

Ask HN: How long does it take to know if a concept of a startup works or not? - ToniVlaic


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timrosenblatt
ToniVlaic, that's a _very_ complicated question. There are extremely smart
people who have spent a lot of time trying to answer that question, and they
don't have simple answers.

I start with that, because the first reply is "what do you mean by 'works'?"

Do you mean that people will use what you've made? Find a small group of
people who you think would use what you've made and see if they're still using
it after X weeks.

Do you mean that people will tell other people what you've made? Check your
stats on an invite system, or new signups, or whatever you need to answer this
question.

Do you mean that you'll be able to market and convert customers at affordable
prices relative to revenue? Will you average spending $20 on advertising to
bring on a customer who buys $5? Or will you spent $5 to bring in $20 of
business?

Do you mean "will the thing I made be interesting to the group I'm trying to
sell to?" There are many instances where a company made something, found out
it wasn't interesting to the group they were trying to sell to, but that
someone else found it very useful.

Give us more details, and we can give useful answers.

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ToniVlaic
TimRosenBlatt first thank you for your reply.

We are working on a social rating platform where users can add items (things,
products, people, companies, events, abstract things, places...no limits),
review the items, rate them and create compares between multiple products so
other users can vote. Those users can follow other users, items and compares
and if there are new interactions with those items or by the users they follow
it will show up in their stream. They gain experience points with every action
they take for certain items, they get badges and rankings for certain
keywords, so for example the person doing the most ratings, reviews etc. for
video games will be the #1 on the video games list. Users can select that they
“have” certain items which then go into their achievements list or “want” and
they go into your wish list. When you search the site you can see if you
friends (people you follow) have interacted with items in the search results.

We have the chicken and egg problem, we need a lot of content so the site will
be useful to the users and to have a lot of content we need many users.
Imagine if you had 30 friends on our site who all reviewed and rated items or
you could see your wife’s or girlfriends wish list the site would be very
useful to you as you know all those people but if you are the first on the
site you don’t see the point why you should add items or rate or review…. I am
aware that every user generated content site has the same problem but I
believe the concept is good (or maybe I hope?) and I am wondering how long it
will take to users understand the full idea behind the site and the concept.

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staunch
<https://twitter.com/paulg/status/333789309779996673/photo/1>

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ToniVlaic
Thank you, this graph is actually very motivating

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jperiasw
The time it takes you to realize that there is no viable revenue model for the
concept.

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orangethirty
Depends on the outcome that you want.

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ToniVlaic
At this point I am looking for confirmation that users like the idea and that
the concept will work as I imagined. Basically I would like to know if I am on
the right track.

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orangethirty
You need to understand that _that_ will take time. Get in touch with the users
directly and get talking.

~~~
ToniVlaic
That's a good tip, I should really start contacting users to see what they
think of the site.

