Lean Voyeurism: 8 guys hacking a Startup in 3 Weeks leave Kimono wide open

8 guys, voyeurism and wide open kimono (for three whole weeks, aieee!) add up to about the most unappetizing blog/product/startup pitch I've read the headline of in a while.

I appreciate the openness, but I would be careful about saying "Our Competition Sucks" when your video mostly highlights good features of your competitors.

Plus saying, "they suck and we won't" isn't the most convincing argument to sign up.

I like the concept and the blog is great. For those without experience in a small start-up environment, it's facinating to see this stuff happen in real time on a hyper-compressed schedule.

A Qwest sales rep I used to deal with would always say "Ask me anything, my Kimono is wide open" at least once every time I talked to him.

It was creepy.

Whether it's fair or not, I got the impression that Top10Reviews and their ilk were pay-to-play affairs. Their "site search" is really a Google web search so it's hard to find reviews. The product links all seem to be affiliate links, so they are making money off referrals. Is it possible that their recommendation has something to do with it? Would they review a product where they couldn't be an affiliate?

I agree the current options out there for this aren't very good. I coded up a prototype for this about a year ago:

http://buyersvote.com/categories/the-best-email-newsletter-c...

My biggest challenge: critical mass.

My hope was that with some seeded pages it would start to rank for long tail keywords, and it would grow organically from there. This largely hasn't happened unfortunately.

I think starting in one niche (ala Facebook), or being prepared to slog through several years of negative cash flow and paid reviews to gain traction (TripAdvisor), or having a giant blog following (StackOverflow) could be what's needed to get critical mass solved.

It's an interesting idea to to put something out in 3 weeks. I see a lot of good projects die before they even start because teams are not focused on executing. Is focusing on execution a good thing or is it best to methodically plan and analyze?

I'd love to see this take off. The number of SaaS products is only getting bigger and it's hard enough already to pick the best one for what you need. Good luck!

So what happens after 3 weeks?

My comment is only going to complain about your headline:

Your use of "hacking" is confusing and possibly incorrect. AFAIK when "hack" is transitive it usually means violating, exploiting, or modifying an existing system, which it doesn't sound like you have yet.

"hacking together a startup" would probably be more clear, meaning that you're making it quickly out of technology without regard to elegance (for now).

"hacking on a startup" might be best, meaning that you're playfully modifying or exploiting (but not violating) the startup, but it still semi-implies that it's a pre-existing system. This also doesn't work with "in 3 weeks", so you'd have to change it to "for 3 weeks" or maybe say "hacking on a 3-week startup".

While I'm at it, the "leave kimono wide open" thing isn't really clear. It sounds like "some guys put together their startup too carelessly and got pwned."