
Please review my startup: Open, Democratic, Project Mgmt - kabuks
http://bettermeans.com
======
gojomo
Like the concepts a lot. (See an old HN comment of mine suggesting a tiny
sliver of what you've done, here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=650361>
)

But, all the text about the grand vision with new custom terminology is off-
putting. Makes the software sound appropriate for running some sort of utopian
hippie commune. A 'Manifesto' makes me think of Marx and the Unabomber.

I suspect that like ThePoint -> Groupon, your opportunity is some pragmatic
subset of all the functionality you're currently offering, rather than the
entire doctrine.

(This is not to say you're wrong about the big trends. Just that people will
adopt the new ways of work via demonstrated success in baby steps, rather than
understanding the vision and inevitability in a flash of insight.)

~~~
sp332
_A 'Manifesto' makes me think of Marx and the Unabomber._

A manifesto is just a public statement or declaration. I thought of the
Cannibal Manifesto and the Hacker Manifesto in addition to the Communist
Manifesto. There are lots more listed here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto#Notable_manifestos>

------
megrimlock
> open, democratic, decentralized social enterprise management

6 words and you've already lost me.

This is followed by a complicated screenshot with arrows pointing in various
directions, then a manifesto in typefaces that jangle like a political
donation chain letter. Then a quote from Albert Einstein. Then a bunch of
diffuse conceptual words in different sizes and orientations. Seeing floaty
words like "Distributed" and "Emergent" only solidifies the feeling that this
product is hot air -- even if it isn't.

You're making it extra hard to understand what it does or why I'd want it.
Smart HN readers will pore through and analyze what it does, because they are
looking for product ideas of their own, but the rest of the world is damn busy
and unlikely to spend that much time.

Perhaps try to cut your initial presentation down by 10x. If I have to scroll
at all to figure out what you are talking about, you've probably lost me until
I hear from someone I know that it's awesome. Do you already have users raving
to everyone they know about how awesome it is?

Not trying to be harsh, just honest! I completely respect the challenge of
what you're trying to take on, and I doubt I could do any better.

Edit: Having spent a bit more time on your site to try to find more
constructive advice to offer, I have to say I am impressed with your ideas and
development of them. I feel myself rooting for you to succeed. But the initial
impression you offer is more opaque than it should be. And it seems like your
system offers an entire architecture for project management that you'd have to
buy into, making that a steep first step. Do you guys use this product
internally? Is there anywhere you expose how you're using it?

------
DanielBMarkham
I like this, but at the same time parts of it strike me as odd.

Nobody tells anybody what to do? Really? Who's taking out the trash next week?
Who's working through the weekend to make sure the install goes okay? Who's
working Christmas?

It has that open-source feel to it -- wonderful, cool, awesome -- and you
wonder whether everything could really be like this, or just stuff people are
excited about. After all, there are a lot of things to do in any organization
that people do not like doing. And the normative payment idea? Wow! I'd love
to see that actually being used. Whether workable or not, its a very powerful
idea.

Having said all of that negative stuff, I think you are on to something.
Congrats! I want to see real-world, for-profit organizations using this
because it makes them competitive. I think that's the put up or shut up moment
for this product. But if you're willing to pivot, I know you'll make it.
Awesome job.

Now the critical part: traction.

~~~
kabuks
The trash is taken out by someone who thinks it's worth doing. If nobody
thinks it's worth doing, the trash stays.

Bettermeans itself is running on the platform:
<https://secure.bettermeans.com/projects/20> so far we've had no problem
showing up for a critical install.

And you're absolutely correct about traction.

------
kabuks
I've been waiting almost two years to post this! Thank you HN for you support.
From giving me a kick in the butt to launch:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1558154>, to amazing feedback on content
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1836538> I continue to be grateful to
this community.

~~~
ph0rque
Kabuks, I'm seriously impressed, and may try the open version for my project,
still in the idea gestation phase
(<http://shindyapin.tumblr.com/tagged/microfarm>).

Any tips on using it to start as a one-man project?

~~~
kabuks
It should work smoothly for you as a one-man team. But the real magic starts
to happen when more people get involved and start needing to make decisions
together.

If you know that your team will remain just you, it might be overkill. I would
use pivotal tracker, or the free version of basecamp. But would be very
curious how it works out for you. Keep me posted on how it goes.

~~~
ph0rque
Thanks... I definitely do not plan to remain a one-man team, if I can help it.

------
coryl
Its certainly an interesting hypothesis and I wish you luck, but I can't see
it working out the way it is now.

What you're introducing has to be implemented first as a cultural change by
leadership, meaning larger organizations that exist today cannot simply adopt
your system unless they fully dedicate themselves to changing. This is
expensive and is pretty much guaranteed not to happen.

This leaves your target market to small and medium, fast growing businesses.
The problem here is that these smaller companies want productivity tools that
accelerate growth instantly; not an organizational revamp for tomorrow.

By the looks of it, it seems your product introduces more work and politics
(IMO just as much bureaucracy as the system before) because members have to
vote on initiatives, rate each other, etc. I can only guess that in a short
matter of time, members stop caring about these artificial ratings or
manipulate/game them, especially if management decides that "contribution
rating" should be a form of how workers are paid. It is simply not a long-run
solution; people don't want to casts votes everyday for the rest of their
lives. Workers are motivated by their work, not extraneous organizational
concerns.

I'm not really sure if the efficiency trade-off nets positive. But I like your
different thinking, and you may be on to something.

//Bachelor of management & organizational studies...never thought I'd ever use
it here lol.

~~~
kabuks
You're spot on that it would be almost impossible to approach an already
entrenched mgmt system with this unproven model.

It's also true that there's an overhead with using the system, but that's the
end of our agreement.

Because folks only vote on what they're interested in, the system works very
fluidly. No work is held up waiting for someone, and you don't have to wade
through votes that you don't care about.

We use our system, and use the contribution rating to pay ourselves, and
distribute equity. And it's working very smoothly. I spend about 20-30 minutes
a week 'rating'. And the rest of the voting happens seamlessly (much like
voting on HN)

It's very, very difficult to game the system b/c everything is so transparant.
It would look ridiculous.

------
timdorr
Christ, how many sites did you steal the design from?

    
    
      http://bettermeans.com/front/pricing.html
      https://github.com/plans
    
      http://bettermeans.com/images/static/dashboard.png
      http://a.gaborcselle.com/blog/uploaded_images/pivotal_screenshot-708013.png
    

You didn't even change the class and id names. Gah!

~~~
jpcx01
Yeah, after watching the video, I was wondering if this was just a rebranding
of Pivotal Tracker.

If you're going to steal an interface... please don't steal from such an ugly
and disfunctional web app. Having to use Pivotal Tracker for 3 months on a
client project made me batshit crazy. It's one of the worst user interfaces
I've ever suffered long term.

~~~
kabuks
I respectfully disagree that we stole the dashboard design. We were definitely
inspired by pivotal tracker bit we didn't steal anything.

~~~
tswicegood
I haven't used the dashboard, so I'm basing this solely on the video, but...
umm, yeah, you did pretty much rip off Pivotal Tracker. You moved the Icebox
over to the left, added a few new buttons, but in the demo when you start
adding values and commenting it's a one-to-one from Pivotal. So much so, that
I even looked at the company bio to see if someone from Pivotal Labs was
involved.

Great idea, but just because you believe in an open enterprise doesn't mean
you should go around lifting everyone else's hard work to kickstart your own.

EDIT: I sit corrected. The dashboard is a dead rip off of Pivotal. I just did
a comparison of one of the dashboards linked above to the source of the
tracker on one of my projects. Shared class names throughout, exact same
structure.

I expect this out of an MBA with no idea of the culture and ethos behind dev,
but someone who's at least knowledgable enough about HN to post it here. Wow,
that's a new low. At this point, saying you're going to send private emails of
apology isn't enough, if you want to be truly open the only way I see to
repair your reputation is a mea culpa on your blog. Really disappointed.

------
sz
Has this concept been tested? As a potential customer I don't have any reason
to believe that this organizational structure works.

The video is downright inspirational though, great job on that.

~~~
kabuks
The governance structure and voting system is very close to the one the Apache
foundation uses for its projects.

The retrospectives and 360 compensation system is our innovation, and is
untested (except on us!)

------
unohoo
I think there's too much text description on the main page. Try simply having
bullets to convey what the site does and why it is better. Like me, there
might be several folks who wouldnt have the time / patience to read through
the entire text or view the video.

------
okaramian
Love the idea, I feel like Noam Chomsky would dig this.

It might be good to have kind of a short outline or guide on how this would be
used, kind of like Joel Spolsky's guide on Mercurial:

<http://hginit.com/>

------
Ripst
WOW! This is the most powerful and inspiring thing I have seen in a while. I
really hope this catches on. Thank you, it is refreshing to see a webapp that
is innovative at this stage of things. Your enthusiasm is contagious, it would
be wonderful if it went viral.

Problems:

I can imagine a lot of CEOs laughingly dismissing this. They are not going to
let some software take over. It has to be clear how this is beneficial for
CEOs, and you make a point that CEOs are overburdened but still.

The overall feeling is that you are giving up control of the corporation. I
think it would be better to market it as an enabling complement to traditional
organizational structures. An evolution rather than a revolution. Make it
clear that your product is a tool with which organizations decide the pace at
which they want to move towards open governance, rather than a new set of
rigid rules to be used from the start.

For the past 3 years in have been thinking and working in something somewhat
related, but chose to focus on the enabling tools, rather than on the
organizational ideas.

------
ntomkin
I'm actually conceptually working on something similar to this. A part of me
wants to congratulate you, because I do truly think you are on to something.
The concept of not paying for the service if your company is willing to
transcend into a democratic process - superb. I sense that you got some of
these ideas from working in a crippled work environment, as I.

My advice to you: push the democratic side, leverage the idea of selling to
the employees rather than the employers through engagement and fandom,
simplify your motions process and dashboard. If possible, have a "democratic
functions" toggle somewhere in settings.

The other side of me wants to be upset that I can't post a link...yet.

Good luck.

------
dporan
Bravo! What an inventive and inspiring approach to something big and
important. Best of luck with it.

I wonder whether you might want to simplify the landing page. I really had to
watch the video (which I liked) to figure out what you're doing.

Maybe it's as simple as . . .

    
    
       A new way to work together
    
       Turbocharge your team with the decentralized
       workstyle pioneered by Wikipedia and Mozilla

~~~
neilk
Those are trademarked names. If you want to say "wikis and open source", fine.

~~~
wnoise
They are trademarked names that are being used to refer directly to what is
named. As such, there is no chance of "consumer confusion", and their use
should be perfectly legal.

------
acconrad
I think the product is good, the message is wrong.

If your message takes a 4 minute video, it's too complicated to acquire
customers. That 4 minute video should be part of a help document, not an
explanation.

Also, you should focus on project management, not on organizational paradigms.
While I applaud your aims for achieving a better impact in the world, I think
it's a bit over-the-top: it's a project management tool, you're not re-
inventing the global economy through democracy - or, in reality, you can't
change the world economy and it's org structure, but you can influence it via
a project management tool. Focus your copy on differentiating yourself from
other products, but don't get all high-and-mighty about how someone should run
their company.

If I were starting a business, I would instantly be turned off if I was told
that in order to use your product, I had to give a copywriter equal say to
product I created and built from day 1.

~~~
adelegb
While it certainly sounds scary to relinquish control, what has been
fascinating is to find how much people are hesitant to overstep. In our open
democratic model to date we have not been burned by giving the "copywriter
equal say". In fact it has made our work richer to open it up to many voices
helping us out.

------
chrischen
The video is fantastic and the product looks amazing, however I'm not sure if
democracy is the best way to govern a company. It may work well for open
source though or smaller startups where the equity is divided across almost
evenly.

~~~
adelegb
We have a greater vision in terms of equity, in that when you work you also
gain equity. Unfortunately we are still working through the legal details of
making that work. But it is articulated in our white paper
(<http://bettermeans.org/front/?page_id=306>).

We will be sure to share that with all of you once we get there, because that
will be the next innovation of our model that could also really shake things
up, especially for tech teams and other startups looking for a way to create
more fair partnership

------
ig1
I think it's too "out-of-the-box" for most companies, it might fit better with
non-profits which are largely driven by volunteers or startups though as their
existing working model is closer to the BetterMeans model (i.e. people pick
which projects to work on, etc.)

But I think there needs to be some level of hierarchical control rather than a
complete free-for-all though, as things like budgets, etc. have to be managed
(disclaimer: I told the Wikipedia founders the same thing when they started. I
may have been a tiny bit wrong in that case ;-)

The product looks very slick though !

~~~
adelegb
I totally agree that it is more suited to non-profits and other social
enterprise. Those are certainly the folks we are directing our message to.
However I do think it has wider applicability for any team that is interested
in working together in a more decentralized way.

In terms of the heirarchy, it is not a total open free for all. While anyone
can vote and comment on open projects, only the votes of the members are
binding. Therefore we create a forum for all voices to be heard, while still
allowing the devoted team members to drive the work in the right direction for
the team.

------
terryjsmith
First, this looks like a huge project; congrats on getting it done and out
there!

I think you should stick with your title here as the main hook at the top:
"Open, democratic project management." The rest seems like too many buzzwords
and still doesn't tell me what your app is/does.

I agree with a couple of the others that the front page has too much on it. I
think you could definitely benefit from a tabbed set of panels with all of
this info on it so people can navigate through it all.

Other than that I like the idea, and will be trying it out with some other
team members.

~~~
adelegb
thanks for the feedback, I think you make good points. We will revisit that
homepage. Such an important first impression.

------
rsa
Looks great! What lang/technologies are you using ?

~~~
kabuks
rails and jquery hosted on heroku recurly for payments

------
2bHalfMad
I love the idea, it will make corporate world much better places to work for
most of corporates out there, it also encourages ideas of each individual, and
cultivates creativity. However, i think its insane to use a software/ IT
product to take the power off those politicians, and create democracy within
the corporate world. My best wishes to you, kabuks.

------
beagledude
Really awesome looking app. I've definitely be interested in using it. I
really like the 4 column dashboard.

------
alain94040
Good luck to you Shereef. You know my interest in that space :-)

I still think the home page is terrible, because of the amount of vertical
scrolling (5 pages on my computer!). But the video rocks!

------
thefool
You should try to streamline the landing page (and subsequent pages as well).
It's not clear upon skimming exactly what you are offering.

Mozilla does a great job of this if you need inspiration.

------
bensummers
Here's a vaguely related and open source app which covers group formation and
decision making: <http://www.oneclickor.gs/>

------
TedBlosser
i only watched the video, but i really dig the pitch. im a heavy user of
Pivotal tracker (which looks very similar to your dashboard), but i find that
it can be sometimes too focused on command and control (one person assigning a
task to another person). it seems like your solution will encourage more
collaboration off the bat, with people having to step up and willingly take
ownership of projects, which could lead to better delivery times.

------
jumby
i do not understand the video's tie in with "social justice" and the
environment? is this a manifesto or project management software?

