

Y Combinator Feedback on Your Site: It hurts so good - theremora
http://genotrope.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/y-combinator-feedback-it-hurts-so-good/

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theoneill
_it was all web designer input and there was none regarding the actual
concept, business model or use of the application_

That's not because the users of this site are web designers. Mostly they're
developers. It was because the design of the site was so bad that most
visitors got held up there. This also explains the low sign-up rate, which you
explain as a property of the audience. I think it is more likely a property of
the site.

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jgrahamc
I agree. Based on this posting I went to look at the site and it's clear that
this is not ready to be public. It needs a private beta with some really
critical thinking going on.

Also, the main page has an it's/its mistake on it which makes it look unready.

It's not surprising that the benefit didn't pop out.

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johnrob
"Out of 350 or so visitors, we got 4 sign ups"

The ycnews crowd may not be your target audience. Perhaps they they are too
busy hacking their own stuff to bother researching other startups :)

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sspencer
This is dead on. A site has to be extremely innovative and useful for me to
sink even the time to register into it. Conversely, even a decently useful-
looking site with an overly complex registration process usually gets bypassed
as well.

Extremely fast-registering sites (like Hacker News, for example) have spoiled
me. ;)

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dkokelley
I'm glad you've brought your site to be picked apart by the News.YC group.
Judging by this blog post you're doing exactly what you should be doing:
Listening to the suggestions and adapting as needed. Good luck with this!

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marcus
Next time when you ask for feedback for a site that requires registration,
please provide a few demo logins we can play with.

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axod
Or just make the registration _simple_. Ask for a username and password and
nothing more.

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theremora
thats all there is to the registration, an email address and password. With
that the user can save their work history from which their graph is built.
they can then find companies that are in their graph, get feeds from those
companies regarding milestones and openings and save companies of interest.
keep track of companies they submitted their resume to. they also can edit and
add companies to the database,

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Zak
"You must log in to access FAQ"

I think the only valid response to that is "WTF?"

~~~
theremora
Yeah, we have some really secret and highly proprietary stuff in there. :)
Sorry, that is just an oversight, not meant to be like that.

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edw519
Wow! This is one of the most insightful and helpful posts ever. (Many of us
are in the same boat.)

Your site may not be ready, but you guys sure seem like you're on the ball.
Thank you and good luck!

