
Ask HN: My Startup didn't go viral- what now? - jiganti
So I launched my startup (moodstir.com) after working on it since November or so and have made a few attempts over the past couple of weeks to try and get a following. It's actually one of the main reasons I decided to take a leave of absence from the University of San Francisco.<p>I understand that virality is not going to happen overnight, but I approached the project under the assumption that it's either going to be adopted and spread throughout some niche quickly, or never catch on.<p>So I'm asking for advice from some of the more experienced founders on HN- am I being impatient? Should I pivot the concept in some way? Perhaps allowing other login options aside from Facebook is the first step to reduce barrier to entry.<p>If you have any suggestions about either where I should go from here, or specifically regarding the concept, I would be happy to hear them.
======
guynamedloren
I'm assuming you've been working on this project full time or near full time
since November, which is approx 10 weeks. Honest question: is this all you can
deliver with 10 weeks of full time work?

Unless there's something hugely complex under the surface that I'm not seeing,
here's my criticism:

\- This is not a startup, and you're hurting yourself if you think of it as
one. It's a simple MVP web project.

\- You could have - and should have - pulled this off in a weekend.

\- The 'why' input is too small.

\- 'Trending now' looks like it's broken.

\- Everything I click yields a search result. Why are there no profiles?

\- What am I supposed to search for in the search box? It should give me tips.

\- Why can't I click photos?

~~~
kamaal
Actually I wanted to say the same, but then I hesitated and thought that it
may be a little harsh on him.

By the way all your points are valid.

Also, If you want to quick tasks outside your work. What you are looking for
is consulting/freelancing not a start up. Start up will chew up both effort
and time in large magnitudes with a river of failures heading your way. Simple
Android/iPhone apps. Small utility website, are Ok if your want to make some
money with Google Ads. But they are not start ups.

By the way these there is a huge tendency among people to call even 100 line
scripts as projects and weekend apps as start ups. The sooner you face the
reality and set you expectations right, the better.

------
steventruong
The best thing you could of done but didn't do would have been to validate the
idea before even building it. And by validating, I meant finding a core group
of users who absolutely had a need or want for what you were looking to build,
not friends or people who thought the idea was cool. This core group would
then go on to be your beta (or alpha) users.

I assume you didn't do the above. Virality, press, etc... are often not
reliable sources of traffic to build a sustainable group of users in the early
stages. At this point, you should go back and find that core group to improve
the MVP with and worry about growth once you've worked out all the initial
bugs and features users actually want.

Obviously take my advice with a grain of salt as I have no idea what your idea
is and just how far you got and this is very general advice (on iPhone and
didn't go to your link). You need to make sure people even wants your product

~~~
jiganti
It was mostly "friends or people who thought the idea was cool". The handful
people who were most adamant about the idea were somewhat savvy Twitter users,
so I envisioned others having the same passion for the idea.

~~~
geoffschmidt
As it turns out, users lie. They will often say whatever they think will
please you, especially if they are your friends. They also have a hard time
imagining how they will use products that don't exist, and a hard
straightening out the reasons for their feelings. They will say "Yes, I
totally want a site that will help me find cool things to do my city!" when
what they really mean is "Yes, I wish I had more free time to go out with my
friends!"

Ways to deal with this sad fact:

* Ask users "how much would you pay for this?" Follow up with "seriously, if I build it, you'll commit to paying that much?" Tends to bring them back to reality, but doesn't make sense for all products.

* Look for external evidence for user pain. If there is no tool on the market for doing X, but users manage to sorta-kinda cobble together four other products to sort of do X poorly, you can believe that they want X.

* Build quick little prototypes, as cheap as possible, and see what users actually do with them. (You've just done that -- good job :))

~~~
kls
_As it turns out, users lie_

This can be overcome by explaining to them up front, that you are about to
invest your soul in the effort and that they will be doing you a disservice if
they are not honest and that failure later will be harder on you. When they
realize that they are actually saving you a larger amount of future grief then
they tend to be more honest.

------
OoTheNigerian
Like others have said, there is no apparent need for it when I can just
Tweet/Facebook "Yaay! I am happy because....."

My suggestions:

1\. Make it more fun and social by changing the call to action from "submit"
to "Tell the world", "let your friends" know etc. I am sure you get the drift.

2\. Use Icons to depict the mood. This smiley --> :) is a LOT more fun than
the word ---> HAPPY. icons are infinitely much more fun. If you cannot design,
go to dribble and contract one of these guys
<http://dribbble.com/search?q=smiley>

3\. Your site should have a mobile version and should be fucking FAST!

4\. Have twitter login too

5.You can seek advice directly from Mark Bao
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=markbao> he launched Threewords.me that
went 'ridiculously viral' (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2051288>) so
he should have better feedback and suggestions.

Remember, you should be thinking of building a sustainable product that is
useful not just something that should go viral.

Here is the very last thing you should do. In fact the thing you should never
do: Pity yourself. You are a warrior for taking the leap. You now go and crush
it! You can, and you will.

~~~
jiganti
Thanks for the response! Submit is a pretty emotionless word- true. Twitter
login is a good idea; icons to depict moods is something we have talked about
but aren't sure if users will know exactly what emotion is related to a
certain face. I remember threewords.me and loved the idea- I appreciate the
links.

~~~
OoTheNigerian
As for the icons, you can put a word to the face. That is the designers
problem. :). I doubt any real designer will have a problem of making smileys
'recognizable'.

------
jgrahamc
My feedback:

1\. It wasn't obvious to me why I would use this when I went to the site. This
is just for telling people my mood? I can do that on Twitter. You need to make
clear what the difference is. Perhaps even some sort of demo.

2\. When I did try to enter a mood I was asked to sign in using Facebook.
That's a dead-end for me; I won't give a random company access to my Facebook
account.

~~~
jiganti
Thanks for the advice- we should probably have this on the home page. The idea
is that there's something specific that caused that emotion. When a number of
people start posting an emotion about a certain thing, "Tim Tebow" for
example, others could search that term and find the collective emotional
consensus everyone has towards him.

~~~
mseebach
And why would I want to know what "the collective emotional consensus" is?
What's the pain? How will it get me laid?

~~~
jiganti
I'm envisioning it to be used for this purpose as a sort of review site.
Having the "collective emotional consensus" of a restaurant down the street
might give you a better idea of whether it's worth trying out than seeing
3.5/5 stars on Yelp will. Showing legislators a "collective emotional
consensus" of peoples' moods towards the "SOPA" keyword would be interesting
as well.

~~~
steventruong
This is just personal opinion but I wouldn't care to see emotional consensus.
That does nothing for me. Rather, I would like to see more in-depth reviews
and ways to flag reviews.

Taking your example of Yelp. I want to be able to filter out (personalize)
_my_ overall reviews by being able to flag reviews I think are ridiculous
(such as 1 star ratings base on other loud customers that may not have
anything to do with the restaurant or food they are reviewing). I would also
like to dive in deeper on reviews such as reviewing specific dishes, viewing
full menus online, etc...

Emotions don't tell me how a particular dish tastes. It doesn't tell me why
someone reacted the way they rated the restaurant (or whatever). Personally,
the collective emotions idea doesn't solve anything for me.

~~~
kls
To me, it could be useful for nightlife but for a restaurant it only applies
to a certain segment of the market. If I am going to a 5 star dining
establishment, on a date, I really don't care about the emotion, because I am
not interesting in socializing. Now for nightlife, I would want to be around
happy people, but I don't know if that can accurately be discerned. Most
people are going to say I am happy at the bar, so all bars are going to be
happy.

------
idanb
Either this is a bad idea, or it's a bad execution of a good idea. I don't
really believe in bad ideas to be honest.

There's no real experience here, as well as no real novelty. I have my own
ideas of how this might be made to be useful, but I think you should give a
real hard think as to the following questions

    
    
        - what is, step by step, the user experience like? 
        - how are they getting to your page in the first place
        - what is their response when they see your page
        - what is their response when they use the page (what do they click, read etc)
        - what brings them back the second time, time after that?
        - why would they refer others to your page?
        - what problem are you solving for them and how can they not get this anywhere else?
    

I'll give you one point that I noticed. W(hy)TF are the emotions in text
format? No one likes to write "happy" when they can ::ninja:: something, also
it's much easier to click in a sea of emoticons than to find an arbitrary
emotion in a list.

------
mvkel
The other feedback mentioned is almost invariably excellent. They're great
things to try.

In short, expecting a waterfall of activity after three months is very
impatient.

If you're an actor trying to make it in Hollywood, it's ridiculous to expect
to be an A-lister after three months.

Similarly, if you're a band that was in a garage in November, it'd silly to
expect to be headlining Madison Square Garden in three months. It even took
Rebecca Black longer.

These things can take an absurd amount of time. You could be around for five
years before "going viral," but will feel absolutely fresh to those seeing it
for the first time.

If this whole "patience" thing is a hard pill to swallow, take an honest look
at what you're doing and how your expectations align with the harsh realities
of being an entrepreneur.

Good actors love the craft and would be perfectly content to perform in their
local theatre for peanuts for the rest of their lives. While capitalism means
the same can't be said for an entrepreneur, the principle is the same.

------
InclinedPlane
_"I approached the project under the assumption that it's either going to be
adopted and spread throughout some niche quickly, or never catch on."_

This is a silly and immature approach, in my opinion. Such an approach is only
suitable if you either have loads of time and money to throw at projects just
for fun or you have a pet project that requires extremely minimal resources
and effort to get off the ground.

The de facto approach to just about any web business should be to imagine it
like a mom and pop store or restaurant. You'll spend a lot of hard work on it,
it'll take years to get into the swing of things properly, and if you're
really lucky you'll just barely do a bit better than keeping yourself employed
at a reasonable level of pay.

~~~
jiganti
I appreciate the candid response. The age-old "ideas vs execution" argument is
something that interests me, and I've always wanted to start projects that
have a neat core concept, where they can potentially get off the ground
quickly from word of mouth. However, it's inspiring to see sites like Reddit
struggle for long periods before eventually having explosive growth.

------
japhyr
I've read all the feedback, and agree with much of it. But I think I see
something here that a lot of people don't see. At my school one of our simple
routines is to go around the class a couple mornings each week, and have
everyone say their name, a number from 1-10 representing how they're feeling
that day, and maybe respond to some prompt. It's a silly, cheesy, touchy-feely
routine on the surface, but when done right it does a lot of good. If someone
is low, it's good for others to know that. We give that person some space, and
make sure someone checks in with them, without suffocating them. If someone is
having a good day, we use that person's energy to push projects forward and
help other people out.

Sure, people could do this using facebook or twitter. But they'd have to use
those general tools for this specific purpose. There could be some strength in
simplicity here.

That said, this will not be an overnight success. If you want to make this
into something meaningful, you've got a bunch of iterating to do. You've got a
lot to learn about what the specific strengths of this concept is, and cut
anything that doesn't build on those strengths. You've got to make it work
with fb and twitter, because it probably won't stand on its own.

Good luck, it's an interesting concept.

------
gizmo
If you want it to go more viral you can always go the usual route: integrate
aggressively with facebook, twitter, and other social networks. Use "rewards"
in terms of points or medals or achievements to encourage users to spend time
on your site.

Also think really carefully about what your target audience is, what value you
want to give to people, and how you plan to (eventually?) make money. I agree
that a startup product like yours has to grow big fast. So the important thing
is the viral part, the rest is pretty much irrelevant (once you have a
bazillion users it's easy to build something they want).

Where should you go from here? Figure out a clever way to make something
viral, then go do that.

Feedback regarding the product? I don't see how it can ever generate
passionate users. I can't imagine anybody saying "Moodstir is the GREATEST
PRODUCT EVER, because...". Twitter was the first social network to do one-to-
many broadcasting right. Facebook gets people laid. Linkedin is a social
network for business purposes. People _really love_ those products, and it's
very clear in what way they bring value to the user. This too is something
that you should probably think about.

------
friggeri
Same thing here, I launched <http://whodidiforget.com> a few days ago, and
after getting a little traffic from HN it fell flat.

Sorry for hijacking your post but my question is similar to yours: what to do
when you're not on a first name basis with big blogs editor (and those blogs
do not respond to email tips) and you don't yet have a large network ?

~~~
jgrahamc
My feedback:

1\. It's not obvious what you do that's special. There's probably some secret
sauce in figuring out who I might have forgotten, but you don't tell me what
it is.

2\. It would be useful to have a walk through or screencast or something
showing how it works. For example, does this thing just make lists, does it
manage invites, send emails? No idea from the site.

3\. I won't use sites that insist on a Facebook login.

~~~
friggeri
Thanks for your feedback !

1\. I didn't want to add too much complexity to the app by going into details
of advanced Social Network Analysis, but I'll think about adding details.

2\. Good idea, I'll work on a screencast/walkthrough

3\. I understand that, but I have no other solution: having access to the
user's facebook friends is an absolute requirement for the app to run.

Nevertheless, thanks for your feedback.

~~~
rlander
If you tell me upfront, maybe near the signup button, that you need access to
my facebook account in order to run "advanced Social Network Analysis" AND I'm
sold on how your app is going to help me, I would have no problem signing up.

~~~
friggeri
I've added an explanation on the how/why on the front page. Thanks !

------
puppybeard
I've never made a startup, so I'm talking as a consumer, but here's my honest
opinion.

I don't want to use your service, I have no need for it. I have four other
services I can use to vent, and I only use 2 of them.

Are you addressing a need that isn't provided elsewhere? What research did you
do?

If I was you, I think I'd be researching until I identified something people
actually need or want, and I'd re-use some of the code from this project for
connectivity.

Also, I'd allow people to use more than just Facebook. Maybe I'd rather have a
unique account on your service that's associated with my email, but not
discoverable by absolutely everybody.

------
Maro
I think you should pivot.

What your site allows users to do is one of the many things people can already
do on Twitter and Facebook much simpler, without the use of dropdowns, just by
typing whatever they feel like into the share box. You're adding very little
value (if any), but want to create a separate walled garden against one
thousand pound gorillas mentioned above. In fact you're subtracting value
because users aren't on Twitter or Facebook where their friends actually see
their shares.

~~~
kls
Right, if you want to continue with this idea, I would suggest building out a
structured front end for twitter that formats posts and collects the data from
twitter to make the reports. You could do this very easy with a hashtag. It
would have saved you the trouble of building out a back end.

------
vintagius
One of the key ingriedients to virality for sites, is Anonymity. If you can
incorporate that element into the site ,your chances of going viral will
increase drastically. If things stay the way they are than you going to have
to do things the old fashion way ie beat the chicken egg problem ,gain users
over a long period of time and let the network effect kick in.

------
samzhao
I guess you need to provide some reasons for your users to use your site? And
maybe you should try some more marketing strategies? Your UI looks fine, but
rather simple - maybe too simple. Looks more like an experimental side project
to me. It simply doesn't have the "official" look to it. That's just my humble
opinion. I'm not an expert or any sort, I'm a user.

------
Tichy
Just had an idea: what if you changed the "happy" "because" to "x made me
happy by". Then people could thank each other that way, instant virality.
Although they could still just do the same on Twitter or Facebook.

But I think there might be some way to redeem your site, by giving a crazy
reason for doing mood checkins.

------
DealisIN
Don't want to be too harsh, but why would people use this over Twitter or FB
status updates? I think the biggest weakness here is that the other users are
people I have no connection to whatsoever. What was your reasoning that this
would take off, and was there any niche you had in mind?

------
spdub
I just ran across this, wanted to say that it looks like an interesting
project - not sure however what advice to give you. I can however say, that I
m a student studying NLP and I like the way users self annotate their moods
based on their statements. Good luck.

------
realschool
Like others have said, I don't understand what value this adds. Second, I
don't have Facebook and won't give my twitter login to an random site..... at
the same time, those 'social' networks seem to be what gives this product
value.

~~~
vintagius
7 years ago,who would have though that tell your friends ''Whats on your
mind''So who know maybe dude is on to something.

------
nurik
Where is the schlep? I'd highly recommend this before developing anything
further: <http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html>

------
dclowd9901
You want viral? Ask yourself: Would this appeal to a 13-15 year old? In the
web, these are your mavens for viral.

------
jiganti
Clickable: <http://moodstir.com>

------
chetan51
What's the value-add you're offering users?

~~~
jiganti
The philosophy was that people use twitter to convey their rational
conceptions of things (140 character explanation of their thoughts) while
there was no medium for telling the world what you're feeling and why. Since
people love posting their thoughts on twitter, we imagined there would be a
market for those who want to let everyone know what's causing their emotions.

From the about page:

Moodstir is where you give the world a snapshot of your emotions. Tell the
world you're [frustrated] because of [traffic], or search [Jersey Shore] to
see the variety of moods the popular TV show causes people to share.

~~~
gradstudent
>The philosophy was that people use twitter to convey their rational
conceptions of things (140 character explanation of their thoughts) while
there was no medium for telling the world what you're feeling and why.

Why, exactly, can't we just use Twitter, or G+ or FB to post our mood? There's
no value-add here; your service is just trying to further divide your target
users' attention and splinter their social network.

Quite aside from the value-add problem is the value proposition itself: what
on earth do I provide by sharing my mood with friends and what do I gain by
moodstalking them?

~~~
jiganti
Say you had a great experience at a coffee shop- you post [satisfied] towards
[Velo Rouge Cafe]. If enough people do this, anyone who wants a quick snapshot
of what people have experienced in Velo Rouge might just search for them on
Moodstir. If there are a lot of [satisfied] emotions posted, or a lot of
[frustrated] ones, it imply certain things about the cafe. Different than a
Yelp review site, in that it takes the aggregate feelings of all users, rather
than a simple X/5 star system, which is a more limited glimpse into peoples'
experiences.

~~~
thhaar
I get it, and dig it.

Aggregating moods would be useful on a site such as Amazon, where, depending
on the technical level of the product, reviews range from sharp and
intelligent to blunt and kneejerk. Having access to sentiment analysis would
help consumers to quickly see whether or not the product/service being 'mood
reviewed' solves their problem or not.

Written reviews are full of conjecture and anecdotes, 5-star gradings may as
well not exist for 2-4 stars, so mood is another great metric to add to these
tools.

------
dkd903
Although the website looks good but you cannot call it a startup right now. It
is just another website or app that lets me do something. You should
understand the difference between a startup and a simple web app.

Just building a web app will not make your idea into a business / company. You
need to chalk out marketing strategies, revenue streams etc. Most importantly
you need to get users to use your site without much force!

My 2 cents :-)

