

10 web start-ups (all mine) ... and why they failed - jawns
http://coding.pressbin.com/50/10-web-start-ups-all-mine--and-why-they-failed/

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lionheart
I really liked Truyoo and I think it could be a success.

But I agree that you can't have the user pay right away.

Can't they just give you their credit card details and get themselves verified
for free the first 1 or 2 times?

After that, to prevent abuse, you can charge them the $2.

I can see this being very useful.

In fact, Heroku does something similar, with many features of their free
account not activated until you give them a credit card to prove your
identity.

~~~
jawns
I would love to be able to do something like that -- grabbing their credit
card details and only charging them if they run afoul of the rules -- but I
haven't found a credit card processing service that would give me that
flexibility.

The only problem, I guess, is what if you have someone who has a dozen credit
cards. Or, more problematic, what if their credit card company offers
"throwaway" credit card numbers (as mine does) that you can use for one-of
purchases? That would give them unlimited attempts to game the system.

~~~
lionheart
It would still be useful, even if 100% free.

Its the hurdle or having to keep setting up accounts with different credit
cards. And the very strong psychological aspect of having to fork over some
real, identifying information to a website in order to comment.

I think this would really make people behave much better.

Its a good idea. I'd encourage you to look into it more.

~~~
ahizzle
Agree that you should pursue this one harder...

You have a nice "inside track" by already being in the industry... and it's
quite likely that you're very passionate about this topic, which will come
through once you...

...Consolidate your pitch to more tightly communicate the opportunity, the
problem in solving the opportunity, and how your product fixes that problem.
(Preferably in a way that works better than existing solutions/semi-solutions.
;)

Remember, you've got to put your salesman hat on when making your case for a
product like this. What was the principle objection your potential customers
raised when declining your proposed solution? ie: _Why_ didn't they like the
fact that the end-user has to pay?

Is there a way to shift that cost elsewhere while maintaining the integrity of
the system?

Have you listed all of your assumptions with that solution and thought of ways
to test and prove/disprove each one?

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jasonkester
There's another common theme that would have killed every one of these sites:
marketing. I don't see it mentioned anywhere in any of his site ideas. They
all seemed to be "build a cool thing and put it on the internet" type of
execution.

I went through a whole pile of little startups just like this guy, with
similar success, before I started to figure out the marketing side of running
a business. Once I started paying more attention to "how are people going to
find this" than "how is this going to handle [obscure corner case]", that's
when my stuff started getting popular and making money.

Take any one of those sites, and try actually promoting it to the world. You
might be surprised at the results.

~~~
jwegan
Any advice on where to get started in figuring out marketing? There are the
well known places to start like SEO, but I was wondering if you had anything
else in mind?

~~~
jasonkester
Look to the Patrick. All knowledge is contained therein:

<http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/>

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brc
Without wanting to sound like a know-it-all, I think the underlying theme
between all of them is not really understanding the value proposition for the
customer. You think it's weird that a vacation house owner wouldn't switch to
a free service - I would think it weird if they did. They're probably making
twice as much money as they used to, and consider it good value for money.
They probably aren't terribly motivated to save a few bucks when the existing
site is working for them, and has high traffic.

You constructed an elaborate payments scheme for rungjump, but in fact people
rarely respond to this type of cash incentive, and introducing payments
'dirties' the whole process. People would probably prefer just to post for the
kudos or ego boost. There is probably a lot more money in this model for
targeting recruiting ads; if someone is looking at job x and how to get it,
recruiters/trainers/educators are going to pay to put an ad in front of them,
and you're going to get good clickthrough.

~~~
jawns
You make some good points!

See ... this is why I said I would have benefited from a co-founder with more
of a business mindset. I get so gung-ho about an idea that I don't always
think about it from that angle.

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msg
This is what spoke volumes to me.

 _In my mind, ParishNetwork.org was intended to be a place where you could
meet other people who attended your parish. But a lot of the users expressed a
desire to be able to interact with users from other parishes. I resisted
accommodating that request because I really wanted ParishNetwork to be parish-
centric, rather than one big meeting place for Catholics across the country._

You need to learn to pivot. Unless you are on a mission, listen to your
customers and make something people want.

edit: I was going for Blues Brothers but I realized it sounded a little yucky.

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dools
Truyoo reminds me of this idea I had for making a document signing service.

Anyone else ever get pissed of that the only reason you need a printer and a
fax machine and/or scanner REALLY is because twice a year you have to sign a
document?

I wanted to have a similar idea where a minimal transaction on a credit card
was used to authenticate - ie. as a digital signature. So each time you
digitally sign a document you get charged 1 cent or something and it verifies
the name you're putting on the document is the same as on the card you're
using.

With the others on this list, though, would you really call all of these
"startups"? Throwing something together and putting it on the web doesn't
qualify it as a "startup" surely ... if so I have several "startups" that no-
one has ever looked at or used (smsmyride.com whatwhere.com.au smscard.com.au
8centsms.com)

I think if you're going to call something a "web startup" you need a little
more than a domain name registration and a couple of stock photographs.

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vladd
I'd be curious if some of these would have had more success given slightly
different operating models. For example, RungJump seemed interesting, but
maybe the described commercial model and the long questionnaire killed the
community before having a chance to develop into a place focused on great jobs
and what makes them so.

I liked the idea and saw the domain expired, so I've put a wiki at
<http://www.rungjump.com> focusing more on what makes a job great as opposed
to charging money for ideal job profiles. I'd be curious if it gets some
interest in this modified form.

(PS: let me know if you want to claim the domain back)

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andywhite37
I liked your sidebar comment: "One thing that's pretty obvious from the
screenshots: I kept re-using the same $3 stock photo I purchased for one of my
earlier ventures. Hey, it's generic enough that it works in pretty much any
context."

However, I think you should ditch that stock photo. It's too "corporate," and
when I visited the sites that were using it, I felt like I was on a godaddy
squatter page.

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/09/if-it-looks-
corpora...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/09/if-it-looks-corporate-
change-it.html)

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aberkowitz
Some of these services seem like they failed just for happening at the wrong
time.

Constant Ads sounds just like the advertising system used by reddit which is
very successful as far as I can tell.

ioFeed sounds like it could have been the replacement for Facebook that
Diaspora wants to be.

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shiftpgdn
I think CivicAssociation.net would have actually been a really viable start up
during the housing boom for neighborhood and civic associations if it had been
marketed as a dead simple CMS/billing system.

