While true, and more so in recent years than a few years ago, I think the cost of salary is way more ridiculous than it needs to be because of the bidding wars. Some are getting above market rate (or what market rate should have been) and stock out the door. That isn't typical for any other place. And college grads from Stanford are getting a premium for entry level salary according to a few TC articles I read that aren't typical for others.
As a person who graduated 10 months back, I am not disagreeing with you that the raw numbers look crazy. However, when you normalize those taking into account environmental factors that I mentioned (housing, food and other expenses), I am not convinced you save remarkably more than you would in a different part of the country. Again, this is anecdotal evidence based on me living in SF and Austin, and knowing what salaries look like in both places.
Sadly, that's because other areas of the US are trying their best to NOT be an innovation capital. There really should be more Silicon Valleys but most other areas in the country don't have the will to do so.
I am not sure it is that simple. The bay area just beats the crap of other places hands down when it comes to starting companies.
Let us look at one of the closest competitors: Austin. This is a city that has a great cultural scene, no state taxes, cheap living, and a good C.S. school close by to get candidates. Yet, there are hardly any software startups in the Austin area. Most folks who graduated with me moved to the bay area. There are more latent variables in what makes the San Francisco bay area tick. If this is the case for Austin's competition, I am not sure how easy it would be for one to inorganically make a city, say in the deep South, become an innovation capital?
The hard parts (colleges, taxes, money, etc) are relatively easy to get compared to the soft parts. I think those soft parts is what makes silicon valley better than most other areas. My theory is that those soft areas are in the cultural part of society, this is the area which the vast majority of people in the world DON'T want to change.
Take one (of many) soft components - acceptance & praise of failure with learning. For some strange reason, this is a hard concept for most people to accept. Many people are shamed by failure or hide their failures pretending they aren't failures at all. They never learn anything useful from their mistakes. They also won't accept people who had any failures. This causes people to have careers of "no failures" which basically means they pretty much only succeed in mediocre things. I don' know if Austin overcame this one example but this type of thinking is a major roadblock in many areas.
1. Looking at your flyers, I have no clue what its about. I'm most likely going to ignore it.
2. Prize incentivization isn't hugely compelling for me personally although it may for others
3. Since I can't see what you posted on the mailing list, I can't comment on whether or not I find it useful. (I no longer have access to my Stanford email and thus no longer get mailing list emails either way).
4. Same as #3 regarding emails for student organizations (are you guys even tracking their activity?)
5. From what it sounds like, there is no compelling reasons why people feel they should need to use your service (I'm still confuse as to what it does beyond what you describe it as here or why its useful). This might be the biggest issue but since I don't know what feedback you guys have had so far, I can't comment much further.
1. We had created those more as a way to create awareness - but you're right...by leaving out the what/why made the eyeball conversions really low. Big mistake on our part!
5. As you've both (thejteam and you) rightly pointed out - our need fulfillment doesn't come across and this could be possibly be the biggest reason.
(Yes, we're tracking all activity including email). I'm adding what Shoutt does and how it is useful to the question now.
I just added it to the question itself. Copy pasted here:
Shoutt is a location-based app. It is a platform to share information with those around you. We're bringing the act of shoutting to the phone - when you shout only the people around you can hear you. This works as a great way to share information with students around you and thus helps connect hyperlocal communities. It can be used to connect places as small as a dorm or a department to as large as the entire campus/city - the distance is decided by the shoutter. Also, unlike other networks there are no friends or followers and is focused primarily on the shared information.
Shoutt can be applied to a wide range of scenarios -- Announcements (events, publicize, news), Collaboration (homework, study groups, hobbies), Marketplace (buy/sell, recruiting for orgs, help), Random chatter (updates, celebrating Cardinal victories) and Asks (ride shares, Freshmen questions).
I think I've encountered a similar app in the past that was working with Twitter API to do something similar (don't even remember who they are). Irrelevant to the point anyway.
Anyway, here's my initial thoughts and PLEASE take it with a massive grain of salt as I don't speak for everyone else...
This idea seems way more appealing to businesses than it would to users i.e. I need to hire a ton of Stanford students, announce job posts, etc... When I was in college, the marketplace argument sounds great in theory but eBay, half.com, and craigslist are not too far away (plus rentals online now that removes reselling problems). If I want to resell, I want to get mass market reach, not just local (whatever is best).
I can also see this as a potential app that rings up too much spam, too many announcements (shouts). I can't find an immediate need for why I would want to make announcements so often and more so, I can't find a reason why I would engage in the app frequently because of such. I can see some power users that may want to do so (for things you've listed), but on a whole, I can't speak for others but I don't see a strong compelling reason why I would want to "shout" anything generally. Particularly to such a niche demographic (unless again, I was a business or something similar in nature where I have a reason to pitch to users, but this doesn't provide a good reason for why users would want to engage).
On the surface, I don't seem to have a problem this app is trying to create a solution for, and there is no strong compelling reason on why (even after the pitch) I would want to use it or continue to engage frequently enough (daily active).
Honest feedback is really appreciated (and wanted) so I'm really glad you replied with that.
We have taken some of those into account - 1) shoutts get categorized into channels (#AskStanford, #gocard, #CS106A etc) and that is one way of making it organized and not overbearing to a user, almost like subreddits 2) when a user opens it at any location, say a gym, they know instantaneously what's popular around there and at that time - the primary reason to use it daily or at least often.
Given that, the above are still just assumptions made by us that will get validated/in-validated soon enough. Again, I really appreciate the feedback it was really helpful.
I just looked at one of the iPads laying around with a single screen of apps, no photos, and a couple synced videos from iTunes and its definitely already more than the 8GB. And thats on an iPad that has almost nothing relative to average use. I think 8GB is too small.
Kickstarter's new policy is about them not wanting to act as an online store, not about taking away the "fund my new convenience store" vs creative projects. Its more about them not wanting to be used by anyone (creative projects included) as if they are there to basically be a selling platform. At least thats how I viewed it.
