
Cofounder Wanted: www.timeoffhq.com - ryandotsmith
I have personally developed this web app over the last couple of years. I have a few serious users but it is only by luck that I have any at all. I have done 0 marketing. I am looking for someone with some mad biz-dev skills to partner with me in turing this project into a revenue generating business. I would even consider selling it outright if the situation was good. My email address is on the front page of www.timeoffhq.com
======
dhruval
Visiting <http://www.timeoffhq.com/accounts> \- shows a xml dump of all your
accounts and users!!

I can tell from your blog that you are a good coder, but need to be careful
with little things like the routes file as this can lead to big problems.

All the best!

------
cheez
Hey, good luck.

Just one small suggestion: that video... You scared the hell out of me.

~~~
ryandotsmith
LOL. Like i said, I have not idea what I am doing when it comes to marketing.
I made this video after 3 days of relentless hacking.

~~~
adolfojp
You've got a good voice so you can do the narration yourself. And you look
decent so you're not going to scare little children away. But you've got the
intensity of a hyperactive geek who overdosed on Froot Loops. Don't take this
the wrong way. As a proud geek myself I know that this can be intimidating.
The other problem with the video is that it looks home made. (Yes, I know that
it is home made) This is OK for technical tutorials but not for a sales
presentation. Potential customers might think that this is a sign of an
unsuccessful company. And they might associate this apparent lack of success
with a bad product. Yes, people are shallow. The video contrasts with the
professionalism of your website. Your website looks good and professional.
Tone your intensity down a bit and remove yourself (and your room) from the
video and you'll make your software look a lot more trustworthy.

Another recommendation is to not use your gmail account... sort of. It makes
you look like a kid in a basement instead of like the owner of a small
software company. But you can use gmail for your domain for free so you can
still get the greatness of Gmail with the legitimacy of your own domain.

Good luck.

------
gridspy
Cute, I like it.

You should consider some simple avenues to get sales before paying the huge
equity cost of getting someone else to do it for you.

\- Get all of your friend's employers to use it (even within subsets of their
business)

\- Write some blog articles about what you learn and post them on HN

\- Get some blog coverage about your product

\- Even pay for some ads or adwords

You might also find a cofounder as you drive up your traffic.

What (I think) you need to do now is to stop trying to improve the product and
concentrate on getting friends and family to use it.

------
apush
Hey Ryan, your product looks quite interesting and I think it is especially
good that you have done no marketing yet: It shows that users are
intrinsically motivated to use your product and are even willing to pay for
it. You should be proud of that! Before you make all your family and friends
use the product or pay for ads, you should start off having a conversation
with your existing customers. \- Try to get suggestions off them for new
features \- Understand what other problems they have (it was already pointed
out that HRMS or payroll systems for small businesses do a poor job with
automatisation of such simple tasks) --> Your existing customers are the
business experts you are looking for and they would be able to tell you
whether or not your ideas are what they value \- Understand how much
money/time they save by using your product and what they value about it (put
it on the front page instead of the features) In the next step you could think
about paid ads, but before using them, your frontpage needs a clearer focus on
people coming in from ads. This is the case as those people will likely be
less educated in terms of their needs and thus your page has to display and
tell them what exactly they are looking for! Some things to consider and then
measure: \- Your page talks in terms of features and not solutions. You might
want to consider to change that. \- it should mirror the feedback from your
customers and have a proactive tense e.g. consider your “sign up & pricing”
button → you might think about changing it to “Sign Up Now” \- look at the big
screenshot → you might want to think about using this prominent space for your
video as it tells much more and is much more convincing that the current
screenshot. Obviously, those are the little things in the beginning but they
might have a significant impact. Other thing to consider are pricing: It is
not clear whether or not the prices are total per month or per user per month
(as is usually the case with such products). As you can see there is a lot of
work in front of you, but you should be proud of yourself, as I have pointed
out! In terms of a business cofounder: It is great that you have realized that
you need those skills in your team. I have worked in biz dev with quite
successful start-ups and can tell you from my experience that HN is probably
not the best place to find those people as it has a very technical focus (what
I like about it). Best of luck, Alex

------
nhannah
A system like this is nice, but IMHO it needs to be aimed at larger
corporations and/or those that deal with limited skill job sets(many
employees). Being an engineer my team has always been small enough that
getting time off just takes mentioning it to my boss 20ft away and making sure
I email him the dates after. If you can tell me how this will save a company
money I would completely agree you can sell the service. This may sound odd
but once again IMHO your pricing is too aggressive, seeing the product and
putting my take of going after larger corporations on it I would say you would
want to have a sales force pushing a specialized version of this to each
customer. Essentially you would go to a Hospital for instance, pitch them on
how much they could save in time and $ using this, add some zeros to the end
of your current rate and do the full install making sure it works with their
current system for scheduling, a support contract is in there somewhere as
well.(huge run on sentence but that's how my mind works) My biggest question
is who is your competition? I could go on, but I would like to hear your take
on competition and who you believe your customers are.

~~~
nhannah
Sorry just spotted small businesses on your page, so my question then is why
small businesses only? Back to your competition with that question I guess.

------
scottkrager
Link: <http://www.timeoffhq.com/>

------
imjonathanlee
I don't think its a bad idea- but like others mentioned, the video is a
turnoff for me. I like your enthusiasm, but I suggest a remake of the video.
The video to me seems like it's an unprofessional product made by someone on a
whim. It's great if it were a testimonial, but when used to describe your
product- It could be less personal.

Keep up the good work and let me know how it turns out.

Cheers

------
kmort
Does it integrate with any HRMS or payroll systems? It may be a nice bolt-on
to such systems which have rather dated interfaces, and would allow you to
target past the small business focus you have at the moment.

~~~
ryandotsmith
It does not. Perhaps this is a great first step towards increasing signups....
But I am looking for someone who knows weather or not this would be a good
idea.

------
johnsocs
Looks like a great product, I do have to agree the video did freak me out a
bit.

I've worked for mid to small businesses in the past and this could integrate
great with them, yet the missing part if you want daily users of your system
you need to have time tracking functionality, and this plays in perfect with
'timeoff' as an employees time off accumulates based on hours worked at some
defined rate.

------
kbrock
Looking Good It seems most HRMS/Payroll systems do a poor job of this.

Integration with Google Apps is nice / key. (
[https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pr...](https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=7205+11045242183304151957)
)

------
TamDenholm
Just curious, what's it coded in?

Edit, actually nvm, I'm guessing rails since your blog is on heroku.

------
ramiyer21a
Cool idea. Very well narrated and concise. The 1 min next to video convinced
me to spend one min on it.

------
Vivtek
Spelling error in the video - "Email notificaiton" (I always make similar
typos).

What a good idea!

------
mikelbring
I made something just like this for work (internal). Looks pretty good!

------
andrewtbham
where do you live? Kansas City, MO?

~~~
ryandotsmith
I used to. Now I am living in San Francisco.

------
venturebros
yeah that video is creepy

