
My startup is not attracting paying customers. Should I shut it down? - puretext
https://www.puretext.us
======
mandelbrotwurst
Are you getting traffic? You'll need that to get sales.

Who is your target customer? Trying to imagine myself as a non-technical exec
type looking at this:

"with AI enrichment of contacts" What does this mean? Sounds vague and scary.

Send a text message in 15 seconds with code? I can already send a text message
in 3 seconds manually! Also, I've been reading this for 30 seconds and it
sounds complicated and technical! Will I have to hire developers for this? In
that case, why not just use Twilio? They have billboards! And at a glance
their prices look a lot lower.

I dislike the "Y" over "Why" in "Y not trust us". Is this supposed to be
cutesy text speak or something?

Why are there separate "Help" and "Support" links in the footer that go to the
same contact form? This is frustrating. I was hoping the "Help" link would
have more information. Consider an FAQ. Specifically, I noticed that you offer
tracking on e-mail sends, which sounds valuable, and made me wonder whether
you are either also supporting e-mail sends, or can somehow integrate with my
other services that are sending e-mails in order to provide this logging, in
which case I'd want to know how that works.

Note: I've never built a startup, but I've worked for a few.

~~~
automathematics
I second almost everything here. Mainly:

> "with AI enrichment of contacts" What does this mean? Sounds vague and
> scary.

and

> I dislike the "Y" over "Why" in "Y not trust us". Is this supposed to be
> cutesy text speak or something?

I'm a former CTO of a startup and Senior Engineer at another now. I don't want
to work with anything with spelling errors and I have ABOUT 30 seconds to
investigate new SASS services and since I don't immediately understand what
you offer, I'd just move on.

It's all fixable though, Im sure.

~~~
puretext
Thank you for your valuable feedback

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wnscooke
Could be because 2 seconds into loading, your crm.puretext.us sites crashes
and tells me an error occurred. Maybe this is happening more often than you
realize.

~~~
ascii_only
His site on second page of HN. Of course he will get Hug of Death.

~~~
delfinom
No, this is a bad JS payload type error.

~~~
puretext
You are right, thanks for highlighting this, this was cuz firebase messaging
is not supported in safari. moved away from it. Thanks once again

------
fuzzygroup
There is not nearly enough information in the question to get any kind of
valid answer. I'd suggest adding:

* How long have you been at this? * What have you got invested personally? * Any third party investment? * Are you learning stuff from it? * What time commitment does it take? * How many users do you have? * What does it cost you to run? * Do you still believe in the concept?

Startups are marathons not sprints. I haven't made a dime from JobHound
(www.jobhound.io) but it helps people and it costs me about $20 / month to
keep it alive (thanks Digital Ocean).

My first startup I didn't take a dime out of it for the first 3 years and then
we crossed the chasm and ultimately sold it successfully. These things take
time. We all love the myth of overnight success but that's staggeringly rare.

Note: I've done this a lot. If you want to talk founder to founder, my contact
info is on my profile.

~~~
puretext
Thank you for your valuable feedback. I will reach out via email

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thyrsus
Disclaimer: I've never built a startup.

My perception is that startups require herculean effort with enormous risk.
That "bet" may be worthwhile if it will make the world a proportionally better
place - which reasonably includes compensation for that effort. Part of the
effort of a startup is to estimate the potential market, the value of what you
bring, the costs of producing it, and communicating that value to those who
would gain from it. Plug those numbers into a spreadsheet (numbers which will
express your biases and values) and make a decision. In a different framing:
evaluate your business plan.

Folks on HN will not be able to advise you without access to those kinds of
details. Some will have experience and insight that may allow you to adjust
those numbers; be grateful for the advice they provide.

~~~
puretext
Thank you for your valuable feedback.

------
dann0
Marketers view: the website has lots of buzz words, so it’ll probably do ok
with gaining organic search traffic. However, I can’t really tell what the
product does? Is it a CRM or is it a way to send messages to my clients?

I think you need to review what your product is, determine what your features
are, then work out what your points of difference are. Feature Advantage
Benefit model is a simple way to start this.

It’s hard to tell what you do. “Try it now”, to me at least, is a step after
looking at screen shots and feature lists. Puretext looks like it has a narrow
feature set - this might be an advantage in certain use cases, but you don’t
tell me anything about what the product does, how it works, and who would
benefit most from this product.

Also, you need to match your language to you clients. If you’re aiming for
enterprise customers, don’t use colloquial language. Use simple, concise and
clear language. I dislike the use of “Y”. Reading your other comments, I get
the impression that this might be your personal style, and that’s great, but
your product needs a different voice.

Finally, your prices are high for what appears to be a messaging service.
There might be benefit in looking at your competitors (not necessarily the
established, bigger players) and review your price strategy.

Good luck, you’ve got some good ideas here!

~~~
puretext
Thank you for your valuable feedback

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t0shi
It costs $0.75 + $1 for phone number lease to send a 100 sms on twilio and
you're charging $9.99. what makes your service better?

~~~
puretext
Thank you for that perspective, In the case of puretext, we offer more than
just an API - an interface to send and receive texts immediately after signup,
a contact address book, bulk texting using the interface and we'll be adding
more

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matty22
In 30s of looking at the front page, I have no idea what your product _is_.
That's too long for me to be in the dark.

~~~
puretext
Thank you for your valuable feedback. Can you please share if you are
tech/non-tech if you don't mind?

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bhhaskin
I noticed your website has all kinds of fun little bugs. Presentation is
important. Specially if you are trying to sell me on a web app. If your
website is the first impression make sure it is polished and functional.

~~~
puretext
Thank you for your valuable feedback.

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RocketSyntax
"Y not try us?" don't talk like this. "_ with python or js" is this for sales
people or devs?

this market is so saturated. can you use your tech for something similar?

~~~
puretext
Thank you for your valuable feedback. fixed "Y not try us?". The goal was to
attract sales people(interface) as well as devs (API)

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sova
Why not try offering a free version for a while and seeing what people find
most useful about it? You can give away a lot to build a customer base.

~~~
puretext
Thank you for your valuable feedback. There is a free trial but reserving a
VOIP number and send texts we still have to pay the carriers etc. So we'll
definitely take a loss plus the freeloaders always find a way to abuse the
system. e.g. Write a bot to create an account and use the new API key to send
10,000 texts and repeat that. Cannot explain how much spam we receive with
people trying fake CC numbers from different countries or behind proxies

~~~
sova
Yeah, you need a good way to screen the muck of the internet pond before doing
expensive (time/data/cycles/money) queries. But you need more customers to
tell you what they want -- you're trying to make the most delicious moose
food. You don't know what moose want. I don't know what moose want. Cover
yourself in blueberries. Go lay in a field. Did the moose come?! Is she
licking your foot! Oh gosh write it down! More blueberry sauce! Startups are a
bicycle made of science and users

------
puretext
new to HN. need some advice

~~~
vertigolimbo
After checking your website I have made some points: What are you exactly
offering? Sending sms from the website? That's great - I need it. But.... Why
would I choose you and not an established company in this domain? What can you
offer me better than existing ones?

Presence in multiple countries? That's awesome. I would like to contact people
from UK, Spanish and Italian numbers. Can I do it with your product? It's not
clear.

Contact Management? I use my (insert name here) CRM. Why would I switch? Just
because it integrated nicely with sending texts from the web?

As a customer, I don't understand what is your product. Is it contact
management, is it text sending, is it global numbers? There are no
screenshots, no videos, just text. I won't be filling in 6 fields just to
"see" what is your product. Show, don't tell.

My advice is that you should focus! What exactly is your product? Show me what
can I do with it and what can it do for me. Raise my curiosity so that I will
click "Free trial" (btw, merge first name and last name, remove confirm
password).

Keep up the good work. You are on the right track just need to focus and
polish your product demo.

~~~
jaclaz
>As a customer, I don't understand what is your product. Is it contact
management, is it text sending, is it global numbers? There are no
screenshots, no videos, just text. I won't be filling in 6 fields just to
"see" what is your product. Show, don't tell.

Exactly my impression, I had a hard time to understand (maybe) what is the
actual "scope".

But I would say "Show, besides tell", right now not only the "show" part is
missing, but also IMHO a clear, simple "tell" part (a small text describing
what is offered would be enough).

As a customer, I find of little (actualy no) use the paragraphs about sending
a text message in 15 seconds with this (or that) scripting or programming
language and I sincerely don't care about Mr. Hanselman's opinion on .Net 5.

As a side note, being not a native English speaker, I could not understand
quite a few things on how your "Plans" work, I had to look on a dictionary for
"Overages" (and even after having read the exact definition I am not too
convinced it is the right term to describe what you charge for each message
exceeding the included amount).

As well, probably it is a language barrier, but I would much better understand
"Text messages" than "Texts".

~~~
puretext
Thank you for your valuable feedback

