Ask HN: Where next to take my startup, Junto

[marcymarcy]

Hi everyone! I'm looking for feedback on Junto – http://thejun.to

We're an online environment for the validation & production of startup ideas (for nontechnical founding teams.) The end result of a Junto startup is what I call an MVPU (minimum viable product for users) so basically a public beta.

Constructive feedback would mean the world to me. If you need to ask about our roadmap or revenue model, they're open for discussion too. HN's transparency was one of our inspirations for Junto in the first place.

Tl;dr: My primary concerns are how do we build an adequately-sized community so that the sample size for validation is substantial; Is there anything we need to be wary of, moving forward; What else can we do to be helpful for our nontechnical customer-base?

[revorad]

As others have said, you need to more clearly define and say what exactly you do.

From a quick look at the projects and ideas you currently have, it appears to me that this is a really slow way to go about building products and may even lead people down the wrong path. Couple of things stood out for me:

Spending days on logo design and "testing" - you really can't afford to do that. It is better instead to build something and put it out. You can get 10 people to use a bad product, but literally no one will use your logo. This must be against lean, no?

Testing assumptions such as "People are comfortable dating within their extended friend group" - that's taking things too far. It's good to be skeptical of one's beliefs but you can't completely throw gut feeling and common sense out the window.

Doing such things may give one the illusion of progress but it is a waste of time.

I'm also wondering who the project founders test their assumptions with. If it's not with the intended users of the final product, then it's worthless.

Everyone loves giving product advice (hi!), but you can safely ignore most of it if their answer to the question, "Will you use this?" is No.

Making new products is hard. But you can't change that by asking everything to the users. You do have to trust your gut and build stuff. Regardless of what people say, their actions don't follow.

Making decisions with more than 75% of the information is by definition hesitation. - Josh James

[marcymarcy → revorad]

Thanks so much for the feedback, first of all!

- ISSUE: Our process actually being slow. It's true that spending a week and a half on something like a logo design is not exactly lean production. But we're actually going above and beyond that. Junto is as much about bringing in feedback on all aspect of production as it is about providing entertainment and developing relationships with potential users – not to mention education about startup process. We want to create advocates earlier and give them reason to feel connected to the startups. Allowing their feedback on things like logo design is easy, inviting and fun for a lot of people. The amount of time it takes is simply a by-product of leaving enough time for people to respond.

And more importantly, behind the scenes, we are bustling with back-end development, wireframing, putting together the business plan and doing a lot of things that don't really make for good public updates... until they are completed. So there's definitely a constant-feedback aspect but it only publicly appears slow when many hours are being spent behind closed doors, iterating away.

- ISSUE: General assumption testing and not going with gut. We'd also agree that saying something like "people are willing to date within their friend group" is pretty general and kind of a 'duh' statement, but our assumption tests are actually more geared towards allowing viewers to share their experiences and gain insight from their stories. We've gleaned a nugget of helpful insight from every test we've done so far. And again, all of this kind of goes back to building a dedicated audience well before product launch.

So in many ways, we agree with you! And will try to be more conscious of such as we move forward. The order in which we do things and what we show publicly will surely change a lot in the coming months.

[noeltock]

Cool project & a good concept I think works well for the people you are targeting.

Notes:

- Front page is tough to understand. Feel like you need a block clearly outlining the concept right at the top, and then jumping to the current projects. You've done great work with other illustrations on the site, why not a visual flow of the junto process (unless I missed it)?

- When I first saw the funding amount, it felt like kickstarter (not sure if that's a good or bad thing for you? :) )

- Project pages are really nice and clear, well done.

- I like seeing faces for projects, gives it more credibility, but what about your team?

- Recent commenters, gravatar?

As for the primary concern, tough one. Don't think there's any easy/cheap way to acquire a ton of users so early on. Think you'll just need to bridge the gap with your gut feeling till it gains more traction.

Good luck, really like the idea!

[marcymarcy → noeltock]

Hey Noel!

Yeah, our front page has come a long way but if it's still unclear what our mission is (it's a complicated one, I admit), that's a problem. There used to be a visual sequence on the About page but perhaps we need to bring that back in.

Re: funding... yup, we have had a problem where people think we provide funding as a solo feature, or that funding is our primary feature... and not true. Troy from Excelerate Labs was great to point that out and work with us on it, but if it still appears to be a primary feature then that's a problem. Eventually crowdfunding might have more of our spotlight but not until our community is of a certain size/interaction level.

Team info is at http://thejun.to/about (tab on right says Meet Junto Team) but could be easier to find (other than that, it's only in the footer.)

Everything else – noted! thanks!

[jnorthrop]

That's a clever idea and I like the concept of getting feedback "early and often."

I do have some questions though. It is unclear whether I can take advantage of your service without hiring Polymathic. Is it just an environment for companies you are building? Also, I couldn't register (http://thejun.to/registration ends as a 404) so I'm unsure, other than offering feedback on logos and such, what I could do on the site.

[marcymarcy → jnorthrop]

Awesome, working to fix that now.

Basically, for the immediate moment there's no reason to register as you can comment on updates using Livefyre (Twitter, FB, etc.) Once these first projects go into alphas and betas (and need testing/feedback), registration will come back into play and we'll also sync it with the commenting system.

Thanks so much for your feedback!

[marcymarcy → jnorthrop]

Also – yes, for the moment, our program is only for startups built with our crews.

p.s. saw your mentor application! will get back to you asap.

[helen842000]

Hey, I just started a thread [1] offering detailed feedback on projects. If it's helpful I can write up some thoughts on Junto & mail them across to you.

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3568752

[marcymarcy → helen842000]

that would be amazing! I can email you if you'd like, too. otherwise I'm marcy at polymathic.me – thanks so much!

[junto]

Personally I don't like your choice of name! As an early adopter I have a collector like penchant for the moniker.

[Blocks8]

Clickable: http://thejun.to

[marcymarcy → Blocks8]

thanks, B!

[aymeric]

Sorry I went on your website and couldn't understand it is about.

[marcymarcy → aymeric]

But if you can be more specific that'd be great too. thanks!

[marcymarcy → aymeric]

point taken. :)