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Comment by shafqat | Hacker News Reader

I'm not in your target market, so take what I say with a grain of salt. It seems like you're trying to do too much in one go. You should try to keep the main thing, the main thing. You said it was a to help developers sell/license their product. I think that is a fantastic tool and great market.

But your software seems to do a bit of everything. Why does it have to do project management, keep track of contacts and all sorts of other stuff. Why cant you just make it help track sales and licenses etc. That would be a compelling product, but right now there seems to be too much. So much that I just got overloaded and left the page. If you had two or three targeted tabs, I would have been a lot more interested.

Either way, great start and good luck!!

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You're right, absolutely right. I know that there are too many features, but I built this thing first and foremost for myself. And I've always wanted the featureset that is now added to the web app, because it's really helpful for selling my own software. I added those features, not because I thought someone would like them, but because I wanted them for myself.

What feature do you think could be cut out? Maybe an outside perspective will make me see it differently.

I don't really want to give you an opinion that could screw up your product! As mentioned, I am not in your target market so that question is probably better directed at someone who is.

IMO, just stick to the sales/licensing/tracking.

But if you built the featureset because they are all important to you as a user, than maybe you're on to something.

I would focus just on the mailing list and build that feature into a full product for developers (both desktop and web).

Current mailers are too complicated and generally don't have any APIs for instance to tie my customer db to a mailing list.

That's a pretty bad idea, unless you want to be an ESP. deliverability becomes a challenge when you start sending our massive quantities of email -- you need to deal with ISPs of all kinds, constantly changing legislation and complaints. one esp (my previous employer) does offer an API to tie your customer db to a mailing list (including doing the mail merge and such) -- verticalresponse.com

I would second the "this has a lot of features for a first cut" sentiment. On the other hand, if you've already written them, the cost isn't too high as long as your most impressive feature is in front.

As for deployment...you can get a perfectly serviceable dedicated host for $100 a month. Buy it, and start slow launching your service. You don't need to wait for help.

If you want to turn this into a startup, you should think about looking for a cofounder (and giving them 50% equity).

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