

Rate our startup: 42goals.com - alexpak
http://42goals.com

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hopeless
It looks quite nice and I've been looking for something similar - though
ideally as a native iPhone app.

One thing I'm forever pernickety about: donations != business

It's a nice looking webapp but it takes more than that to make it a business

EDIT: oh, wait, the frontpage only mentions donations but I go to sign up and
there's a $5/mo plan. Why isn't that front & center on the front page? It
makes it feel like a bait & switch

EDIT #2: Aggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh... It gets worse! Once I've activated my
(supposedly) free account I immediately get presented with options to pay for
1, 6 or 12months. Even more bait & switch! Why don't you just man-up, put the
price on the front page and give a 30 day trial. Right now I'm not even going
to try the app itself - the upsell attempts are worse than GoDaddy!

~~~
alexpak
I agree, perhaps it's misleading and we should fix it. When we have launched,
it was a non-profit project, so we have added donations. Recently, we have
added some additional features with a premium account.

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JangoSteve
From your pricing page, what are "Basic Goal Types" and "Advanced Goal Types"?
Is that like, "do my laundry" vs. "solve P == NP"? As a visitor, these labels
mean nothing to me.

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alexpak
Thanks for the good point, I will have to populate it more.

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scrrr
Ok so my honest opinion is that this, although it can be nice for certain
things, will not turn out to be a success. My reasons:

1\. The people that like to track everything probably can also use custom
spreadsheets, e.g. in Google Docs.

2\. Keeping track of your cigarette or food consumption will probably not help
you quit smoking or loose weight.

3\. There are already competing sites that look more polished and seem to have
more features.

4\. (For me) the best way to remind myself of something is putting a sticky
note on my monitor. :)

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alexpak
Thank you for your honest opinion! Could you give some examples of those web-
sites?

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scrrr
Sure, quick Google-search ("goal tracking") for example gives me:

* <http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Best-Goal-Tracking-Tools-Online>

* <http://lifehacker.com/5439026/five-best-goal+tracking-tools>

If you want to compete I guess you have to look at the competition and either
do something different or do something better.

~~~
alexpak
Thanks for the links. Evernote is a really nice service for keeping notes, but
not really for goals tracking. Joesgoals is also nice, but not maintained
currently. Excel... well, one can probably do pretty much anything there. And
of course, I'm not trying to compete with paper, pen and friends.

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rakkhi
nice site, good idea. I use todo applications like Done on my iPhone to
document and keep track of long term goals and Omnifocus to tick off tasks
against projects but this could be slightly different and work well with these
tools.

Thumbs up: [+] nice design, clean [+] signup is simple and easy [+] intuative
and easy to use - like the keep clicking to change on boolean

Thumbs down: [+] echo the upsell [+] would be nice to have the option of going
to the details menu once you add a goal, rather than adding the generic ones
and then editing it [+] the roatating screens are nice but they could be
larger and the transitions a bit more smooth (bit chucky at the moment at
least on my browser)

Future features: [+] definately be handy as a mobile app [+] linking to a todo
app or providing that functionality would be great: Don't forget the milk,
Omnifocus and Things for the iPhone are my favouries [+] export reports and
get them emailed to you [+] email and/or sms in values for the day [+] goal
reminders and how much you have left [+] add rewards for yourself for
achieving your goals [+] timeframe to goals - i.e. life, 3 year, 2 year, this
month etc

Commercials: I wouldn't pay $5 per month for it at the moment. If it was $3-5
one off as an iPhone app and had the todo features or linked to my existing
todo app I would buy it.

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nysauhem
I think the functionality is great, I especially like the data aggregation
options that you provide.

That said, I think the design needs polish. This is nitpicky, but looking at
the demo, there's no visual distinction between the time and the stopwatch
types. Also, I'd suggest a more web-optimized font, Times New Roman looks, for
lack of a better term, bleh

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lee
Nice, I've been looking for a goal tracking solution that can spit out graphs
for me!

One thing that does bother me about your site... is the "caroussel" image
effect for the screenshots. It seems more gimmicky than useful, and is not
appealing. At first it looks like a bunch of small screenshots floating about
willy-nilly. It just looks out of place.

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transburgh
Your call to action needs to stand out more by using a color that will pop. It
currently blends into the rest of the page. Instead of "Register Now" it
should say something like "Start Tracking Your Goals".

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bnjamin
The image rotator on the frontpage looks really cool, however on my
screen(1280x800) it doesn't add any clarity on what the app does. The images
are way too small.

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piers
This seems to be a very popular thing at the moment. I know of another
developer who is currently running something very similar in private beta.

~~~
alexpak
Any chance to take a look at it?

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hkuo
Accessing it from my iPhone and I don't see a link to register. Is that just
for the mobile version of the site?

~~~
alexpak
Yes, for now you need to go to the desktop version to register and add goals.
Once you've done it, you may continue use it on your iPhone.

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pshirishreddy
Hi, the site is themed pretty well and is attractive but the aim is to manage
one's daily goals and events, right ? Wouldn't it be better if the user is
reminded of the same on his desktop rather than visiting a web browser every
time he needs to check for his lists.

A email notification of the tasks needed to be accomplished would be better.
Developing a desktop app for your web app to communicate with the server and
notify using the local notification daemon such as libnotify or any thing else
would have been good too :) Any ways that was my honest opinion.

All the best

~~~
alexpak
Thanks for the advice! We already have an open API, so that any developer can
implement it, while we also plan to develop a desktop app ourselves.

~~~
pshirishreddy
greatwork alexpak. Best of luck.

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weego
Was 38, 39, 40 and 41 all taken for something else?

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gyardley
I imagine '42' was picked both for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
reference and to be somewhat similar to the goal-tracking site 43things.com.

Not sure I get naming the company something so similar to 43things - I
initially assumed it was a total knockoff, but the feature sets are actually
pretty different.

