
My experiences on a one month startup - jasonb05
http://www.neverreadpassively.com/2008/08/my-experiences-on-one-month-startup.html
======
bootload
Some observations:

Firstly congratulations on getting the idea from zero to launch in one month.
Even if the thing fails you have invested only 1+ resources building. I tried
this yesterday, registered and had a play around. Impressions:

\- name: 2 words, elephant that never forgets but why spicy? longer to type

\- registration: faultless

\- no favicon: with tabbed browsers favicons make it easy to find

\- demo: no video demonstration OR quick visual demonstration from front page
to show canned demo how app is better

\- clean urls: yes, but where is clean url on say popular? ~
[http://spicyelephant.com/decks?direction=ASC&order=popul...](http://spicyelephant.com/decks?direction=ASC&order=popular)

\- feedback: google group (good) no twitter, blog. Would have thought a
twitter account and blog was a good idea for features and latest new decks?

\- loading: no check for javascript block

\- layout: readability reduced by lots of text. cull text.

\- New deck: there is no easy way to create new deck once registed (ie: need a
big easy to find button for people with really big thumbs so they do not have
to hunt for it). Link to create deck should be off front page. When user is
logged in "Make new deck" should be at the front page not just
<http://spicyelephant.com/profile>

Now most of these are pretty trivial. The app works. What about marketing and
getting feedback from users to improve? The only real things I'd suggest would
be:

\- add "make new deck" to front page easier to find

\- add a demo walk through with story with pictures and text showing how the
app is better

\- add blog and twitter support (more feedback & data push).

One feature request I'd really like to see is a widget I could add to a third
party site linking back which allows other companies to create information,
test and show users results.

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jasonb05
that is fantastic feedback bootload, thanks a lot mate! I've upgraded you
(login:bootload) to premium as a gesture of the thanks.

jase

~~~
bootload
_"... thanks a lot mate! I've upgraded you (login:bootload) to premium as a
gesture of the thanks ..."_

Aw gee you didn't have to. But I'll see how I can make use of it. One idea
I've had is could you use the flash cards as a sort of measurable help system?
Anyway thanks. Keep up the features.

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13ren
Great stuff!

I think you need a clear _pitch_ of what you're offering users. Something that
can leverage word of mouth: short, easy to grasp, exciting. (Of course, maybe
through following supermemo's seeding the geek market, you don't need it for
us)

The offer is to "help them to learn stuff, by ... ", how? The first part is
clear (cute: elephant=memory), but "how" it helps is not clear.

 _"2. We intelligently organize when to study"_

That doesn't give me a sense of it (sounds like "in the morning"?, "after
exercise"?, "at night"?) It's cute having your info as the first scheduled
training, but maybe more effective to also have that info available _before_
trial. :-) It's probably just me, but (though cute), I found scheduling that a
bit pushy.

I'd also feel more comfortable having a clearer sense of when training will
occur: what's the scheduling for _this_ deck? I don't think it's needed for
the learning task; but it would make the user _feel_ more informed and in
control; and not at the whim of a machine (users don't like that).

But I think you could have something really successful going there.

~~~
jasonb05
some good points. I really like your comment about knowing the schedule for a
deck. We do have an overview in the train page, and some more information in
the stats page, but a clear visualization of a decks complete schedule would
be a great addition.

thanks.

~~~
13ren
You're welcome - I had seen the schedule on train page, but not the one on the
stats page (this may be because I'm on a tiny eee PC, and didn't happen to
scroll down... for this (rare) case, I think some sites have subtle guides in
the design to suggest the page isn't finished more lower down - I see you have
narrow vertical margins, but the RHS is off my screen... as said, a rare case
(and it could just be me).

It would be nice to know which each deck is scheduled when (just different
colours and a key) - ie, the visualization you suggest.

But you've basically answered my issue - actually, the basic schedule you have
now is _very_ important, because you need to know, so you visit the site when
the next learning is scheduled. One way is (optional) email alerts, to remind
people. (Of course, a serious user would be at the site every day anyway).

BTW: somehow, the info on train and profile pages seems a bit confused to
me... maybe there's a better principle to organize it by, in terms of what the
user needs, in their work flow. (but I think it's OK as it is - this is just a
refinement).

Don't know if any of that helps, but thought I might as well pass on my
reactions, just in case they do.

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halo
IMO you should offer free subscriptions to people for creating decks - this
free content will attract more people to the site and make you stand out and
differentiate yourself from competitors like Supermemo or Mnemosyne.

The "content is king" meme exists for a reason.

~~~
jasonb05
that is good advice, we really do need a lot more content to get users.

Hard-core users seem to obsess about making their own decks, thus the
available content is there as a hook or gateway to becoming a more involved
user.

~~~
halo
Actually the one thing that has put me off using one of these applications is
the lack of availability of a library of decks and is probably the main
advantage of a web-based approach. I'm not a fan of the over-proliferation of
social network-based sites (Halo's law: "Every site expands until it becomes a
social network, those that don't are replaced by those that do"), but I think
this is the key case where it could really work to both your and your users
advantage.

The hardcore users will be more likely to already have bought Supermemo, have
lots of Supermemo decks and be unlikely to switch over. I think you could end
up with a larger, broader market than that. But I think the concept is good.

~~~
marcus
Consider building a tool to let users import decks they created on other
sites/with other tools (and thus probably retain rights on) to your platform

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jasonb05
good suggestion :) we have import from csv, but you're right - import from
supermemo and eqiv would be a useful feature.

thanks

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hooande
I love the idea of building a team and then coming up with different products.
Your project mayhem is almost as cool as the one in fight club.

I think the idea behind Spicy Elephant might be a bit abstract for most
consumers, but the site came out well. The name doesn't help people to
understand what it is...but I like it any way =)

I wish you guys the best of luck with your future projects and I can't wait to
see what you come up with next.

~~~
13ren
I think the "elephant" part does, esp with the graphic. Though I don't get the
"spicy" part... for me, it actually brings to mind an elephant that has eaten
too much spicy indian food...

But sometimes, memorability is more important than meaningfulness... (eg. all
the weird IT names we've gotten used to, Red hat, Apache, Mozilla).

it would be really cool to have a cute/humorous story to explain the name (and
the business), so that someone mentioning the name would be asked to explain
it, and get to pass on an interesting story. eg. Ycombinator. Easy for me to
suggest - but coming up with such a story is harder. :-)

~~~
bootload
_"... it would be really cool to have a cute/humorous story to explain the
name (and the business), so that someone mentioning the name would be asked to
explain it, and get to pass on an interesting story. eg. Ycombinator. Easy for
me to suggest - but coming up with such a story is harder. :-) ..."_

A parent company that creates other companies as its namesake suggests ... _"a
higher-order function which computes a fixed point of other functions"_ ~
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_combinator>

------
DanielBMarkham
Congrats on the project! It does seem a little obscure but as I understand it,
it has a lot of academic interest.

The only thing that made me wince was when you put your source repository on
your server. Probably a bad idea, as you found out. You really want your
production server configured and streamlined to do one thing -- make money.
(Or provide value to users, to be more precise) Think of it as a big cash
register. Try to keep it as clean as possible.

------
immad
advertising is a clear and big monetization strategy. A lot of startups use it
effectively.

~~~
vaksel
Yes but it requires you to achieve a huge userbase before you start seeing any
significant profit, and honestly I don't see his startup being able to do
that, because I'm guessing his niche is very small

~~~
immad
My comment was regarding the statement:

"The one caveat was that each project must have to have a clear and realistic
path to monetization (for example: subscription, not advertisement)"

I don't think an advertising monetized startup is unclear or unrealistic and
it means that you discount a lot of ideas from the start.

~~~
paul
Yes, realistically neither subscription nor advertisement is likely to bring
in a lot of money. My guess is that they want to do things the "37 signals"
way, and that means acting as though advertising isn't "realistic".

~~~
jasonb05
yeah, the video of DHH's talk at startup school influenced the team a lot!

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JimEngland
Just a quick observation: Compare the comments on Hacker News to that on
Reddit.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6uo66/my_experi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6uo66/my_experiences_on_a_one_month_startup/)

You'd think everyone on Reddit created their own million dollar tech startup
based on those comments.

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bluelu
Load the next card in the background so I don't have to wait for the next card
to appear when I continue. (I know that the next cards depend on what you
achieved in the past, but you could still calculate the next card on the past
achievements without considering the last answer).

~~~
mmilo
Cheers Bluelu,

It's definitely something that's in the cards, pun indended :)

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donw
I've written a similar system specifically tailored to learning foreign
languages, so I'm definitely interested in taking a closer look at what you've
produced.

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avner
paying for hosted SVN is a pain... I found a godsend when in a similar
situation- www.assembla.com - free project management, svn, git, trac- just
name it.

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jrsims
Just curious - why beanstalk and not github?

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pmorici
Because they were using subversion, not git.

~~~
mmilo
Yup exactly, and since only one member of the group was familiar with rails
when we started we thought it would be best to stick with at least a version
control system that we all knew.

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pageman
tried to register right now but can't for some reason ...

~~~
jasonb05
sorry about that, out email broke. should be working fine now.

