

Help us spread our site to your school - symbiotic

If you want to skip the BS and see the final product here it is: http://www.collegeacb.com<p>So it’s been 4 months since we had our interview with the YC in Mountain View CA. It was a really exciting experience and although my partner and I were really upset that we didn’t get funded, I decided to continue developing the project. I remembered reading a bunch of posts after the interviews were over from many of the teams who did not make it. What I haven’t seen thus far is the story of what happened after the rejection, so here it is…<p>My co-founder and I were both seniors nearing the end of our college careers when we applied for YC. By the time we heard the amazing news that we had been invited to interview in Mountain View neither of us had even a potential job offer lined up for after graduation. We were pretty much banking on getting accepted.<p>After we were rejected we pretty much put the project on hold as we scrambled to find jobs. Luckily I was able to get a position as and my co-founder got accepted into the google summer of code program. My employers wanted me to start work at the beginning of June (only a few days after my graduation) but I knew that once I started work I would have no time to continue development on the potential startup. Luckily, I was able to push off my starting date for a month. At this point my co-founder was busy and wasn’t able to help with the programming. But where he failed to deliver in lines of code, he made up in sound advice and encouragement.
I moved back home and coded away for the first 3 weeks of June. At that point I had a buggy version of what I had hoped to create, minus a few features, that I chose to drop/postpone. I started my “real” job early July and have been fixing all the bugs up until now.<p>So if you’re still reading at this point here is a description of the idea from my YC application:<p>“Our product is an anonymous social network geared towards the college community. The site is centered around a forum where students can vent their frustrations, talk about taboo subjects, or tell stories about their lives. However, as users interact with one another and post their thoughts to their community at large, they have the option to reveal their true identity or request the true identities (verified by University e-mail) to and from people whom they would like to reach out to in real life. It is our hope to connect our users not by their already established social identities, but by their common interests and character.”<p>PG and company were worried that it would be too difficult to spread our idea. We have observed an incredible viral effect when launching the site at a few test schools. Usually we are able to reach 50% or more of the university within 3-5 days. The problem is that the viral effect does not spread from school to school, only within the specific school. It requires a friend or other contact at the school in order to spread the word. That means that we need a friend or contact for each school we want to launch at.<p>So this is where I do the shameless plug for help. If there are any college students out there who had the attention span to get to this point then we would love it if you would help us spread our site to your school. We are willing to offer you 100% of our advertising profits (from your school) for the first 2 months for your help. Usually all that it takes is for you to create a facebook group and invite all of your friends, and maybe put up some fliers. Were expecting that our contact will make between $25 and $500, so its not a bad deal for the little amount of effort it takes.<p>If your interested in helping out please email me: aaron [at] collegeacb [dot] com<p>Here a link to the site if you want to check it out: http://www.collegeacb.com. I’d definitely love to hear feedback (especially on design and usability or other ways to spread to new schools).
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Alex3917
What makes your service better than all the other startups offering anonymous
conversations among college students? All of them have basically been proven
to be fads, popular for a brief time among gay kids looking for hookups and
people looking for vicodin, but then rapidly losing popularity after a few
months. (I'm thinking specifically of boredat.net and juicycampus.com.) I'll
admit I've never used the competing sites so I don't know much about them, but
I also don't see much that differentiates your site either.

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steveplace
1) I know it's probably overplayed, but this is one instance where a facebook
app would definitely help your exposure. Having a random rant from your school
on your wall every day would be interesting to me at least.

2) Lower your barrier to entry to allow people to post without logging in.
Then offer to create an acct to see if anyone replies to your post. Also,
there is no "register" button on the front page.

3) The img on top doesn't link back to home. Might want to change that.

Some design comments:

You have extra spacing on your login box. I'm on firefox with ABP.

A random quote at the bottom of the forms would be nice.

 _And_ you could have a site-wide feed that transcended schools. That might
help eliminate the isolation between colleges.

A description/slogan to the right of your top_text might be helpful. Also,
tighten up the copy when your explaining what your site is.

You need an about and a privacy page on your footer.

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symbiotic
Thanks for all of the comments everyone. To address some of the issues:

You don't have to log in to view posts, only to make them. This is one thing
that I think guides the discussion in a more meaningful direction than
boredat/juicycampus. We have community moderation, so that if your post is
reported a couple times by other users then it is removed and your posting
privileges are temporarily suspended. This helps cut down on the excessively
slanderous posts that you see on juicycampus.

As for it being a fad... At my school we had a live journal board and it has
remained popular for at least 3 years now. I'm pretty convinced that if done
right, we will be able to keep the attention of the student body. Not to
mention that each year there's a whole new class of freshman who the idea may
be completely new to.

PS: My co-founder was on NPR talking about some of these issues. You can check
it out here...
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9394823...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93948235)

Click on the "Listen Now" button at the top (next to the red button)

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rtf
At UC Santa Cruz there is a Livejournal community with an end-of-quarter "post
anonymous secrets" thread. Exactly what is described here, and very popular. I
think other campus LJ communities did the same as well.

I'm surprised at the critical attitudes -- that there are two competitors is
reason for encouragement and indicates that the market you're targeting is no
illusion. All you have to do is make your site better and better-known than
the other guys.

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eventhough
Don't make me have to sign up or log in to see stuff. Let me into a school and
let me read what's going on right away. Let me peruse your content.

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netcan
Not sure if I'd make that a rule.

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dslydel
I personally think this is a great idea. Reading through the posts, its
obvious that this offers something that juicycampus does not, mainly, actual
conversations. You might consider expanding tools, I notice you can private
message people, which is cool, but it would be nice if there were a couple
"special" reasons to come to your site other than what I just mentioned.

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symbiotic
We have been considering a "crush list" feature where students can add the
email address of their crush to a private list. If two people add each other
then their identities are revealed. The one thing we are worried about is the
possibility for abuse (like someone adding everyone they know to see if there
are any matches).

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dslydel
Not a terrible idea, I was trying to think of something that fits nicely into
the gossip/anonymous board idea. Like maybe a post-secret type section.
Errr... well, I'll think about it some more.

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cbrinker
It just doesn't seem like something that will catch on. It offers a single
particular service that is probably only useful to some people a minimal
number of times before it gets old and/or their question(s) is answered.

Maybe it's just me personally, but I don't see a use for it really.

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mstefff
why would people want to talk to each other anonymously? instead of talking to
my friends in person or on one of the other million social networks, I would
want to speak to people I don't know anonymously?

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Alex3917
The Harvard Crimson had a decent editorial explaining the appeal:

<http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=515684>

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mstefff
alls i know is that it's pretty lame if you spend your time doing that - just
rambling on to no one about nothing. a community like this is completely
different.

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dslydel
just because you don't do it, doesn't mean there isn't a market for it. How
many people think it's silly to be posting on this site!

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sharpshoot
www.juicycampus.com and www.boredat.com already have this down.

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hooande
juicycampus isn't doing great according to compete and boredat is down. Seems
like there is definitely still room in the market.

