

Does anyone want to play tennis? How our startup was born - neeharc
http://blog.shoutt.me/post/43791903829/does-anyone-want-to-play-tennis

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djb_hackernews
I sort of built something like this and i can give you all the advice in the
world but it looks like you are on the right path. You are going to have a
chicken and egg problem, I don't know if you've attempted this solution yet
but you can lower the adoption friction of new users by letting them tweet.
Then you can use the twitter api to, say, find all of the tweets with the
#shoutt hashtag and process them. This way you can make use the the massive
platform that is Twitter and users don't even need to signup or install an
app.

Good luck.

~~~
mansigandhi
djb_hackernews - we would love to get advice from you and hear about your
experience (should we email you?). We're looking at Twitter/FB integration for
that.

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ankitml
Thats super cool, some of the issues you may need to address before this
becomes too cool.

1\. Prevent people from advertising, ok this can be a revenue model also :P

2\. Allow me to shout to places other than where I live, like suppose i am
visiting a new place. It will be cool to shoutt at the new place before I
reach. Though this is not necessary, just a thought.

3\. Some kind of block list where I can block certain noisy neighbors whose
shouts I dont like.

4\. Someone shouting for needing security or SOS, can be highlighted, people
around should receive these help requests on priority basis. Can help prevent
robbery, protect women from potential harrassments.

Overall this can bring communities together, glue them. Wish you luck with the
startup.

~~~
neeharc
Thanks for your feedback. We've thought of these issues before and we are
tackling them . Shoutting for help or security is a great use case but one
that can be easily abused. We want to make sure we take precautions from
people crying wolf too many times.

~~~
ankitml
ya, that is a big concern. Maybe calling for help around can be made a paid
feature, crying wolf wont pay but someone in need of help can pay. Well you
can think of other things also on how to de-incentivize abuse of system. :)

~~~
stdbrouw
> Maybe calling for help around can be made a paid feature

You might want to reflect on what you just said :-)

~~~
ankitml
ha ha! I know, I didnt mean it directly paid like today's eCommerce shop and
cart stores where in you can buy priority shouts. It has to be prepaid shout
credits or pay later. Well in the end the idea is to pinch someone who is
shouting for help. Pinching can be monetary or non monetary, but just enough
to discourage cry wolfs and not to discourage genuine cases. The balance (ie
intensity of pinch) is more difficult to achieve than what the pinch is.

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robgough
I worry that you're trying to be everything to everyone. Just because your
backend can handle anything type of "shout", have you considered effectively
turning it into a white label, and creating dedicated "sport" brand, etc.

If you manage to get X number of people to sign up, currently they likelihood
of finding someone who wants the same thing is significantly lower than if
those X people all signed up to looking for a similar thing.

Though I should imagine there is some advantage to keeping it generic to a
point (sport over tennis) as someone may just be after someone to play games
with, and might also be up for badminton or basketball or whatever.

~~~
mansigandhi
We were slightly worried about it too. The reason we chose to be generic is
that we want to be the de-facto app to solve needs. We're trying to keep it
narrow by the kind of communities we market it to.

~~~
robgough
My concern is simply that trying to be the de-facto app means you'll never
really get the traction you need to become successful. I hate to invoke
Facebook here, but even they started with a very limited market. Once there
was enough demand, people were coming to them asking for access and they
evolved.

I like what you're saying about keeping it narrow by the communities you're
targetting. If it's truly useful, and generic, then people will start finding
their own alternative uses.

I wouldn't have three different type of question on your front-page header;

1\. Lost my Dog, if you spot it ... 2\. Wanna play a game? 3\. What is...

I'd pick one type (personally, the 2nd) and stick to that. 1. is only useful
with significant localised usage and 3. is better left to something like
twitter for now.

Whatever you do, best of luck.

~~~
mansigandhi
Thanks for the feedback!

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vyrotek
Isn't this what BlockChalk [1] and many others have attempted before? How are
you going to solve the chicken & egg problem? How are you more than a GPS
centric twitter?

I'm genuinely interested. I actually created and submitted this exact type of
application when Android first came out and had their app contest. Of course,
the market has grown a bit since then. ;) I've since moved on but it always
did seem like a good idea.

[1] <http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/08/blockchalk-location/> (Deadpooled)

~~~
neeharc
There are many flavors of location based social apps. Unlike the other apps,
shoutt aims to solve people's everyday problems by connecting people based on
what they need. So it puts you first. With respect to the chicken and egg
problem, we plan to start city by city.

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slashedzero
I want to know what you're going to do to attract the every day user? Why
would someone choose this over meetup.com or posting on craigslist or reddit,
etc.

There're a fair number of ways for people to interact with their local
community nowadays (even beyond their local social circle), and I can't see
anyone adopting this as just one more way to do so. Perhaps I'm missing
something.

~~~
BIackSwan
I'm not sure whether you had the chance to look at the video but we address
this point in it. The video is available here -
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0LC54QaMf4>

~~~
slashedzero
Checked out the video, well made! However, it is incredibly vague in terms of
answering my question. The video says you're looking for "My neighbors,
coworkers, classmates, my community" why aren't these people on your already
existing social media sites? They sure are on mine.

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syassami
Two friends of mine made a similar app called spotvite [1], It's great for
pickup sports. I find these type of apps only excel in popular areas.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spotvite.a...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spotvite.android)

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CommitPush
You're doing what 100 other startups are trying to do right now, connecting
like-minded people through activites, just to name a few: Spontacts, Woofound,
spotvite, aka aki etc.

They have all failed because if you're trying to be everything for everybody,
you just end up being nothing for no one.

~~~
mansigandhi
We are not about connecting like-minded people. We are trying to help people
solve their everyday problems....connecting people is a consequence of it.

~~~
CommitPush
It doesn't matter what you do beforehand, the goal is to connect them. I've
built an entire app like this too and it's a great problem to solve, probably
the greatest of all, however you will hit a wall in 2-3 months once you figure
out that you can't market it and that you can't raise money from investors,
because they have been pitched this 100 times before and they know the
problems.

Just go for one use-case, really. :)

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rickdale
Speaking specifically towards tennis, this idea has been tried before. There
is a definitely a market here some how though; just last week I got a text
message from my old tennis coach/boss, "what about a website where people
would meet to play tennis, is that profitable?"

~~~
mansigandhi
Yeah, there is a market for people looking to start pick up games, find
tennis/squash/chess partners, but these are the subset of the larger problem
that we want to solve. Irrespective of what your need, you should be able to
find the right help/person around you.

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akhilpai
Very nice! I've been wanting something like this for a couple years now.

I don't live in a city though, so the value of this (people I _don't_ know
using the service) is low. Have you thought about how people like me can help
get the word out easier?

~~~
BIackSwan
Hi, I am one of the cofounders. Shoutt works better with your friends around
you, this is because your friends are more likely to help you. When you shoutt
if your friends are around, we'll let them know first.

~~~
akhilpai
Right, but what I meant was triadic closure.

I can tell my friends to use this, but since I can already communicate with
them through existing services (which may include geolocation like fb's find
friends nearby or highlight) there's no real value there for me.

The value comes from talking to people who may not be on your social network
(e.g. all of the use case examples on your page should be directed at as big a
local audience as possible).

~~~
neeharc
The point of Shoutt is to find what you need, not just to connect with people
you don't know. Whether a person is a friend or a stranger is secondary. It's
just that friends are always more likely to help.

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rckrd
Not that I'm offended, but you might want to find a replacement for 'retarded'
on your launch page. Sure, it gives a colloquial vibe, but it comes off as a
little immature.

~~~
neeharc
Thanks for pointing that out. I thought I changed that earlier

------
neeharc
Update: We just uploaded an introduction video -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0LC54QaMf4>

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pazimzadeh
Are you focusing on a specific location, to start off?

~~~
BIackSwan
We are planning to start off in san francisco bay area for our beta testing.

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benwerd
Cool! How is this different to Jig.com?

~~~
neeharc
Unlike Jig, our objective is to connect you to the people around you.

People who share the same location often share a similar set of problems and
that's precisely why they are the best people to connect with.

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sitong
do you see every shout nearby you in real-time or is there some filtering
going on?

~~~
neeharc
Yes you see every shoutt around you. But we sort the shoutts by popularity. In
addition to that, when someone shoutts, we find the people who are most likely
to respond and send them a push notification.

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chrisabrams
lol I was at the SF Tennis Club while reading this - would be pretty useful.

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donebizkit
Great idea!

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reaclmbs
A more personally useful idea would just be a niche tennis matchmaking
service. Or basketball.

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birken
I don't think this is necessary for basketball. Having played quite a bit of
pickup basketball in SF (and other cities), if you want to play basketball
just go to the court with a ball. If there is nobody there, you just shoot
around until enough people are there for a game to start. However more often
than not on a weekend or other prime times there are already people there and
you just join a random group and get in line.

~~~
reaclmbs
It would be good to get people of similar skill to play together. I hate
playing with the total scrubs and I hate playing with the ex Varsity athletes.
Also it would be nice to meet someone else who has to use contrived situations
to make friends.

