easier' tierwhere they can pick what services complement what they already do

------
johnwheeler
To me, it _is_ the product...

You’ve essentially taken a bunch of things that are already free, bundled them
together, and charged a steep price.

* Your NDA could be replaced with a simple Google search

* There are plenty of ways to throw together a quick, pro looking website.

* Scheduling calls is done over email, and gmail and outlook already add appointments to your calendars.

* Chat assistant can be replaced with Tawk.To

Moreover, I think that giving shares away is not a good idea - not because
equity in general is so valuable, but specifically because your equity is
somewhat worthless at this point. When you position doing that as a value-add,
it makes me question your value proposition in its entirety (seems gimmicky)

~~~
cod3boy
I don't think so. All of the things you explained below takes at least a week
in real life to complete. To and fro emails to get the requirement right,
using DocuSign to sign NDAs, then setting up a call. While with Sieve PRO all
of this happens right away.

About equity, we've already raised an angel round, so I think it creates some
value, but now I think we need to convey this better to the audience.

~~~
comstock
As a freelancer, this also just doesn’t fit with my personal experience. When
a client wants an NDA, they send one. I rarely/never care. I’ll check over the
language, but they don’t want to use my NDA in general.

Invoicing, time tracking is done through my accounting system.

Scheduling meeting is pretty easy.

Setting up a personal website is pretty easy, and if you’re a Webdev you
probably already have one. In my experience most work comes through personal
contacts anyway.

So, it was hard for me to see how this would be useful. Maybe I’m not the
audience. Posting a survey might get you more statistics on what’s wrong with
the site.

~~~
icedchai
Same here. I freelance part time. All NDAs have been from clients. Meetings
are rare, mostly everything is in emails. For invoices, I use Quickbooks.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
Same here. I kick off call scheduling via calendly. Send PDF proposal and bill
via freshbooks. All done within minutes with a few days of client delay -
fairly typical. Never an NDA unless they want one. Absolutely no need for this
service.

------
deanclatworthy
Your sign-up process is completely broken. Sign-up forms can be big barriers,
why do you ask me for so much information in some modal popup for a service
called Typeform that I have never even heard of.

I'd suggest that your "Get Started" button drops the user immediately into the
app. Generate a "guest user" account, give the user a tour. Have a banner at
the top of the page reminding them that if they want to save their
information, they need to sign up. Perhaps a banner at the top or bottom of
the page. If the user clicks it, ask for email, password and payment
information. All other information can be asked once the user bites.

There is far too much friction there at the moment. I'd even consider offering
a free trial. 7-14 days.

On the plus side, your homepage looks great (visually) but I think you're
missing a trick here too. Show your product. Whether that's a video, slideshow
or whatever. I want to see it before I use it.

~~~
cod3boy
Noted, we'll be reworking the home page completely and about the signup flow.
We are already working on the video as we speak. Here is raw demo if you are
intrigued
[https://drive.google.com/open?id=11uAP1oNm7HzLo3q9fHiAXheFg6...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=11uAP1oNm7HzLo3q9fHiAXheFg6kqlrfJ)

~~~
ryandrake
Maybe a demo video is a good idea, maybe not. Personally, I would not look at
a demo video at all, but perhaps others would. Don't take my word for it
(sample size N=1) Presumably you've asked your potential customers and believe
it would help.

Agree 100% with the other commenters: The sign-up flow is super-high friction.
You did the first step right though, you measured the funnel and found out
that people are dropping out! Have you measured each screen in your sign-up
flow to see which one is causing the most churn? At a previous company, the
best thing we did to increase active users was to remove almost all of the
multi-step sign-in flow and get people into the application right away. We
were down to a single E-mail capture screen, which I strongly argued to remove
as well, but couldn't convince Marketing. I instead got a button to skip the
E-mail capture, which helped :)

Keep measuring!

~~~
cpfohl
+1 no videos. Gifs yes. Screenshots and text descriptions yes. No videos:

A video can't be searched, it can't be scanned, and it can't be watched
without headphones on in many settings.

I recognize lots of people learn by video or research by video, though I feel
like a person watching a video has to have a level of commitment to your
product that's higher than a person scanning for screenshots. Video should be
"level 2"

~~~
cod3boy
We had gifs in our PH post. Will work on to bring them in the website
[https://ph-files.imgix.net/9c21f525-f715-4110-b04e-af2b3bf46...](https://ph-
files.imgix.net/9c21f525-f715-4110-b04e-af2b3bf46a52?auto=format&auto=compress&codec=mozjpeg&cs=strip)

------
Freeboots
I checked it out from product hunt a couple days ago, and I am your perfect
target. Recently started freelancing, trying to figure out all the auxiliary
shit I need.

I looked around, got a general idea what it was about, but what I really
wanted was a demo site. Not a video, which I don't think I bothered to watch,
but a demo site I can play with.

I am definitely not signing up for $300+ without trying it first. Your product
seems like it could support a free trial, why not offer one? 30 days, one
client, whatever.

Another thing that struck me as I watched your demo video just now: does form
based lead generation like this even convert better than a simple, "hey why
don't you flick me an email and we'll set a time to chat about your project"?

Is that something you should test before building a product around it? Myself,
I would prefer a slightly more personal touch, but if the stats proved me
wrong then maybe I would consider a system like this.

Just my thoughts

~~~
cod3boy
If you could send me some basic details about yourself, I'd set up a demo and
see if this can be useful for you.

How much would you be willing to pay for this per month? If you want to take
it private, please email me sanjay@sievehq.com

and hey thanks for the feedback.

------
rupertj
Your message is bad. It starts “Become a PROFESSIONAL freelancer”.

Your target market is freelancers, who no doubt already think they’re
professionals (because who likes to think they’re not professional?). They’ll
be thinking: “I’m already a professional freelancer. I don’t need this
product.”

“We help freelancers become more professional with automatic streamlined
process...”

Again - I am already a professional freelancer. I don’t need this. Give me
some concrete examples of what your product can do for me, how it can save me
time, money, etc. There are some examples of how you can save me time further
down the page, but they’re things that happen once per client (Onboarding,
etc) which is once or twice per year. If you could outline a way you can save
me time every day or even once a month, it’d be a much more compelling
proposition.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
And what the hell does it even mean to be a professional freelancer?

------
mindcrime
_What did we do wrong?_

Not articulating, testing, and validating all of your initial assumptions
before building/launching the project?

Who did you talk to first? Are you sure there's a market of people who have
the problem you're trying to solve? What research did you to to identify your
potential market? How do you know how to reach that market (hint: they might
not read Product Hunt)? Do you know how much they're willing to pay? Maybe
you're charging too much. Maybe you're not charging enough (if something is
too cheap, it can be perceived as low quality even if it isn't).

Or maybe you just haven't given it enough time yet. When did you launch? How
quickly do you think people can evaluate a solution like this, decide if it's
what they need or not, decide how to integrate it into their business, etc?
How quick could you do the same?

Maybe you just need to run a drip campaign (you have emails from the people
who signed up?). Or maybe you need some good old fashioned outbound selling...
go all _Glengarry Glen Ross_ on 'em...

~~~
cod3boy
Thank you for all the feedback. I'll go through all of them one by one.

About validation, we launched on upcoming a month ago with a landing page
[https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/sieve-
pro](https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/sieve-pro) and had over 150 people
subscribe.

Maybe it's about giving it time, we only launched on product hunt 2 days ago
:)

I was particularly intrigued by what happens between clicking signup and then
dropping off, we had 400 out of 600 people click signup and then drop off.

~~~
meric
I really don't like the sign up form. Is there a demo site or profile
available?

~~~
cod3boy
[https://bighead.sievehq.com/](https://bighead.sievehq.com/) and a demo here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32kJRAbIoU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32kJRAbIoU)

------
josephernest
In short: you ask too much to the user _before having offered_ one single
thing to him.

It's a classic inversion

The user _has to do the effort_ of giving personal data, of giving highly
private data (credit card), before you have offered anything.

Something else: seeing "12% finished" on bottom makes the think: omg it's
going to be longgggg...

~~~
cod3boy
Got it :) working on a new onboarding flow.

------
brudgers
The number one thing a person needs to start freelancing is a customer/client
(one with a retainer check is preferred). That's, for better or worse, Upwork
and Fiverr for the fifteen minute web solution. It's the rollodex (o.k.
contact list) for the traditional solution.

The reason people build websites as the first step to becoming a freelancer is
because building a website is easier than finding potential clients/customers
and closing deals. It feels like productive work and procrastinates against
the unpleasant hard reality.

Getting a website in fifteen minutes does not provide sufficient
procrastination and so it doesn't meet an important goal of a newbie
freelancer's website.

Good luck.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for the feedback, I'll think about this more :)

------
robin_reala
I think your copy might be part of the problem. Just taking the hero as an
example:

 _Become a PROFESSIONAL freelancer_

Sounds insulting to people who consider themselves professional already but
could do with some extra help.

 _We help freelancers become more professional with automatic streamlined
process for managerial tasks like client onboarding, signing NDA and
requirement collection right from their personal website._

Weird mix of singular and plurals. If singular then you’d want “with an
automated”. Also typically NDA is pluralised to NDAs, and you probably want to
refer to “requirements collection”.

I know that sounds picky, but copy is a major part of a sale and correct
grammar gives a sense that you sweat the details. Or at least bad grammar
gives a sense that you don’t.

~~~
cod3boy
I think I never thought about it that way, I thought it like we help
freelancers appear more professional like a company. Many freelancers don't
have a clear process in place like a company do, to onboard clients, collect
requirements etc.

I'll work on the copy real soon.

~~~
rticesterp
Also, not to nit pick, but the grammar in your second to last sentence doesn’t
give me confidence in the quality of material on your site. I understand you
are receiving a large amount of feedback in a short amount of time. However,
the attention to detail needs to be there in all of your communication.

~~~
iamwithnail
Yep - I found lots of the grammar on the site jarring, and little things like
10$/month - the convention is $10/month, and it looks really odd. You should
get a couple of hours of a copywriter's time to go over it, there's lots of
little quirks.

------
mythrwy
Here is the naked truth. As a freelancer this service doesn't appear to be
worth $29 a month. As it sits now this service isn't worth free a month to me.
I wouldn't use anything on it.

The site issues are repainting a sinking boat. It's a waste of time and
energy.

I've been were you are, built things and dreamed about what a great hit they'd
be then no one wanted them and it sucks so not trying to be a downer because I
understand the pain but I also understand it's important that prospective
clients level with you about their needs so you can re-calibrate.

Before anything, you must determine some real value you can provide.
Scheduling and NDA's aren't it. I'm not going to funnel leads through your
"online assistant". Nor will I use a premade web template. It's my business
and my livelihood. I don't know you and am not going to take chances in that
regard.

If you do want to stick with this market here is what I _would_ use. A time
tracker with hours (possibly w/ screenshots like Upwork). Invoicing based on
the previous. A chat forum (like Slack but simpler) to stay in contact and
preserve communication. Possibly a central document store (specs, mockups etc)
and a place non git using clients could retrieve code/ check on progress. A
change order/issue tracker accessible to non-technical clients. These things
already exist though so you'd need to be better/faster/cheaper.

------
mattweinberg
My comments are about the website your service creates for freelancers, not
your (Sieve PRO's) website itself:
[https://bighead.sievehq.com/](https://bighead.sievehq.com/)

1\. The "Start project with xxxx" button leads to a form which says "Please be
ready to spend 15 minutes to complete this process". I think this is going to
be a major turn off to many prospective clients of those freelancers.

2\. If they enter their email, they get this:
[https://i.imgur.com/2K75S2Z.png](https://i.imgur.com/2K75S2Z.png) . Is this
supposed to be a prospect contacting this freelancer for the first time? If so
then the majority of the freelancer's prospects are going to close the window
at this point. Almost no potential freelancing client is going to sign up for
a whole system just to share their idea. It's also immediately filled with
error warnings. (And address 2 is required but shouldn't be).

3\. "Lambda" is spelled wrong in the "Do you have any technology suggestions
?" section

4\. As noted elsewhere, American dollars are written as $10 not 10$; this
needs to be fixed in the budget dropdown.

5\. The timeline dropdown says "budget".

6\. In general this form asks a freelancer's potential prospects to answer a
ton of information ahead of time and I feel that most just won't and the
freelancer will lose the propsect. There needs to be a way to setup an initial
contact without going through all this.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for taking time to write in this detail, will go through all of this
one by one and do the needful to incorporate this into our product, thanks
again! :)

------
HelloNurse
Let's try to visit your site, step by step.

First screen

\- A gratuitous 3D animation shows sample pages from your site. Why didn't you
spend that effort to make the pages look better?

\- There's a profile cover page featuring a portrait of a white hipster with a
sad expression, "Nelson Bighetti" from "Silicon Valley". It looks like
LinkedIn, but more importantly it is strangely prominent. Moreover, who is he?
A mock profile? Someone in the company? A clumsily leaked actual customer?
Uncertainty is bad.

\- Another skewed but readable sample page in the 3D splash is titled
"Projects" and it looks very simple and sparse. Is it the limit of what you
can do? Being used to ERP and CRM tools with tables of tables and rabbit holes
of lookups and details and popups and cross references, I'm not impressed.

Scrolling: features list

\- Personal web site? Better than what I already have? What does it look like?
I can't tell by the generic self-praise words in your _text-only_ item.

\- Client onboarding: I can definitely write down contact and payment
information in other ways that make sense to me. What about the "onboarding"
of making them well-behaved customers?

\- Client NDA? Either I don't need it or my lawyer and I designed and drafted
it a long time ago before I started freelancing. Why should I use a standard
form without discussing it with a lawyer? Risky at any price.

\- Personal assistant? Expensive and hard to train. I'll do without, as much
as possible.

~~~
scaryclam
One of the first things I thought was: "do they have rights to those Silicon
Valley assets?". Considering that this is a small setup (which it feels like),
the answer is probably "no" which makes me wonder, as a prospective client,
what else they're doing that may end up with legal trouble. Sure, HBO are very
unlikely to find out, or even care, but it's a silly risk, and if they're
taking silly risks now, why would I trust them with any part of my business?

Now, all that's a knee jerk reaction. The guys who made the service may well
have licensed the assets, or the assets may not need to be licensed. And who
cares? They're just a few assets! But that's the _first thing_ I thought about
when I got to their front page. Not a good start. Then I see a bunch of bad
copy as false promises (seriously, you are not going to get a professional UX
expert to "engineer" my personal website). Then, assuming I'm not that
pedantic or I can get over the copy, I click on signup and get a TypeForm
modal popup. I assume that the whole credit card bit has been removed, as I
can't see it on the form, but really, I'm not going to submit that form. A
company who can't create a simple form for their own SaaS website is not one
I'm going to look at in a good light. How are they going to deliver a good
service if they can't even be bothered with that part?

Again, knee jerk reactions all they way down, but that's my honest feedback.
And I don't even get to the product, since I've already fallen off the radar.

~~~
HelloNurse
I completely missed that "Nelson Bighetti" was a TV character, not a real or
mock user, and "Silicon Valley" his show, not his address.

[http://silicon-valley.wikia.com/wiki/Big_Head](http://silicon-
valley.wikia.com/wiki/Big_Head)

[https://www.hbo.com/silicon-valley/cast-and-crew/big-
head](https://www.hbo.com/silicon-valley/cast-and-crew/big-head)

Messing with HBO intellectual property just to make a joke? It isn't only a
"silly risk", it is, or it appears to be, the expression of a completely
unprofessional set of values. I cannot avoid imagining many things I don't
like about the personality, culture and ethics of people who would do that.

------
meowface
One of the worst and shadiest-looking sign-up pages I've ever seen on a
corporate website. Could that be part of the issue?

There are also some grammar and writing issues on the landing page, though
nothing too bad.

The "THE ELITE 100" link leads to the landing page.

There's almost no information about or examples of what any of the core
features actually do or look like.

~~~
cod3boy
I think so, we are reworking on the whole homepage and working on these as we
speak. The Elite 100 was removed after the program flopped. I've given a brief
about what the program was in earlier comments.

------
leonroy
Typeform is fine. I don't think it's your problem here. I'd simplify the
signup form to just take the absolute MINIMUM you need which is just:

1\. Email 2\. Password

If a user's willing to give that they're probably willing to give more but
you've gotta hook them in the app first.

After signup the user should go straight into the app. You can prevent them
from doing anything that costs you money until they've verified their email
and added their billing details but it's a bread crumb trail. You're trying to
lead them to where you want them to go.

~~~
cod3boy
Noted, working on the trail :)

------
erikb
I'm a possible customer for this. And wouldn't give you a cent because I don't
believe you can do what you promise after looking at your landing page. I need
to see demos, I need to see real customers with quotes of praise and links to
their websites.

Give it away for free for 5 people, while building a clickable demo account
that doesn't require a login, and make a youtube video to show more about your
team and how to interact with your product.

~~~
cod3boy
Noted, we are working on this as we speak. Here is a quick video (raw) if you
are intrigued
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c)

~~~
chrismorgan
Do not, not, _not_ autoplay the video (as the site currently does).
_Especially_ not with sound enabled. That will get the site closed with
prejudice by many people, and upset most of the rest. Especially when they
can’t even _see_ the video because it’s below the fold.

For user engagement, having a video available is good, but playing it contrary
to user expectations is _really_ bad.

~~~
cod3boy
Disabling in a moment :)

------
dragonwriter
> It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

Belief is irrelevant. How do you validate the product offering with the target
market? Are there really people who aren't freelancing now _because_ this
service isn't available?

Second, if you do believe in your product, why is the offering you highlighted
focused on future features and future performance of your company to sell it?
That would tell me, as a potential customer, that you _don 't_ believe the
current product features justify the price. And if you don't seem to believe
that, why should I think you'll be able to do anything in the future that
would make future features or shares meaningful?

------
tobyhinloopen
There is not a single sign a product actually exist. Only a "pay here" button.

Give people a free trail or something. I would never pay for software without
getting to try it first.

~~~
cod3boy
Working on the feedback right now. FYI
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c)

------
discordance
You were giving away shares in your company in return for people signing up
for your product?

I get that this might sound like a nice referral scheme idea, but it’s way too
much to think about if I were one of your potential customers. Feels like a
modern take on the free steak knives.

Why not incentivize around what your product does? - a 30 day demo or access
to parts of the pack.. etc

~~~
cod3boy
Yes, I've explained the concept behind that thought process in a different
thread here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733157)

------
tnolet
I'm a "pro" freelancer in the tech space. You've already had many relevant
tips and critiques here so I won't repeat them. Just wanted to add this one,
as I've seen it firsthand with startups: you are focusing on you. You fail to
make me, a potential customer pretty much exactly in the market you are
targeting, believe you have any idea how freelancing works and where the pain
and value adds are.

Genuine question and not meant as a put down: how long have you freelanced and
have you experienced the pain you mention yourself?

~~~
cod3boy
I've freelanced on the side for a few years. I used to put together a google
form for the requirement collection, then send the NDAs on DocuSign,I had a
quite number of people asking me to send an NDA before discussing. Quickbooks
for accounting and sometimes PandaDoc for agreements. While putting together
this product, I wanted to reduce the friction of getting started with
freelancing and put together all of these in a single package. I've also spent
time answering previous portfolios, my fee structure etc, which are kind of
FAQs, that's why we thought of putting a personal assistant to quickly answer
basic questions.

I'd love to hear your points, and probably what are the needs of a pro person
like you?

~~~
Silhouette
Just as another data point for you, we don't generally sign NDAs, and I never
did as long as I was freelancing solo either. It's close to 100% downside for
the freelancer/consultancy to do that up-front, and it's a rare client whose
project is going to be so attractive that we'd make an exception. A basic
mutual confidentiality clause in standard terms has always been sufficient
IME.

So, I started watching your YouTube walkthrough, and right after the "give me
your email address before you can do anything" red flag, you got into some
sort of legalese agreement. If I'd been interest at all in your product before
that, I wouldn't have been any more at that point.

~~~
cod3boy
:) Thanks for this feedback. Will consider and work on this.

------
jlgaddis
Quick comment after skimming the ProductHunt page: it would appear that you
have "half a product", with some promises of future functionality. You've got
the easy stuff done. The hard stuff -- the "real", beneficial features (lead
gen, invoicing, payments)-- haven't arrived yet.

Personally, I've been around long enough to never trust those promises or rely
on a "roadmap" of future functionality. If what you have _now_ doesn't meet my
needs, you're not getting my money. The "Elite 100" just seems like a sleazy
trick to lure in customers who otherwise wouldn't give you their money.

$348/year might be a bit much for a "free-lancer" to spend when they aren't
sure your product is something that's going to be of real benefit to them --
and if you require an annual payment, it's not $29/month, it's $348/year.

> _"... we couple top-notch freelancers from around the world as a team
> (usually a designer, developer and any special ops) along with a project
> manager ..."_

I don't have much faith in your ability to "couple" me with unknown people. If
the others fail to deliver or are "sub-par", that's going to directly affect
my income. Why should I trust my future income to you? On that note, how much
of a cut of this team's income are you taking, if any?

~~~
cod3boy
The coupling of freelancers is not a part of Sieve PRO, but a part of Sieve
offering, it's very much different from this. Sorry about the confusion.

------
SimonPStevens
Just my thoughts.

I need to see far more, with far less commitment from me before I start
evening thinking about paying you.

I need to see demos and example pages, and perhaps a trial of some kind where
it basically works immediately, and I can fill in as much or as little as I
want to get an idea about what it does and how it might work for me.

Basically all you have is a couple of screenshots on your landing page, and a
list of features that I can't really visualize and then you start immediately
asking me for email and linked-in address when I hit 'get-started'. I need to
see the product first, I'm not ready to start filling in forms yet, I need to
see it working to understand what it does.

Secondary to that... I'm a freelancer, and I don't think I would use your
product. I put together a website myself (and in fact, freelancing as a
developer I think your website is at least partly your portfolio, so doing it
yourself to showcase your ability is important), I manage
contracts/NDAs/Invoices and stuff easily enough already, and I talk to my
clients via email/phone to gather requirements, etc. So I'm not sure of the
value of the client on-boarding part. Perhaps I'm just not your target market,
so take this part with a pinch of salt. Perhaps for freelancers in a non-tech
sector where they don't have the skills to create their own website might be
more your target.

~~~
cod3boy
(I'll work on the first comments) About the last part, how much is the time
delay in getting the NDAs signed back? also I've tried taking the requirements
over phone/email, but I it usually end up with multiple exchanges while with
sieve you can get it all done in one go. Can you please take a quick look at
this video, and send a feedback on the requirement collection process?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c)

~~~
SimonPStevens
On the NDA specifically, I can't quite work out why I would want my clients to
sign an NDA for me. Usually, it's me signing one for them. When I work with my
smaller clients, sometimes they say things like

    
    
      "errr, it's super secret, can you sign an NDA before we talk about it",
    

to which I reply with

    
    
      "No problem, here is a standard NDA I use a lot, I've already filled it in and signed it for you, is that enough? If not, send me your document and I'll take a look".
    

9 times out of 10 that's enough for the small clients. Big clients have their
own NDAs that I read and sign. So delay isn't really a problem, it's not me
that cares, it's them. I always sign and return their documents quickly.

Invoices on the other hand. I don't generally have a problem as such, but
smaller clients do often forget. I send a polite email the day before the
invoice is due with something like "Just wanted to reminder you that invoice
1234 is due tomorrow. If you've already paid it, thanks." Again, 9 times out
of 10, that kicks them enough to get payment the next day. Very very very
occasionally I have to send another follow up a week later. But I don't really
consider chasing up invoices to be a major problem in my work, it's just an
occasional email to remind people. And it's fairly rare, so again, I don't
really see a problem with the delays I experience at the moment.

On the subject of requirements gathering. Yes, it's always multiple
conversations, but I see that as pretty integral to the process of
understanding requirements. I watched the video, and I don't really see that
Sieve does that I couldn't do in an email. In fact my initial email exchanges
with clients do have questions very much along the lines of the questions you
have in your forms. And the example answers I could see in the video show
exactly why Sieve wouldn't provide all the requirements in one go. One
response to "Summary of your business problem" was "I want to build Uber for
Mars". Well yes, that's exactly the kind of responses I do get sometimes, and
what follows is typically a discussion about scope, specifics, scale, etc. I
don't see how the few forms on Sieve will force clients to actually think and
provide the detail. Clients will just fill them in exactly as they would in an
email conversation, far too vaguely to be useful in the first instance. So
after going through the Sieve process, I will still need to arrange a call or
exchange emails with the client to gather requirements details.

Another thing I've just thought of is what jurisdiction you offer services
for. For example, the NDA flashed up very briefly, but I caught the word
"employer" in it when referring to the client. I'm based in the UK, and there
is some legislation known as IR35 that means freelancers usually want to be
very careful to make it absolutely clear there is no employer-employee
relationship. Now this is very UK specific. So it might not matter to you if
you are targeting only the US. But it's something to think about, every
jurisdiction has particularities that need to be catered for in legal
documents. If you are offering this globally, you'll need to tailor your
contracts and documents for each country.

I know I'm being very critical, but don't be disheartened. I suspect that I'm
not your target audience. As a dev freelancer, half of your value proposition
is useless to me (the personal website part, as I mentioned previously). I'd
have a hard think about exactly who you are targeting, the types of
freelancer, the types of work they will are doing, and then find some and talk
to them. Show them what you have and find out if it's useful to them. In other
words, do some really manual leg work first to find your first 10 paying
customers. Doesn't matter if it's not a process that scales, because you'll
only do this for your first 10, if you can't find 10 people who will sign up
by manually calling them and convincing them to sign up, then you need to have
a rethink - [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

(This got a bit long, and isn't really useful to anyone else. Shoot me an
email if you want to talk me. It's my HN profile)

~~~
cod3boy
Thank you for the detailed feedback, I do understand very well established
freelancers are having a process in place, We are trying to make this for
everyone else, not just the pros. If someone is starting freelance, they don't
have the process, questionnaire and everything in place. I'll read this again
and incorporate the main points :)

------
xwvvvvwx
It's really hard to tell if this product is any good:

\- There is no way to try out the product before actually buying it.

\- There are no examples of existing profiles to check out.

~~~
cod3boy
Working on this, thanks. Here is a quick raw video btw
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c)
here is a quick demo profile btw
[https://bighead.sievehq.com/](https://bighead.sievehq.com/)

~~~
beautifulfreak
That's not a quick video. It seems slow even speeded up 2X. Even so, the first
page ("Hello There") disappears in about a second, despite having some
important information. You can't expect people to wait as text is slowly being
entered into text fields, so I hope by "raw" you meant that it will be edited
to speed up the text entry somehow. (And check your grammar. One page asks,
"What is the monetization plans or business model?" This will lose you
customers! Hire an editor.)

~~~
cod3boy
When I said quick, I meant we made that quickly, while the comments were
happening on HN. Will put together a good one by tomorrow.

------
27182818284
>It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

It sounds like you're in a spot where people are interested in your company,
(why you have sign ups) but you're not solving a hair-on-fire problem. Heck,
you yourself wrote that you strongly believe you have a "decent" product—Not
an amazing product, not a product that freelancers are going to rave about to
their friends. Just a _decent_ product.

Try talking with a lot more potential customers, and when they are nice and
tell you it is good and such and such, actually ask for $10. I think in those
cases you'll all of a sudden hear something different from them.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks, the whole development was another experiment where we tried building
the whole key features in 6 weeks. I strongly believe that we can make this
product a lot better over time, that's why I used "decent" as it's not the
best we can in the current form.

------
ehllo
Just a simple Input from my side, tested your site with chrome and firefox
(both newest version) and IE 11 on windows 8.1 pro.

# Firefox with UBlock Origin - Don't Work

# Clean Chrome - Don't Work

# IE 11 - Don't Work

Maybe there is more to this than only your Process of collecting Prospect-Info

~~~
cod3boy
We've tested this through, will check on this.

------
DKnoll
First off, I'm not a prospective client, but I have some questions. How can I
customize the site? How about custom fields in the client on-boarding wizard?
Can I use my own domain?

To be honest I don't see anything I couldn't pull off with a CMS, under
$10/month in hosting fees and an NDA from Google or thrown together by a
paralegal in an hour.

I think the product as you built it has legs, but in a different market at a
lower price. Your overhead can't be significant here and $29 a month is way
too ambitious. I would pivot to a non-technical market if I were you, like
creatives, marketing or even trades.

I may also be totally wrong, but that's my $0.02. Good luck.

~~~
cod3boy
There are no customisations as of now, yes you can use your own domain. Thanks
for the feedback, reading this in detail :)

------
discordance
Some more feedback... this is what your page looks like on mobile:

[https://pasteboard.co/GUmoc26.png](https://pasteboard.co/GUmoc26.png)

Doesn’t instill much confidence in the professiona out there

~~~
cod3boy
Which is your device?

~~~
drivingmenuts
It really shouldn't matter what kind of mobile device the end user has. Get
your designer to use a mobile-friendly CSS framework like Bootstrap or get a
new designer.

Asking what kind of mobile device sounds like you're targeting a specific
platform.

------
garethsprice
As an ex-freelancer, you're trying to do too much & don't have the credibility
I'd want to turn over my business to your system. I have my own systems in
place - my own website, my own contracts, etc. so why would I want to use
yours? Will they be relevant to my market?

It's like looking at a cable TV lineup where I might want 1 channel but have
to subscribe to a bunch of others. $29 was a lot of money to me for a SaaS as
a freelancer, where some months were lean and I tried to keep expenses as low
as possible.

The "Personal assistant" that will answer chat queries seems like something
that would be worth $29 on it's own. Is the PA a human or a bot? I'd
definitely be interested in a 24/7 message taking service that could answer
simple questions about my service set (and escalate more complex inquiries)
for $29/mo. It sucked to have to answer my phone or get an email from a
potential client when I was on-site with another client. Generic office
answering services were expensive and didn't work well with freelancer setups.

I'd at least look at segmenting your pricing model - have a "Rolls Royce"
option (human PA, custom responses, etc) to make $29/mo seem like the cheap
option, and a starter plan I can start with, remove the risk of signing up (30
day free trial?), allow me to choose which features I want to sign up for.

Also for the first 100 or so users, you won't find them through random web
signups - you'll find them in person, where you can talk to them and figure
out what they really want. You don't have a product that solves a market
problem right now, you have a hypothesis.

~~~
cod3boy
The personal assistant is a real live human :) and exactly does like what you
mentioned, answer simple ones and escalate complex inquiries.

Will consider the pricing plans, ideally, we are trying to reduce the friction
in beginning and have the least number of plans.

Thanks for the rest of the feedback, will definitely go through them :)

~~~
garethsprice
$29/mo for a real virtual assistant who can do that is an absolute steal and
if I were still freelancing I'd sign right up. That is what I am excited
about. The rest is cruft. Make this your USP and you are onto a winner.

------
briandear
So Stripe Atlas for freelancers except it costs money. Look at how Atlas works
and ask: why does Stripe do it? The answer is because it gets a new Stripe
customer out of the deal and SV Bank gets another customer and the follow up
legal services generate some money as well; so everyone gets paid at some
point but there’s more of a value chain.

Why not give away some parts, charge for other parts on the backend rather
than upfront.

Look at the Atlas model and see where you can copy that in the freelancer
context. Perhaps make some deals with companies to provide qualified
freelancers to members of your service; then you have a lead generation value
prop to add to your product.

Freelancers need clients more than they need an NDA. So work all sides of the
freelancer’s pain.

And stop with the “shares” thing. Honestly, nobody wants a piece of your
business (yet,) so that’s just meaningless.

Why not $29 per year? What’s your actual marginal cost per user? Find that
number, mark it up some amount and then go after scale. Alternatively, market
to new freelancers — existing ones already know what they’re doing.

This is a big market but a really tough one. Freelancers are generally opposed
to spending money unless absolutely necessary to their business because the
one that can afford your service, don’t need it and the ones that do, can
afford it — meaning the value doesn’t exceed the cost.

~~~
cod3boy
Interesting comment, I'll take a better look. Just that you mentioned about
the different sides of business, here is a piece I've written about the whole
larger vision [https://medium.com/@cod3boy/startup-101-philosophy-vision-
an...](https://medium.com/@cod3boy/startup-101-philosophy-vision-and-strategy-
cb6113782ca)

------
stevekemp
(Not sure what the point of linking to producthunt is - that almost counts as
a negative in my experience, due to the biased way that sites get promoted, or
more often, not.)

------
simonw
"If you build it, they will come" is entirely untrue in the world of SaaS.
Your first ten (even your first 100) customers will each require an enormous
amount of effort to find, convince, on-board and retain.

Once you've built a product that ten people are willing to pay for you can
probably get to 100. If you can get to 100 you'll probably be able to get to
1,000. But those first 10-100 will be like pulling blood from a stone.

There's so much good advice embedded in
[https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/starting-
sales](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/starting-sales) about getting your
first ten customers, but I particularly liked this accompanying tweet:

"We made a sale for Appointment Reminder from someone whose only way of
getting data into the system was to fax it to us. Guess the cheat. If you
guess “CEO signs up for HelloFax, receives the fax, and types 600 patient
names and phone numbers by hand” you have good instincts." \-
[https://twitter.com/patio11/status/922491782583037953](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/922491782583037953)

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for the reading materials. Really relevant, Will go through them in
detail.

------
pksadiq
Is your signup form felt like phishing?

Its title is "SievePRO Onboarding (copy)" and it asks for all credit card
details rather than forwarding to some payment gateway.

~~~
cod3boy
It's embedded in the typeform.

~~~
sumedh
You are giving other people websites yet you cannot build your own form?

~~~
cod3boy
It was a part of our lean method :) We actually had tons of questions and
branches there before, and using typeform helped us launch faster.

~~~
sumedh
I dont think you are getting it, you have to drink your own kool aid. You are
literally building websites for others and yet cannot build your own in time.

So why should anyone trust you?

------
dboreham
I haven’t dived into the details on your product offering but I will say this
: getting people to give you money for something is much harder than you might
expect if you’ve (a) never tried before and (b) believed the lore from the
“startup-industrial complex”.

Consider the things that are sure-fire sellers: drugs; things you might go to
jail if you don’t buy; things that cure severe pain (e.g. dentists); things
that might get you sued if you don’t buy. The further away your product is
from these things the harder it is to sell for $$. Just being “kind of useful”
doesn’t typically work unless you’re very lucky. It needs to be more like
“make $1000/week extra income freelancing with our amazing secret sauce” (but
what would that sauce be given that web sites and CRM are commodified long
ago?)

I think also you may have overestimated the size of your market: you’re not
even selling to “freelancers”, which I suspect is quite a small market, but
rather “people starting freelancing” which is a much smaller market again.
Anyone who is already freelancing by definition doesn’t need help starting.

------
jmnicolas
Maybe because you attracted people interested in freelancing, not actual
freelancers.

------
wlll
Very first gut impression is you might be asking for money from people who
don't really have any to spend. Freelancing is a linear profit model and so
margins, and costs, matter. I suspect people only at the stage of thinking of
becoming freelancers may have even tighter margins.

Second, the typeform signup form feels sketchy, and the animation on the
homepage made me think "MS Frontpage".

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for the feedback. I am not sure about the spending capacity of the
freelancer, but I think there are quite a good number of folks who make decent
money. For those people, onboarding the clients, requirement collection, NDAs
etc are a pain point. Eventually, we'd also automate the agreements, invoices,
and payments to directly reach their bank accounts.

I am reworking on the typeform real soon. Thanks :)

~~~
ryanlol
>I am reworking on the typeform real soon. Thanks :)

I have to ask. What on earth could possibly motivate you to go with that
hideous, broken, typeform garbage instead of quickly implementing your own
form?

~~~
cod3boy
:) We actually had a lot more questions before, like branched questions if the
user wants to fill out the LinkedIn or fill out all the details by themselves.
It also had a payment embedded into the typeform. Thats when typeform was
handier.

~~~
ryanlol
Hey man, turn debugging off on prod, right now! It’s leaking your passwords.

------
thunfisch
The Django toolbar pops up when I open your site. That's an indicator for me
that I don't really want to work with your service.

------
novaleaf
My thoughts: your core customer group is too small.

people new to freelancing don't have the cash to put into a subscription tool,
and probably don't think they need these features you provide. (if only due to
lack of experience)

Freelancer Pro's are already doing their lead generation workflows, and
whatever it is it's working, so the majority of them are not going to be
actively looking for new tooling.

So it seems like the core demographics that would be interested in your
product are: 1) pro freelancers frustrated with their current workflow 2)
junior (but not novice) freelancers ready to take their lead generation to the
next level

both of those demographics is probably pretty small. probably you need to
broaden the features, but as mentioned elsewhere, you should follow up with
your potential customers as to why they drop off. maybe even offer 1 year of
free usage to them, just to see if they can get value from your product, and
learn from them.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for the feedback, I am definitely looking into them in detail, but I
never thought someone would say 1 year of free trial :)

------
arihant
It seems to require my LinkedIn profile mandatorily. Don’t have one. Also, not
putting my credit card in a Typeform.

Not a freelancer, but maybe this will help in some way. I’ve never signed up
for a service asking for compulsory links to other social websites. Why not
just put a sign in with LinkedIn button and take credit card using stripe pop
up later?

~~~
cod3boy
Yeah, I think so. We are moving to different flow altogether now. Thanks! :)

------
Operyl
So my problem here is: do you offer anything unique? As a potential customer,
I see you smashing together tons of third party services, and I could do that
myself without paying you a dime. So, what’s the benefit? I don’t think you
have a great product here, it feels like reselling.

~~~
cod3boy
Can you please take a quick look here and send a feedback? This is the real
product
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32kJRAbIoU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32kJRAbIoU)

------
helen842000
It sounds like you're targeting new freelancers. Yet it is existing
freelancers that understand the pain you are trying to solve.

It looks like you have 5-6 average tools in one package, not one killer tool
that would make it worth switching.

Your copy doesn't read like a native English speaker and doesn't pull on any
emotions or hit on the pain point you are trying to address.

I would contact all of your signups. Ask them which feature they were most
interested in. Make it so the tool only does that 1 thing for now and take a
MUCH lower monthly payment.

From there you can learn what people need next and add on features slowly so
people aren't overwhelmed by your product.

Also you should note that you started this post with "it's not the product".
It IS the product but it can be fixed.

~~~
virgil_disgr4ce
Agreed—the copy is weak af. The features do seem compelling, but the copy
makes it sound rather untrustworthy.

------
presto8
I don't know anything about your business, but just some quick comments: I
went to the site, easily saw the "Get started" button. Clicked on it, there is
a landing page that doesn't add any value in my opinion - why is it there?
Clicking "start" takes me to a "fill in info" page, I don't know how much this
is going to cost me nor what I'm signing up for.

I think clicking on the "get started" should go to a page that tells me how
much it's going to be (preferrably 30-day free trial) and the obligation terms
("cancel anytime"?) and then just ask for the email to get started. I saw some
other people made similar comment about just collecting the email elsewhere.

Good luck!

~~~
cod3boy
Got it! We are reworking on the onboarding flow now, thanks for the feedback!

------
ci5er
Q: Are granting shares not a securities violaion in some states (like Missouri
Blue Sky?)

I'm old, so I don't need most of this, but in a world where MS Office (which
is an unfairly large amount of code!) costs ~$5/month, isn't this steep for a
non-vertical-specific product? For example, I have something that I would
generally hand-wave and call Slack+Asana-for-healthcare-careteams. I charge
about $10/member/month with all the Federal HIPAA compliance and audits and
whatever. If pressed, I drop it to about $3/member/month. That said - each
"Enterprise Sale" is ~5k~10k members....

What would it cost you to run, at the margin, if you had over 5,000 users? (I
realize that at some point, you need to make enough to eat...)

------
hashkb
Sorry to say it is your product. I'm a freelancer and the stuff you're selling
is very easy to do, thus you are overcharging and also potentially adding a
problem (if I ever have to deal with you) rather than solving one.

------
shubhamjain
In addition to everyone else's wise words: don't try to eat the whole elephant
at once. It seems you have tried to solve every problem that freelancer might
have, instead of a crisp, well-defined one. The result being, you have created
something that is hard to sell because very few people want a drastic overhaul
of their workflow. No one wants to replace Skype, an Invoicing software,
Squarespace with a software that has just been launched.

A product can be bad for hundreds of reasons, which also includes, as I can
see it here, doing too much, having no focus, and communicating the benefits
poorly.

~~~
cod3boy
Noted, just to make it clear, we've so far made the personal website, client
onboarding, requirement collection with NDAs for now. Invoices, payments, and
agreements are yet to come :)

------
ricardobeat
Do you intend to become a search engine for contractors, like freelance.com?
If you don't, offering a public profile page is completely out of sync with
your value proposition. 'Professional freelancers' already have their own
website, and would use this product as a backoffice tool.

This other video is miles better than the one featured in the page:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S23V3LmRUb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S23V3LmRUb4),
it took me a while to figure out what all those inputs and forms were about.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks, will make necessary edits in other video, we put that quickly while
the comments in HN escalated and wanted to show :)

------
fjabre
Whoah! You're charging $348 dollars a year and you don't even have a
professional video done yet? You are already expensive and this is an MVP!

Also you have some 15 minute onboarding process. 15 minutes is like 150 years
in web time. What kind of freelancer has the time for that.

im not sure who your target is. Freelancers could mean almost anything. You're
not going to attract the hacker crowd but that should be obvious to you.
Hackers already know how do all this and they aren't going to pay you
$348/year for stuff they can do easily on their own.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks and 15 minutes is for the clients coming to a freelancer's website.

------
jasonrhaas
I'm a freelancer. And, like other have said, the hardest part about
freelancing is finding good clients to work with. Also, your value prop is at
odds with the priorities of new freelancers.

When you first start out freelancing, you likely have no clients or only a
few. You really don't need an assistant, automatic call scheduling, NDA
generation. Also -- don't the clients provide the NDA's, not the freelancer?

With your existing product I think your target market is the experienced,
established freelancer, not someone brand new to freelancing.

~~~
brandon272
> When you first start out freelancing, you likely have no clients or only a
> few. You really don't need an assistant, automatic call scheduling, NDA
> generation. Also -- don't the clients provide the NDA's, not the freelancer?

This was one of the things I found confusing when reviewing the product -- if
I'm "starting a project" with a freelancer, why is the _freelancer_ giving
_me_ an NDA to sign..?

------
hguhghuff
Sorta looks like a phony HTML template. And it says 10$ which is really weird.

And it seems to be trying to convince people to become freelancers which seems
s strange thing to be wanting to convince someone to do.

------
oulu2006
There is almost _no_ information on your website about how any of those
services you are offering work or what they look like.

I would have thought you'd at least make each of those 6 services clickable so
I can see how they will look if I sign up.

Simple things like lacking a floating header so I can move up and down the
site make it feel gimmicky.

Signup form looks cheap and nasty; if you're going to be presenting a polished
UX for my clients, I would expect _your_ site to be a _top notch_ example of
the quality you're going to offer to my clients.

~~~
cod3boy
Noted every one of this feedback. During the product hunt launch, we had most
of the information and a gif explainer in the PH page. We are working on a
video demo of whole product as we speak. I am just adding a raw video here
quickly. Would love some feedback here too :)
[https://drive.google.com/open?id=11uAP1oNm7HzLo3q9fHiAXheFg6...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=11uAP1oNm7HzLo3q9fHiAXheFg6kqlrfJ)

[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sieve-
pro](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sieve-pro)

~~~
smilesnd
The video show me all the user you have for login into admin. Time to fire up
a bot and see if any of them use a weak password.

------
praulv
Most serious freelancers will have accountants who provide (very crude)
software portals which handle the company revenue stream tied to the business
bank account. This allows each transaction to be reckoned against ongoing
projects, raise invoices, handle documentation etc which are all present in
that portal.

Admittedly, these tend to be quite crude but I have the added comfort that my
accountant can get involved when necessary as they are familiar with it.

So perhaps the target market should be a different kind of freelancer.

~~~
dboreham
I run a small consultancy and while we have an accounting firm for tax prep
and strategic advice and to tell us how to stay within IRS rules, we do our
own transaction accounting (including payroll and 401k) using quickbooks. It
would be much more expensive if we had to pay our accounting firm to do this
work. I felt it would be useful to say you can do this stuff yourself since I
see several posts here talking about paying accountants to to it.

------
aryehof
Offer shares publicly without a prospectus? You do realize that is illegal in
most jurisdictions? Reading that made me think your somewhat naive, and likely
your product would be too. I realize that this sounds harsh, but I'm not
saying it to be mean.

Other than that, I assume your product doesn't solve a problem or need enough
for people to pay for it. The best idea for next time is to try to establish
that earlier.

------
amelius
It seems like the product handles a few of the bureaucratic nuisances a
freelancer has to deal with, but forgets about one important issue: finding
actual clients!

------
sandGorgon
I use Upwork extensively to get work done.

The problem with freelancing is generating demand. How do I, as a client find
freelancers ? So I go to such places. And all the sites that can generate
demand (freelancer.com, upwork.com, etc) will manage all of this for you.

They have their own freelancer landing pages, etc. Maybe not as good as yours,
but they are fundamentally solving the demand generation problem first.
Invoices and Payments are fundamental to these platforms.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for showing this angle.

------
speedplane
Why don't you contact your potential users and ask them?

------
tscherno
You have a debugger enabled:
[http://i.imgur.com/PZmrcbn.png](http://i.imgur.com/PZmrcbn.png)

------
alangibson
The simplest explanation usually being the right one, you have either created
a product that your target customers don't want/need or you have not reached
your target customers.

Since you didn't get much contact info, you need to find some freelancers and
ask them what they think, if is valuable to them, etc.

It's also possible that no freelancers hang out where you have made your
launch announcements.

------
codingdave
> It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

You may be right... but there are a couple problems with that statement:

1) "Decent" isn't good enough. Aim higher.

2) You aren't going to deliver the best product to your audience if you go in
defensively insisting that your product is fine. Listen to what people say,
and be willing to build the product they want, not the one you think is best.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for this, we were running an experiment to build the key features in
very less time, and I had a feeling deep inside that this was not the best of
our abilities, that's why it came out like that and obviously listening to all
the feedback here incorporating them.

------
chvid
I don’t think your numbers are bad. But I think you are expecting too much. It
is not unusual for a new saas company to hand carry the first many customers
and only much later be able to get new customers from online ads or organic
traffic.

By hand carry I mean do the sale in person to people who you know or get to
know by classic salesmanship ie running a meetup or showing up at conferences.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for this feedback :)

------
gesman
Give people free 1 month trial.

Don't try to handcuff visitors into 1 yr worth of subscription right off the
bat.

If your service worth value - people will stay. If they wont - learn why not?

I just bought a car yesterday and the dealer gave 3 days/250 miles
unconditional money back. That moved a needle to my decision (even though a
little less pricey car was available in the area).

~~~
cod3boy
Interesting, we are definitely considering free trial now. I haven't seen
anyone selling cars with an unconditional money back though :D You got
yourself a nice deal I guess.

------
watt
Nobody is going to give you their credit card information straight off the
bat, without knowing exactly what they are signing up for.

~~~
cod3boy
Noted, working on this feedback :) Do you think you'd give the credit card
info if the money was refundable without any questions?

~~~
tobyhinloopen
No. Get enthousiast users first. Get money later. Give a free trail (without
entry of credit card), and lock it after 30 days with a "pay now" thingy

------
mrhappyunhappy
Most likely several reasons:

1\. Audience product mismatch 2\. People are just curious but don't actually
care for your product because it's not relevant to them. Perhaps you are just
trying to solve he wrong problem.

Note: as a freelancer I would never use your service. I have enough overhead
as it is and would not pay 29 no for what you offer. My 2c

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for taking time to write a feedback. Really appreciate.

------
eip
It's debatable whether the things you listed are even worth a one time $29
payment. Definitely not worth a subscription.

------
xstartup
I've built 5 products, all are selling just fine. The first rule is to make
for the customer which are desperate enough to pay for your solution. The
second rule is to have a product. You don't even need perfect sales pages and
all that jazz. The third rule is to create a marketing angle and spend on ads.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for this! :)

------
wingerlang
Maybe allow users to set it up for free, and go through one project with one
client with the tool. If it makes the process amazing people might be in a
position where they would like to pay for it.

You could include a nudge to increase their pricing for that project to cover
X months of usage of the tool (depending on project size I guess).

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for the feedback, I think I've received a lot along this lines, will
think this out deeper.

------
sethjgore
I did not read the comments first, instead I tried out your site. It's the
typeform. PERIOD. It throws you off.

~~~
deadcast
Whoa yeah that signup form killed the experience for me. A definite turn off.
Could build a much, much simpler and elegant form.

------
richardknop
As somebody who has worked as contractor / freelancer for some years I don't
see how this product is any useful to me. It does nothing that I can't do
myself for free. For invoicing I'd rather use software supplied by my
accountant who does my taxes, seems crazy to use SaaS for that.

------
zbentley
Stop using videos for marketing material. Especially among the type of user
you're trying to attract, video demos or marketing material are often a no-go;
they either don't feel like taking the time to watch them, or would prefer
text for higher information density and consume-at-your-own-speed. Post text,
screenshots, annotated demos of an _actually usable_ guest profile on the
site, heck, even short animated GIFs if you absolutely must, but not full-
length marketing/demo videos.

The sign-in flow might suck, as many others have commented, but even if it
didn't, $29 just to see if something works out for them might be too much for
many users. Even if they have the money to burn, that doesn't mean they'll
spend it here. Offer a trial or a freemium service.

I think a lot of folks on this thread are commenting about the specific
technologies, UX "feel" of the product, or how it provides the features that
it does. Those might be valid criticisms, but I think they're missing a much
bigger point: you have a few hundred people that said "interested" during a
proof of concept, a few hundred more that started sign-in, and a few dozen
after that who eventually didn't make it out the other end. The narrowing of
that funnel speaks to sign up problems, sure, but the _input numbers
themselves are still way too small_. You're marketing this offering
aggressively, and they're still small. Unless you're doing B2B marketing for
some huge, high-dollar product, numbers that small mean either inaccurate
marketing (there's a product/market fit, and people come to your site looking
for something that does what you advertise, but it turns out to not actually
do it) or a lack of a market.

Consider that your offerings fall, for many freelancers, into the "perceptual
cost hole": things that are minor hassles for many people, but that, at the
end of the day, they often _don 't consider to be costs of their business_.
Like, DocuSign is miserable, and dealing with companies' NDAs sucks. But when
reading your offering, I have to remind myself that those annoyances are
(maybe) _not_ things I have to waste time doing; that there are things that
could make life easier. My gut reaction to those features is "yeah but I
spending time/money/hassle on those things is something I already do and
that's just a part of freelancing". This is obviously wrong after thinking
about it, but, if shared by others, this is a perception that may seriously
damage adoption of your product while causing the initial "interest spike" you
saw.

As alternatives, consider: free initial offering/trialware; freemium services;
a pivot to emphasizing one of your features as a primary offering (e.g. NDA
hosting or something).

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I am seriously considering the
trial/freemium model.

------
octasimo
Please when you add video or music on your website/app, don't have that start
automatically.

------
datelligence
Lack of market knowledge. Know your niche, understand it, before asking for
money test your product.

------
raphinou
When I sign up, I like to have an overview of what is asked. It is very
difficult here, and scrolling over the whole form gives me a headache, with
those fields withering when not at the center of the page. Simplify the signup
form, that could already help.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks, just FYI here is demo we worked up just now if you are interested :)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32kJRAbIoU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32kJRAbIoU)

------
wellboy
How much did you pay for those 600 people and were they targeted long-tail
searches from google (ndas for freelancers) or random visitors? Usually the
conversion rate for visitor to payed customer is 0.1-1%, depending on your
product, that's normal.

~~~
cod3boy
We paid nothing, it was all from Product hunt. We were on the top 5 day before
yesterday.

~~~
wellboy
Ok, that's all very untargeted.

Try targeted long tail google ads. If you spend $200 for every acquired paying
customer, you are golden. Send me an email if you have questions.

------
feistypharit
The site is pretty bare and non-functional on Android with the brave browser.
All I see is the header, where the hamburger menu doesn't work. Then I see "
become a professional freelancer" and "demo video " that's it.

~~~
cod3boy
Which one is your device?

------
go_prodev
Your site could be improved...

1) the separator icons to me looked like carousel dots so I spent an
embarrassing amount of time trying to see the other slides.

2) on my mobile I wasn't able to get your menu to open. That left me
hopelessly loking at the front page.

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for this, the separators have been removed, we are working a full
revamp soon.

------
parish
I am a freelance web developer. I am working as a freelancer in Fiverr and
Upwork from the last 3 year. I just opened your website, hit the Get Started
button, Fill the first 3 fields and next? and I did what everyone else is
doing.

~~~
cod3boy
We'll get back to you now.

------
Ice_cream_suit
Went to your site.(Using Chrome on Android) Started to sign up. After putting
in a name, it momentarily asks for an email. Then a blank page appears and all
further progress stops.

You need to do basic testing on your product before rolling it out.

~~~
cod3boy
It should be something else, it's working perfectly fine here, and moreover
its a Typeform. Can you try again?

------
chrisper
Your website design looks like a copy of Digital Ocean. To me that shows lack
of creativity or so. Getting inspired is okay, but looking 98% like your
source is not good. Even the color scheme and the blue is exactly the same...

------
jtchang
Wow there is such valuable advice in this entire thread. After you churn
through it hopefully you'll be able to get a better handle on where your
product is.

For me it just doesn't solve any problem.

------
partycoder
If you've got a leaky funnel:

1\. Identify the steps of your funnel

2\. Per each part of the funnel, understand how many people enter, how many
people pass through it and how many people leave.

3\. Work on the parts of your funnel where people leave.

~~~
cod3boy
Noted, thanks :)

------
ezconnect
Your site looks sketchy.

No one I know who's looking for a job will add monthly expenses to his already
tight budget.

I think you should build a community first or people find no value on what you
are proposing to them.

------
encoderer
There is great advice here but I’ll add: your customers are probably not just
hanging out on product hunt waiting for you to come along.

Find out where they are and how to sell to them.

~~~
cod3boy
Thank you :)

------
redleggedfrog
I'd never sign up because there is no docs, and no obvious support.

If I can't read the details on what I'm getting I'm not interested.

------
eksemplar
Maybe you should try selling something people need? Seems like what you're
peddling is stuff most freelancers already have.

------
smilesnd
Homepage, why do they have a fictional character as part of a profile piece?
Do they have no one to actually to show, or is it suppose to be a joke?
Doesn't seem that professional to me. I get the pic probably represents what
my profile might look like but it is blocked by another window which I have no
idea what it is about. Would be better just to get rid of the 2 windows that
mean nothing to me and highlight what my profile would look like.

Clicking home hides the top toolbar which annoys me. Clicking "THE ELITIE 100"
does nothing but reload the page for me which is a sign the websites isn't
complete. If the website isn't complete then the service is probably not ready
either. Features list lacks any real information. Can't find any information
giving me details how, who, what, when, or where about the things you have in
feature list.

Do I have any input on the design of the personal website? Do you have any
examples or templates for the personal website? How long does it take you to
get my personal website up? Do I have to buy a domain or do you handle that?
Do you include ssl?

Client on boarding isn't even fully listed, just has etc at the end. What is
your process for client on boarding? What is the full list? How do we have
details for future agreements when we current don't even have contract laid
out or requirements filled in?

How do you handle a NDA? Do I have to sign away my rights so you can process
NDA in my name? Do you have a legal team to review them? Whats a fully secure
digital signature?

Is the personal assistant a bot? Are you saying I get a free bot with my
signup? I am assuming I be just getting a freshchat bot.

"COMPLETE CLIENT PROCESS" do you have some one qualify to even do requirement
collecting? Do you have a experience arch for all linux, windows, mac, and
bsd? What languages and database can you cover in this process?

The link to the sign up is the final flag. I get no details and no real
information but you expect me to sign up for your service through another
service. Having me pay money not knowing what I am getting at all. Not going
to happen ever. Only reason I click the link to sign up was to see if I could
get more information. Instead I get asked for my cred info.

Finally $10 a month even if it is a starting price to get traffic is way to
low for any one of your services. A "personal website" will run you $500
upfront plus $20 a month in maintenance (This begin a dirty little wordpress
site a high schooler could build). The doamin name alone will cost you $10.
Having a lawyer read over a NDA is probably $250 or something in that ball
park. Plus everything else just doesn't seem like the right price. No body is
going to pay so little for a "professional" service.

~~~
cod3boy
I'll take into consideration all the feedbacks. About the questions, For NDA
after signing up you get to choose your signature and works similar to other
digital signature services like DocuSign.

The personal assistant is a real person to answer basic questions about you
and your services (freelancer).

Will work on the rest of the questions and feedback :)

------
6841iam
some ideas:

0\. is this a product people want?

1\. you need a free tier or a try for 3 months before you pay. $29/mo is a
high commitment.

2\. also why not give your service for free to early adopters and get some
testimonials.

3\. do you have adwords setup? do you know what your target market is? do you
know who your competitors are? bid on those keywords and you may get a
customer that decides to pay.

~~~
cod3boy
I think 3 mo is a pretty long cycle to test this out, we'd probably do a 7
days or until the first client comes in for the freelancer. No adwords as of
now, we only posted on Product hunt.

------
amigoingtodie
Are you a capable freelancer that can use your own service you created to
sucessfully make money (as a user, not owner)?

------
njharman
> It's not the product,

No, it is the product.

------
greenone
there is a fundamental/conceptual/trust issue with every tool a freelancer
uses: his business depends on it, others can look into it. period.

why should I trust the core of my business to you guys?

------
a_imho
I'm at problem zero, how did you get 600 people to come to your website, what
channels did you use?

Some piggybacking here, if anyone is up to giving advice
[https://smileydelta.com/](https://smileydelta.com/)

~~~
jlgaddis
If you really want some comments, why not start a new thread that is more
likely to be seen?

(After looking at your front page, I have NFI what your company is, does, or
why I should give you money.)

~~~
a_imho
Well, I did, but it never got any responses.

It is a platform where peers can give feedbacks

1\. to each other. It was customary at many companies I worked to evaluate at
retrospectives how we did the past sprint: what went right and what to change
in the next one. Who did well, who should improve

2\. to management, what are the impediments regarding work, how satisfied is
one with the job, whether jumping ships is imminent etc.

In my experience these kind of systems are often paper based or there is some
weird JIRA project abuse going on. Sometimes people just pretended issues were
never raised.

------
cardimart
Have you ever talked to one potential customer face-to-face?

------
tonywebster
Here are some random observations and opinions.

1\. The screenshot at the top of the page seems to show some features, but I
have to infer what they are. It would be good to automatically cycle through
annotations to show what the little "Expert" badge and all the other features
mean. Sell your product in a captivating way. The headline "Become a
PROFESSIONAL freelancer" is a good thing to A/B test, or to have rotate
through words, e.g. "Become a SUCCESSFUL freelancer," etc.

2\. The demo video is way too small. Make it much bigger so users don't have
to squint. It's also too long. There's a time and place for a nearly five-
minute demo video, but not this soon in the process. 30-45 seconds max.

3\. The NDA feature is overhyped. I care much more about defining the scope of
work and getting my clients to agree to my master services agreement or other
contract. Does the product generate an agreement? Can I make a template for my
agreement? More detail would be helpful.

4\. I don't find value in the personal assistant feature, personally. I want
to maintain direct contact with my clients once we make contact. It actually
freaks me out to have someone else talking to a client and potentially making
promises I don't agree to, or not behaving the way I'd expect.

5\. As I scroll down the page, I'm not actually presented with a big call-to-
action to start the signup process until I reach the bottom. This adds way too
much resistance. Also, make the signup button green, or consider A/B testing
signup button color.

6\. The signup process is difficult. Instead of just asking for a couple quick
details (e.g. email address and name), it opens a modal window that presents
huge resistance. There's a splash screen adding yet another step to the
process (you have to click TWICE to reach any form inputs).

7\. The form is a Typeform full-screen modal form with a "0% completed" label.
I hate Typeform forms, and I've found them to perform poorly in my own
experience. For a signup process, seeing "0% completed" is a huge mental
barrier. I immediately think "ugh, this is gonna take forever, I'll do this
later" and I might not come back.

8\. I'm not told before or during this signup process whether I have to pay
any money or what I get for free versus for pay. Use the signup process as an
opportunity to reinforce features and benefits. Is there a trial period? I
have no interest in filling out this complex form if I'm going to have to pay
right away. I need to be able to take it for a test drive.

9\. You force users to provide a LinkedIn URL. Not everyone uses LinkedIn, for
good reason. If you don't have a LinkedIn, you cannot proceed. You're killing
signups.

10\. The signup process doesn't actually work. It appears all it does is email
you. So, it's actually a "contact" form and not a "signup" form. Upon
submission, it says "Thank you! We'll get back soon. If you have any questions
reach out to [email]." You've now dead-ended your user that is interested in
your service. I doubt many will come back when you "get back soon" to them.
Make sure you always give users a path forward, without manual intervention
from you. Your post says, in all caps, "NO ONE PAID" \-- well yes, you
literally do not collect payment information or give users a path forward to
payment.

11\. Footer says "Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User
Agreement and Privacy Policy". But you have neither. There are no links to a
user agreement or privacy policy. This suggests to me that maybe I need to be
concerned about how good the onboarding process is. This might seem like a
small detail, but the site is marketing itself to web developers and
engineers, who will notice these details.

12\. Show success stories somewhere. Seeing an HBO Silicon Valley character
screams "we don't have any users." Use real stories of people who have enjoyed
using the service.

13\. You mention in your post an "Elite 100" program where you give people
shares. I don't think this is compelling for most users, but perhaps it's
worth testing and experimenting with. Currently you appear to not advertise
this anywhere. Your ProductHunt appears to include a link to it (/100), but
that redirects to the homepage. If the program isn't detailed, it doesn't
exist.

14\. Site needs proofreading throughout.

15\. Pricing says $29 per month and then right below that says $10 per month.
Which is it?

~~~
cod3boy
Thanks for taking time to write such a detailed feedback. Some of the errors
happened because we were updating in real-time with the feedback from HN :|
The Elite 100 program was taken down yesterday due to low interest, I've
briefed about it in another comment above. Thanks again! :)

------
outsidetheparty
Others have addressed the sign-up flow; I didn't get that far before bailing
out.

TL;DR: you don't make a case for why your offering has any value.

Most of the information about what you offer is buried in a really
uncompelling video, which seems tailored to make it as difficult as possible
for potential customers to see what they're paying for. Three and a half
minutes of muttering while slowly filling fake information into a long form --
with zero indication of what the form is _for_ , or what value it offers. This
is followed by about thirty seconds of scrolling absurdly quickly through a
page which contains all the information you just typed in. For some reason.

The glimpse of the sole feature that is any more elaborate than "fill in a
form then see what you just filled in" is comically brief: "You can have a
conversation with your support agent at any time" \-- you pop it open for
literally less than half a second and then log out. Who's this support agent?
Is it a person or a chatbot? Is is supporting the freelancer or their clients?
What information can it provide? I have no idea. This is followed by an
equally brief glimpse of the "client dashboard", which provides zero
information about why it exists or what either the client or freelancer would
use it for.

So far I'm left with the impression that I could get more or less the same
value by purchasing a 99-cent notepad and just writing this stuff down.

The feature checklist is equally problematic:

* Personal website: which is practically a commodity by this point, and which your potential customers can't see before buying.

* Client onboarding: presumably the long form being filled in in the video. No case is made for why this has any value.

* Client NDA: the thing here is, you have this completely backwards. NDA _always_ comes from the client, not the freelancer. No client who requires an NDA is going to trust one drawn up by the freelancer. That you tout this as a major feature makes me question your understanding of your target audience's needs.

* Personal assistant: this sounds like it could be a real, potentially useful feature! Too bad you provide no information on how it works. Except oh look: you're using it too -- and your potential customers can easily see that it's a third-party product with a free tier, and just go sign up for it directly, if they find it of value.

* Call scheduling: so I can schedule a call and have it automatically added to my calendar. Or... I could just put it in my calendar. No apparent value add here.

* "Complete client process", a recap of the other five bullet points, because five items don't lay out well.

Based on your copy ("Become a PROFESSIONAL!") and very limited feature set, I
have to assume you're targeting amateurs and wannabes -- any freelancer with
more than a client or two under their belt will already have their own
website, contracts, calendar, etc. Instead you're aiming at the people trying
to take the next step up from, like, fiverr gigs. This is fine -- that's a
valid market -- but your price point is way too high for that audience.
(Incidentally: your pricing page lists $29/month, with copy stating "Start
earning more with every deal at 10$/month." That doesn't exactly inspire
trust.)

~~~
cod3boy
Will work on most feedbacks, some of them are messed up because we tried to
incorporate feedback from HN in real-time. For example, the video was added to
give a quick gist of what the platform looks like after we received feedback
here about the lack of clarity. Will consider the rest of feedback in detail
:)

------
kapauldo
Good idea. Too expensive. Try $9/month see if that works

------
hasenj
I tried to freelance before. The number one concern for a freelancer is how do
I get clients.

Nothing on your site provides a solution for my problem.

