
Ask HN: Review my startup, www.getmustapp.com - TheMustApp
Ask HN: Review my startup, www.getmustapp.com
======
runako
Slick idea, I think. My feedback:

\- The video added nothing of value for me. I felt like I wasted 1:20 on what
could just as easily have been a SquareSpace or Adidas commercial. I'm not
sure why the video doesn't just...show me what the product does and why I'd
want it.

\- The rest of the site probably does tell me that, but it uses a wall of text
to do so. Since I've already wasted 90 seconds by the time I get to the wall
of text, I'm in low-fi skim mode.

My takeaway: it's some kind of photo-sharing app. I'm not sure why I'd want
it.

Hope this helps.

------
mcjiggerlog
Slick website and an interesting idea, unfortunately I'm on android so can't
check it out.

I hate to be that HN guy, but when I first went to your site, I spent nearly
10 seconds looking at a frozen image of a car, with no text or anything,
wondering what was going on. Then the hero video started playing and the text
was then rendered, but I couldn't actually read the text because there was so
much going on behind it. I also didn't notice the play video button until I
read some of the comments here too. If I was you I would ditch the hero video
and go with something less distracting and less heavy on the page (scrolling
was pretty laggy too). It's a shame because the rest of the page looks great
and has good copy, but I'd suspect you'd lose quite a few readers in those
first 5-10 seconds.

~~~
falcolas
It was 30 seconds for the full landing page to show for me, and 17 seconds
before the hook text flew onto the page.

The front page is over 8 megs, and even with a primed cache there are 4 megs
which must be downloaded before I can even view the landing page. This will be
hell for mobile users.

I agree with the parent, this will not be acceptable for many folks. After
all, if your website abandon rates will rise by 5% for every second it takes
to load, how many will be around after 10, 20, 30 seconds?

And while I hate to be "that guy", what value does the dynamic loading provide
the end user? What could not be done with a static webpage animated with
Javascript after the assets have been loaded?

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mpdehaan2
A few brand things - If you take the "getmustapp" apart, your app is named
"Must". So your domain, should, probably, be "must". Similarly, "must" seems
to remind me of the phrase "musty".

Your website photo loads before the text, and describes a "recommendation app"
that "speaks with photos". My brain has a hard time merging these two to
understand it.

What is even a photo recommendation app? Do I take a photo of milk and say
"this is good milk?"

The photo at the bottom that discusses "must have" and "must drink", makes it
seem a bit like a pinterest?

The valuations of all of these companies are based on massive userbase turning
into eventual profit per user. Your whole usage then will depend on getting
massive amounts of people to use this thing - instead of the existing things.

Instagram (or Flickr, etc) are a bit more open ended, and not so consumer
focused... so they can also be used to say "this is about my style" or
whatever, versus consumer buying. Which to me, is more interesting, rather
than bragging about what someone bought or where they ate.

(Also, I'm boring.)

------
striking
How are you going to sell it? There's an age-old issue with making money with
social networks. Either you allow people to be free-loaders and make it
totally free, or you sell your users to keep it afloat.

Why do I want it? It seems like... Instagram. Just, that. Let me illustrate by
analyzing the main value prop:

    
    
      "Must is a free lifestyle photo recommendation app for discovering, capturing, and sharing new experiences across the world."

So:

    
    
      * free: (above)
      * lifestyle: so like, anything from awesome to anodyne? I would think you'd only want to reward things that other people think are cool, as a social network.
      * recommendation: you can't sell personalization as a product. You can try after five years of having a product, maybe. But as an MVP you have *literally no data.*
      * capturing, sharing: so, Instagram.
      * new experiences: so, just photos? Or do you have a cool trick up your sleeve? This spot could be your saving grace: if you find a new way to capture events like Snapchat did with 7-second videos, then *everything else written here is invalid.* Otherwise, *yawn.*
      * across the world: these three words are wasting my time. Don't waste time. With the advent of the Internet, basically every startup could say this. Why don't they? Because it's a waste of time.
    

Hopefully this doesn't come across as ranty and horrible because I would like
to see you succeed. (In fact, I'm being somewhat nice. If you caught a YC
partner on a bad day with something like this, you might get something a
little worse. ;)

I wish you luck.

------
binxbolling
My thought process as I'm reading/scrolling:

"So, Instagram?"

"Instagram... This is Instagram."

"OOOHH, that's how it's NOT Instagram. Why didn't they say so earlier? That
weird copy about Shakespeare and 'trailing' [sic] wasn't actually an ad for
Instagram."

Be direct and get to your value proposition much sooner than 3 pages down or
whatever. I actually could see myself using this app, or at least trying it,
but not when the entire hook upfront is "share photos."

Also, the name is very bad. I get it, "must do, must drink, must see," etc.
The URL alone makes me twitch.

------
highCs
Click: [http://www.getmustapp.com/](http://www.getmustapp.com/)

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alanctgardner3
Maybe it's just me, but I found the copy insufferable. I don't think I'm the
target audience, but there's some irony in hitting a wall of text complaining
about how people write too much and think they're Shakespeare. It could be a
lot clearer and more direct.

~~~
lloyddobbler
Agreed. Worth taking the whole thing and first running it through the filter
of 'WIFM' (i.e., the first question you answer shouldn't be 'What type of app
is Must?', but instead, 'What does Must do for me, the user?').

Then, worth taking all the copy and running it through
[http://www.hemingwayapp.com](http://www.hemingwayapp.com).

------
jmilloy
I'm excited by your app.

You need to do more, sooner, to emphasize that it is _not_ a photo sharing
app. The recommendations aren't the photos, but what's in them. It is for
experience-sharing. It is closer to Pinterest than Instagram, but the
impression you give is the latter.

You would do well to emphasize this through _features_ in the app. The
interactions you need people to have with the app are a full cycle: _save, do,
respond_ and _do, share, get feedback_ (not just _save_ and _share_ ). Reward
users for coming back and checking off a saved experience, and reward users
when someone does an experience they recommended.

Or whatever actual, better feature you have in mind that emphasizes
experiences over photos and encourages the full cycle. But do it soon, and
simplify.

------
slamus
The site is clear and beautiful, as needed for a new product.

But you ask us to review your startup and not your website right ? :)

So here's my thought on your product: Having "must have" content on one
platform is a good idea. It then garantees new & quality content. But my
question is about this very content: How will you filter the photos in order
to keep a great content while filling up your user base? is there moderators
or content-filtering algorithms? Because in case you haven't thought of that,
the risk for your app is to besome an lesser instagram...

Great design work though ! (sorry for my poor english)

------
dyeje
The video was pretty, but it didn't tell me anything about the app. Felt
vapid, like a TV commercial for pharmaceuticals.

Then I scrolled down and skimmed through. It's Instagram with categories or
something I think?

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contechual
Nice video but doesn't really give me the details of the app unless I use it.

Photo-sharing sure but what makes you guys different from let's say VSCOcam,
Instagram, and all the other Social Media sharing photo apps available?

-Even by sharing the highlight menu, you don't need to separate food and drink. You can generalize it as "Must Dine."

Having demo'd the app itself here are a few suggestions:

-Work on the metatags in the app store make it Android available. I had to filter through the first five apps and five different iterations of "Must App" keyword iterations to finally find it on my phone and install it.

The UI is a bit flimsy for me, if you can have the option to have the bottom
header pop up static instead of remaining hidden that would be cool.

The photo editing, should have all "Effects, Frames, Overlays" pre-installed.
Having need to install even the defaults is sort of a drag.

-After uploading a photo, the preview size and the actual size, should be the same resolution and dimensions. Because it is different it made my editing choices a bit skewed.

Draw option is nice (reminds me of snapchat), but sort of ruins the "photo
centric feel" but that's just me.

Overall, I get what you're trying to be but I believe there's a bigger
potential in focusing solely on video in a mobile format versus photo. Case in
point, Youtube's current UI when browsing on a smart phone.

Hope this helps and good luck. If you wish to have more feedback feel free to
reach out.

------
slimetree
_" Must is a free lifestyle photo recommendation app for discovering,
capturing and sharing new experiences across the world."_

 _" DISCOVER. EXPERIENCE. CAPTURE. SHARE."_

I'm having a hard time understanding what this app does. The prose is too long
and hairy for me to parse. Does it take pictures? Show them in a feed?

What am I going to _do_ with this app? Where will I be? Why will I be doing
it? Why will I want to, and what is the increment of improvement over my
current technology this will provide? Put that as concisely as possible in the
first two pages I scroll through. If it's hard to do in words, make a video or
take some screenshots of someone using the app the way I would use it.

This is some solid advice from pg I like:

 _" Better to start with an overly narrow description of your project than try
to describe it in its full generality and lose the audience completely. If
there's a simple one-sentence description of what you're doing that only
conveys half your potential, that's actually pretty good. You're halfway to
your destination in just the first sentence."_

------
fabrigm
About the site:

1) Redirect [http://www.getmustapp.com](http://www.getmustapp.com) to
[https://getmustapp.com](https://getmustapp.com), with www or without, with
https or without

2) Cursor: default, not text

3) The second image of the mobile example is clickable and goes to the image
"zoom"

4) The email subscriber it's not clear enough to me, where should I enter de
email?...

5) Not favicon

------
jackmaney
Don't have a video playing in the background. Even if there's no audio, it
makes foreground text harder to read than it should be.

If you're going to play a video, however, play something useful. This video
was so bland that I have no reason to believe that it wasn't stock footage.
Ask yourself why you wanted to include the video and give it a very long, very
hard second thought.

------
traviswingo
Pretty cool idea. I few things to consider about the way I initially perceived
the app:

* It took me a while of consciously skimming and reading to figure out how it was different from Instagram (this is the most important IMO)

* Given the above, it also took me a while to figure out exactly what it does.

* Your website is REALLY slow to load. Obviously, tons of people from HN alone are accessing it to check it out, but keep this in mind for later - it can cost you big time.

* To me, it's an Instagram-Pinterest hybrid - which could be a really good thing, you just need to sell it properly.

Don't worry too much about these "how are you going to make money" questions.
That's something that you can dial in after you've brought in a good chunk of
users. After all, you can't make money if you don't have any users.

Nice work. It looks beautiful in the screenshots, I'll download it for sure.
It'll be up to you to make sure I keep it on my phone and actual deem it a
part of my lifestyle! :p

------
zamalek
Product's purpose is clearly communicated in the first paragraph, and as a
bonus even the title bar. Bravo! I really can't complain about the website.

I can't use the app (Windows Phone) but I'd definitely try it out if it was
available. Maybe provide an email notification option for Android and Windows
Phone.

~~~
detaro
Disagree on the first point. Only after scrolling below the fold and seeing
the screenshots I understood what it does.

------
KararCBB
Kudos on the launching the site! You entered into well charted waters but that
doesn't mean you don't have room to grow. Try to add features that can
differentiate you from Instagram or Pinterest. There are some great
suggestions here so don't ignore. Here few things I noticed; the website is
cookie cutter WP site, so invest little in design and I think 99designs.com
can help. Your site is about photographs and video on homepage threw me off
right away as I thought it's video app; and video itself is not related to
your product. See [https://www.airbnb.com/](https://www.airbnb.com/), how
relevant their video message is to their services. Don't get discouraged,
pivot!!

------
weizenbaum
Great Idea!

Some suggestions: \- Must have: Filter on tags (Tech, Gadgets, Fashion,
Beauty, ...) \- I guess one might want to add a picture from Instagram to "I
must have" or "you must have".

And then I want to check a picture and say: I've done that! Would' recommend.

------
drei29
The pictures on the front page seemed like they should be static as opposed to
stuttery and changing. (Version 41.0.2272.89 (64-bit) MacOS-X)

I think the video needs to explain the app a little more too. I agree with the
sentiments of the video though and love the design.

After I went through the tutorial in-app it took a while to load just showing
me a white screen. Some sample data would be nice to start with. A bit more
direction in-app would be helpful.

Overall I like the concept and the idea but the implementation needs a bit of
work. It's a very compelling concept and it sounds like something I would use
while travelling.

------
mping
Site looks good.

\- I would prefer a smoother transition to play the video, otherwise it seems
I navigated to a different page. Better yet, I would prefer to see the video
without "leaving" the landing page \- the screenshot with the 2x3 menu looks
but, but I would love to see a drilldown to get a feeling of what kind of
suggestions I can get Anyway I would love a product like this IF the
suggestions match my taste.

As a geek, I must ask: are the suggestions curated, 100% automatic or a mix?
I'm guessing a mix between user suggestions and some kind of recommendation
system

And why U no android? :)

~~~
supercoder
I can't speak for the developer, but my response to 'why not android' is
generally:

\- Development is easier on iOS (APIs, number of devices etc), and a higher
level of quality can be achieved with less effort. \- It's hard to saturate a
market of 700 million devices.

Basically until it seems like all iOS that have downloaded will, there seems
no need to go Android. You're doubling the development effort, support costs
etc for little gain.

~~~
antihero
I'd counter that with the fact that this is a social app, and thus depends on
being able to saturate _networks_ of people. This means that if someone that
does interesting things wants to share those on this app, and happen to have
Android, you could have lost a really valuable "node" that could have helped
you saturate both markets more.

~~~
supercoder
Yeah totally, in theory it makes sense with a social app to consider as many
platforms as possible.

Though in practise I haven't seen it hurt social networks that start on iOS.
Instagram is the obvious example.

Keep in mind 700million is a _really_ big number of addressable users, and
there will be plenty of valuable node / users there.

I guess my point is still that if you're struggling on iOS in the early days,
it's not because your app isn't available to 'enough' people, its because
something else is wrong, which more platforms almost certainly won't fix.

------
machinelearning
I personally wouldn't use it. It isn't a huge step up vs. sharing something on
Facebook/Twitter. Doesn't justify me installing a whole new app and
evangelizing my network to join it.

~~~
hoopism
That seems unfair. Those platforms don't even attempt the functionality being
posed here (from what I gather).

All those platforms allow photo sharing, true. But the ability to categorize
photos into experiences for reference isn't even covered in those other
applications.

It's like saying snapchat isn't a step-up from twitter. It doesn't have to
be... it isn't the same category.

~~~
machinelearning
Well that is exactly what I am referring to. The ability to categorize photos
doesn't justify me moving all my photo sharing activities to the app.

Snapchat on the other hand is vastly differentiated from services such as
twitter.

------
minznerjosh
Just some feedback on the site:

The images/iconography appear to be @1x resolution, making things appear
blurry on my MacBook Pro with Retina Display. I'm guessing it would be the
same on my iPhone or iPad.

------
chrismcb
My first thoughts? Visited the website on my ipad, saw a bunch if pics, with
no text (but big blank spaces) my first thought was too much work went into
making a slick website that doesn't really work. I had no idea what the app
did. After a minute or so I was about to give up when the text came in... Read
some of it, still not sure what it is. Some sort if bucket list app, that my
friends may or may not use. Spend more time making a slick app, and less time
on a website that doesn't work ( less is more)

------
skizm
Website looks neat, but am I the only one who, when they see a website that
loads as you scroll, scrolls all the way to the bottom to pre-load everything
then go back to the top and start again. There should be a plugin to pre-load
websites like this.

------
antihero
Looks interesting, I'll give it a shot once it hits the Play store.

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alimoeeny
At the top I would put the "Must see, Must eat, ...".

I read the copy, watched the video and until I scrolled down, I didn't get
what it was all about, and why "must".

------
krsweston
absolutely god awful video, seems like the same old tripe done again. and im
sure we will see it again another 5 billion times yet in our lifetimes.

------
stevewilhelm
Seems like Pinterest. Might want to target the app to a particular
demographic. For example: Pinterest + Match.com.

------
piratebroadcast
GetMustApp.com is the worst domain I have ever heard of, sorry.

------
santiagobasulto
I loved the video.

