

Ask HN: Rate My Startup - mooders

http://www.bzplnr.com<p>The first step toward creating what I am calling an ecosystem of startups - broadly related, semi-dependent startups that together will form a comprehensive whole covering a wide range of market segments.<p>Thanks in advance for the comments!
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drewcrawford
This is going to be detailed. My thoughts, in order, as I use your site. These
comments are mostly negative, but I hope you can take them constructively.
It's not a personal thing =) I'm trying to help you.

1\. Name. Srsly?

2\. Color scheme. Fix it.

3\. Why should I use this? It creates a "business plan", but is it any better
than the one I already made for my investors? As a user, I want to know that
you can either

A) add pretty pictures / make up for my lack of design skills

B) Suggest things I might have forgotten, or otherwise improve what I could
write in word / google docs

C) Add some sort of 'social' element to business planning (e.g. sending it to
a list of people I manage, commenting, something like that)

Otherwise, I have no reason to use your product. You need to figure out what
it is you are providing (i.e. value) and put it on the front page, where I can
see it.

3a) Also, I want to see what the final result looks like. Sample business
plans! Put the output formats in a bullet/feature list (PDF, hosted
automagically, DOC, whatever it is you support, because i have no idea).

If I were a random user not reviewing your site, I would have left at this
point.

5\. Why do you need an e-mail? I didn't receive any "Thanks for signing up!"
mail from you, so I'm assuming you're going to spam me with feature updates
later?

6\. What is a strapline, and why is it italicized?

7\. I'm assuming the "Author" is me? Don't you already have my name? Didn't I
type it in 10 seconds ago?

8\. What is drstunner and why is it autofilled in every box?

9\. Explanation text is a good idea. Some of it appears to be voiced
awkwardly. Random example: Why are those things "drivers"? Minor grammatical
issues. Yes, i am a grammar nazi.

10\. Asterisks. So I'm expecting some type of markup?

11\. This autofilled text is really annoying. At minimum it should clear when
I click in the box. Worse is the complete lack of grammar--my subconscious
concern is one of these could end up in my final plan.

12\. I just realized that the stuff in the "Notes" green box has a section for
each input field. You need to move that somewhere next to the input field I'm
working with. Otherwise it's scroll-->type, scroll->type

13\. The Financials section is way simplistic. Maybe I'm thinking about a
subscription or advertising model, or maybe I charge for something that is
sufficiently different than (or unrelated to) primary costs or users. Imagine
if eBay, or Google, or Mint were using your site. I looked for a way to turn
off this section (impossible) or use my own chart (also impossible).

14\. Trying to use the "Plan" section on the right for navigation... it's not
in any sort of order. I have no idea what section to go to 'next' in the flow.
Wait, why is this a flow again? And why is the 'overview' the last stop?

15\. Ah, so it generates PDFs. Twenty minutes later, I now know what your
product does.

16\. And those PDFs look like crap. Headings and normal text, aparrently. In
landscape format. And advertisement for you on every page. Investors will be
signing up in droves once they learn that I used "bzplnr".

17\. The asterisks... are asterisks.

18\. Clicking "generate..." again gives me "Matt Siegel's" business plan,
which is certainly not me, generating FUD about trusting you with my secret
plan.

You need to look hard at 3/3a, which is where most people will leave. What
value are you providing? Right now, the only value is the somewhat-helpful
text that I didn't realize was associated with input fields until halfway
through. This app is one big form and you need to do some usability work here.
Filling out forms isn't fun for anyone, but your task is to figure out a way
to make it fun.

The finished PDFs look like crap (I can't even do bullet points). The lowest
common denominator here is google docs-like markup. The real performance
metric is Word templates. Until you at least support textile/markup/google
docs styling, nobody's going to hand this PDF to an investor. And you're not
really going to see users until you surpass word templates.

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sspencer
Make sure to include Neal Stephenson's disclaimer from _Cryptonomicon_

"EXTREMELY SERIOUS WARNING Unless you are as smart as Johann Karl Friedrich
Gauss, savvy as a half-blind Calcutta bootblack, tough as General William
Tecumseh Sherman, rich as the Queen of England, emotionally resilient as a Red
Sox fan, and as generally able to take care of yourself as the average nuclear
missile submarine commander, you should never have been allowed near this
document. Please dispose of it as you would any piece of high-level
radioactive waste and then arrange with a qualified surgeon to amputate your
arms at the elbows and gouge your eyes from their sockets. This warning is
necessary because once, a hundred years ago, a little old lady in Kentucky put
a hundred dollars into a dry goods company which went belly-up and only
returned her ninety-nine dollars. Ever since then the government has been on
our asses. If you ignore this warning, read on at your peril — you are dead
certain to lose everything you've got and live out your final decades beating
back waves of termites in a Mississippi Delta leper colony. Still reading?
Great. Now that we've scared off the lightweights, let's get down to business.
"

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noodle
my immediate thoughts:

    
    
      - i dislike the name.  for something producing somewhat important documents, it has a trendy, difficult to remember/spell domain name.
      - i dislike the fact that i can't see any examples of what gets produced.  i *have* to sign up and go through everything just to see an example of the end product to see if the process was worthwhile.
      - i dislike the fact that i have to sign up before i can do anything.
    

i'll get back to you once i actually generate a plan. the idea is interesting,
though, and does have potential for the right crowd.

~~~
scott_s
Bizplanner might be a better name. That's what I said in my head once I
figured out what he was trying for.

~~~
bigbang
I said the same in my head.

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auston
I think your name does need work and the principle behind the app is really
good, I wouldnt want to waste my time writing a full BP.

But you should make that landing page more friendly, right now it's a like a
shy kid in the corner. Nice & interesting once you read into that person, but
not to enticing on the surface.

Add some bigger/bolder text to emphasize your value proposition. As well as
pictures/videos of actual use.

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tortilla
1) Name is horrible. Srsly. :)

2) You should show screenshots at a minimum. Also show the final
product/output. Maybe a sample Business Plan pdf to download.

3) Site looks like a blog not a web app.

4) Slogan is kinda wrong: Because Business Plans Are Hard. -> What are you
doing to solve this? Would be like Basecamp saying: Because Online Project
Management is Hard.

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matthewer
I really do want to see what I am getting involved with. A visual example that
walks me through the process.

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antiismist
... or you could write the plan out as plain text (i.e. the hard part of
coming up with the plan is coming up with the plan, not formatting it):

<http://www.paulgraham.com/vwplan.html>

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mooders
Thanks to everyone for the comments.

I have taken the site down for a few days whilst I implement some of the good
ideas here.

Be back soon with v2.0!

Cheers once again.

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vaksel
on top of what everyone said(horrible name, no screenshots, looks too much
like a blog), the theme is just plain horrible, puke green isn't exactly a
great color, and you made it so light, that it actually hurts your eyes to
look at it

