7 Months Into My 2nd Stint as a Startup CEO | Hacker News Reader

7 Months Into My 2nd Stint as a Startup CEO

blog.socialmedian.com

21 pointszen5315 comments

@augustus -- I encourage you to "dig" a little deeper. socialmedian = social news meets the social graph. Very different from Digg, although our roots are from their foundation. What we're trying to do here is personalized news at the topical level -- more about "me" informed by "we" vs. just a popularity contest. Poke around and would love your feedback.

You are currently forcing people to create an account to see anything besides the Digg-like front page. I recommend you let people explore around before forcing them to sign in. If you really do have something that's different than Digg, you have to let potential users see it.

Yes, we agree. We are working to get rid of all the registration requirements. It was just a holdover from our alpha.

If anyone outside of the tech world came to your site they would have no idea what it is.

Social news network is meaningless to a surprising amount of people, which will probably make it very hard to market.

Also, the constant user registration pop-ups kills your sites usability, and I consider myself an early adopter.

Agree on all fronts. Right now it is an early adopter product with crappy registration requirements. And that's the founder writing this.

Wow. $40K/month burn? 11 developers? That's a tight budget?

with 12 people $40k/month total burn is like paying each person around $30k/year annual salary when you factor in other expenses like equipment, telecom, travel, etc. So yeah, that's pretty tight.

It's not the $40K that's surprising, it's the 11 developers. I'd have guessed 3-4 (and consequently a lot lower burn).

Burning over a quarter of a million in 7 months on a web app sounds like a lot these days, but I'm not out there doing it, so what do I know.

I think that because part of his team being in India, he can keep expenses low.

I love his execution advice and I have bookmarked it.

The only problem is the site is no different than digg.

There certainly are a lot of digg clones nowadays. I wonder if it will be like search where everyone thinks it's a crowded market for a solved problem and then someone with an actually intelligent algorithm comes along and mops up.

I think it's more than an algorithm problem: initially with a site like that, it's all about getting more people, because without them, the site is worth nothing. Then, all of a sudden, poof, you succeed, but you get a bunch of flaming morons, and the quality goes down the tubes. Maybe you're in a position to make some money, but I wouldn't consider something like reddit or digg an unqualified 'success' in terms of making the world a better place.

I was thinking the same thing-- the article made me feel a bit guilty for not liking SocialMedian when I alpha-tested it.

@Michael -- give it another whirl. We've gone a lot past the initial alpha features. Our repeat usage is very high right now -- about 30% of users returning daily.

I'll do that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com