

Ask HN: Would you use a website to help other startups with sales? - gintas

I am thinking about putting up a website for startups that would help sales by getting referrals from other startups.<p>The basis for the idea is threefold:<p>1. There is a lot of goodwill in the startup world (recent Offer HN posts are evidence). Many startup people I know would go out of their way to help their peers as long as they are not direct competitors.<p>2. Startup founders have a lot of human capital: they know and on a daily basis talk to many people who are potential clients not just for their own companies, but for their peers as well.<p>3. The most complicated part of business for most startups is sales (customer acquisition).<p>The idea is to put up a website where one could register a startup, provide basic information: name, product description (15-second pitch), target group. Startups with matching target groups would be informed about each other (I am thinking regular emails), and with some luck and good will would refer potential customers to each other.<p>Yeah, the idea is hopelessly naive, but maybe it could just work out?
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apedley
Funny you should mention that. First private beta of my site that does fairly
much what you described going live tomorrow.

It is for all businesses though, not just startups.

I have been working on this one for about 4 months (from idea to build)

It would be great to have some more people to try it out in a week or 2 if you
are interested?

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gintas
Sure, throw a link my way (see <http://blog.miliauskas.lt> for contact info).

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fooandbarify
Cool. Sort of like a more detailed link swap... startups could offer discount
packages with each other, offer each other as up-sells, etc. For certain
markets I think it would work really, really well.

When I'm ready to ship my next project, I would definitely use a site like
this if it existed.

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gintas
Hmm, what would those markets be in your opinion? Perhaps it's worth targeting
a niche narrower than startups.

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fooandbarify
I think it would be hard to narrow it down further - the problem has more to
do with the fact that hackers don't want to bother with marketing and/or
negotiating deals, myself included. I mean, the markets that would work are
anything large enough to have several startups operating within it without
being in competition with each other, but like I said - the problem is a bit
more complicated than that. (I'm working on a book that is somewhat related to
all of this, but I keep getting distracted with making things.)

If you really wanted it to work: In my opinion the best way for something like
this to gain traction would be to start small and make it exclusive. Make
yourself the gatekeeper to a startup marketing nirvana rather than driving a
race to the bottom. Play matchmaker with hot startups (taking a commission of
course) - perhaps one of the niche app hosts want to pair up with a popular
new domain name generator, or maybe you can find the next set of games to sell
as a bundle. It sounds like a lot of work (and I'm sure that it would be) but
the fact is that startups already have too many ways to find each other - a
much more valuable proposition is someone willing to do the legwork. If you
are able to generate enough interest in what you're doing, automating it and
making it public might become an option in the future.

tl;dr I don't think hackers understand the value of what you're suggesting,
even though I think it's valuable. Create demand and prove your method first.

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SupremumLimit
Sounds like an online version of BNI (<http://www.bni.com/>). Would it work on
a completely altruistic basis though? With BNI you at least get some real
world networking at the meetings.

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apedley
Orignally I thought of this, having it as an online referral based system, but
it wasn't going to work. Referrals of clients is too time consuming and
requires large amounts of trust before sending clients over to someone.

I went down the path of thinking of each relationship as a joint venture.

