

Ask HN: how to get back after epic fail. - MK5

Hi HN folks,<p>first, here's the background: in 2007, with friends, we watched a lot of Korean Starcraft games on Youtube. And we became fan of this guy: http://www.youtube.com/user/KlazartSC. He basically commentates the match in English because we can't understand Korean.
But he eventually retired because it takes too much time to download the source video from Youtube, cast, record, synchronize manually, encode and put it back on Youtube.
So, we came with an idea: create a nice service that does all these tasks easily and full web.
We did it! I've actually, talked about it in NH and TechCrunch France also covered us.<p>BUT, it's a fail. lol.
The feedbacks we received we're all pretty good BUT no one really uses it.<p>Marketing fail. We had the wrong target. We wanted to target the video game players but they were looking for Ustream, Livestream or JustinTV live video synchronization which we can't do because their API don't have stuffs like Timestamp.
What we could do is synchronize with Youtube video but people prefer to use offline tools to do their "VOD cast" because they are not afraid of doing hard-job and spending hours and hours to do something "perfect". 
eLive is meant to help people to cast easily and quickly, not meant to be a Adobe Premier online :/<p>So we are now thinking about re-positioning our service. Actually, eLive could be used for many applications such as singing Karaoke or giving a lecture or just doing an interactive video/audio podcast, alone or with friends.<p>Do you have any idea, guys?
Have you ever failed in doing something but eventually succeed in re-doing it in another way?
Thanks about that ;)
======
gregschlom
>Have you ever failed in doing something but eventually succeed in re-doing it
in another way?

Sure, that's called "pivoting".

Also, from the fact that you got coverage on TechCrunch France, I'd guess
you're French. Being a fellow Frenchman myself, I know that failure isn't
usually as well tolerated in France as it is in the US.

You talk about "Epic Failure". Chill out. You seem to have identified the
reasons why your project didn't suceed. That's great. Now it's time to move on
and try to pivot. There's nothing wrong in failling, really :)

(Also, it reminds me of a quote I once heard in a start-up conference: "Try
and fail, but don't fail to try.")

Good luck

------
bvi
Don't get hooked on the term "fail." Continuously evolve your product (Seesmic
comes to mind, among countless others) - and never give up.

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devmonk
Why not convert it into a community-powered video translation site (and
possibly add subtitling capabilities- allow users to enter text to display at
bottom)? Also, why not market the kids and teenagers that want to do
MST3000-like overdubbing? (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000> )

You might have trouble getting people to pay for it, but maybe you could
convert to a non-profit if the goal was to provide tools to help the blind,
the deaf, or to translate important works.

A big problem I see with the site now is that there is nothing on the front
page that says what it does. You can't expect it to be content driven before
people understand what it is or why they should be adding content. Also, how
and where were you marketing it? Web apps aren't like the game from the the
movie "Field of Dreams". If you build it, people only come if they know that
their work will not be wasted. You should have the app say that it will
reupload the edited video to Youtube, Vimeo, etc., and that its purpose is
just simple Saas video editing for translation (and perhaps subtitling).

~~~
MK5
Oh, thanks about this one. And yeah, definitely, I should put somewhere
telling what it does.

~~~
ks
As a user, it seems that the main purpose of this site is to consume videos
posted by someone. The "Cast now" button tells me nothing. I hope I don't
appear too negative, but I think you have missed a lot of potential users.
It's little that tells me that this is something other than "break.com" for
games.

~~~
MK5
oh? really? Thanks about this one, I never thought about it but you raised a
good point. Thanks!

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Tichy
It sounds like a cool product. So I suppose you could also do just subtitles?

Maybe the need for voice translations does not emerge that often, because in
most cases, if you are interested in a certain field, you either know the
language already, or it is really niche. For example IT conference talks -
most people would already speak English, even if they are not native speakers.

However, not being a native speaker of English myself, at times I would wish
for subtitles because some speakers are hard to understand.

Karaoke is also REALLY big, I should think.

~~~
MK5
We are actually repositioning eLive as eDole: the first social Karaoke
webservice. Imagine: you just have the largest music catalog for cover songs
EVER : Youtube :D And the subtitles thing is definitely a good point. Thanks
so much folks !

~~~
hkuo
Perhaps you could take it one step further from karaoke and put an American
Idol spin on it. Competitions, prizes, Internet fame. If you could somehow
pull in a celebrity partner or sponsor, this could become an even greater
possibility.

~~~
MK5
LOL, this is what we talked just an hour ago with my CTO! I'm happy one of you
guys raised this up, makes me more confident :) eDole or eDol is a good name
:p

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kilian
Well, you could start with adding some more info about what the site actually
does on the homepage. Looking at it, I'm at a loss what to do. You're probably
losing a lot of potential users because of that. Just give them a couple of
sentences on what they can do and what you can help them achieve.

Like others noted, subtitles sound like a major opportunity.

------
lukehasnoname
Step one: Ask HN, not NH!

~~~
MK5
mea culpa. :(

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anonyacc
Suggest you add link to site.

------
bjonathan
link to their website: <http://elive.pro>

