This looks really great, I hope you are psyched this post hit the first page. Everyone is fixated on pricing, I think the pricing is fine. Here are my notes:
Vectorizing - I don't see anyway to share these creations with the world. Why not have a Pinterest share button? The looky-loos who will never buy anything can share these creations for you and generate free traffic for you. Put them to work. Also, encourage artists to put their store URL as their Instagram bio link.
Authority - You kind of have a Kickstarter problem. They launched with thoughtful projects to fund so half the two sided marketplace was done. What happens when you get a few customers who then want to become sellers? When Aunt Marie wants to put her crappy poodle paintings on your site? How do you let her down gracefully? If you don't, why would I as a customer stay on site and sift through garbage?
Elitism - You are disrupting the gallery system but you are also accidentally creating a gallery. How do you reconcile that contradiction? Galleries don't make their money on selling out stock from the current show (this sometimes happens), they make money from generating press, becoming authoritative, and the wealthy go to the back room, where the great stuff is. Sometimes the gallerist will say, no, a museum is considering buying this. Are you going to do that? Say no to make more money later?
Lastly, you couldn't have picked a better time to launch. I would have to imagine the gallery system is getting flattened right now.
This is a great comment but I need to reply to one mistaken assumption:
> I hope you are psyched this post hit the first page
It didn't hit the front page organically; we place Launch HNs for YC startups on HN's front page. This is one of three formal things that HN does to give something back to YC in exchange for funding it. The other two are job ads and displaying YC founder names in orange to other YC founders.
I'd like to open this feature to non-YC-startups in some way. It's not clear yet how to do that. Also, it would be hard to scale: we do a lot of editing to help founders write about their startup in a way that we think the community will find interesting. That's time consuming and we don't have a lot of spare resources.
That said, if anyone is planning to make a post like that which you would like some feedback about, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and ask. Just please understand that we can't reply right away—the inbox is constantly piling up (and a bit higher each time it does).
dang, thanks for clarifying. I had a friend with a bed company years back with no affiliation do a Show HN and it must have organically trended. I didn't know you guys did that, and it makes sense that you do. I have no idea how you would open it up because then it would be like Product Hunt on steroids with 1,000+ inbound requests a day.
Just to be clear: there's a big difference between "Show HN" and "Launch HN". Show HNs organically trend. Launch HNs are for YC companies only and we place them on the front page.
Vectorizing - I don't see anyway to share these creations with the world. Why not have a Pinterest share button? The looky-loos who will never buy anything can share these creations for you and generate free traffic for you. Put them to work. Also, encourage artists to put their store URL as their Instagram bio link.
Authority - You kind of have a Kickstarter problem. They launched with thoughtful projects to fund so half the two sided marketplace was done. What happens when you get a few customers who then want to become sellers? When Aunt Marie wants to put her crappy poodle paintings on your site? How do you let her down gracefully? If you don't, why would I as a customer stay on site and sift through garbage?
Elitism - You are disrupting the gallery system but you are also accidentally creating a gallery. How do you reconcile that contradiction? Galleries don't make their money on selling out stock from the current show (this sometimes happens), they make money from generating press, becoming authoritative, and the wealthy go to the back room, where the great stuff is. Sometimes the gallerist will say, no, a museum is considering buying this. Are you going to do that? Say no to make more money later?
Lastly, you couldn't have picked a better time to launch. I would have to imagine the gallery system is getting flattened right now.