
Show HN: Upboat, idea validation with a twist - neoveller
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.upboat.us<p>Demo: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.upboat.us&#x2F;idea&#x2F;upboat
Screenshot of logged-in view: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;vUZXfZc.png<p>Upboat is an idea validation platform, somewhere inbetween Kickstarter and LaunchRock. If the idea you pitch receives over 200* &quot;upboat&quot;s (consented would-be users) within one week, you get the whole emailing list of all those who upboat&#x27;d it. If not, you get nothing. This is helpful for those who have ideas for side-projects, but lack the strong-enough incentive to get to work and just hack something together. Should you put up an idea you came up with, and in a week it gets enough upboats, you have a 200-strong user incentive to get to work. If not, then not a big deal.<p>You can upboat an idea as an potential user of the service, a potential developer of the idea (github auth&#x27;d), and&#x2F;or as a potential investor in the idea (angelList auth&#x27;d). No commitment--just the chance to chat. This hopefully provides a stronger social proof scheme than a landing-page-captured email count.<p>* In the future, I&#x27;d prefer this to be 500 instead of 200.<p>Backstory: I built this at the Angelhack Silicon Valley hackathon this past weekend in 24 hours of maddening, restless typing. Granted, I was also &quot;in the zone&quot; for most of it. In past Angelhacks, I&#x27;ve done silly things like single-handedly build and present 3 different hacks (drives the judges nuts), but this time I decided to go for one production-ready hack (we&#x27;ll see if I&#x27;m right). Upboat came out of it, so please, if you can contain yourself, don&#x27;t mind the sloppiest code you&#x27;d ever laid eyes on.<p>I&#x27;d love to get some feedback, but I&#x27;d love even more to get enough Upboats to keep working on it :)
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avalaunch
On the registration popup, it says 500 users required.

I had nearly this exact idea before. Actually that's where my username
Avalaunch comes from - "launch your new idea with an avalanche of support".
Thus far I haven't followed through with the idea because I don't think it
provides enough value to the would be early adopters.

Two suggestions:

1\. Let the idea author dictate how many users are required instead of setting
an arbitrary number. For some ideas (new dating site), 500 isn't nearly
enough. For others 50 would be plenty.

2\. Set it up so that the idea author is encouraged to give something to the
potential users for upboating an idea. Ie. "First 3 months of service are free
for all upboaters".

Good luck! I'd be interested to hear how it turns out for you.

EDIT:

Suggestion 3. Add login by Facebook. I know most of HN hates it, but I hate
filling out forms more.

EDIT 2:

The develop upboat is a really cool feature that I hadn't thought of. Maybe
add a designer upboat too? Or ideally, let the idea author determine what kind
of upboats he's looking for. Maybe I have a great developer but I really need
a salesperson.

~~~
Felix21
Interestingly I was working on this as well. It was called "should I Build
it?" and the idea is if enough people vote YES (you decide how many people are
enough), then you build it.

Two Additional Suggestions:

1\. After the potential user votes "yes" or "no" allow the idea author to
collect feedback as to why they voted the way they did. (customer development
built-in). This will provide some great insights into what's valuable to your
prospects.

2\. Secondly it will be more useful to allow the idea author set this up on
their own domain and be able to add their own styling to the page because most
of the traffic the page will get will be from the idea author's network.

I don't see myself as a user, coming to your website to look for ideas to
support with my email.

Finally how do you plan on monetizing this app? This is the chief reason I
dropped the idea which is probably short-sighted but it'll be interesting to
see how you go about it.

Good Luck.

~~~
neoveller
1\. Good call. 2\. A widget is an awesome idea. Move aside, LaunchRock! 3\.
You're the man. Thanks!

Monetizing? Apps aren't expensive, and if it provides value to a community I
certainly wouldn't mind not-charging for it. It took me 24 hours to build, and
hopefully not a year of labor to maintain. If I can break even, I'd be happy.
Otherwise, selling contact info of idea authors who've collected unreal
amounts of upboats to investors seems like it could do something, granted I
gather the consent of all parties involved.

------
vec
I think your github oauth request is a bit broad:

    
    
        The app Upboat will be able to:
    
        * Read your public information.
        * Read your private email addresses.
        * Update your public and private repositories (Commits, Issues, etc).
    

I'd like to register myself as a dev, but I'm not going to agree to those
terms. No offense, but you need to do a lot more to justify why you want write
access to my github account.

~~~
neoveller
I just need enough permissions to know that you have > 0 repos, public or
private. I didn't see anything between just-email and all-the-things in their
oauth docs, but I might've missed something while rushing through. Do you know
otherwise?

~~~
vec
No, but even read only access to private repos is a problem. A lot of that
code belongs to my employer and I can't in good conscience grant access to it
even if I want to.

I'm not sure why having an empty account is something you care to filter on.
If someone really wants to pretend to be a dev, forcing them to click "Create
new repo" before they sign up isn't going to provide much of a barrier. You're
already basically taking them at their word so I'd recommend just dropping the
requirement.

~~~
neoveller
You, sir, are the voice of reason. I'm pushing an update now that removes
those conditions.

------
krichman
My first reaction was that this is creative and interesting. Impressive that
you did it in 24 hours.

The validation use case for Upboat makes sense... but it seems strictly weaker
than, say, Kickstarter for validation. Emails mean much less than payments;
you could get 1000 emails but then have a low conversion rate on that. If you
did the same project on Kickstarter, you'd either fail to reach your goal or
reach the goal and have validation that N people want it enough to pay for it.
Upboat would be good for checking interest in FOSS projects or something, but
then what is your plan to monetize it?

~~~
shimms
Could also extend it to include a charge for the first month's usage.

Once the requisite number of upboats is met, the funds can be transferred to
the idea holder, less a clip of the ticket.

This would also improve confidence that the validation is genuinely
representative of user willingness to spend money - if I get 1000 upboats for
a new service, but I plan on charging $49 a month for it, I still have no idea
if I've validated people willing to pay $49 for it. Pledging that money and
then collecting it at goal reached (Kickstarter model) would help alleviate
this, and I think make for much more compelling investor discussions.

------
AltonSun
It's awesome that you've actually taken action on this as an idea rather than
just talked about it. (Like me)

I posted a similar idea, amidst several other ideas here that I welcome any
and everyone to steal/modify and use for themselves. (Though I won't refuse
equity)

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/e26/who_wants_to_start_an_important_...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/e26/who_wants_to_start_an_important_startup/78d2)

Message me here or at www.Facebook.com/AltonSun since we probably have some
mutual friends if you're interested. (Directed towards everyone since I
already know Michael as an awesome hacker that consistently cleans up well at
top hackathons in the Bay Area.)

Your idea is better than mine for a couple reasons: 1\. It's hard to measure
whether someone really fulfilled your wish 2\. Lower barrier to entry and
simpler with just emails, you can reasonably charge the poster some nominal
fee rather than the upboaters to keep noise to signal ratio low

------
revx
I'm just curious what the user's incentive for using upboat is?

Edit: I mean, I'm not a startup owner, but I visited the site and couldn't
figure out why I would want to do this, rather than just wait until the
product actually comes out.

~~~
neoveller
I'm not sure what angle you're asking this from--the originator of the idea,
or someone who might want to use a service?

Regarding the former, that's answered in the OP, so you probably mean the
latter.

A) Why do you browse HN? I will assume here that it is because you want to
keep up with hacker news. Another possibility is that you want be
stimulated/inspired by interesting ideas and premises for startups. While the
traffic and postings on Upboat thus far haven't been overwhelming, I've
enjoyed reading people's ideas and commenting to probe them deeper about them.
It keeps me on my toes for ideas I might have in the future. It also gives me
the chance to become an early adopter/user of a service I personally find
impactful and needed. I get to be a part of that, if other Upboaters agree.

B) The social aspect to Upboat lets me see how people I follow are upboating.
This eases the friction of finding potentially great ideas I would like to
upboat for the reasons in A. Although the follower/followee social network
thing is overplayed and contrived by now, I feel the social filtering it
provides is a compelling reason to stay active and upboat ideas I find
valuable and want my followers to take a look at.

~~~
avalaunch
I think what revx may be alluding to is the fact that you're currently selling
more to the person with the idea instead of the idea backer. Your home page is
a good example. It asks "Is your startup idea valid?". Contrast that to
IndieGoGo's home page which says "The world's funding platform. Fund what
matters to you." or Kickstarter's which encourages you to "Discover great
projects" with the goal of "Bringing Creativity to Life".

You're clearly solving a problem for those seeking idea validation but are you
also solving a problem for those willing to give validation? Both KS and IGG
do a really good job of tapping into a very visceral desire to help others
succeed and to be a part of something bigger than oneself. If you can do that
with Upboat you'll have a winner.

~~~
neoveller
Have an HN upboat, sir. I think you hit on a point I wasn't even thinking
nearly enough about. I naturally enjoy hearing out ideas and knowing my
feedback is heard, but I overlooked the possibility of that being uncommon.
Light incentives (specialty accounts for early adopters) might be in order per
the kickstart model. Thanks!

~~~
ArekDymalski
While I totally agree that you'll need to incentivize the potential users to
use your app, I think that right now you've subconsciously taken the right
path. To attract the users you need sufficient number of interesting ideas to
show to them. That's why targeting the entrepreneurs,developers and designers
(as someone brilliantly suggested) is a way to go for now imho. After that you
can focus on implementing changes aimed at acquiring "normal" users. And that
can be a real challenge. The perks/benefits seem to be already proven
solution. I also thought about turning the "upboats" into some kind of game of
prediction - can the user guess which idea will take off? Something like here:
[http://www.upboat.us/idea/c4861c9bf49ce663](http://www.upboat.us/idea/c4861c9bf49ce663)
;)

------
toumhi
Congrats on shipping! However:

You don't prove the validity of a startup idea by asking a community of
startup enthusiasts whether they think it's valid (except if it's an idea
targeted to startup enthusiasts).

It's the same as getting validation from your friends and family: next to
worthless.

People who make up the Upboat community and the potential customers of your
startup idea are very probably different. And they're going to have wildly
different opinions on the validity.

What you should find out is whether your potential customers think it's valid.

~~~
neoveller
It's not a simple "yes, it's valid". It's a "yes, I like it, and if you make
it, I'm going to be among your first users." And suddenly, it's built, and
200+ users auto-appear.

------
donutdan4114
Clickable links: [http://www.upboat.us](http://www.upboat.us) Demo:
[http://www.upboat.us/idea/upboat](http://www.upboat.us/idea/upboat)
Screenshot of logged-in view:
[http://i.imgur.com/vUZXfZc.png](http://i.imgur.com/vUZXfZc.png)

------
donutdan4114
Nice looking site. My biggest nit-pick with any site is that I don't want
another account on another site. So either FB/Twitter/GitHub/Persona/Google
sign-in would be fantastical.

------
songzme
I just signed up for an account and posted an idea! As a developer, I think
this is a great tool to get users before deciding to sink into a project that
might never see the light of day

------
markdown
Love it!

Suggestion: It is very rarely a good idea to open links in a new window/tab.
Please remove target="_blank" from your 'Popular and New' links.

~~~
neoveller
You got it!

------
geedy
I had a similar idea a couple of months ago, but the issue I found with it is
that a virtual "vote" for a product is borderline worthless. When an idea is
funded on Kickstarter, people are putting real money on the project, something
they do not want to part with unless they feel they are getting something of
equal or greater value back.

Either way, all the best to you, and good luck.

------
giologist
The design could use quite a bit of work, but other than that I think it's a
pretty solid idea! :)

~~~
sakai
Agreed -- but for 24 hours, the design is pretty good too!

------
newernpguy
very interesting concept. The karma based version at
[http://firespotting.com](http://firespotting.com) gets many good ideas. The
validation and user base is a good value add.

~~~
milkmiruku
I would love to be able to drill down and monitor both
[http://firespotting.com](http://firespotting.com) and
[http://upboat.us/](http://upboat.us/) via
[https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/) style tagging.

~~~
puneetsmail
seeking a lobste.rs invite.

~~~
milkmiruku
Hey puneetsmail, just saw this. You still seeking?

~~~
puneetsmail
Yes please. puneetsmail@gmail.com

------
fxthea
Who's benefiting from not releasing contact information until a certain
threshold is met?

~~~
neoveller
The users who are upboating. Do you want to be one of 5 supporters, and then
get emailed to use a product with just the other 4? If it doesn't reach 200+,
there's also somewhat more incentive for the author of the idea to use the
emails for other purposes than the posted idea.

------
asperous
How ironic is it going to be if your app doesn't get 500 supporters on your
own site?

~~~
neoveller
It probably won't at this rate, TBH. But as of now, the only way to find out
is to launch.

------
Chris2048
Maybe have a requirement that at least a site/mockups be made?

