
Apply HN: Polymyr – Bring Your Product to Life - polymyr
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.polymyr.com<p>Consumer reviews are preferred by a 3-to-1 margin over press reviews. Polymyr capitalizes on that and is a social product testing&#x2F;launch platform that offers hardware startups valuable user experience insights by incentivizing our members, through rebates which you decide upon, to test and review your product. We aim to significantly improve the current launch process by giving new products superuser-level reviews right from the start.<p>For example, Product X is currently retailing for $199, our members will buy it for its full price, they&#x27;ll see how much of a rebate they&#x27;ll receive after they submit their product review, we collect and analyze all their reviews on our platform, send Company X all the reviews, and provide recommendations based on those reviews. For each unit sold, we only ask for a small commission.<p>In summary, we help you promote and sell your product, reach new audiences, collect valuable consumer insights, and give you recommendations.
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davemel37
> Consumer reviews are preferred by a 3-to-1 margin over press reviews.

I strongly disagree with this premise. I would suspect real branding, PR, and
marketing data would show that press reviews influence branding and sales 10-1
over consumer reviews.

(although consumer reviews can mean lots of things. It can mean a friend
recommends, or a consumer does a deep video review online, or it could mean an
anonymous person gives random feedback.)

I guess, I have two questions: 1\. Can you substantiate that original premise
with more than a poll or survey, but actual market research? 2\. Do you think
incentivized reviews will instantly remove any credibility those reviews may
have carried in the first place?

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mikedeng
Thank you for bringing up great points! We've definitely thought a lot about
your first question because you're right, if companies don't care very much
about consumer reviews then our product isn't going to be useful. As it turns
out, all the startups we've talked to so far have told us that they would love
to get more and better consumer feedback. In the end, makers are building
products for consumers, so it makes sense that makers want reviews from people
they are selling to. It's true that press reviews are valuable, but how a
consumer sees a product may be different from how a professional product
critic sees the product. There are also a couple articles online that help
substantiate our point. But you're right, having a rock-solid market research
report to prove our point would be a great asset!

For your second question, we don't think the incentive will hurt the
credibility of the review - the incentive exists only to encourage consumers
to provide an honest review that will help the makers improve their products.

Thanks again for commenting :)

Edit: Ninja'd by my partner above!

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davemel37
> For each unit sold, we only ask for a small commission.

Have you gotten any companies to agree to a royalty like this or is this just
the initial monetization idea. I can see them paying 5 figures for a final
report, but not a royalty on their bottom line sales.

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mikedeng
Thank you for commenting! This is the initial idea at the moment. It makes
sense to us because a commission on each unit means that companies pay more if
they get more reviews. So far, none of the companies have brought up any
problems with this scheme, but we will definitely be trying to solidify our
monetization strategy as we partner with more companies.

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davemel37
I misunderstood this. I thought you meant on each unit sold in the
future...not just to your reviewers.

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chaostheory
What makes you better than Amazon Vine?

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polymyr
Great question!

Amazon Vine is an invite-only program that rewards Amazon reviewers through
giving them access to review free pre-release and new products. From my
understanding, it works similarly to the Yelp Elite program.

Polymyr tackles reviews in a completely different angle. We're not just a
rewards program, we're a launch platform with a mission to accelerate product
development. It's important to note that the reviews submitted on our platform
are private by default. They're intended for your company to actually gain
valuable insights to improve your product. As we grow, we hope to provide more
data-driven user experience analytics for companies to use. In addition, we're
planning to release a feature that will allow these reviews to be public, but
for now, how companies use their reviews is completely up to them.

Let's start off with the consumer's perspective. By using Polymyr, you're able
to see and participate in any current product launch. You have the freedom to
explore different products from categories that you're personally interested
in. Our review process is designed to make reviewing products fun and
engaging. Furthermore, we're planning on launching our own social ranking
program (similar to Amazon Vine and Yelp Elite) to incentivize our users to
submit higher quality reviews. We care about quality over quantity, and we
want the features we implement to embody such ideals.

From an enterprise perspective, Polymyr provides a much better service across
the board. First and foremost, launching a product on Polymyr is completely
free. In contrast, to use Amazon Vine, companies have to pay a substantial
fee. Moreover, Polymyr's review process is more than just a five-star ranking
and text box. We're building a process that makes it easy for companies to
prioritize what aspects of their product they need to work on first. By
launching your product on Polymyr, you're able to price test through our
rebate model and use your launch page as a way to connect with our super-
reviewers during and after your product launch.

This is just the beginning for Polymyr. As a two-sided marketplace, we're
currently focused on giving the best possible experience to the companies that
use our platform and service. We can't wait to add all the social features we
have planned for our users down the road. That's where things get really
exciting and what will eventually make us truly special and unique to both our
makers and users.

I hope I answered your question!

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morirb
Cool!

I'm curious about the "launch platform" part. (I did a "Apply HN" on that).
What is your vision on that?

What do you mean with "superuser-level reviews"?

This is exciting:)

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polymyr
We're just as excited as you are! :D

1) Our vision currently is to help any product at any stage succeed pre and
post launch. We want our platform to be an incredible and on-demand resource
for companies to gain insights that they only could have dreamed of.

2) Superusers are your product evangelists. They're the people that want to
deep dive into your product and want to have domain knowledge over it. Big
companies such as Apple or Google specifically look out for these users and
reward them handsomely, as they are incredibly rare.

To put it simply, superuser-level reviews are the highest quality of reviews,
where you get the most feedback because the user cares that much about the
success of your product and is willing to go that extra-mile for your company.

At Polymyr, we hope to cultivate and attract a community of superusers that
simply live and breathe your product.

