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Show HN: Check if my startup ideas have legs

provetheywantit.com

22 pointsrepartix43 comments

I like the concept but please correct me if I'm mistaken that this is essentially a Kickstarter approach of validating a product concept but backers are putting in more skin in the game than the one who came up with the idea? I think it's important to validate an idea and people's willingness to pay but that is based on trust/brand/distribution/credibility as well. Instead of a pay option, it might be more interesting to harvest emails for early access or updates.

Yeah, pretty much. It's a way to see which ideas are good, not which founders would be best to build them. Ideas probably pick founders more than founders pick ideas. People have inclinations that make them best suited for only the ideas they'd be great at.

Imagine 10 earnest, formidable, unknown founders in one end and 10 bad-looking, good, unknown ideas on the other end. It'd be great if they could find each other.

Paying is a stronger signal than entering an email. Harvesting emails might work but it'd need some proof-of-work mechanism to vet people really are interested.

What Kickstarter doesn't provide is a way for backers to show things they want built that no-one stepped up to build yet. That's a bigger set. It's all of the ideas that are left!

There's a great opportunity to use this site as a jumping off point for distribution. Harvest emails/like on social/transact for one-time/repeat/subscription/recommend to friends/etc, all of which is available via various existing vendor APIs.

Backers who paid can now submit their email to get updates.

Backers on Kickstarter could also be chipping in more money than the person with the idea. Ks do have an optional spreadsheet that campaigns can fill in to check if money will cover their costs, with the incentive that it can potentially help their campaign get shown more prominently, and potential backers get shown a pie chart that is supposedly helpful. People on ks don't seem to give the amount of time or thought into decisions as you'd expect of an angel or VC investor though, so I'm not sure how worth it that extra aggro really is

Ha just posted a very similar comment. There is a reason kickstarter has created a whole industry of videographers and kickstarter designers.

You want people to put money towards a vague idea, just to see if it's a good idea? If you don't have a good idea and skin in the game, what on earth makes you think you'll be able to create something? I don't get it.

- You just described VCs.

- I don't think I'll be able to create something. I think someone else will be able to.

- Product > idea. A builder who describes a working product has skin in the game, and backers see they're backing something more tangible than an idea.

- You bring up a good point. A better angle might be "ask people to pay to fund the next feature in your project". Fund $1000 at a time.

Hello HN, I'm bad at picking startup ideas. I built a lot of stuff no one used. So I thought I'd build a site where people can pay for an idea before it's built.

You don't need to create some fancy landing page or something. Just describe the idea.

If people pay before an idea gets built, it's probably a big positive sign. It means the idea is big enough of a pain point. If not, this website will be a graveyard of ideas that didn't work.

If this doesn't work I'll take it down in a week.

I would prefer something like this, but for specific niches. For example I'd love something like this to upload my video game trailer too, but I don't think showcasing the game I'm building is really all that well served by your current format.

I can imagine similar examples for music

You can add HTML in the description field.

I'll check on adding channels. Thanks!

Getting an internal server error, have you taken it down or are you having problems?

From experience I know that user research/validation is one of the most important steps in building a viable project, but also that it is really difficult to do because your methods have to be tailored to different groups of people. That's where I think this might need improvement - it simplifies idea selection to "throw your idea out there, and maybe somebody will pay to see it happen." Quite a few ideas on there but I haven't seen anybody pay.

In reality, you will have to go through literally hundreds of ideas and talk to many, many people to even get your idea to the start line. Then, you can start charging and see if people are willing to pay. To be honest, I feel like this bring-to-market test, whether that's a Kickstarter or a deployment of a SaaS product is the most efficient way to test your idea out.

There are no shortcuts in user research. This website might be better off pivoting to idea aggregator (possibly with gamification/in-game money) to better simulate the market test. People "pay" for a small MVP experiment and contribute in a sort of crowdsourced idea selection and startup formation process.

Thanks. I reframed the messaging to be about pay for small experiments. Let's see how it does now.

Better to remove javascript if you allow HTML : https://provetheywantit.com/project?public_token=pub_ozjXfpA...

How long are you waiting to show $$ as "supporting" an idea?

I've put in a bit, and it's been https://live.blockcypher.com/ltc/tx/bbed3a666b1399cb1a8b116b... awhile now and still not showing up.

It checks every ~5 minutes. Ouch this looks like a bug. Looking into it.

edit: I think the amount you put in is less than the amount requested. You put in 0.01560016 LTC ($3.17 at $203 per LTC) and the project requested 0.0244 LTC ($5).

I just copied the amount of LTC requested on the page and didn't do any USD conversions (my local currency is not USD). If fees and such were taken, or something, I have no idea, but that sounds like what happened.

Found a bug w/ trying to insert a link in my description.

Ended up creating a project here: https://provetheywantit.com/project?public_token=pub_XAWtPgA...

You have to put the link with HTML. Try

   <a href="theurl">the app name</a>

Wow... this is actually a really cool idea. Just gave it a shot: https://provetheywantit.com/project?public_token=pub_eNTRarZ...

Neat idea. Like a very slimmed down Kickstarter. There's probably some minimum amount of style/content to convince me the person pitching the idea is the one I want to build it. I guess the description field gives them a half of a chance to do that :D

They can add HTML in the description field.

Supporting HTML in the description makes XSS more likely:

https://provetheywantit.com/project?public_token=pub_KSUPBwl...

Does XSS in the description hurt? There's nothing to steal from the /project page and it's not displayed in /admin.

Do you really want someone to inject some js that says "click here to receive notifications about this project" that actually sends them spam notifications?

Fixed, thanks! Also urls get hyperlinked now.

(https://provetheywantit.com/project?public_token=pub_GTjEJsX...) - giving it a dhot

Tried to create a project, but I literally have no idea how to send the money. There's a QR code but my phone says "no usable data" (iPhone). If there were a simple LTC address, it would be pretty simple.

I added the address in both /admin and /project. Thanks!

It might also be worth putting a link to the home page somewhere when viewing a project.

It's an interesting idea, but it's going to be hard to prove the model when the only payment accepted seems to be Litecoin, which severely limits the audience that can "vote" to prove the concept.

Liked this one! Can't wait to see it getting filled with awesome ideas from which I can pick one to become a billionaire ;)

If I am paying money, I need to get something back. 1% Equity for $1000? :)

Or may be just refund the money back after 30 days?

You do get something back, you prove the idea has legs. Someone might go build it. It might help to give something more to backers but it seemed too much to work on for the MVP. I mean, if this idea gets 0 users (again) there's no point in adding more stuff to it.

On refunds there are two options. The builder can either accept the $1000 or refund them.

I don't know what would work. The reason I put a hard-cap on $1000 is to not get in legal trouble during this launch. Getting more than $1000 might make a service classified as an MSB (money services business). For the same reason, I'm thinking of refunding all the money back after 30 days, and not letting the builder keep any of the money.

This got me thinking. If 100 people all pony up $1000, then you've got $100,000 of funding and no equity (as the founder). But if we stretch this idea - say $1000 buys equity in the startup equal to 49% / (total number of backers). The founder still keeps control and now has no cap on funding. I write this with almost zero knowledge of equity financing of startups, and vc's, etc... Just spit-ballin' here!

Hm...this is worth trying. To get it to work, at this stage practically, the website would have to explain to users that it's basically a promise by the creator. The site could draft documents and give people some sort of equity certificate or what not.

But since I have no clue how this works legally, and really have no users, I can't go out talking to lawyers about some idea that doesn't have legs. I'll probably take the site offline in a week if posting on Reddit doesn't get users.

So I just tried this for TeaRounder (my solo project I've been working on in spare time for a while). I did an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign for it a few months ago, so I can compare them from a project founder view.

Positives: -It was 20-30 times quicker to upload to ptwi, significantly less daunting and was hassle free. I literally did this in five to ten minutes, immediately after seeing this thread. Ks felt like an ordeal, and took the best part of a week to get set up, including multiple drafts, setting up screenshots just to fit their layout, filling out a spreadsheet that wasn't really aimed at the kind of project I had - not to mention their system for verifying payment details and getting checked for fit with their rules (they tell you to allow a certain amount of business days for someone to check it, and don't really make it clear that that's only done if they're automatic system flags something up)

- your website name makes my intentions more clear. With Kickstarter there's often this impression people have, that the campaign is the main or only source of funding for a project, which can be downright harmful to projects. I remember a game console Kickstarter getting lots of flack for asking for an amount that people thought wouldn't be enough to make it work. When you only need a little bit or nothing at all, it's not helpful to have to inflate the amount you're asking for, on an all or nothing form of funding. (To me now, crowdfunding is basically a "vague acquaintances and people in the same online communities as me" round)

Negatives: 1)I couldn't change the amount I'm asking for in total. It might be because I'm on mobile, but even with zooming in, it didn't seem like that was even an input box. $1000 is way more than I need to prove that it's worth continuing on that route. I'd be happier doing $200 but on just a few days of the ad being live, since the next stage is only really a $5 per year thing. (Edit: 5$ per year is roughly what I'd want to charge each user for a basic level subscription)

2) the message about paying $10 to show I'm not a spammer. That is shown once the page is live and it's rather confusing. I don't know your brand and in my experience in the UK most companies that check if you're real by taking money and then refunding do £1, so being asked for $10 on that basis makes me nervous. Makes me question why there wasn't a captcha, or email verification, or restriction to one upload. It took me writing this up to realise posting projects to ptwi is anonymous. That also explains using cryptocurrency and having to save a specific link to administer the page. Feels really odd but kind of cool.

3) I've never used any cryptocurrency before, and I also wouldn't want to have to explain how to use it to people I share the link with. Ideally I should be able to just send the link to people with a short warm intro and leave them to it

Here's the shareable page that I got:

https://provetheywantit.com/project?public_token=pub_EDJsmGx...

Thank you so, sooo much for writing this illuminating feedback.

1) I just made the amount configurable. I had this feature implemented but disabled, because I didn't want people to stop to decide how much to ask for. One less thing to think about. That's how uploading to ptwi is 20-30 times quicker than Ks.

2) What would you suggest to improve this? Similar to (1) I didn't want people stopping to think about spam when creating the project. I had a version where the qrcode was in /prove and I didn't like the user flow. I also disliked it visually. I made three changes now that might help. Reduced the amount to $5 (I hope it's not too low), explained posting projects is anonymous and how it fights spam, and explained in /prove that making a project public will need to pay to prove the project isn't spam.

3) Maybe /project should include a link to a page that explains what cryptocurrency is and what money is. I'll add this.

Glad to help!

1) ooh cool! I think simply having that default prepopulated at $1000 goes a long way to making decision quick- that value immediately gets me deciding if I need to go higher, lower or the same.

2) those changes sound like they'll really help. How about also having a badge on the public pages to show a project has done that step, and saying that on the admin page as a reason to do it as soon as possible.

3) maybe also a link to set up a wallet. I realise this is extra development and payment fees, but enabling regular card transactions would be great - maybe only have it for some projects where anonymity isn't useful. PayPal (or something similar) would be a good compromise.

2) Added the badge, thanks!

3) Added a link to setup a wallet and explained that users can buy LTC with a credit card. I don't know about regular card transactions. It doesn't compromise the creator's anonymity but affects the backer's anonymity. I'm not excited about hooking into Stripe.

Additionally:

In theory I could use this to a/b test completely different paths for a project to take, or a selection of different project ideas. It's so simple to upload, and I can do this without having a video demo. You might even be able to just take $10 as a flat upfront fee per listing once you've proven that good ideas get funding there.

You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question and everyone will lie to you at least a little.

Talking to customers is one of the foundational part of building something useful.

Two books every aspiring startup founder should read.

> https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-...

> https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Humans-Success-understanding-...

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