
Ask HN: Feedback on Startup Idea – digital business card - aszoke
Hi HN,<p>I&#x27;m thinking about an idea for mobile application and I wanted your advice. Here is my hypothesis:<p>We are living in a high-speed economy. The paper business cards provide static engagement. So modern business men &#x2F; women want a more dynamic branding and marketing tool to enable vibrant mutually beneficial partnerships that take full advantage of internal and external synergies by sharing up-to-date information with each other, referring each other based on a face-to-face meeting initialized visually creative digital business cards.<p>Does it make sense? What is your opinion? Would you buy a product like this?
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BjoernKW
Been there, done that:
[https://github.com/BjoernKW/Freshcard](https://github.com/BjoernKW/Freshcard)

Digital business cards are one of those ideas that just seem natural,
especially to digital natives, and hence come up again and again and yet none
of these countless implementations - including my humble attempt - has
succeeded so far.

The reasons for this are numerous, e.g.: \- chicken and egg problem: How do
you convince people to use your business card replacement when nobody else is
using it? \- lack of perceived benefit / pain point for casual business card
users: While they're a source of needless clutter to anyone accustomed to
using technology for keeping data most people simply couldn't care less. \-
lack of reliability: Paper at least works everywhere and under most
conditions. How does your solution fare when there's no reliable network
(which is surprisingly common even in industrialized countries, e.g. at most
larger conferences ...)?

If you'd like any further information on this subject just drop me a note.

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creamyhorror
1\. Your pitch is too full of marketing fluff. Get to the point, use simple
words to explain what your product would do, and don't oversell the idea.

2\. If you think about and iterate your idea a bit more, you get LinkedIn.
You'll need to take a different direction that offers some other
value/convenience that LinkedIn doesn't. Your differentiator might be allowing
users to personalized the design of their "virtual card", but that might not
offer enough added value over LinkedIn.

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J-dawg
> enable vibrant mutually beneficial partnerships

> take full advantage of internal and external synergies

Sounds like marketing speak. What would the product actually do?

Also, based on what I've witnessed in meetings recently, the current norm
seems to be to exchange traditional cards, then add each other on LinkedIn,
either immediately or later that day. Some people have started to skip the
traditional cards step. I think your product would need to offer a clear
benefit that LinkedIn does not have.

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rmason
People have been building software products to try and replace the business
card for close to twenty years. I don't wish to discourage you but spend some
time researching the companies that tried first.

If you can offer something truly novel or can articulate how a certain idea
didn't work before but would work now you may see success.

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brudgers
Asking "Would you buy a product like this?" is empty. There is no "this" and
therefore there is no way of knowing if what you mean by "this" is consistent
with what I think you mean by "this".

My advice: build a mockup or prototype. Make a "this".

Good luck.

