
YC: Please, criticize my startup! - white
Here is the deal - we're building an instant answer portal.  We're targeting to clients who need to get an instant multiple answers to their problem or a question (say, within 60 minutes time frame).  This will cost money (client's budget), that will be split over the subscribers, who will answer the questions.  One of the key points, that makes it interesting for market research groups, is that we'll be able to generate more then one answer for one question.  So here comes the major question - while it's pretty transparent and kind of motivating for subscribers, how do you think this is interesting for clients?  What target group of clients do you think we may be interesting for?  What kind of a questions do we sound like a great niche?  I have my own answers, but they're definitely not enough (one of the reasons why we're developing this portal :).  Just give me any feedback, either positive or negative.  Please, drop me a line if you see this either as a perspective startup or a looser.  THANKS!
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lurker
Here's two random data points for you: 1\. I, coincidentally this morning,
just asked my first question on LinkedIn. I had my first answer in 25 minutes.
Done.

2\. S&P runs a service called Vista Research. They've built a stable of
experts in various vertical markets, and they've cultivated an advisory client
list. So the clients come in with crazy questions about things impacting their
business or investment decisions and S&P hooks them up with the Expert to
answer. The Experts bill the client, and S&P also bills the client as a
subscriber with access to all the experts. (I'm an 'expert' and get a question
once a month or so. It's never turned into business for our company yet
though.) Theirs is a super-premium service for people making $million
decisions. It's also heavily manual. Recruiting experts, selling clients,
matching clients to experts, etc. Maybe there's some web2.0 optimization of
that niche to be had.

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ekanes
Hey white,

This kind of idea is hard to evaluate up-front. Sometimes you just have to
build it and see but I think you could be onto something.

If you do it, try to integrate visual ways of showing that the app is working,
and spend effort on getting that key first answer incredibly fast. Another
question to ask yourself is if you want someone to wait and watch the answers
come in, or if they'll come back in an hour to see what came in. That decision
is crucial to how you build the app.

This article might be of interest: [http://www.seo24.org.uk/how-yahoo-or-
facebook-could-really-k...](http://www.seo24.org.uk/how-yahoo-or-facebook-
could-really-kill-google.htm) Most isn't relevant, but skip down to the text
"Think of it this way - today's search engines answer three basic questions:"

It's talking about _exactly_ the problem you're solving, and the value you're
providing. Hope that helps and all the best with the idea!

We built something similar, but our focus has been on gathering votes quickly
rather than answers. Personally I think something magical that happens when an
app crosses over into being truly (and visually) real-time.

\- aaron

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kirubakaran
Does your startup do anything that Amazon Mechanical Turk doesn't do? (may be
yours does it better?)

~~~
white
That's the one which is really close. However, our main point to to provide
multiple answers, but not a simple solutions. Besides, the Amazon's idea is
not about instant answers, so there are not many chances to get your answer(s)
within an hour after asking. And yes, I bet we can do it better. Just because
we're more simple and easy and intuitive. More, speaking about Amazon's Turk,
the price paid isn't relative to real world cost of living. Most of the HITs
over there are less then $1 per hour gigs. We see our business in questions,
which can be answered in 5 minutes or less, without need to perform long term
investigation, review, discussion or anything time consuming.

~~~
kirubakaran
Wishing you all the best.

Just curious... which {language,framework,hosting}?

~~~
white
We've got a dedicated server at ServerBeach, everything else is a typical
LAMP. We've got enough skills with Java and Ruby, but PHP could be the best
choice to bootstrap quickly.

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trekker7
Maybe tech support? I don't know about the multiple answers bit, but perhaps
there's a market for crowdsourced tech support, that works much faster than
regular channels.

~~~
white
Personally, I don't think this will work well. Although, it's a good idea for
some niched startup, but for something more global, we'll never get much luck
with crowdsourced support, comparing to hundred thousands of subscribers.

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fleddermaus
To me, off the top of my head, I'd say you need to first focus on the
community that you'll be targeting. People want something better that makes
their life easier. I think the bigger challenge you'll have is the credibility
of responses. I'd almost suggest a way for people looking for an answer to
evaluate the answers they've found. I'd take a look at www.qaboom.com. A
similar idea, but it is targeted to students. The question I would ask myself,
is, who are the early adopters. If you have some early adopters, what is going
to make it worth while for them? What if the person tags their question with a
category and another person subscribes to the RSS of that category...being
able to see what others are asking and then seeing the real time responses is
going to be powerful. Just some thoughts. I'd love to be a beta tester for
you. Let me know. Honestly, you might want to look at a model like about.com.
Find some experts who already belong to a community and give them a % of
revenues. just some thoughts, I think it is a great idea! Good luck with it!

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lurker
You mention 'market research groups' and maybe that's your differentiation
niche. Some statistically sound methodology that Google and LinkedIn and Yahoo
don't provide. Then you can build your audience by dealing with a professional
groups of question askers. Consumer products, advertising, anything with a
mass audience likes to base on market research.

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louisadekoya
I am not a big fan of advertising-only business models but I think this is one
idea that would be better off relying on ads than on paying users. To be
frank, I just don't think that users will pay for answers. They will exhaust
other avenues first and even then most won't be able to bring themselves to
pay.

As I explained in a recent blog post ([http://www.ideatagging.com/a-facebook-
and-yahoo-partnership-...](http://www.ideatagging.com/a-facebook-and-yahoo-
partnership-that-could-trouble-google/)), after search, questions are the next
best thing for detecting users' intent and therefore are a good basis for
tageted ads. So my advice, much as it pains me to say it, is to ditch the
paying users idea and instead focus on ad revenues.

By the way, I have some interesting angles on the whole questions and answers
thing. Contact me via my blog (link above) and I would be happy to share. Good
luck.

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dfranke
What do you plan to do differently from the likes of Google Answers that would
allow you to deliver on the 60-minute timeframe more often than they did?

~~~
white
Mostly it's about delivering updates to people, who want to participate. Email
notifications, IM, cell... Also it'd bring a spirit of a challenge, and so
you'll have to hurry up and use your chance to answer the question and get
some money. So this will motivate subscribers to check the site often (when
they have spare time) or even have it a a home page or keep it sticky all the
time.

~~~
SwellJoe
Unless you're offering Jeopardy style prizes (or at least something worth
paying attention to), I don't see how you'd get particularly well qualified
answers in a short time period. Expertise isn't cheap, and expertise on call
is downright expensive (when I was a consultant I charged an annual service
fee just for the privilege of calling my cell phone number outside of business
hours)...so if someone can make $100+/hour consulting with their expertise, or
make $10 every few hours via your service, they're obviously going to spend
more time consulting than sitting in front of their mailbox waiting for
questions that match their expertise.

I'm not saying it can't be done effectively and profitably--it probably can.
We used SitePoint for a logo contest recently and had a half dozen
professional designers, and another couple dozen serious amateurs, who
responded over the course of 10 days...the prize was $500, though, so not
chump change. We were extremely happy with the resulting logo, and we all
(designers included) had a lot of fun with the contest.

But you might consider focusing on a few niches to get started, and actually
line up experts on retainer just to prove to people that you have a working
system (we've seen Google, Yahoo, and a dozen also-rans come and go in this
field...most people are not going to believe that a startup can make something
work that all of the big names in internet tech have failed to deliver). I
believe you're going to have to prove it, but I might be wrong...maybe you can
just let it run and gather momentum slowly.

The other problem is that most of the high end questions and answers I've seen
(the ones where you'll make your money) on similar services have been
extremely vague and, in result, poorly answered. I got a strong feeling that
the questioner probably wasn't going to be very satisfied with the answers.
Quality is historically very low from these kinds of services, and it's hard
for me to imagine how you'd solve that problem without a lot of (expensive)
oversight.

~~~
white
I wasn't very clear with my point. We're not about professional services, but
with something, which doesn't need a degree or special skills. Like choice
between red or black shirt, one nightclub or another, how good is some idea,
the best gift for the girlfriend, etc.

~~~
SwellJoe
Ah. OK, then it's a terrible idea. ;-)

~~~
white
Can you tell me why? I'd really appreciate this kind of feedback.

~~~
joeguilmette
b/c if i want to ask those types of questions i can ask (in order).

my friends on gtalk/yelp/google

furthermore, i would never in a million years think of paying for the answer
to a question such as "which color shirt do i wear" or "where do i shop for
X".

i have a brain, and the internet offers answers to those questions for free,
and it doesn't take an hour.

~~~
white
Well, #3 is not good choice. ;) That's even not a subject for discussion.
Besides, our potential clients already gave up on Google when they are coming
to us. #2 - well, maybe yes, maybe not. We make it easier. And #1 - not much
people have hundred of friends on IM. And sometimes, it'd be nice to know 50
opinions, instead of 10 (someone's typical online IM active list). (And well
sometimes you don't want you friend know that you're interested in SOME THINGS
:P

Don't forget that if you know where is the best retail store close by, some
people don't, and they are not that happy to invest hours looking for it.

Speaking about my example with shirt/club/etc, these are really bad examples,
saying about paid questions; but they are good if they'd be free (and they
would).

However, just a silly example. I'd like to buy a gaming console, but I don't
know which one. I have close to 100 of active contacts in my IM, but barely
few of them know something about gaming consoles. So I'm about to spend
several hundred dollars, and (me, personally) would be happy to spend $10 or
$20 in advance to gather opinion of 50 or 100 people about the gaming consoles
before making a purchase. And I want it now. Not tomorrow. Not after the week
of gathering all pros and cons.

~~~
SwellJoe
To go further with what others have said, it sounds like you're putting
strangers in charge of answering questions that only close friends have the
knowledge to answer well.

What game console do I buy? Well, the one my friends have, so we can trade
games and play against each other! What club? The one my friends go to...we
like the same music (roughly), and have the same general style...we probably
even like the same kinds of girls. So, IM is infinitely more valuable than the
service you describe even if only one or two friends are active right now. If
it's not expertise that you're brokering, you've got nothing of value, as far
as I can tell.

A Google search about game consoles will turn up thousands of random opinions
from strangers about just about any subject (particularly game consoles, but
clubs also get talked about, etc.), so without some sort of expertise, you're
just doing a really inefficient and slow Google search.

Now, I'm not saying brokering expertise is an easy business, but I can at
least see value in it. I can't think of any good use cases for a dedicated
"trivial questions with easy answers" system.

I'm happy to be wrong. Maybe you should build a prototype this weekend and see
how people react...you'd probably be able to get some media for it, since all
of the big answers services have been shutdown or shuffled off into a corner
to die quietly. If it looks cool, you'd be able to get a crunch and maybe some
hits from design blogs. If you use a funny language (Smalltalk or Erlang or
something) you can get some hits from that. It costs nothing but time to try
it.

But, it's not an idea I would be willing to invest any time in. (Although, I
did just invest fifteen minutes or so in my various responses to your query
about it.) ;-)

~~~
white
thanks for ur answer, it helps

~~~
joeguilmette
swelljoe has great advice.

"trivial answers with easy questions" just sounds like a slow google, nothing
i would be excited about using, and certainly nothing i would pay for.

that being said, i dont think your idea is horrible at all, but simply that i
think you need to spend some time refining it.

someone mentioned a site that helps people answer very difficult, expensive
questions, the exact opposite of what you're looking for.

explore that avenue. spend a day reading about google answers and why they
died. really, if i were you, i would spend the next week doing nothing but
looking at other sites that failed or are failing and ask 'why' and 'what can
i do better?'.

it sounds like you've done that a bit, but as you can see from the wonderful
amount of criticism you've received, you could probably stand to do a lot more
research and thinking about the problem.

i personally think you're on to something, but just need to rethink it a bit.

and btw, dont write off google so quickly. search for "xbox 360 vs ps3" and
within .5 seconds you'll have more information about which console to buy than
your service could hope to offer in a full day of responses.

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falsestprophet
I think it is an interesting idea. I don't know that there is a market for it,
but I think it is worth building to find out.

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Kaizyn
Why not ask your beta testers or don't you believe in generating information
by using your own service?

~~~
white
Beta testers are already hooked-up, so their opinions would not be too
objective. I need some thoughts from those, who never used us before, but now
can get an opportunity to try.

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blader
My lack of knowledge of the market makes me feel that this is an idea in
search of a market.

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edw519
Have you considered developing the technology and then licensing it to special
interest groups? Somehow I get the feeling this would work well in vertical
niches (i.e. trade associations).

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rms
>Please, drop me a line

The email address in your profile doesn't show up to the public, you've gotta
reenter it in the about: field if you want other people to be able to see it.

~~~
white
It's "white at chief dot la". Thanks! Or you can write here.

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byrneseyeview
site:answers.google.com

After the first page, it's basically a list of old questions and answers -- so
reading over the first hundred or so might give you a good idea of what the
market is for this service.

~~~
white
That's not exactly what we're talking about. We're not questionary service,
but instant and multiple answers. Instant, means, within very short period of
time, like 60 minutes max. See my other comments. Thanks.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Are questions that require quick answers different from Google Answers-style
questions?

~~~
white
Well, some of the will be different, some of them will be pretty similar to
Google Answers' style.

~~~
byrneseyeview
You'll need to articulate your goals better if you're going to get funding or
customers. So far, I know that it is like Google Answers, but not, because it
is "Instant" (as in, it takes up to an hour) and has multiple answers (like
other answer services).

It sounds like you're offering an answer service with a deadline, which is
great, because now all you have to do is figure out what kind of questions
people will ask, how to attract the people who can answer them, how to
compensate everyone, and how to outcompete much larger rivals who can
duplicate your entire product over their lunch break, while taking advantage
of their existing network. Sounds pretty surefire!

~~~
white
I already showed an example for questions, which I see to be typical there:
which shirt to choose, where to shop, which club to go for, what present for
girlfriend to buy. Also, we could be a great match for market research during
the product development cycle. I don't see problems how to compensate everyone
(the client pays for getting answers), subscribers will get attracted by the
challenging style of the process and ability to get paid. However, what I
really concerned about is whether this idea sound interesting for potential
clients or not. Speaking about competition, it's always good and it speeds up
the progress. Besides, the market always has a tendency to change the business
model within time.

