
Ask HN: Bootstrapping my app, tell me what you think? - malia
Hi guys,<p>I&#x27;m bootstraping a mobile app that enables long distant couples to virtually interact while timezones apart.<p>The heartbeat feature will let users hear each other&#x27;s heart beating in real time and the shared clock will sync differing time zones or busy schedules and send a notification when you&#x27;re mutually available.<p>Going to use the lean startup method and build one feature first.
I have a site up, would love to know what you think. Does it clearly tell you what the app is about?<p>www.closerthanapp.com
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ajeet_dhaliwal
I'm hardly a model of success so take anything I say with appropriate weight.

The site is very clear about what it does and looks great. If you have the
ability to map a finger in front of the camera to a heart beat that's kind of
cool. Seems a bit trivial and useless thing to do to me. However like I said
I'm not a model for success and I am 33 year old man / programmer, I still
don't understand the success of Instagram, Twitter, cat pictures or almost
anything on the internet.

You indicate this will be available for iOS/Android/Windows. Is that
necessary? Why not just do one to see if you have any traction. Are you doing
this to make money? If so, your pricing seems very low.

I would never use it but I'm not a teenager in love or in a long distance
relationship. I'm married with two kids.

A unique idea and wish you success. Just take it easy and focus on one
platform I say unless you have friends working with you on different platforms
or funding, just don't want to see your burned out like I've been before. Have
you got any indication anyone is interested in this?

EDIT: Just noticed the first thing you said is it's bootstrapped. So yes
definitely think doing three platforms is a bad idea. Are you doing all that
other stuff too? Video, messenger? I can't see how you could run a service
like this bootstrapped for that price. Biggest thing: any indication anyone is
interested before you develop, any beta users?

~~~
malia
Hi thanks for your response.

I put all platforms to test how many people of each platform decide to click
to subscribe for an email update for when the app is out. Though I get what
you mean, it's probably misleading.

I was unsure of how to price, especially against my competitors and other apps
out there. I plan to eventually have other revenue streams such as selling
stickers. I sometimes wonder how some of the biggest apps that sell for such
low prices are even surviving.

I've got 500 people signed up to receive an email notification when the app
releases so that is promising.

I also wanted opinions on whether I should should state on the website that
this app will release as a single feature beta version on iOS and I am
building as MVP to begin with.

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gnicholas
I was in bicoastal relationship for two years, but I don't think we would have
used an app like this. It seems like just another place to have messages
trapped (is there any way to export? why use this over text messaging or
email?). IMHO, the benefit of this app versus the status quo has to be made
clearer.

When you're starting out, go with free. I know your price points are very low,
but the main friction is deciding what service to use to pay you through,
deciding how much I trust that the billing will be honest, getting out my
wallet, etc. When you want fast user growth, you need to be free.

The pricing is also confusing, because it isn't immediately clear that the
annual pricing is for the same tier as the monthly. I'd swap the order of
those two (keep the annual bigger) so that it's more logical for a left-to-
right reader. First you introduce the tier (on the left) and then you
introduce the annual upsell (in the middle). You could also try a variant of
gotomeeting's pricing funnel, where they offer the discount in the second
stage, after a user has selected a plan. This would simplify things further
without really undermining your low-price message.

~~~
malia
Thanks for your thoughts. Looking back my pricing order and strategy does seem
a bit awkward. I've changed it so that FREE comes first with the most popular
or value-for-money goes in the middle.

I forgot to mention that I have little coding experience and plan to either
outsource or look for a technical cofounder for my startup. So that's about as
far as I can stretch to when editing my site.

I do want to start out as a free app but have only kept pricing info to test
the click through rate.

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diegogcouto
I've already used a messaging app for couples with my girlfriend. I do
remember they had some nice features, like sending kisses and hugs, but we
eventually stopped using it. Mainly because we had a lot of messages not being
sent.

Currently I'm also bootstrapping my own product and I can see that you might
have some problems (like I've):

1\. It's always nice to have an app for each mobile platform... but it costs a
lot of energy to keep them running! I'd start supporting only one. Use all the
spare time for marketing (it's incredibly hard to sell things...).

2\. We had access to nice features using the app I mentioned, but the chat
experience wasn't fluid enough. Sometimes, when we try to do a lot of things,
we forget the basics.

3\. The heart beating feature sounds nice... but is it something important to
your public? We've added tons of features we loved to our product. It's very
disappointing to see that they aren't using them.

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brudgers
The use case is clear, it's not one of my use cases at the moment, but it's
clear.

Less clear is how the app addresses the hard problems of long distance
relationships, which for me were those times when communications were prickly.
Cuddly kinda' took care of itself. Scheduling communications was more a matter
of routine than checking calendars. Still seems to be the case that we just
set aside a certain time of day.

Finally, I think the idea of generating revenue from services product is
probably better than pursuing subscription. It's easier to have a high dollar
transaction that would take 100 years of subscription revenue to generate. It
also keeps the focus on delivering what each individual needs.

Good luck.

~~~
malia
What do you mean when you say 'services product'? Is that where the person
buys the app one off?

EDIT: Forgive my ignorance or how silly of a question that may sound.

~~~
brudgers
Sorry, meant "services/product". For example, deriving revenue from jewelry
sales or floral delivery rather than subscriptions to the app.

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Peroni
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

~~~
Mz
Yeah, you should submit it as a Show HN.

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afarrell
I was in a long-distance relationship and would definitely have bought this at
that price. The landing page is clear and the photo on it speaks to me.

I wouldn't have actually used the heartbeat feature, but the mutual schedule
one is valuable. I might even use that with my wife now occasionally. I would
have when I was interviewing to move to the U.K.

~~~
malia
Thanks so much for your thoughts :)

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tmaly
It can, but people read things differently. You might want to consider doing
multi-variate or even just A/B testing on the landing page wording. A short
animation or some cartoon pictures could help to reinforce the concept.

