

Dragdis 3 minute pitch. Feedback needed  - dmslt
http://dragd.is/aHgT3

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pytrin
Some context needed - who is the target audience? investors? potential hires?
users? I would make some modifications to accommodate each. I think the
product concept translates well and is easy to understand. Since you focus
most of the pitch on it, it seems like a pitch for users.

If you're pitching to investors, a few things need to be sharpened / clarified
-

* You say "0 marketing spend" \- which most investors will call bullshit on that. Typically, what you really mean is that you spent nothing on ads. Unless you consider your time as worthless, you probably spent quite a bit on marketing. Even if you have the most viral product in the world, you need to kickstart it until it reaches critical mass. Investors want to know that you've given some thought on how to scale that operation (and not that you'll spend 0 on marketing going forward).

* Regarding marketing, you briefly mention that user acquisition is built into the product. You need to elaborate a little bit on that, cause right now it's not clear how that is the case.

* Dates on the x-axis of the user growth graph would be helpful. Did that growth happen mostly after the public launch or during the closed beta? most people would assume the latter unless you tell them otherwise.

* At the end you briefly group together your recruiting needs and fundraising goals. Depending on the audience, I would focus on one. If fundraising interest is the goal of the pitch, put a dedicated slide on that, and move the hiring part to a footnote on the team slide. If it's the reverse, do the opposite.

* I would make the contact details at the end way larger, and move it higher. In addition, it's always good practice to put the name of the company, a tagline and basic contact details in the header of every slide - for people who lost concentration, or want to put a note for themselves before you reach the last slide. Btw, it should be in header and not the footer, because sometimes people's heads obscure the bottom of the deck during presentations (depending on how the seats are arranged). That is also why you should move the contact details at the end higher, just in case.

* Again, investor audience only - add a slide about the market / opportunity size. Especially if you're aiming for a series A round, which typically means venture capital.

Hope this helps!

~~~
dmslt
Wow! Thank you so much! So many good points.

Regarding "$0 marketing spend" is yes $0 dollars on ads. We spent a bit money
on making a promo video and business cards and so on. Investors where asking
this question :)

Really helpful. Dragged this feedback to my "Feedback" folder :)
[http://dragd.is/WTSR2](http://dragd.is/WTSR2)

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moreati
Love the concept and the pitch sold me. Your registration needs some work,
there's too many steps/bail out moments. This was the sequence.

    
    
      1. Visit http://dragd.is. Big, obvious Register with ___ buttons, excellent.
      2. Click Register with Twitter. Oh, they'll be able to add/remove followers, wasn't expecting that ... alright-ish.
      3. Click authorize. "Your Twitter account was successfully linked to Dragdis. Yey! To finish your registration please enter your email and create a password." Abort!
    

The point (for me) of registering with Twitter/Google/whatever is to avoid
giving yet another site my email address and maintaining yet another password.
You already have a shared secret with me (the twitter oauth token), you don't
need a password as well. Step 3 should have been "start dragging things".

PS You've almost certainly thought of this, but
[http://drag.it/](http://drag.it/) would be a more obvious/memorable URL/brand

~~~
Blahah
I came here to say almost exactly this (including the bit about loving the
concept and pitch!).

The Twitter sign-up process was unexpected, and then randomly failed and took
me to an error page.

I tried again and this time noticed that the check box that says 'agree to
terms and privacy' doesn't link to the terms or privacy agreement, so I don't
know what I'm agreeing to. This could get you into trouble in some
jurisdictions.

Finally, the google signup worked with two clicks and didn't request a
username/password - this is what the Twitter one should be like.

One more piece of feedback - I already knew how the product worked (it's
obvious!), and I wanted to skip the walkthrough, but there wasn't a button for
that. Add a 'skip' button to ease frustration :).

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pknight
My initial thought on this was that it needs to be a combination of self-
hosted/hostable, open source and community driven. At the very least, it users
should be able to control where their data is stored. Now that I see that
advertising is a major component, I feel even less confident this can work.

If one of the goals is a Series A, the only way this thing works if it goes
big and goes big fast and investors can be convinced on the promise of a
working advertising model. If advertising is a big part of the monetization
strategy, the chances of success are low. Everything would need to go right.
But it's just as likely that in a few years time the company stops work on it
if the numbers don't look encouraging.

The problem with being funded here and already having some eyes on a Series A,
and also looking at an ad model, these are all big pressures that are placed
on a startup (i.e. go big, go bust or pivot into solving another problem). It
also takes the focus away from the user. Of course the idea is to build as
good a product as possible. But the user is now the product and the userbase
is tasked with showing enough growth potential to convince investors for more
funding. The startup pressures can create conflicts of interest between users
and company goals (do we need yet another company that harvests data from
users as their reason for being?).

This product and the idea of it, from the outset, is about empowering users.
Making their life easier. Giving them superpowers.

What gets me the most is that, technically, this is a product and an idea that
doesn't require a funded startup and a cloud based service to succeed. For
some products, having investors and a major push for growth is pivotal. But
you could easily see a software that accomplishes the same things, but is
either free and open source, or just a simple paid service or software. If the
vision really is as good as you make it out to be, people should be willing to
purchase it. That model is more compatible with the core concept of user
empowerment.

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lucb1e
Okay sounds nice, but where/how do I get started? Perhaps too much information
for a 3 minute video, but I don't feel like googling the name and seeing
whether it's an application (Linux?), browser add-on (Firefox?), or some
javascript that needs to plug into the page.

Then I also feel like, what is the difference between this and a folder? It's
not as if all of the topics I need fit in a non-scrolling sidebar, plus I need
to organize that sidebar too. The dragging is new, but it's not like it's an
auto-organizer.

The pitch itself is pretty nice though. Telling as much as possible about a
product you're enthusiastic about in only 3 minutes is tough. Good job on that
:)

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ASquare
A few questions (from an investor perspective):

1) For this to gain massive traction, a lot of people (millions) are going to
have to install this

What are your plans for making that happen? In other words how will you scale
this? What channels will you use? What customer acquisition costs do you
anticipate?

2) Do people actually click on ads? The intent of the products is to
drag/drop, be done & move on - not hang around to see ads etc. So how
profitable is this channel? What other sources of revenue are you considering?

3) Who would you consider your nearest/biggest competitor? What stops them
from creating features that your offering has that they may be missing?

~~~
dmslt
1\. We are integrating with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other social apps,
so that people could drag&drop straight to them. Every single time that
happens we get publicity, because next to the content posted via Dragdis there
will be a link to Dragdis.

2\. Ads will not be shown on Dragdis itself for the most part. Ads will be
distributed through an ad network. For example drag nike sneakers, go on
TechCrunch, see ad there.

3\. IFTTT. Key here is not for everybody to develop the same sidebar
experience as Dragdis have, but to develop one product that will be really
open and integrate with EVERYONE. If everyone will build this in their apps on
they own we gonna end up having overlapping sidebars - bad experience.

If you're interested to talk more. Please write me at domas@dragdis.com

Thanks! :)

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kordless
First, I wanted to say I saw this a while back and loved the idea. You've done
an excellent job all around and should be proud of yourselves! I just
installed it and I'll see how it goes. I bookmark a fair amount of coding/tech
related bits...

Regarding the pitch, I'd say it's already pretty polished. You are good at
pitching and execute on the basics: what the problem is, who has the problem,
how you solve it, how you _think_ you are going to make money, and what you
want from the audience. If I have to give feedback, it would consist of
suggesting removing any distracting content, including showing all the
cluttered folders at the beginning and then speed up the fairly slow
explanation and the _speed up_ the demo of dragging and dropping things. You
could probably trim 30 seconds from the pitch without losing the intent and
still demo the feature: bookmarking small bits of information is currently
difficult and TIME CONSUMING. Dragdis fixes that. FWIW, I see a (downvoted)
post at the bottom of the comments mentioning Dragdis helps him make a
cluttered mess faster. He may be right...

Second piece of feedback (because you asked!): stop moving around so much. I
LOVE LOVE LOVE the two hands to the head movement, but coupled with the pacing
and other arm movements, it's distracting and too much. Marketing is about
raising interest in your product. Raising interest in something else (like,
why is this guy pacing?) takes away interest in the audience. Practice and
confidence usually remedies this.

Lastly, I have a feature request: A folder that auto Tweets things I drag to
it.

~~~
dmslt
Thank you so much for the feedback!

Yeah I need to move less. Need to learn to control myself :)

Regarding the Tweeting, you can drag&drop straight to Twitter. In "Drag to"
group there should be Twitter. Just drag&drop to it :)

Thanks again!

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yk
You have a statement like "user aquisition is build in" roughly in the middle
of the presentation but you don't explain that point. Which has a quite
puzzling effect, since I had up to that point apparently completely
misunderstood what you are doing. (I had essentially a local application in my
mind.) So either you should emphasize more that one can drag to twitter,
facebook etc. in the first part, or you talk at that point about web
integration, in a _one more thing_ kind of twist.

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tarikozket
Awesome job dude, well done! It's just simple as it needs to be, don't mess it
up. Just try to be more clear and simple on monetization. Hit and finish me
with just something like this : "There will be two plans: free 500 items plan
and paid for 500 or more items. Paid plan will be 4.99$ for a year and we will
have 2 million users in two years". Because, as you know, nowadays analyzing
people's data is horrible business model for monetization because of privacy.

~~~
Blahah
If the choice was 500 items for free or pay, I just wouldn't use the service.
The vast majority of people would rather have something at no monetary cost
and pay by releasing their data for advert targeting.

~~~
tarikozket
Don't you use Dropbox, Parse, Hootsuite, Mailchimp, CloudFlare or New Relic?
It's a usual business model. Also, in my opinion, the vast majority of people
would think "a free extension which one sees all of my movements on the
internet says 'I'm gonna show you related advertising about your dragged
items, hehe', what a horror story! I would rather pay 1$ or 5$ to it and feel
safe myself.".

~~~
dmslt
What we believe will end up doing is making Dragdis free forever, but
supporting with ads or you will be able to pay a little premium and get
Dragdis without the ads.

We want to give this to as much people as possible. That's why we went the ads
way.

Thanks!

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borplk
I guess I'm very farm from your target audience but for what it's worth I
wouldn't use a tool like this, especially if it revolves around ads.

In my view the problem you are solving does not warrant a service with ads
because it can rather easily be solved locally with a standalone application.

Google gets away with ads because I can't get those search results anywhere
else.

But technology wise your solution is easy to replicate, your point of
advantage may be in the number of integrations, but nothing fundamentally
difficult like searching the web.

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tobinharris
Thought it was a good pitch, a genuine problem, and a good long term vision.

I think you need a new name. Potentially focusing on a different angle other
than Drag and Drop. Such as curating. Organising. Sharing. Simplifying.

Also, the phrase "Drag & Drop" sounds old school. It's like you're trying to
sell something we've all been doing for years.

As a developer I'd also be more interested in keyboard shortcuts, like Cmd-
Shift-V to paste to Dragdis :) So Drag and Drop isn't that relevant. But the
product idea is.

~~~
dmslt
The drag&drop part will always evolve. If we gonna come up with a more
straight to move things around we gonna use that :)

Thanks!

~~~
josephjrobison
I personally do like Dragdis - although I haven't thought of any alternatives.

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keslert
This is the only organizational tool I use and it is awesome! Never been one
for saving things to say Evernote or Pocket, but because the drag and drop is
so intuitive and easy, I use this everyday.

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josephjrobison
I think the presentation was great, engaging, interesting. You did a bid of
Jobs-ian presenting, making the platform look simple and magical. I've been
using it for a month and love it. I still use Evernote for screenshotting
designs I like, and use Google bookmarks for full articles, but Dragdis is
perfect for copy snippets or quotes I want to save for later. Great for idea
generation.

~~~
dmslt
Thank you very much!

I have good news for you. We will soon integrate Evernote, Google bookmarks
and other apps, so you will be able simply to drag&drop stuff straight to your
Evernote notebooks or Google bookmarks :)

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voltagex_
Holy moly. Connect this up to my del.icio.us & trello and you've created
something very useful! Think rich annotations for my bookmarks.

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harel
As an early adopter, I've been using this service a lot as my main bookmarking
service. It's fantastic. Thanks.

~~~
dmslt
Thank you so much! Pssst... it's available on mobile also. We just didn't
announce it :)

Open dragdis.com on your iPhone, iPad or any other device.

~~~
imdsm
Interesting!

How close are you to allowing developers to extend it? You have drag&drop to
twitter, facebook, but it'd be nice to interface it with buffer as well.

~~~
dmslt
Integrations are our focus now. We gonna spend a couple of months until we
roll out the first ones, but it's just because we want to absolutely NAIL them
:)

Thanks!

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imdsm
I use this. I love this. But when you told me you're going to make money from
my drag & drops, it made me pause. Not that I think you're an immoral company,
and not that I am being naive in thinking that a dozen others aren't already
tracking me, but how exactly will you be using "my data"?

~~~
yokom
I'm not affiliated with this company, but usually data collection like this is
completely harmless. They will pick up things like hashed URLs you drag, the
text contained in the URL you just dragged, file type information (text?
image? etc), number of interactions in a given time period, etc.

And obviously, it's just for ad targeting.

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rookonaut
Would've expected that you say "all you need to do is just dragdis" at the
end.

~~~
dmslt
Good one. Thanks!

~~~
josephjrobison
I like that you didn't, because I was expecting Dragdis, but it would have
been cheesey.

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dmslt
yeah... :) [http://dragd.is/iY2XH](http://dragd.is/iY2XH)

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c54
Figure out how to import from Pocket and I'll use this till the end of my days

~~~
dmslt
Ha ha :) Thanks for support! :)

Integrations are coming. I know I keep repeating that, but integrations are
truly our main focus from now on and for the future :)

Thanks again!

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Phr34Ck
hey just signed up for the service, really really useful! I just have a
question: Where is everything saved?

I thought at first that the saving is done locally since you started the
presentation showing a desktop and then you moved to Dragdis where there are
folders defined.

~~~
dmslt
So everything is in the cloud. You can access it from whatever device on
Dragdis.com

Saving stuff locally will be possible soon as we are working on Dropbox and
Gdrive integrations :)

Thanks!

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trevorhinesley
A bit off-topic, but is there a way to import a bookmark folder into Dragdis?
:)

~~~
dmslt
Sorry not at the moment :/

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imdsm
How soon until those new icons are going to arrive? ;)

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motiw
Can you drag into email ?

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dmslt
Soon! :)

