

Looking for Startup Advice - jasonsaeho

Me and my co-founder have an idea that we just cannot give up on. We&#x27;ve been working on this idea for 1 and half year. However we failed after the first year and since November 2014, we got rid of everything we built and started over again with a product pivot and same idea&#x2F;vision.<p>Since the pivot we were able to move very fast. We now have had a polished product for a little while now and have been trying persistently to get organizations to adopt the platform.<p>However trying to get organizations to adopt is like pulling teeth. Maybe it&#x27;s because we have absolutely no network&#x2F;connections to leverage, or maybe its because not everyone wants to write. Or maybe organizations just don&#x27;t like &quot;different&quot; and &quot;better&quot; way of doing something they&#x27;re already doing and wants to be left alone.<p>We really, really feel like we have a very solid product right now. And we really like the vision&#x2F;idea that we&#x27;re trying to make come true, but trying to get past the organizations&#x27; &quot;corporate wall&quot; and have them adopt feels literally impossible.<p>Is this a sign that we should give up on our vision?<p>What we built currently is an organization publishing platform for team collaborated digital storytelling. The problem we&#x27;re trying to solve is social responsibility.<p>We could easily give up our vision and open up the platform to all types of users... but we&#x27;re so attached and obsessed over our vision of different way of doing&#x2F;reporting social responsibility.<p>What do you think?? Any advice is greatly appreciated.<p>Here&#x27;s our product and a demo that you can login to play with:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;goodethos.com&#x2F;charitywater<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;goodethos.com&#x2F;demo-public (username: demo-public, password: demo-public)
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zaroth
This looks really quite awesome.

So you're sitting on a fairly compelling Medium competitor, and you don't want
to open it up to let your users in? :-)

My suggestion? Pivot from GoodEthos and focus on leveraging the beautiful CMS
you built. I don't know if you want to keep it all under your domain, Medium
style, or let people pay to host on their own domain. But depending on how
scalable your back-end is, and what kind of revenue you would need to sustain
it, I think there are a few different price points where this should sell
quite well.

For personal use, especially if you can automate setup of your own domain
(e.g. just tell me where to point the A-record) I could see people paying a
few bucks a month for this. For corporate, start at $99/month. More or less
you could copy WPEngine pricing.

But for now, just get it out there free for the first 10,000 domains to signup
or whatever. If the problem is too many users and your servers are melting,
that's when you send an email to Sam at YC and your problem is solved.

Also, please add contact info to your profile.

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jasonsaeho
Problem is we are NOT like Medium. We have a completely different mission and
we're not trying to solve/innovate publishing. THAT's what's so frustrating!!

The problem we're trying to solve is Social Responsibility. Without getting to
much into what Social Responsibility is, we want to show companies of all
sizes like Coca Cola, Starbucks all the way down to small organizations that
there is a different way to do/report social responsibility.

But like I said in my original post, trying to convince organizations is like
pulling teeth.

How do we know whether or not to give up our vision and just focus on
publishing?

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zaroth
What about the thing you have built is uniquely targeted to social
responsibility versus general purpose publishing?

Whatever the answer is to that question, it should be on your home page.

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rickolas
I'd just focus on the publishing aspect. As bad as it sounds, 90% of companies
aren't concerned with the social responsibility side of things. Even
convincing Non Profits to take on a new platform will be like pulling teeth.

And it's not clear why your product solves anything to do with social
responsibility in particular. It just appears to be a nice
publishing/marketing platform. What features are specific to social
responsibility?

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jasonsaeho
The thing is we're literally trying to tell companies that there is a
"different" and "better" way to do something they're already doing.

I know it looks like a Medium competitor right now, but what we're trying to
do is provide a way for companies and nonprofits to talk about their social
responsibility activities in an engaging way. From there we will provide
discovery for the companies and thereby bringing awareness to consumers.

And from there we plan to provide initiatives publishing because most
organizations have very common initiatives.

I can see why everyone is reacting this way.

And quite frankly, I kind of see it too. It's just that we are so obsessed
with the idea of social responsibility that we can't get our minds out of it.

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rickolas
Please don't take my reaction negatively in any way. As I said the product is
looking great. My point is this. What makes content that is about Social
Responsibility any different that other content? e.g. What about your product
encourages companies and non-profits to talk about that particular aspect of
their business/cause more that it does about any other aspect or topic?

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jasonsaeho
You're right. Content is content and there's no difference between content
about social responsibility and any other content. We may be making a big
mistake by trying to limit ourselves to the topic of social responsibility.

We did that because social responsibility is the issue we want to tackle. And
we thought that providing the tools to that user group is the right step.

I definitely see everyone's point.

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jasonsaeho
Thank you for comments and insight everyone.

I have one more question. If we were to pivot and open up the platform to all
users, do you think we should sell the software to everyone from the start? Or
should we offer it for free?

I know Zaroth suggested $99/mth corporate account. And I think that's probably
a good idea.

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greenido
Your product looks very good. But from a browsing 'around' I can't tell how
it's different from Medium (and others).

I would focus on that and try to make it clear to the clients (=the ones who
pay not consume the content).

Good luck.

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nphyte
hi how can i get in touch to help this grow?

