Ask HN: [Validating app idea] An app which allows you to hoist a private auction | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: [Validating app idea] An app which allows you to hoist a private auction

1 pointblack_blood3 comments

Hello everyone.

I have an idea for an app and I am trying to validate the idea. I want to create an app which allows users to hoist a private auction (an English Auction). You create an auction in my app, keep some start time for the auction, you invite other users to participate in your auction by mentioning their email addresses. The auction happens and the highest bidder is decided. The actual transaction between the highest bidder and seller happens offline. (May be in some other use cases, there is no actual transaction)

@HNs: 1) Will you be needing this app? If so, what is your case? (if the use case is shady, just mention shady) 2) I am having trouble in figuring out the use cases. Can you guess any use cases for this app?

Edit: Only the users invited to the auction will be able to bid.

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You will get two types of answers here:

1. People saying they will use it => From my experience people have absolutely no idea if they will actually want something until they get exposed to it, especially so if it's a social app.

2. People saying they won't use it => This is also useless feedback for the same reason as above. People (including you and me and everyone else) have absolutely no idea if a mythical product will stick with them. They may like or hate the "idea" but this doesn't mean they will or will not use it. You shouldn't get discouraged by a comment about something people haven't even seen yet.

Just think of all kinds of "stupid" products that made tons of money. If the founder asked "I'm thinking about selling a bunch of small rocks as a pet, will you buy it?" on HN, probably most people will tell you to stop trolling. But the guy who made pet rocks actually made and sold them instead of asking. If he had asked on HN should i sell pet rocks he would have lost all his courage to start working on it.

TLDR: You should never get discouraged by some random comment on HN about your idea that doesn't even exist as a product yet. Also getting encouraged about a product that doesn't even exist yet is also bad because you probably will build something that people may like in theory but never use in practice. Which means, there's nothing good that can come out of asking for feedback on an "idea".

The only way to get around this is not ask for feedback when you have nothing to show, and instead just go build it. Build an MVP and ask for feedback so people actually can see what they're giving feedback on.

1) No.

2) No. I can't imagine people using an app that has auctions that can't be enforced. The element of trust/enforcement is crucial.

Questions for you:

1) Are you talking about a native app? If so, why native?

2) How does this solve a problem that eBay doesn't solve?

1) I am thinking about a web-app for now. 2) eBay's private listings is different. All the users can bid in an eBay auction. In eBay's private listings, just the username is kept confidential. Whereas with my app, only the users invited will be able to bid.

You talked about element of trust/enforcement. The one who is creating the auction is inviting people by their email. So, he will invite only those people who he trusts.

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