

Ask HN: is this the "missing link" or am i hallucinating? - methochris

Hello,<p>I am 80% complete with a web app I'm hoping to launch in early fall that I'm calling Pinjot.com. What it is is a responsive (works nice on any screen) forum where users can post "jots" (threaded conversations or links to external sites) and other users can reply/vote/etc.<p>My secret sauce is this: every combination of place/group is its own seperate forum and is indexed for easy finding.<p>So if you go to chicago.pinjot.com/general you are posting to the general group in Chicago. Chicago.pinjot.com/chessplayers, Chicago.pinjot.com/jobs, /personals, /anything and going to Chicago.pinjot.com will list any /groups people have posted to.<p>But its not limited to cities. U can go to anywhere.pinjot.com. Illinois, Midwest, eastcoast, usa, northamerica, www.<p>There is no other system I can find like this and I think its what we all need to target specificaly the people we wish to reach.<p>Is this the greatest idea ever or am I just dillusional and should cut my losses now, as its tearing my family apart and destroying my life trying to make this a reality...<p>Thanks.
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captain_mars
From my experience, I believe having a stable life and a supportive family is
very important to business success. They provide you with a strong foundation,
and a way to weather the emotional lows and highs that come with startups. So,
I would definitely give higher priority to family and life.

Moreover, I understand from reading others' experiences that for them
"success" (however they defined it) took much longer to arrive than they had
anticipated in the beginning. So, if you are counting on the "success" of your
idea to make everything OK with your family again, be aware that that success,
if it arrives, may arrive too late to undo the damage.

Finally, money is important, but so are your relationships. If relationships
are good, I can still be content with my life, even blissful, even if I was
earning below my potential. So, unless I were in a situation in which my
family was already starving to death, I would not destroy my family trying to
"make it big."

Good luck!

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methochris
Wise words.

My family has been supportive over the past 14 months while I mapped this
thing out, learned to program, design it, etc.

It's just at a point now where I have to chose leaving my day job to make the
site my day job and its too risky without at least throwing the idea out there
first to see if there's any response.

Thanks!

~~~
robfitz
Compliments on the internet are not validation! Fishing for them is an easy
route to false positives and big heartbreak.

Don't quit your day job before launching -- that's the only way to get real
data about whether it may work or not.

~~~
methochris
Launching may be the only way for real data but how does one find out if an
idea is even worth putting the time into? Other people talk about all this
testing they do and pre-signups... Are they just aquiring these people through
search results/real world marketing/agencies?

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robfitz
Ideas like this can't be judged good or bad in a vacuum. If user acquisition
works, then it was genius. If not, then a flop. But I don't think it can be
predicted in advance. Can you scope down and get v1 out the door in days
instead of weeks? All the risk is in adoption & execution -- I don't think
anyone here is going to be able to offer useful advice.

~~~
methochris
Ya...I am trying. I think the responsiveness is a huge selling point and
that's like building 6 different sites at once, so the going is slow. I'm
alone and only have 2 days a week to commit. Now that I learned how to program
enough to get it functional, things are speeding up.

Was just hoping for a little validation that maybe someone in a vacuum thinks
it'd be neat.

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debacle
The idea isn't new, but it's the execution that counts.

