

HN, would love your feedback on my idea - phankinson
http://domainvitals.com/

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sajid
What friends and random people on the web (even on HN) think about your idea
is irrelevant.

You need to speak to prospective customers and get reliable answers to these
questions:

1\. Are you solving a problem they have?

2\. What substitutes do they resort to right now?

3\. How much are they willing to pay for this service?

~~~
phankinson
Thanks for the feedback. I agree with you, and we thought HN might be one of
the best places to get some feedback, since this is where a lot of tech
entrepreneurs hang out. I'm hoping the audience here can spread it to anyone
they feel the idea may be relevant to.

~~~
sajid
Small business owners are your most likely customers. I'd suggest also asking
for feedback on small business forums like:

<http://www.smallbusinessforums.org/>

~~~
phankinson
Wow - 28,000 registered users!!! Definitely going to ask around in these
forums.

~~~
lubos
most of them are likely spam bots. last activity on those forums was like 3
months ago.... it's dead

~~~
there
august 2006 was 3 months ago?

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lubos
the part where you categorize income & expenses automatically is pretty hard.
so there will be a lot of manual labor involved and lot of clarifying with
clients if you want to do it properly.

you said it yourself on your website, bookkeeping _is_ expensive and time-
consuming... your idea is like waterbed. you off-load your clients only to
have this problem on your own plate now. it just won't become magically cheap
and fast just because you do it.

and if you execute this idea, it will be nothing more than an outsourced
bookkeeping service. there are thousands of bookkeeping firms already doing
this.

~~~
petervandijck
Disagree. It'll be an outsourced bookkeeping service _on the web_.

That fact alone lets you offer heaps of goodies and efficiencies that your
bookkeeper around the corner can't.

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alttab
Your idea is great. So great even, that there is already a precedence for this
sort of thing.

Mint.com, indinero, less accounting, all of them use backend bank services
like Yodlee to sync with bank accounts and statements, auto-categorize
expenses, and generate visual reports and integrated tracking tools to make
accounting and bookkeeping simple.

The question isn't "is my idea good?" it really is "do I have enough of a
unique angle to compete with others in that space?"

~~~
phankinson
Absolutely - I'm familiar with the companies out there. However, those
companies typically only focus on a few banks to do an automated reports.
Also, from bank statements and credit card statements you can't get granular
information like amount paid for multiple items from one store or even the tax
you paid.

Our solution would take your receipts and invoice, extract that granular data
and feed it back into a system for the business owners.

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veyron
I would pay $1000/yr for this service if you could do one key thing: figure
out, based on the receipts, which ones are tax deductible (e.g. food) and
which could be tax deductible if I did something extra (e.g. NY ST 121.3,
sales tax exemption for computer hardware). None of the existing solutions
take the tax issue to the next step.

~~~
phankinson
Exactly.... This is the key pain point we are trying to solve! Glad to see you
think it would be useful :)

~~~
darkmethod
Not to rain on your parade. Shoeboxed* does this type of thing already. I am
currently using their limited trial. <http://www.shoeboxed.com/receipts-for-
taxes/> I'm not sure how you would differentiate yourself. You might have in
mind other ways to tackle this problem.

You have an excellent idea and the space ripe for disruption because I for one
dislike receipt management for expenditures. It is a necessary evil.

*I'm in no associated with any of the above.

~~~
veyron
The key thing which all of the existing solutions miss is proactive
recommendations based on your company.

I mentioned ST 121.3 as an awesome example because most NYC startup founders
aren't aware of the rule.

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sunir
You are looking for <http://Shoeboxed.com> plus any of its various
integrations.

The Shoeboxed part is hard. The reporting is less hard insomuch as it is a UX
challenge, not an operational challenge.

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meric
You mean like this: <http://www.invoice2go.com/>? Yeah, go for it.

~~~
phankinson
Cool, thanks for the link.

~~~
redslazer
Isn't it slightly concerning that you are finding out about your competitors
through this feedback thread.

I recommend you find out about all your competitors, try their services and
see what they are doing "wrong". If you can improve on these or come up with
innovative features that make live easier for small business than its a good
idea. Otherwise your just another book keeping firm.

------
zerostar07
I think a "What do you think of my idea" site generator would cover a real
need

~~~
Veera
Google Moderator can be used for getting idea feedback, though it won't
generate good looking pages.

<http://www.google.com/moderator/>

