Ask HN: Looking for honest feedback from the community

[FansUnite]

Hi there, So our web based start up just received 250k at a 1 mil valuation in funding from an angel investor. Up to this point my self and the three other co-founders had been putting up the development money our selves. We are extremely new to this game. We just had an idea and decided to go for it. I work in the film industry as a camera operator, one of us is an accountant, one is a lawyer, and the fourth is an ex canadian football player. So now here we are with a bank account full of money and what was, just over a year ago, only an idea. Our site is currently up in its most basic form as that was as far as we could afford to develop it on our own dime. A very smart friend suggested we begin here, on the hacker news forums, building a game plan on how to take this to the next level. So my question for this community is pretty broad. If you were in our position where would you begin? As a site that relies on user submitted content we are at the mercy of others to enjoy what we are offering enough to stick around and use the site.

One note I will make is that we are about to sign a deal with pugpharm to work on enhancing the user experience. If anyone has experience working with them, feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to chat with us.

Fansunite.com

[petervandijck]

Let's see, where would I begin?

First, I would identify what we're trying to do (you know this) and from that figure out 1 to 3 core metrics for the site.

Metrics are hard, but try your best to identify something. A meaningful number. Active users (defined as users creating content) would be good.

Now track the weekly growth percentage of that number (how fast it grows week over week), and focus on keeping that growth percentage around 5%.

Just keep it at 5%.

Now you have a clear focus. Good luck! http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

[FansUnite → petervandijck]

Loved this article you linked to about startup growth. Thank you.

[davidkatz]

Hi there. I have some experience with building user generated content communities. If you'd like to talk, feel free to email me.

[FansUnite → davidkatz]

e-mailing you right now.

[thesingularity]

Clickable - https://fansunite.com/

[adventured]

Do you really need to wait for users to generate your content? I'd suggest that's the scenario most likely to fail (that is, waiting for users to generate content dramatically increases the odds of failure).

You might already be actively doing this, but if not.... Spin-up the flywheel by generating as much content through faking users as you can stand to. Simulate real users (you fake the user names, the contribution time stamps, the upvotes / downvotes, and anything else necessary for your particular community). The more quality activity on your site, the greater the odds you'll get that critical initial traction. It doesn't matter if it's real or fake, so long as real users can't tell the difference.

You could also consider paying users for activity, depending on exactly what you need. The Amazon web services mechanical turk premise.

http://aws.amazon.com/mturk/

I don't know how difficult it is to generate user content for your site, granted.

Look up how Reddit used this concept to fake-it until they made it. It's also a commonly used tactic on new dating sites. There's nothing worse than a site lacking in activity, do whatever it takes to avoid that. Users will suffer a lot of things, such as bad design, long before they'll hang around somewhere that isn't humming.

[SheepSlapper → adventured]

Yeah, that's how Reddit got off the ground. Worked out pretty well for them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeDzx4SUME

[FansUnite → SheepSlapper]

Really insightful. It's amazing how openly they talk about how they faked users in the beginning. I guess at this point no one cares.

[adventured → SheepSlapper]

I was familiar with the story, but had never seen that video before. Thanks for that, tremendous insights in that short clip.

[FansUnite → adventured]

We were actually just talking about how Ebay faked it till they made it last night. The four of us each have a few accounts we use to stimulate conversation and there is a small organic active user base on the site. I wasn't aware that Amazon Mechanical Turk existed. This is a really cool concept. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.