

Introducing, Braintrust, my bootstrapped lean startup - Tawheed
http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010/05/introducing-braintrust-my-bootstrapped-lean-startup/

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csmeder
My criticism:

\- You don't have a "try here" or "demo" button. Like many people I won't
spend the time creating a free account. And I am not interested in watching a
video.

\- no other criticism (as I haven't tried it).

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Tawheed
Thanks. This is good feedback. I've just now added a one click demo button.
<http://braintrust.io/demo>

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keeptrying
I think you've basically created a simple version of Quora but you dont have
the experts who can actually answer interesting questions.

Most people just email their friends if they want to figure something out.
Braintrust = gmail conversation thread. Plus that is completely private.

I think you need to pivot.

You need to find some type of job which answers questions. And create a way to
allow the "answerer" to bill clients per conversation thread or per time or
something. There are other solutions to this problem but its just an idea ...

Eg: Lawyers,

Best of luck with it!

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robfitz
I've been casually using this for the last couple weeks. It's really slick for
what it does (multiple simultaneous conversations with the same group of
people) and has some neat touches like upgrading comments to standalone
discussions when people start to discuss them.

Congrats on the launch.

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byoung2
You said that people kept asking for project management features, but your
vision was to focus on conversation management. Do you think you will ever add
in the project management aspect?

I can imagine that after using this service, people will eventually have to
stop talking and actually do something! For example, we use Jira at work, and
I find it lacking in the discussion dept. I would love to have your app's
conversation tracking about specific revisions of code, QA cycles, production
pushes, etc.

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keeptrying
Extending byoung2's thought... Right now there is no way to tie in
comments/programmer conversation and code. It would be great to have a tool
that could be added to svn,git etc which would allow programmers to attach
comments to code in such a way that I could then ask for all conversations for
a particular feature since that feature was created to any enhancments done on
it. ...

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JeffJenkins
I believe github allows you to comment on commits. I don't know how well that
is integrated with their bug tracker, though.

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byoung2
So does Jira. But it's just basic comments. Full conversation tracking like
this app (including image and video embedding) would be amazing. For example,
I would like QA to be able to embed a screenshot or video walkthrough when
evaluating a specific revision.

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benofsky
This is only a little nit-picky but I found the image next to "Real time
conversations" on your homepage very _very_ distracting. Otherwise looks
pretty cool!

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gmjosack
I kept feeling like some ajaxy widget was loading on the side and kept causing
me to look over there. So I'd agree.

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Tawheed
I agree. I've changed the icon. Thanks for the feedback.

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benofsky
Awesome, looks good!

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artery
I like your idea - sort of wave-esque. The way you addressed the encapsulation
of topics in an uncluttered interface is definitely important. You might want
to put some thought into a logo redesign since it looks so much like Ubuntu's.
Aside from that, congratulations on the launch! I'll be taking it for a spin
later this weekend.

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grk
Very good demo video on the product page. I'm actually surprised that I didn't
kill it after 30 seconds as I usually do.

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Tawheed
Thanks. This is about the 8th iteration of me doing a demo video. I think I've
got the length and the content just right this time, but it was a long road to
get to this point.

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mtarnovan
You borrowed a lot of design from basecamp & co. No necessarily a bad thing
though :)

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StrawberryFrog
Why the comma after "Introducing"?

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adrianwaj
maybe also get brainstrust.io

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fleitz
Looks really cool, just from a sales / marketing perspective I'd change
"Braintrust Features:" to "Braintrust Benefits:"

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Tawheed
Agreed and changed! Thanks for the feedback.

