

Ask HN: Rate my startup idea "Be Caller Nine" - jazzychad

I have always been fascinated with telephony programming (thanks, "War Games") and radio call-in contests where you have to "be caller nine" in order to win a prize.<p>Well, I have now developed a system that would allow any person/group/event/company/podcaster to run one of these call-in style contests just by administrating the incoming calls through a browser (instead of a giant 300 line switchboard like radio stations have). I have a working prototype, and the few people that have seen it thought it was a pretty neat idea.<p>My question is, would there be a market for this sort of thing? Would people/groups be willing to pay to be able to run such a contest?<p>I imagine this being used for things like: live podcasts that have sponsorships; conferences; internet radio stations; college radio stations; school fundraiser events; ad-hoc internet events (think twitter chats); etc...<p>What do you think?
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JangoSteve
I was a DJ and program manager for my university's radio station, and based on
my experience I think there's a much larger opportunity here. Firstly, to
answer your question, yes I think non-profit radio stations in particular
would be quite interested in something like this, as they can't usually afford
more than a 1 or 2-line phone system.

Now, the larger opportunity. If you could make it a less-specialized system
and aim it at radio stations, I think you'd really have something. The biggest
problem we had with taking calls on the air wasn't so much that we couldn't
afford the phone lines, but that we couldn't afford the call-screener. If you
had a system that could simulate let's say 10 lines, whereby people call in,
it plays an automated screening message asking them their name and purpose of
their call, and then it transcribed that onto the DJ's computer screen and
allowed them to pick which calls to answer while the rest remain on hold, that
would be awesome!

I don't doubt this could probably be done with some combination of Google
Voice and Grasshopper. Then again, they don't market their products to this
niche the way you could. The biggest hurdle with B2B is acquiring the
customers, which often takes a focused message. But I digress.

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Barnabas
Awesome idea. As for how, with the Twilio API I think you could do the
transcribe bit.

[http://www.twilio.com/docs/api/2008-08-01/twiml/record#trans...](http://www.twilio.com/docs/api/2008-08-01/twiml/record#transcribe)

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nicholasreed
This would be a cinch with Twilio! Great idea and good luck!

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qthrul
Good reverse pattern research:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22winning+radio+contests%22>

By offering up a specific number of channels (i.e. incoming ports for calls)
you could also specify what percentage of busy rings you could anticipate
(example: Erlang/Engset calculations) to give the adrenaline effect that is
more desirable -- hearing a "sorry you are caller # 4" vs a fast busy.

You could also play back an advertisement for 20 seconds saying that to be
registered as a caller you need to listen to this or their calling party NPA-
NXX-XXXX will be removed from the call count listing.

Sell the 20 seconds of ad time to local businesses saying things like "mention
Blogcaster offer 14 to get 20% off your next meal" or unique one time numbers
used for Amazon or other discounts where those numbers can be manufactured.

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staunch
Sounds like the classic case of developing a thing because you think it's
cool, not because you've seen any _demonstrated need_ for it. Even if there is
some demand you probably have little chance at getting in front of the
decision makers, if you don't even know who they are already. I'd say 99/100
times this enough to know you should immediately abort any plans of turning it
into a business. Maybe put it up somewhere, promote it a bit, and let people
enjoy it, but don't try to make it into something it isn't.

On the other hand maybe this could eventually lead you to something that could
be very successful. While trying to sell this you may find that there are many
other unmet needs in the market. Maybe you can develop a whole suite of
similar tools. This might be as good a place to start as anything else.

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gridspy
While you have a point that you need a market, perhaps rather than just
"giving up" when you have no audience, you instead try as hard as you can to
build one right now, and ask them what they think of your idea.

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danicgross
cool. i think the ideas that take services that were previously available only
to bigger corporations and make them accessible to everyone (ala
polleverywhere.com) are almost always useful. you might want to look in to
developing in other mediums other then calling - texting or emailing in are
also good.

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jazzychad
Yes, texting could also a part of this, I should have mentioned it.

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danicgross
if you need some advice with US shortcodes for texting shoot me an email.. i
spent some time dealing with this for a different idea

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lanstein
Do radio stations really have that many phone lines though? I'm not sure what
the benefit of that would be; just let the carrier create the circuit or not,
no? It certainly sounds like a good idea if the alternative is maintaining
that level of infrastructure.

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jazzychad
Well, it may not be mostly for radio stations... I was thinking more of taking
this "radio contest" construct/analogy and letting other people/groups
recreate it w/o needing that sort of infrastructure. The contestants would
immediately relate to what's happening, but instead of calling a radio
station, they are calling another entity (podcaster, event, group).

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andresburgos
I can definitely see this on streaming radio apps like ShoutCast. Great idea
Chad!

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dksf
It seems like this is 1 feature which might be interesting to
bloggers/podcasters. Is there a more generalized "podcaster sweepstakes
platform" you could build? Help bloggers/podcasters engage their audiences
more around giveaways/sweepstakes to generate buzz and attention, track brand
impressions/dollars, present network of advertisers, etc... I'm not a big
blogger or podcaster so I wouldn't likely be the best person to design this
product to solve my problems. But reach out to real users/partners/potential
customers. They'll likely tell you what to build.

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NickWritersBloc
I think executionally it's a great idea. The thing is - telephones were always
used as an input channel because people were listening to the radio and NOT
doing something else. Maybe there's a live tv application here - maybe event
programming makes sense (you could sell this off to a progressive experiential
marketing agency - Jack Morton/etc.) for promotional elements.

The long and short of it is - think of the required use/application and where
this actually fits. Or if not, create a use for it and monetize.

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replicatorblog
Is there a way to make it useful in an asynchronous context? I think the
kernel is smart, but the 9th caller issue seems less pertinent in a web-based
world. However, the notion of creating a reward system for attention and
action could be the start of something big.

Right now I imagine the evaluation of such a purchase would be: "cool, but I
can just say "the first person to send me an email with an answer to X" wins
something."

Cool idea though, stick with it.

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jasonwilk
Hey Chad, too bad about your original idea. I liked that one. Anyways, I think
you need to think where contests are headed, especially when considering
conferences, live podcasts, etc. Many people are going the SMS route, so if
the app could integrate both phone calls and SMS, I think that would be fancy.
Just my 2 cents. See you next week.

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runT1ME
Think its a neat idea, and could have a lot of uses from radio to podcasts,
etc. What APIs/telecom libs are you currently using? Have you looked into
Voice XML/ccXML?

I'm interested in writing some open source telcom APIs/server so I'm always
curious to hear someone's thoughts that might be a potential user.

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mlarkin42
As a marketing event producer at a multimedia company I say absolutely yes
there is a market for this concept. I wish It was available now. It adds
tremendous value to sponsorship packages and a measurable outcome for driving
people to a website, event, etc ... everything other than television, print,
and radio

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raheemm
Seems like this would be in demand, especially as more people start producing
their own videocast and audiocasts.

If you target the blogger market, and many of them use Skype, then you can
implement your idea as a skype/justin add-on. It'll be easier to market by
piggybacking on a larger solution/platform.

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stevedewald
One company I recently purchased from (www.bonobos.com) has had some success
marketing via rewarding consumers for attention. Their various strategies got
people a little more involved than just listening and calling a phone line,
but I think it's an interesting concept.

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tron_carter
Good idea, I think there are many low-power radio stations with limited
resources that could utilize something like this. Also, the concept could be
extended for local businesses to run phone-in contests when running a TV or
radio ad.

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grandalf
This is a great idea, and I think the power of it is that it's essentially a
raffle but stepping around the regulations that make doing so illegal without
government permission.

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cujo
Do DJs and what not actually wait for the nth caller? I always just assumed
they just grabbed a line and, woo hoo, that's the winner.

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jefftown
I've been a DJ on several commercial radio stations in medium sized markets
and legally we have to keep track due to contesting rules put in place by the
CRTC or some other part of law. That being said if it's a lesser contest for
tickets or something then nobody will be really paying attention and we just
sort of eyeball it on the phone system with no screener needed.

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nannylaff
most of your responses are from "super techies". They may not be your
target.One of your targets should be the folks that stay at home or listen on
the radio...there are lots of us now...consider the demograhics. The "over the
hill gang".

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tphyahoo
I like it!

