
Show HN / Review my startup / MindQuilt : Private Q&A app for knowledge sharing - mqmouse
Hi HN,<p>We’re a four person company started in February. We’ve been in private beta and are now moving to public beta. The basic idea is a whitelabel Q&#38;A application used in companies or groups to share private or proprietary knowledge. Our key feature is the ability to auto tag questions as they are typed and then route them to the best possible source for an answer (either previous questions, documents uploaded, or experts in your organization).  As MindQuilt is used more and more, MindQuilt learns how to route a question better and better.<p>We’ve incorporated some gaming dynamics to try to increase engagement but we’re unsure if it’s just a distraction or if it offers a real intrinsic motivation to keep interacting with the app.<p>Could you please review our startup and our pitch? The sign up form is here: http://www.mindquilt.com/beta<p>MindQuilt is a private Q&#38;A platform that leverages matchmaking and gaming dynamics to get your questions answered and documented FAST!<p>Have you ever spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find an answer a colleague could have provided in 15secs?<p>MindQuilt connects the questions in your organisation with its experts and documents the results delivering Just in time documentation!<p>Like Quora or StackOverflow for the Enterprise, MindQuilt provides consumer ease of use while respecting the confidentiality and security required for corporate use. Where else can you post a question about internal products or policies?<p>MindQuilt reduces the cost of new employee onboarding by allowing your organization to build a knowledgebase of commonly asked questions, allowing your employees to leverage previous questions or to be connected to an internal expert immediately.<p>Our cost is $4usd/per user/month but if you say you come from Hacker News in the “why you’re interested” question in the signup, we’ll change your account to the free-forever version. We’d really like your feedback on how to make MindQuilt useful not only to large organizations but smaller organizations as well.<p>You can signup here: http://www.mindquilt.com/beta<p>Thank you very much for your time,<p>Daniel<p>p.s feedback we’re really interesting in getting:<p>a) we’ve seen MindQuilt work really well in large cross location beta sites, how could we make it more useful to small sub 50 employee companies (or groups / organizations)?<p>b) MindQuilt reduces question volume by suggesting similar questions and internal documents while a question is being asked. In the same vein, one of the features we’re thinking of adding is the ability to share links and feeds and indexing them. Would that feature be useful? Or are other shared bookmarking applications sufficient without the need for deep integration?<p>c) MindQuilt needs a bootstrap period for it to learn people’s expertise. A feature we’ve considered adding is allowing MindQuilt to crunch through it’s users email to make a connection map between people and the topics they correspond on. Also, that would allow MindQuilt to suggest not only previous questions and documents (and maybe public links) but your own private emails that are topical as well. Would you be willing to enter in your email credentials into a hosted application? If not, what kind of security mechanism could we put in place to make that comfortable for you? Is it even a cool feature?<p>d) We love sites like Quora and Stackoverflow (and HackerNews!), which is one of the reasons why we decided to build MindQuilt (we were looking for a good whitelabel solution for one of our consulting clients). Part of the reason why they are so awesome is because the fantastic community they have built up. One of the difficult things about providing a b2b q&#38;a solution is that instead of building an awesome community once, you have to build one many times, over and over again for each company. Do you have any insight into this problem? What tools can we deliver to internal company champions to help them build a great community?<p>e) Any other feedback you have. We’ve been wanting to post a Ask HN for awhile now but we’ve been self conscious about our product maturity (design, functionality, etc). We’ve finally had our come-to-${religious-icon} moment and we’re showing a wider audience our baby. Any feedback would be appreciated (even if it’s negative (even though it’ll make us cry)).
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RiderOfGiraffes
Oh, I have so much to say, and I really don't have time. I'll take two minutes
..

    
    
      MindQuilt is a private Q&A platform that leverages
      matchmaking and gaming dynamics to get your questions
      answered and documented FAST!
    

Don't care about "leveraging" or "matchmaking" or "gaming dynamics" (whatever
they are) - I'd lose this sentence completely

    
    
      Have you ever spent an inordinate amount of time trying
      to find an answer a colleague could have provided in 15secs?
    

Can you ask that question in half as many words?

    
    
      MindQuilt connects the questions in your organisation with
      its experts and documents the results delivering Just in time
      documentation!
    

"Just In Time" is not a good buzzword to use. What you're claiming is that it
automatically sends questions to the right person, and documents the answers
for future reference.

What I'd also like (I haven't read further) is that if the same question gets
asked in the future the system spits back the answer without having to trouble
the same people over and over again. We have a system that does that - how
does your system do it?

    
    
      Like Quora or StackOverflow for the Enterprise, ...
    

What are they?

    
    
      ... MindQuilt provides consumer ease of use while respecting
      the confidentiality and security required for corporate use.
      Where else can you post a question about internal products or
      policies?
    

What?

    
    
      MindQuilt reduces the cost of new employee onboarding by
      allowing your organization to build a knowledgebase of
      commonly asked questions, allowing your employees to leverage
      previous questions or to be connected to an internal expert
      immediately.
    

Oh, so many buzzwords.

OK, I'm a technical person and this is _way_ too high on the Ginger factor.
Make it more real, make it more direct, make it 1/3 the length, and make my
pain your focus.

That's your two minutes. I'll look at your beta when I have time.

PS: All my own opinions - and I'm weird.

PPS: An email address in your HN profile would be nice.

~~~
mqmouse
Wow. Thanks for reply! I'll work on a new draft now and replace the body later
after getting more feedback. Thanks for your two minutes!

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Filter my comments through your knowledge and beliefs. Don't trust anything I
say - strive to understand, then adapt.

As I say - I'm weird. What works for me won't necessarily work for others, and
others here will have different opinions. Probably better.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Clickable: <http://www.mindquilt.com/beta>

