

Ask HN: Please critique my startup idea and landing page - coderdude

I would greatly appreciate any constructive criticism the community has about my startup idea, BakeLayer.<p>http://bakelayer.com/<p>The idea is simple -- hosted browser cookies. There are several advantages to storing data server-side that would normally be stored client-side:<p>- You can store more data in a database than you can in a browser cookie. That data can be accessed via a key/value interface (API)<p>- You can add, delete, and modify cookie data server-side without the need for the visitor to access a page on your site.<p>- There are multiple methods of tracking other than cookies, so I can use those methods to associate an ID with each client, making it harder for them to "lose" the cookie data you've assigned to them. Naturally, only methods that haven't met with litigation are employed.<p>I'm still kicking around ways to price this, as potentially it could be hit with a ton of traffic (each page view on a given website, similar to an analytics service). After reading the Dilbert comic today I'm pretty sure how I want to market it.<p>Any ideas or notes on the design or business idea are greatly appreciated!
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minalecs
why wouldn't i just store cookie data in my local datastore, why would I want
to use yours ?

Amazon offers simpledb, google app engine, both offers are very cheap, and
wouldn't take much to create a simple datastore utilizing either of these
services to simple key value pairs.. how would you differentiate ?

In all honesty.. cookies are usually lost between uses and not during the
session, so I can't see the point really. If a user logs in , I usually set
cookies based on loaded information at time of login ... so its a one time
thing.

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coderdude
>>why wouldn't i just store cookie data in my local datastore, why would I
want to use yours?

The vast majority of my theoretical potential customers are the kind of buyers
who need copy-paste solutions. This is most e-commerce sites and affiliate
managers.

>>Amazon offers simpledb, google app engine, both offers are very cheap, and
wouldn't take much to create a simple datastore utilizing either of these
services to simple key value pairs.. how would you differentiate?

Technologically I would not be trying to compete. I would be competing on ease
of use and having a system/dashboard that is specific to this use case.
Infrastructure vs. product I suppose you could think of it as.

>>In all honesty.. cookies are usually lost between uses and not during the
session

You mean between sessions? If so, that is the other major selling point. I am
employing methods that will make the cookies as persistent as possible between
sessions and even between browsers (yes, cross-browser cookies, via Flash
storage).

The idea here is that if you already have a person logged in, you don't need
this. This is for people who want to associate an arbitrary amount of data
with a visitor and ensure (to the best of the service's ability) that it won't
get deleted. I have a feeling my customers will be more concerned with this
feature than any other.

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znt
I'm sure this is not a trivial technical solution to a problem but have you
actually talked to anyone and confirmed they'd pay for this service?

Landing page seems nice though, easy on the eyes.

~~~
coderdude
Yes I have, but not much. I have a few contacts who are either affiliate
program managers for large online stores or are otherwise involved with
affiliate-based marketing on some level higher than simply being users of some
affiliate program. One person expressed interest in the service after a
debacle involving Live's CashBack program. I'm going to gather feedback from
potential customers via adwords campaigns. This should also give me some idea
of the level of interest.

Edit: I don't know who downvoted you, or my other comment, but this is
basically abuse of the voting system and it's been going on for a while now. I
wish there was some moderator just hovering over all these threads going "Why
did so and so just downvote that guy? Reversed."

~~~
znt
Ok first of all I really don't know how you're planning to gather potential
customer feedback via adwords but I really advise you to get out there and
have some face to face meetings with potential customers. You probably have a
MVP at this point but you haven't done any customer development.

Please go have a look at this document, it should help you with validating
your MVP and startup idea: [http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-
bin/winter/drupal/upl...](http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-
bin/winter/drupal/upload/handouts/Four_Steps.pdf)

Also I really don't care about karma or upvotes. I'm here to learn and share
my knowledge. If this message helps you in any way, I'll be more than content.

~~~
coderdude
Thank you for the feedback, and especially the link. I plan on getting
customer feedback by developing over the course of a month or two a list of
keywords that get a high conversion for sign-ups to the mailing list. Then
actually talking to the people on my mailing list. Also, in the past I have
found that many people are willing to contact me via the contact form I have
on a landing page, and those individuals are easy to engage for feedback.

As for the karma and votes, I know it's not about the karma. And one down-vote
doesn't mean anything. For me it's the principle of it. I want people here to
act right because I try so hard to uphold the values this place represents. It
just seems like more and more people don't give a crap about that. Sigh.

Thanks again!

Edit: Really started checking out the PDF you linked me to. This is a
fantastic find. I'll be reading this tonight over my favorite episodes of TNG.

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Skywing
hrm. cool idea. would have to make sure that accessing such an integral part
of data from your servers would be snappy fast, though.

~~~
coderdude
Thanks, and agreed. The latency of each request would have to be as short as
possible. I'm guessing in order for it to be snappy fast I'm looking at
requests taking around <80ms.

