Rate our startup: 42goals.com | Hacker News Reader

Rate our startup: 42goals.com

42goals.com

19 pointsalexpak24 comments

It looks quite nice and I've been looking for something similar - though ideally as a native iPhone app.

One thing I'm forever pernickety about: donations != business

It's a nice looking webapp but it takes more than that to make it a business

EDIT: oh, wait, the frontpage only mentions donations but I go to sign up and there's a $5/mo plan. Why isn't that front & center on the front page? It makes it feel like a bait & switch

EDIT #2: Aggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh... It gets worse! Once I've activated my (supposedly) free account I immediately get presented with options to pay for 1, 6 or 12months. Even more bait & switch! Why don't you just man-up, put the price on the front page and give a 30 day trial. Right now I'm not even going to try the app itself - the upsell attempts are worse than GoDaddy!

I agree, perhaps it's misleading and we should fix it. When we have launched, it was a non-profit project, so we have added donations. Recently, we have added some additional features with a premium account.

From your pricing page, what are "Basic Goal Types" and "Advanced Goal Types"? Is that like, "do my laundry" vs. "solve P == NP"? As a visitor, these labels mean nothing to me.

and can you couch the copy on the homepage in terms of benefits rather than features please?

Thanks for the good point, I will have to populate it more.

Ok so my honest opinion is that this, although it can be nice for certain things, will not turn out to be a success. My reasons:

1. The people that like to track everything probably can also use custom spreadsheets, e.g. in Google Docs.

2. Keeping track of your cigarette or food consumption will probably not help you quit smoking or loose weight.

3. There are already competing sites that look more polished and seem to have more features.

4. (For me) the best way to remind myself of something is putting a sticky note on my monitor. :)

Thank you for your honest opinion! Could you give some examples of those web-sites?

Sure, quick Google-search ("goal tracking") for example gives me:

* http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Best-Goal-Tracking-Tools-Online

* http://lifehacker.com/5439026/five-best-goal+tracking-tools

If you want to compete I guess you have to look at the competition and either do something different or do something better.

Thanks for the links. Evernote is a really nice service for keeping notes, but not really for goals tracking. Joesgoals is also nice, but not maintained currently. Excel... well, one can probably do pretty much anything there. And of course, I'm not trying to compete with paper, pen and friends.

I'm not sure why someone downvoted this comment. They said it was their opinion, and personally it mirrors mine. It is quite a nice little web app when you look at the demo, but I cannot imagine that people will pay for it - there are just too many other options available to people.

nice site, good idea. I use todo applications like Done on my iPhone to document and keep track of long term goals and Omnifocus to tick off tasks against projects but this could be slightly different and work well with these tools.

Thumbs up: [+] nice design, clean [+] signup is simple and easy [+] intuative and easy to use - like the keep clicking to change on boolean

Thumbs down: [+] echo the upsell [+] would be nice to have the option of going to the details menu once you add a goal, rather than adding the generic ones and then editing it [+] the roatating screens are nice but they could be larger and the transitions a bit more smooth (bit chucky at the moment at least on my browser)

Future features: [+] definately be handy as a mobile app [+] linking to a todo app or providing that functionality would be great: Don't forget the milk, Omnifocus and Things for the iPhone are my favouries [+] export reports and get them emailed to you [+] email and/or sms in values for the day [+] goal reminders and how much you have left [+] add rewards for yourself for achieving your goals [+] timeframe to goals - i.e. life, 3 year, 2 year, this month etc

Commercials: I wouldn't pay $5 per month for it at the moment. If it was $3-5 one off as an iPhone app and had the todo features or linked to my existing todo app I would buy it.

I think the functionality is great, I especially like the data aggregation options that you provide.

That said, I think the design needs polish. This is nitpicky, but looking at the demo, there's no visual distinction between the time and the stopwatch types. Also, I'd suggest a more web-optimized font, Times New Roman looks, for lack of a better term, bleh

Nice, I've been looking for a goal tracking solution that can spit out graphs for me!

One thing that does bother me about your site... is the "caroussel" image effect for the screenshots. It seems more gimmicky than useful, and is not appealing. At first it looks like a bunch of small screenshots floating about willy-nilly. It just looks out of place.

Your call to action needs to stand out more by using a color that will pop. It currently blends into the rest of the page. Instead of "Register Now" it should say something like "Start Tracking Your Goals".

The image rotator on the frontpage looks really cool, however on my screen(1280x800) it doesn't add any clarity on what the app does. The images are way too small.

This seems to be a very popular thing at the moment. I know of another developer who is currently running something very similar in private beta.

Any chance to take a look at it?

Accessing it from my iPhone and I don't see a link to register. Is that just for the mobile version of the site?

Yes, for now you need to go to the desktop version to register and add goals. Once you've done it, you may continue use it on your iPhone.

Hi, the site is themed pretty well and is attractive but the aim is to manage one's daily goals and events, right ? Wouldn't it be better if the user is reminded of the same on his desktop rather than visiting a web browser every time he needs to check for his lists.

A email notification of the tasks needed to be accomplished would be better. Developing a desktop app for your web app to communicate with the server and notify using the local notification daemon such as libnotify or any thing else would have been good too :) Any ways that was my honest opinion.

All the best

Thanks for the advice! We already have an open API, so that any developer can implement it, while we also plan to develop a desktop app ourselves.

greatwork alexpak. Best of luck.

Was 38, 39, 40 and 41 all taken for something else?

I imagine '42' was picked both for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference and to be somewhat similar to the goal-tracking site 43things.com.

Not sure I get naming the company something so similar to 43things - I initially assumed it was a total knockoff, but the feature sets are actually pretty different.

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