

Ask HN: What do you think of my startup - dkan
http://www.gymcalls.com/hackernews.html
Personalized reminders to go to the gym
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HeyLaughingBoy
Nice idea; how will it make money?

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dkan
Well, it's a subscription service. Ideally, there will be a lot of people that
lack the motivation, yet want to achieve the results. That's where we come in.
In exchange for us calling them and providing motivation (whatever kind they
want), they pay about 67 cents a day.

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zurla
discount code for HN readers?

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dkan
Go to <http://www.gymcalls.com/discount-sign-up.html> for discounted
subscription, password: 'gymcallsnow'

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rprasad
Too much text, and the font is too small. The pictures are clearly used
without permission (big no-no!) and don't match in style, so it just looks
like a bunch of stuff thrown together. Get rid of the video. It's
unprofessional. I almost hit the back button when I saw it.

The prose is too colloquial and informal. It doesn't identify what your
customer would want, it identifies what _you_ want. You also make it sound
like you're doing people a favor ("That's why we're willing...") but then you
also tell them you're charging them for it.

On the Service page, you have too many slash marks, so what you do becomes
confusing. Get rid of the slash marks and everything after the slash mark.
(Why would you call someone _after_ their workout to tell them they should
have worked out?)

Also, $20/month is too much. I pay less than that for Netflix. Voip, Xbox
Live... You need to justify the expense. Which brings us to...the samples.
Based on the samples provided, I would not sign up. It's that simple. You/your
guys need to be more assertive. Style should refer to the script, but not to
the substantive content. Too many (well, all) of the samples just sounded like
nagging, and I can get that from my girlfriend for free. It goes along with
the relative lack of professionalism in the site. It also makes it hard to
discern what value the service provides over an automated call.

Basically: (1) fix up the look and content of the site, (2) figure out what
value it is that you provide over an automated message service, and (3) figure
out why someone would pay $X/month for a person to call them rather use a
cheaper automated message service or SMS service.

