Ask HN: Please critique my startup idea and landing page

[coderdude]

I would greatly appreciate any constructive criticism the community has about my startup idea, BakeLayer.

http://bakelayer.com/

The idea is simple -- hosted browser cookies. There are several advantages to storing data server-side that would normally be stored client-side:

- You can store more data in a database than you can in a browser cookie. That data can be accessed via a key/value interface (API)

- You can add, delete, and modify cookie data server-side without the need for the visitor to access a page on your site.

- There are multiple methods of tracking other than cookies, so I can use those methods to associate an ID with each client, making it harder for them to "lose" the cookie data you've assigned to them. Naturally, only methods that haven't met with litigation are employed.

I'm still kicking around ways to price this, as potentially it could be hit with a ton of traffic (each page view on a given website, similar to an analytics service). After reading the Dilbert comic today I'm pretty sure how I want to market it.

Any ideas or notes on the design or business idea are greatly appreciated!

[minalecs]

why wouldn't i just store cookie data in my local datastore, why would I want to use yours ?

Amazon offers simpledb, google app engine, both offers are very cheap, and wouldn't take much to create a simple datastore utilizing either of these services to simple key value pairs.. how would you differentiate ?

In all honesty.. cookies are usually lost between uses and not during the session, so I can't see the point really. If a user logs in , I usually set cookies based on loaded information at time of login ... so its a one time thing.

[coderdude → minalecs]

>>why wouldn't i just store cookie data in my local datastore, why would I want to use yours?

The vast majority of my theoretical potential customers are the kind of buyers who need copy-paste solutions. This is most e-commerce sites and affiliate managers.

>>Amazon offers simpledb, google app engine, both offers are very cheap, and wouldn't take much to create a simple datastore utilizing either of these services to simple key value pairs.. how would you differentiate?

Technologically I would not be trying to compete. I would be competing on ease of use and having a system/dashboard that is specific to this use case. Infrastructure vs. product I suppose you could think of it as.

>>In all honesty.. cookies are usually lost between uses and not during the session

You mean between sessions? If so, that is the other major selling point. I am employing methods that will make the cookies as persistent as possible between sessions and even between browsers (yes, cross-browser cookies, via Flash storage).

The idea here is that if you already have a person logged in, you don't need this. This is for people who want to associate an arbitrary amount of data with a visitor and ensure (to the best of the service's ability) that it won't get deleted. I have a feeling my customers will be more concerned with this feature than any other.

[znt]

I'm sure this is not a trivial technical solution to a problem but have you actually talked to anyone and confirmed they'd pay for this service?

Landing page seems nice though, easy on the eyes.

[coderdude → znt]

Yes I have, but not much. I have a few contacts who are either affiliate program managers for large online stores or are otherwise involved with affiliate-based marketing on some level higher than simply being users of some affiliate program. One person expressed interest in the service after a debacle involving Live's CashBack program. I'm going to gather feedback from potential customers via adwords campaigns. This should also give me some idea of the level of interest.

Edit: I don't know who downvoted you, or my other comment, but this is basically abuse of the voting system and it's been going on for a while now. I wish there was some moderator just hovering over all these threads going "Why did so and so just downvote that guy? Reversed."

[znt → coderdude]

Ok first of all I really don't know how you're planning to gather potential customer feedback via adwords but I really advise you to get out there and have some face to face meetings with potential customers. You probably have a MVP at this point but you haven't done any customer development.

Please go have a look at this document, it should help you with validating your MVP and startup idea: http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upl...

Also I really don't care about karma or upvotes. I'm here to learn and share my knowledge. If this message helps you in any way, I'll be more than content.

[coderdude → znt]

Thank you for the feedback, and especially the link. I plan on getting customer feedback by developing over the course of a month or two a list of keywords that get a high conversion for sign-ups to the mailing list. Then actually talking to the people on my mailing list. Also, in the past I have found that many people are willing to contact me via the contact form I have on a landing page, and those individuals are easy to engage for feedback.

As for the karma and votes, I know it's not about the karma. And one down-vote doesn't mean anything. For me it's the principle of it. I want people here to act right because I try so hard to uphold the values this place represents. It just seems like more and more people don't give a crap about that. Sigh.

Thanks again!

Edit: Really started checking out the PDF you linked me to. This is a fantastic find. I'll be reading this tonight over my favorite episodes of TNG.

[Skywing]

hrm. cool idea. would have to make sure that accessing such an integral part of data from your servers would be snappy fast, though.

[coderdude → Skywing]

Thanks, and agreed. The latency of each request would have to be as short as possible. I'm guessing in order for it to be snappy fast I'm looking at requests taking around <80ms.