Tell HN: Frustrated and feeling pretty useless at this point.

Re-brand. Create a few bitmaps, logos and such, get yourself a new name, fix your marketing and distribution problem (making the app only "work" for 5 major cities or something) and re-launch. If you think the idea has traction, fix the problem and go forward. If not, don't. Sounds like you made one mistake that's affecting the brand -- not that you made one of the thousands of other mistakes. Count yourself lucky.

With startups, it's never over. That's a good thing and a bad thing! It's bad because you never really know when to quit, and there's always something else to do. It's good because there's always another chance.

Also, I've been thinking about this "solve your own problem" and "build the dream" kind of thinking for a while. I used to be a BIG supporter of this, but I'm not so sure any more. If you look at good investors, they have learned to separate what makes them excited from what the right investing decision is. I think startup founders should be a little more like this: sitting back dispassionately determining where to invest their time and energy. This is probably much more practical than trying to find the idea that makes them the most excited. Build the right thing, the right way, get traction -- you'll get excited. Trust me. Build something that turns you on, you could be in for a LONG slog of self-abuse. Startups are hard enough as it is -- for me, at least, tying my emotional self-worth closely into all that work is a really bad thing to do.

Odds are you will fail. Any amount of fanciful thinking is not going to change that. So, when it happens, it shouldn't be the end of the world. Instead, you should be emotionally in a position where you go, "Interesting! These 7 things worked. These 2 did not. What can I take from this and move forward? New idea? Change brands? Pivot? Etc." Being wrapped up in chasing "the one" only makes this kind of self-analysis extraordinarily more difficult. At least it does for me.

I agree with the Major cities approach. You need to think about cities where a lot of people visit/move to and want to meet new people. The market is certainly there, as my girlfriend and I use meetup.com for exactly this reason in Tokyo.

Sidenote: I wanted try the app out but couldn't find it in the Australian or Japanese stores. Have you limited it to US only? If so that seems crazy to me. So what if there are no other users in the area?, improve the feedback/take that opportunity to get them to spread the word.

I think that's one of their biggest challenges, people are using meetup for this sort of thing. Another thing to keep in mind is 37signals encourage people not to quit there jobs until they have a hit. A lot of people forget that. Their motto is risk adverse, slow and calculated way of doing business. If you read their popular profitable and proud series, majority of the entrepreneur all seem to have work on their startups as a side project until they got traction.

I agree too. Target all your marketing efforts on these cities. Don't even bother about tech news. If it gets popular Techcrunch will want to interview you. Buy ads in the local area, organise events and give out flyers in the city centre.

One company that has done a good job of this is Lovestruck in London. They are a dating site, which isn't really my thing, but in terms of getting their brand known they can't really do much better. They have adverts all over the tube, give out flyers at major transport interchanges, and even organise regular free events (which they need to advertise more IMO).

Great insight on founders needing to think more like investors. Something that may help in thinking this way is: If you had $100,000 to invest in an idea (and would not be personally involved beyond that), would you do it, or is there another idea with a better risk / reward profile? Use that as your emotional anchor while you factor in your excitement for the idea.

You're right about traction - it can get you excited even if you're in a mudane industry. That's much better than doing something "cool" that never gets off the ground.

Not sure if I agree with the rebrand idea. You don't want to lose whatever awareness you worked hard for by changing the name and logo again.

Move forward. Get localized and make it work in one city first, then move to the next city.

One could do both: Spin off some experimental new brands and try to rehab the existing brand.

The codebase is there. The infrastructure is there. The company has exercised the whole stack from prototyping through to delivery and maintenance. New brands or brand variants aren't cheap, but they might be a lot cheaper than starting over.

These folks can, in theory and provided it fits within the limits of human endurance, build a dozen variants on the idea. They can release the app that specializes in three major cities and the app that is targeted specifically at golfers looking for golf buddies and the app that's targeted at meetups among beer aficionados and throw more marketing spaghetti at the wall for the original app.

(Though obviously I have no idea if any of these things will yield profits or not.)

I like your ideas, but you're not accounting for time and energy costs. And it also seems like they don't have much motivation left in the tank.

This is true. But those of us in the comfy armchair can only throw out the ideas. It's up to the players on the field to decide which are useful.

I would hardly second-guess them whatever they chose to do.

Just make the damn app FREE for a little while on iTunes. A large userbase is obviously half of your product- classic social networking problem, the service is only good if other people use it- so that will help you establish the userbase you need.

Furthermore, make it free and issue a huge marketing push to get people to download the app. This is the hard part as the programming part was deterministic and easy. People are strange.

I agree with the above points, and have one more of my own. Try to gather events and stuff from third party services, so if no one is around, you still have 'something' to show your users. Edit: and you don't post popular events on your twitter account? you're not using twitter to it's full potential! (look at what stackexchange does with its many sites and it's twitter account).

Okay. Great idea. Very bad execution. I'm not an expert, but let me explain

1. Your landing page is terrible. "Create. Connect. Enjoy". Thank you. I closed the page. This makes no sense for me. Fix that. I'm interested in the App, because I don't have friends and I'm working odd hours. But "Create. Connect. Enjoy"?

2. You should have expected this. You should have known that before. Your users are dispersed across the earth and you are looking for 75Miles?

3. So you gave up? Seriously, after all the development and a proof of a good idea, just give up?

Let me tell you few things:

1. People in this situation (forever-alone types) are desperate for a solution.

2. Adsense and Facebook can do Geotargetting for you. You can target your audience with keywords (and may be some mix AI/ML to find the right people). If Facebook can let you select singles, you are done (not sure, but it would be amazing).

3. Don't spend advertising money on 30 days. Spend it on few hours. Make the app work for a single 75Miles on earth and try to get at least 10 or 15 (fairly enough). Start growing from there. Do research on the best location on earth you can boom from, and may be move their and try to connect as many people.

4. I'm interested to discuss or work on this. Send me an email or add me on Skype ;)

Put a photo of a smiling girl/guy in the background. Isn't that the problem you're trying to solve?

Good advice. I had never been to the landing page till just now. I could not tell, at a glance and a quick read, what Grooovy is.

That's death. The lowest common denominator user needs to be able to see what this does right away.

+1 on that. "Create" is the first thing you see, and what the hell does the app have to do with creation? The copy seems too focused on the tech side of things: "No admins. No forms. No approvals" - who cares? I'm not comparing other apps to yours.

Creating a social app in the valley is a long shot, particularly one with no business model. Don't take this personally, Twitter doesn't have a business model.

You're also stuck with the chicken egg problem which is hard to solve: You have no users so you're not useful. I'm familiar with how tough the geo chicken-egg problem is since I built a foursquare app 4 years before foursquare came along and it also didn't fly because of the wide distribution of users. It's still online here: http://geojoey.com/

My advice to you is to walk away and chalk it up to a learning experience. Then go and build a paid application that solves a problem people have and that isn't being solved by anyone else. Make sure the problem you're solving is worth money to users, that they have money to spend and that they're the type of people who spend it. Usually this means the people who use your app get some kind of direct or indirect ROI from using it. Also try to do it in a space that is under exploited. The app store is massively crowded and very noisy.

Don't write a social app. Don't make it free. Don't ever plan to get funding. Don't give away shares in your business to anyone. Don't feel compelled to take on a co-founder or partner. Don't use bleeding edge tech for your business. Don't bother with incubators. Don't surround yourself with other entrepreneurs all day long. Don't think you need constant input from advisors or mentors. Do your own thing, be an individual, create real value. Find a problem that you yourself have and that you would be prepared to pay for and don't accidentally persuade yourself that you have a fictitious problem - find a real one that no one else is solving that that is costing you money until it is solved.

Money talks. Build an app that makes cash and it will change your life. Sitting on a balcony drinking a mochito at 5pm as your settlement email arrives telling you you've settled $2k today because people paid for software you wrote is a feeling few developers experience in their lifetimes and there's nothing like it.

Great advice.

"Then go and build a paid application that solves a problem people have and that isn't being solved by anyone else."

Sometimes that's not always the best approach. If no one else is solving it, it may be that the people with the problem won't pay, hence no providers. If there's solutions out there, it does validate a market/problem/idea.

The trap I see some people fall in to is what you just advised - trying to come up with something "totally new/unique", when often there's no demand. And when they see demand for X, they say "oh, XYZ is already solving that". The trick is determining how well they're solving it, finding customers they won't/can't serve, and going after that.

But yeah, don't make a social app, don't give away free stuff, etc - all your "don't"s - great list. And yeah, making money is a good feeling. It also gives you a much stronger position to explore new ideas from, rather than from a position of "oh crap there's only 4 boxes of macaroni left and I'm late on my rent".

EDIT: the 'great advice' really was meant to be 'great advice', not sarcastically spoken. I think pretty much everything in that post was great, except for the one line I called out. :)

There's so much wisdom condensed in this comment. That's the best advice I've ever read on creating startups.

Why does it have to be a problem no one else is solving? Of course competing with an existing service is hard, but sometimes thinking of something no one else is doing is harder. In many cases, especially in software, the competition is not as far ahead as you might think. In many more cases, their marketing is not that far reaching. And if there's one thing we can learn from this whole ordeal is that marketing is key.

Regarding the failure of this launch, this should not have come as a surprise, the marketing solution to this should've been in your business plan from day one. And maybe, if you _would_ have surrounded yourself with founders maybe one of them had actually paid attention to the stories at HN and warned you about the launching deficiencies in your plan. I think it's too early to stop now, even as it feels you've lost your only chance. You build a product people actually want and you've only tried launching it once thus far.

iPhone was not solving out something that was not solved by someone else. So it's not always to make something unique.

You have the classic chicken-egg social networking problem. To get users, you need users. So how do you get users?

Actually you don't need users to start, you just need good source of events that users might be interested in. You can make the app more functional by including other sources, such as the Meetup API:

http://www.meetup.com/meetup_api/

Then, even if no one's posted through your app itself, they can find things to do.

This is the most interesting "Tell HN" I've seen in a while because it touches on many issues.

(1) A lot of us are attracted to SEO, app stores, and free and freemium business models because we don't want to do marketing. It's clear that you need to work hard at marketing if you're trying to sell an enterprise product that costs $10,000/seat/year, but people forget that a "free" website supported by advertising or a $5.99 app needs just us much work (and sometimes expense)

(2) For a long time I've been cynical about "hyperlocal" because it usually seems to mean "San Francisco and Brooklyn". Put any thought of those two markets out of your mind, because (a) you've got tough competition from VC-backed companies and (b) people who really think will think you're just another sheep. You should target some second-tier market, say Denver or Boston or Chicago or Washington, DC. San Diego is probably OK.

(3) As for geotargeting, there is a wide range of "old school" marketing channels that can be geotargeted. These include advertising on local cable TV, weekly newspapers, radio as well as fliers, stickers, and the like. You can also buy geotargeted ads on platforms like Facebook and Google.

(4) To saturate a target market takes more effort and/or money that most people want to spend. If you can't afford to hit a second-tier market, go for a third or fourth tier market. I know of people in Ithaca NY that have been blanketing the downtown area with lawn signs and fliers to promote a new site -- this is a small enough market that a person can put up 500 fliers on bulletin boards on foot on a weekend.

(5) To drive your marketing campaign you may need to rustle up some cash. Find a way to do it.

(6) Success in a target market can lead to you rustling up more cash for over markets, getting publicity, etc.

(7) 75 miles seems like a really long distance to me to hang out with people I don't know unless I share some kind of exceptionally strong interest with them.

Philly would be good, we have a ton of universities here.

There is a lot of competition in this space[1], and as someone who has a side project that is in this space I feel like I can give you some advice. (I should really write a general blog post because I seem to be giving this advice frequently)

I can't help much with the mental aspect. My service started out very similarly, the premise was someone that had some free time and wanted to find a tennis partner, a concert buddy, someone to practice their french etc.

I "launched", and the immediate feedback was basically 1) There isn't anything there, so I'm not compelled to post anything. 2) I don't really want to meet strangers on the internet.

You've run into 1) and you say your beta users didn't have the same feelings as 2). I'm worried you selected the wrong beta users, and you didn't catch this problem early enough.

I "pivoted" by scrapping the self post idea, and becoming an aggregator. I aggregate events from several social/local event services[2], and now that people are using it, I'm getting feedback that they'd like to be able to add their own events!

To summarize a lot of great feedback already, I think you should launch in a few metro areas and seed the events with events from other services. I'd also study the competition (and there is plenty of it, which is a good thing) to see what works, what doesn't, what sorts of features are expected for applications like this, etc. I'd also consider kicking the native apps and going html5. All the features you need for a social/local/mobile app are built into browsers, so why not develop once and make everyone happy?

[1] Swerve on ios, upout.com, GatheringPoint, brom.ly, Everyblock, my own service impromptudo.com

[2] meetup, eventbrite, active.com, yahoo! etc

Launching an app in the App Store is hard. And the App Store is an incredibly stressful environment because essentially you only get 2 weeks to settle into a rank that will be the basis of your success. If you fuck it up, you're pretty much done because discovery on the app store is broken.

I work for a social game company that has invested orders of magnitude more time and money into figuring out the best route to launch an app, and even they recognize that even after all their analysis and beta-testing, they too can fail. But they have the most disciplined process to give them the best shot at winning. I'll offer a few pieces of advice from seeing their launch process:

1) Beta test internally until the app is "good enough" for launch. Bugs are ok. Put in monetization features immediately and test.

2a) Come up with a target rank you want to achieve (both safe and stretch) and figure out how you need to get there. For example, if your goal is to get into the top 10 free games, you need to have around 1.5 million downloads a month. To get into the top 25, you need about 1 million. Understanding these targets helps hone your strategy.

2b) You can't afford to not do some initial projections in your industry. For a free-to-play game as an example, DAU and churn and Lifetime Value are important metrics. You need to setup some initial benchmarks for these metrics, so you can gauge if you're being "successful" in your launch.

3) Don't launch in the U.S initially. As you've found out, you only get one chance, and the U.S is a huge market to fuck up. One great thing about the App Store is that it has geo-targeting built into its distribution, so launch in a much smaller market that might validate your idea. We chose New Zealand, because its a large enough market to beta-test an idea, but "Whatever Happens in New Zealand Stays In New Zealand" as our marketing director put it.

4) If you fuck up a beta-tested market, don't worry, theres about 25 others that you can use before launching in the "mainstream" markets.

5) You will have to pour money into ads, but you only have to do it for 2 weeks because ranking in the App Store is determined by velocity of downloads. So as soon as you launch, target with any ad-system you can get your hands on from Admob, InMobi, Facebook, Google, TapJoy, whatever. This will cost you lots of money, but this is what it takes to succeed. There is simply too much competition in the App Store.

Great advice on targeting smaller markets first.

Totally agree with the market comment.

You're selling a product that needs to leverage the network effect, otherwise it's useless. Marketing this product in a geographically sparse environment such as the USA means you need more users before you hit the "tipping point", at which it becomes useful.

Consider Facebook: it started as a Harvard project. That meant that it could become useful with a user-base measured in hundreds, as the population was densely packed.

In contrast, your product had a user-base of 3000, in a population of 300,000,000. That works out as 0.001%. I'm not a statistician, but the maths would show that the likelihood of a particular person knowing another user nearby is very low.

I'm not saying your business is a failure, and it can still be salvaged if you have the will, but you should definitely look at this as a learning exercise just as you did with your first startup.

I wish you luck in whatever it is you choose to do.

Lots of good advice from others here. The point is reiterated that you need users to be useful--but that's not exactly the case. What you need is data, more specifically information on someone nearby your User who wants to meet up.

So searching your local existing user-base for nearby other users is the easiest way, and if you limit yourself to that, the only way. But since you really just need other people's information, you can just steal that information. Monitor places like meetup.com, public tweets, public facebook posts, craigslist, etc. Direct your Users to the results. Possibly solicit other people on behalf of the User. (There are a lot of "Anyone at Hotel X want to grab a coffee?" posts at conventions, for instance, often with hashtags you can set followup monitors on.) Sign up with the top competitor and route some queries through their network.

> During our last startup, we sacrificed all the time we had with friends, family, and ignored our relationships for the most part.

So you're not doing this any more, right? Good. Especially for your case, you should constantly be thinking about how you meet other people and how you signal your desire to meet other people, strangers or not, and work on figuring out how to assimilate the data and the action into your app.

Yep that is what I was thinking, integrate with some data streams to get the data. Use those providers to solicit new users by making your app work with the workflow of those applications. The twitter idea is a perfect example. Foursquare would be another one, pick up checkin data, use it to find people that may be interested in meeting.

I had an app idea a few years ago, a few months before the 2008 election, that I never got around to developing, that would fit right in with what you have now, and the time is soon going to be right for it. I'm not going to ever get around to this one, so feel free to take it if it would enhance your app.

The idea was to provide an app that would schedule people to meet up over coffee or lunch, but with the purpose of having an interesting debate or discussion, so the app would offer a list of debate topics and you could say which side you were interested in taking, and it would match you up with someone who wanted the other side.

Topics could include things like: Republican_X vs. Republican_Y, Republican_X vs. Obama, vim vs. emacs, pro-life vs. pro-choice, Edward vs. Jacob, Newton vs. Leibniz, Python vs. Ruby, Protestant vs. Catholic, Should Marijuana be Legalized?, Legalize Gay Marriage or not?, controversial state or local ballot issues and initiatives, and so on.

It sure looks like you've been through quite a bit and, at the very least, deserve some brutally honest feedback from this community.

Many may not agree with me and this may not make you feel much better, but after reading your experience, quite a few thoughts came to my mind. In no particular order:

I kinda knew it was going to happen

What? That's a horrible attitude and probably a self-fulfilling prophesy. I know of many cases (mine included) where everything was "perfect", world-changing idea, solid team, great skill, intense passion, practically a perfect alignment of the stars, and it still failed. Software is hard! Startups are harder! You will probably fail anyway, so if you attitude isn't 100%, then you should save yourselves and everyone else a lot of trouble and not even bother.

truly believed that my current startup had potential to grow

See my remarks above. You may have been right about your startup's potential and still failed. This is normal!

I lost the one chance I had

This is ridiculous so just get it out of your head. We all get many chances. Many successful entrepreneurs failed (several times) before they succeeded.

Given that we didn't have any programming or design experience

Then I'm not surprised you failed. Those of us with lots of experience, myself included, are constantly encouraging those with little or no experience to pursue building virtual stuff. It's a wonderful avocation with great opportunity for career satisfaction. But please don't mistake encouragement for approval. You will have to pay your dues first. Sure, it's much easier to come up to speed quickly now than it used to be, but you still have to get something under your belt before you can build good stuff. Like I said earlier, it's tough enough for the best of us to succeed with a startup; by definition, it's tougher for you.

One of the startup advice that I hear most often is to create a product that solves a problem of your own (37signals) because there's bound to be people like you who have the same problem.

There's no guarantee of that. Worse, lots of others may be thinking the same thing, so we end up with lots of teams building the same useless thing that they all want but no one else does. Or others may want, but not badly enough to pay. It's interesting advice that has been effective for some people, but frankly, I've never liked it. As a natural outlier, I would never build something that I want. For me, that's just a recipe for failure. I'd much rather pound the pavement and find out what others want and are willing to pay for.

Please take this advice, like all advice on Hacker News, 37 Signals, or anywhere else with a grain of salt. Our industry is still in its infancy so there are few rules yet, just lots of guidelines. One of the best skills you can have now is to be able to distinguinguish between which advice is good or bad for you.

we sacrificed all the time we had with friends, family, and ignored our relationships for the most part

First of all, that's a bad attitude. Life is a zero-sum game, so by definition, you can't have it all. Using the word "sacrificed" to describe the thing you choose not to have is problematic. You chose A and didn't choose B. Fine. But you sacrificed nothing. In fact, you're probably way ahead. You learned stuff that most others never do, and the people who really matter are still there. By definition, you can't possibly lose real friends by living your life the way you choose. Anyone you lost was never really a friend in the first place.

It was miserable and lonely

Then you're in the wrong business. I spend 90% of my time alone with my computer and I love it! I have figured out how to balance work and life, but make no mistake about it, if you choose to be a programmer, and especially if you choose to start a startup, you will be alone with your ones a zeros a lot. If that doesn't absolutely turn you on, then maybe you should consider doing something else.

still dreaming of get rich quick schemes

Fuck. That. Shit.

If you're doing this to get rich, then please just stop and go do something else. Law school, medical school, Wall Street, selling ebooks, whatever.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but in order to succeed with software (and software startups), you must focus on many more things before money. First, you must absolutely love what you do. If you don't, then you will end up writing posts like yours. Then you must have an undying determination to build that which must be built (according to you). Anything less is a sure recipe for failure.

Sure, lots of us get rich but many more don't. And those that do often observe that even though they did the absolute best that they could, the real riches came from sources beyond their control: they got lucky or were in the right place at the right time.

There are lots of great reasons for building the stuff we build. IMHO, "getting rich" is not one of them.

That was the key- it would really tackle the problem of not being able to meet people and just socialize

It sounds like you may have gotten feedback in an echo chamber; that is, you talked to alot of similar people so you thought you had a random sample but really didn't. Frankly, the idea of using technology to accomplish that which is better done without technology (meeting people and not being lonely) is not appealing at all to me. (Previous disclaimer: I am an outlier, so I understand that I may be in the minority.)

This was a terrible mistake that we should've caught on.

Never say "should've". It's not possible to "should've". Now you know. It may not seem that way right now, but that's actually a good thing.

...this was something I had truly believed it, I truly worked hard for and believed that it wasn't just something stupid I created again on a whim.

It was not stupid and was not done on a whim. If it was you wouldn't have gotten as far as you did.

We tried to follow every piece of advice we were given...

Advice is input. Not all input should be processed.

...just had to let out some anger.

Good! Now relax and listen...

You probably won't believe me now, so come back and read this in 30 days...

You are actually in great shape! You have learned things that most people in our industry never learn. Like Edison, you know x ways to not do a startup. So relax, regroup, do something else to feel better for a while, then when you think the time is right, do it again. Use all that you learned to go again without making the same mistakes. There will never be any guarantees, but you should feel confident you will be much better next time.

I wonder how much better the startup scene would be if 'get rich quick' was supplanted by 'create something of value that generates a good standard of living'.

Considerably, I imagine.

Also include changing "solves a problem of your own" to "solve a problem that people will pay for"

> so come back and read this in 30 days

This was the best part of this great insight, thank you, Ed.

Always take the time, because time changes perspective.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3441176

Perhaps I don't understand the app, but I would have thought that the radius depends on population density.

In a city or town 75mi would be be waay to much, and too little in rural areas.

I assume most users would come from cities and I would think that the limit would be a few city blocks - the distance I would be willing to walk to hang out with strangers after work.

One maybe slightly odd piece of advice: travel. Go out there and see experience how other people live.

Because the whole 75 mile radius thing suggests to me that you a limited view of the world. That distance has very different meaning in many places, depending on population density, culture, transportation etc. "Near" and "far" are not universal constants, and understanding that was pretty central to your app.

There are many other variables like that, many of which are especially relevant to both mobile apps and social networking, both of which are heavily influenced by context.

Rebrand as the others have said. If you really want to segment users you can rebrand by city, that is a new app per city. This would also afford you another means to A/B beta test features.

Personally anytime I see "social" I stay away. Other than the one or two surprise apps that come out a year the space is beyond crowded.

Good Luck!

You, as a person, have not failed! There is no shame in what has happened.

This kind of startup is very high risk, as it has numerous "problems", such as chicken-and-egg, being dependent on the app store rankings, saturation in the app store, saturation in the social space, etc. Also, as you said "we didn't have any programming or design experience", no funding, no accelerator program. In other words, your chances were very slim to begin with. If you have good friends [+], they probably said something along those lines to keep your expectations close to the ground.

So, your idea was most likely to fail and that's what happened. On the other hand, you learned a lot! You learned about programming, design, releasing apps, and all the countless real-life issues one encounters when trying to launch a new product. That is invaluable.

You're still young, so no worries, you have lots of room left!

As others have pointed out, if you want to push on with this idea, just pull the app from the store and relaunch a rebranded version in a smarter way. (Can't you geo-target by calling the app "XYZ for San Francisco" and "XYZ for San Diego"? Once you have enough traction, you can unite the apps, don't worry about it now.)

Or you can do something else. If not having an income is an issue, perhaps you can do some consulting work on the side, like 37signals, the company you cited.

Or if you had enough for now, take a job and chill for a year, there's no shame in it!

Best of luck!

[+] A true friend points out your mistakes, even at the risk of losing your friendship.

I don't want to beat up on you. I admire your tenacity and entrepreneurism. You also have a good idea with Grooovy.

But I gotta tell you man, the copywriting on the website is bloody awful. Some of the worst I've ever read.

Nonsensical cliches like "breaking barriers" and "in the driver's seat" look amateurish and discredit your app. You didn't think to get a Copywriter's opinion?

Rewrite the page, or better yet, contact someone who can for a decent rate.

My email is in my profile if your interested (I'm a copywriter).

If you're going to call yourself a copywriter, you should probably make sure you don't have any errors in the copy you're using to promote that. Oh, the irony.

If you don't mind some feedback...

Instead of harshing on the OP, making him find your email, and beg for help, don't you think a more proactive approach would be more valuable to the conversation?

Like the following, for instance.

-

"As a copywriter, I see quite a few common mistakes on your landing page. I took a few minutes and made a first pass at cleaning it up. (Find a before/after article on my blog here: [link] )

I'm happy to help you improve your (or any HNer's) site copy. Drop me a line to discuss. Email's in my profile"

-

This more proactive approach is far more likely to actually help someone. Based on others who have offered non-programming services/advice on HN, it seems likely to lead to some freelance/consulting work should you desire some.

Make it clear that you only spent 5/10/15 minutes on your draft. That sets expectations about quality, while still showing people how much better things could be with help from a real copywriter.

Food for thought.

I'm on my iPhone. In bed with a bad cold. I also don't do work for free (unless it's a charity I have selected).

I appreciate your suggestions nonetheless.

OP said: We tried to follow every piece of advice we were given, learned to be humble, continued to believe in ourselves but feel like all is useless now because we can't geotarget specific cities with the iphone like SF Bay Area or San Diego!

Why not just call the app "Groovy SF" and brand it as a SF-local app, so that people's expectations are set correctly? You can't technically geotarget, but you can hack it.

Don't worry too much. Life is like that. Had you taken care of this problem beforehand, I am pretty sure some other major problem would have turned up. When you create something new, you have to deal with 100s of problems. No one gets it right in version 1 itself. What you need to do is to be able to calmly work through all the issues that come up and think about what you can do to recover the traction your app initially seemed to be getting.

Your app is tricky because I can derive value from not when I install it, but when all my friends install it as well. This implies you guys should make it really really really easy for me to get my friends on it as well. Perhaps you can take my phone contact list and show all those users as my friends within your app the moment I install it, and send the other users an SMS (using twilio) or email if I try to interact with them using your app. This way you can disguise your cold start from the user and make it more useful to him from day 1.

iamjonlee, You've got my sympathy; I can understand your anger, but it's not productive.

I checked out your twitter feed, and you appear to have 3 whole posts all of which sound like marketing blah. Your HN post is much more interesting, and gives me a reason to "follow" you and your app (I don't have an iDevice so ordinarily I'd completely disregard your app). I suggest you write a blog with fairly frequent posts updating your progress. You can put more detail in a blog. At least, update your twitter feed more often, and keep it real so there's a personality behind it, not some marketing robot.

BTW to the people complaining about the fact that the app is only available at itunes, keep in mind these guys are strapped for resources.

People have suggested rebranding... I guess another option is to port to android and launch it there with all problems solved. Don't know how realistic that would be given they're low on resources.

Relax! You have a killer product! So you made a bit of an oversight, big deal. You made the right choice by limiting it to a limited area for now. Promote the shit out of this, build in some easy ways for users to promote their events to friends and it will have a chance of catching on.

Why can't you geotarget specific cities? That seems to be the strategy most successful mobile location apps start with.

Edit: and 75 miles is HUGE. On average I probably travel only within a 15 miles radius (max) of my house. I expect I'm fairly typical in that regard.

This reminds me of the problems Color had initially. They launched it worldwide, when a targeted rollout in densely populated tech areas (e.g. SXSW) would have given them a small number of happy users to build from, instead of a larger number of pissed off ones ( http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/29/how-many-mulligans-does-col...). But grooovy hasn't, I assume got $50 million of funding, so you won't get hammered for wasting it. Target the tech-heavy cities, like SF, Boston, London, where lots of people have iPhones and use a lot of apps, and where tech journalists live.

Great advice! I love HN!

Yes, every time you post something here, there would always be many people who care and know show up. HN is a great community.

I got 2 pieces of advice:

1) When you're building any app that requires a network effect, the most important thing is not fixing bugs, or usability, or creating an awesome product. That's important, yes, but it all pales in comparison to: getting users. So, from day 1 you need to build a list of people who are interested in using it. Spend 20+ hours a week building that list through Adwords, forums, talking with people, networking with bloggers, etc. That way when you launch, you avoid the scenario you just had. "Build it and they will come" is the absolutely worst thing you can do for a social app.

2) If I were you, I would pivot this idea. I would make this app immediately useful to everyone in the US by aggregating social or free events in their city, and having a weekly newsletter that they could subscribe to (ala DailyCandy). I think someone recently got featured in TC for doing something like. Plug in your zip code, we sent you a list of weekend events to meet singles. Cool, simple value proposition. Doesn't require any network effects. And a very apparent future business model: allow people to advertise their events in the email.

Right now you feel like you've lost a huge opportunity - I had something like this happen recently but actually you haven't. You've learned something here. Truth is without learning this lesson, you can't really overcome it. True for everything really.

Rebrand, regroup etc but jeep going if users find you valuable. If you need to get a job to tide things over then do so.

If you need some inspiration, have a look at this:

Quora.com/startup-inspiration

One thing people haven't discussed is how much your are personally involved in your business. I'd like you and others like you to take a step back and evaluate that aspect.

While being personally involved has advantages, namely passion/commitment/overriding work ethic, it also has disadvantages. Namely, that when your business starts failing, it feels as if you are failing, and when your business ends it feels as if you have failed.

I think the business suggestions people have below are very good, especially about concentrating on new cities. But you should also work on the psychological aspect of your business. In this case, reducing the belief that you and the business are the same. They are not. Business is business, and all over the world they fail for reasons outside the entrepreneur's control every day across the world. Lack of capital, timing, world events, technology, competitors, you name it.

I think a little bit of reduction in how much of your well-being is invested in this business will be good for you. When you start to think of your business as just a business, and not an integral part of who you are, then you realize it can fail and you will be ok. It allows you to bounce back quicker and be a better analyst on what is going wrong, instead of thinking that the solution to everything is working longer hours and coding harder (Not that your post suggested you are doing this, but some people do).

Thanks for posting by the way. I agree with the other person that said this is by far one of HN's most interesting posts in a while. I hope you manage to implement some of the advice people have given you. But if it doesn't work out, now worries. Another business opportunity will come. They have been coming for the millennium of human existence, and they will keep coming. And you will be stronger and better adapted to the next one, if that is what you want to tackle in life.

Your mental health is #1. Hopefulness and camaraderie can enable you to solve seemingly impossible and overwhelming problems - but seemingly impossible problems won't give you hope or camaraderie. (by "mental health", I mean analogous to physical health - being fit and in good shape). Posting this shows you already know it.

Getting critical mass is a ordinary standard marketing problem. See "Crossing the Chasm". It's about niche marketing: it suggests ways targeting a very specific subset of users, and then adding another niche ("bowling alley") and another. It's not about geographical niches, but you could apply the approaches to "geo-niches".

Though, it also might help your app if you target like-minded niches of people, e.g. based on sports, or cinemas, or plays. Or follow facebook's beginnings, and target local universities or schools...

Marketing is just as much work as creating the product (if not more), and it sounds like you need some recuperation time if you want to tackle it. You can always launch again.

Hey, man. Welcome to the club! Failure sucks but its the stuff of wisdom. I hope you haven't thrown in the towel completely. You need to give you your app a toe hold. Start local. Go to the local college and give it away. Do some interviews. Take out a few cheap local radio ads. Try to reach a tipping point in your market. Find clusters of people who want to use it, like a fraternity or sorority. Pay a local bar to promote it. Do a contest like "find me and get a free beer." Yes, not quite the easy overnight success we all envision. Sometimes its like that. Use this local feedback to improve, then rebrand it as grooooovy and launch national again, this time with the ability to zoom your range from 500 miles to 100 feet. Don't give up just because you hit a little bump, like a failed launch. My friends and I have bounced back from worse. http://bit.ly/ysXZTz

Sounds like meetup.com (but without the users). How is it different?

BINGO!!!

Good point colinm,

I briefly checked and didn't see a phone app there, so maybe they could use your idea!

They even have a "we're hiring" link. That might be your vector to getting their attention. Better to buy than build.

You might even get them to buy you out...

Make the changes required to fix the single biggest gripe you have gotten, and relaunch under a new name.

Some tough love for you: Quit being so negative and complaining about hard work failing. It's a part of entrepreneurship - things will go wrong. How are you (especially if you are a CEO or founder) going to pivot and survive despite the hardship?

Dust yourself off, take a deep breathe, deal with the problem in front of you and address the core issue.

Your product plan made the assumption that a million users would use it locally. This part never happened, so how are you going to fix it?

This isn't only a tech problem, but also a marketing issue. You need to address how you will get a lot of users in one geographic location using it in order to make it really thrive.

You have to find the strength in yourself.

I think the biggest mistake is you pursued a high risk startup relying on the first iteration to go smoothly without having a plan in case things did not go well.

It sounds like you're running out of money personally? You need to fix that first. Realize that you've shown you can build an iPhone application and try to leverage that into some work. Or try to get external funding for your idea.

I wouldn't give up on Grooovy but make sure you're not in a bad situation if it doesn't take off or it just takes longer than you think to get traction. It usually ends up taking longer than you think.

The only feedback I have for the idea itself is be very careful about what people say they want. They may be imagining a different execution, or they may like the idea but will never use it.

Why do you only want to socialize with people who have iPhones? Make a web app that anyone can use.

Using the 37 signals line you quoted. The key word you missed was solved. Like you worked out this doesn't solve the problem because there aren't enough users using it. That's another problem to solve.

The best advice from the thread already target a specific city. Lock down that city then move on (I wouldn't choose SF as already so many geo mobile startups targeting it, also SF users maybe don't represent the broader market).

Also leverage existing API's. Or hell become an API combining all other sources and let other people build the apps (seems to me the real problem, billion people connected to different networks). If I look on meetup maybe I'm missing out on great events from other sites, but I don't have time to search them all.

That's a very valid point. Our problem was solved, this is just another problem. I didn't just focus on a specific city, I chose SF Bay Area- this was because most people who tested this product were interested in meeting elsewhere (such as driving to a specific restaurant or location to meet people) or attend events within a reasonable driving distance.

While I understand that choosing SF may have a lot of competition, most of the advertisers I've talked to don't have good stats on any of the surrounding cities. I'll look into this and see if there's a better alternative.

Your API idea is pretty interesting, I didn't think about using other APIs because our focus was so different.

I admire your enthusiasm and dedication. But are you sure this is for you?

With no programming or design experience, a less than stellar idea (sorry) and apparently no business model, why are you trying to "get rich quick" in the app scene? In my opinion, if you hang around the tech scene/sites for too long, you begin to believe that succeeding in this space is easy. It's not.

It's sometimes treated as blasphemy 'round these parts, but have you thought about getting some corporate experience? You will reveal to yourself a whole other world of problems that need solving (B2B, a huge space) as well as learning how to really model a business. Worst case, you'll become reinvigorated to work for yourself.

It sounds to me like you've done everything that is in your control. Stop beating yourself up about the aspect that you have very little influence over (the app becoming popular)

You designed, built & shipped the shell of a social network. Now you have an empty db that once filled will be useful, interesting and used by a lot of people.

Now you've got to find the events and go some way towards populating your database to show to your early adopters that your concept works.

You've got several options.

a) Seek out other event agregators where open invitations are ok. See if you can get a stream of data into your app from events that are already taking part in these places. Speak to a few University groups, get them to try it out in a larger focus group. Get them to post their social gatherings up on the app, to gauge their longer term feedback. If they keep using it, great!

b) Contact other founders that have had similar chicken & egg issues. Ask for their advice. Implement & test any insights they give you.

c) Turn the tables round slightly. It seems your app users are looking for a hangout they can join. Why not prompt your users to create their own first and be the 'host' instead of expecting there to be ones they can join. Maybe you make it so they HAVE to host one before they get to join others in the future?

d)Try to team up with some open invitation events, perhaps event ticketed events may fit in. Fundraisers, sports events etc even if it doesn't fit your 'personal hangout' criteria. It shows you've done your best to populate the database. Who knows, if you joined up with Startup Weekends or a wide spread event, you may even get a sponsor!

e) Find ways to integrate posting to Grooovy as part of other social networks. This could involve all tweets @grooovy with the #hangout and city being auto added to the app. You could try this manually first. The hosts don't actually need to have the app, they just need to share their event information with you so your searchers can join in.

I think you've come 90% of the way and are reeling from the shock that you 'built it' but they didn't come (yet).

You haven't fallen at the last hurdle. You just need to find new & inventive ways to jump it!

Be sure to update us on your progress!

One idea that popped into my head - perhaps look at targeting the business traveller. I'm by no means a frequent business traveller, but on the occasion that I have done some trips, it would be great if there was a local whom was interested in sharing a meal with a stranger. Sure beats eating alone in a restaurant or room service.

Perhaps you can get some tie-in with conventions - ie sign up with this app and find people to share a meal with whilst on convention.

Sorry that you are so dispirited.

If you can bear a suggestion, perhaps release many different apps/sites branded with the city name. Like, "Grooovy NYC". Or, perhaps even better, try a lot of apps/sites each branded with the name of a university.

Social sites, as far as I can tell, need small "nucleation" points. In many cases it is the developers' friends and family. But in your case that won't work, you need a seed audience that also shares a schedule.

I love the idea! But, I have not heard of your app before. You should consider raising its awareness - brainstorm some, there's lots of possibilities: funny YT videos, a small adwords budget, sending a well-written digest to tons of app-reviewing journals/blogs, drawing a public stunt the newspaper will write about; Also mind that Facebook's USP was exclusivity at first - your audience is definitely too broad now.

... funny YT videos, a small adwords budget, sending a well-written digest to tons of app-reviewing journals/blogs ...

Don't bother. Everybody tries these, and they won't get you any attention.

Unless you're Sony and you have a million dollars to blow on mindbending visuals for a product commercial, uploading stuff on YouTube is pointless.

AdWords won't do anything unless your product targets a very specific niche.

There are 500,000 apps on the iOS and Android app stores, so app reviewers get far too many review requests. If you get any feedback, it will be from a shady review site who wants you to pay for the chance that your app may be looked at.

An optimist here, eh? :) All of your arguments presume a lack of quality - I would not do that. Also, YMMV - it seems your mileage has already varied, but please don't extrapolate too much from your experiences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction).

Thanks for the support! Well look into the YouTube videos and Adwords budget but it could be difficult to gain traction with many other similar advertisers our there(higher cpc and smaller budget to compete with), but I totally get what you're saying. I'll brainstorm some ideas, thanks!

I could relate to how you feel.

I think your original idea to find new people is novel and not yet clearly solved.

I think failures are part of a startup.

There should be no reason why you should feel "frustrated" and "pretty useless". If not for anything else you would be in a very good position who could solve the problem of meeting new people with all the learnings that you have now from grooovy.

Its only your approach to the idea that failed. Not you.

Thanks, we do realize now that no matter what, just like our first failed startup- it was a learning experience and will allow us to not make the same mistake in the future.

You have just learned what marketing is all about! There needs to be a way to get people to find out about your app. I suggest spending time figuring out how to get people in your local area to start using it, quickly followed by getting people in your local area to somehow pay for it.

Yep! lesson learned. We're already looking into geotargeting advertising but it still seems that it'll be beyond our budgets before we can reach that tipping point where everyone can utilize it fully. We'll continue to think of alternatives, thanks!

Dont give up. At least you were able to build the product and test it. Thats a super-duper achievement and you should be proud of that. This is my 19th month, and second iteration of the product would be over this month. Exactly your credentials, non-coder, non-designer. Keep the faith.

Thank you! It really makes us feel better to know someone else is out there with a similar background.

This example also stress the importance of checking assumptions as fast as possible. With a really badly done prototype, you could have found this problem 5 months 1/2 before. I think this is a huge lesson to learn from that. And if you did, you're on your way to start a great startup.

Not sure why you're being so hard on yourself when some of SV's top serial-entrepreneurs and engineers with $41 million in venture capital and huge tech blog coverage to aid with their launch had the same problem launching a similar geolocated app.

At least you are out there hustling, which deserves a ton of respect. Dont feel bad, because you have come further than most other people wishing they had it in them to push so far.

Never a failure, always a lesson.

What's your Facebook page for people to share this idea with their pals?

We took our Facebook page down- it was mostly spammed by robotos and advertisements. We saw much more success by having just the tweet button alone.

Getting a foothold in the marketplace by launching a city specific version is great. Or cater the service to a niche group, such as medical students or other group looking for social options.

Yeah we originally planned to allow it for all of US but because of the sparse users all spread out, we quickly focused on San Franciso bay areas first. The niche does sound Like an idea to consider though, thank you.

The idea sounds good, but I'll never use it because it seems to be iPhone only and I have an Android phone. If it was a website, or a multi-platform app, I'd give it a try.

We didn't have prior experience with any programming or design experience prior to this app. While we are considering eventually learning Android, it won't be for a while because we'd have to start from scratch again and it would be better to find a way to the app to work for iphone for now.

Provide value first and then create a service for your users... has worked over and over for me.

it looks like it's the same problem color.com had - sparse users (geographically), thus making the app "useless"?

I didn't check the app (and groovy.me is a parked domain), but couldn't you bake in any feature that would ask for people to bring in friends/spreading virally?

I didn't realize that color.com had a similar problem. The only thing I remember about them is that they spent 350k purchasing their domain name. We did have features that allowed people to share events but didn't actually offer any incentive to spread virally. It was something we should've done, but we couldn't think of what we could do- there isn't really a incentive we can offer to joining an event. We could give our free drinks- but there's a limit of how much freebies we can provide. The idea was that once they actually try out an event in real life, they would find value and find it worth it to share to their friends then. I admit though, this should be a much bigger priority on our list.

Another bit of advice: Launch in Europe, where population density is much higher.

Agreed. According to my secret source (wiki-p) UK has 8x more people per mile than the US. Germany has 7x more. Total population of these two countries combined: 143,799,308. Get translated into French and Spanish and watch users roll in. Potentially.

EDIT: The copy on the site needs work.

. The expressions used (meet to your mood, break barriers, you in the driving seat) are either non-standard and odd, slowing down the reader, or cliche, losing meaning and impact.

. The punctuation is mixed - periods slow down readers, make them stop reading at times.

. You obviously get that you need to keep it short, but IMO you've picked the wrong words in a bunch of places.

And to couple these critical thoughts with the helpful - I'll offer to sit down with another copywriting colleague and go over the main points we see at no charge. This could increase conversion, but no guarantees.

Fantastic advice from you and Instakill, thank you. I had never even considered starting in another country besides the US. It definitely sounds like a starting place to seriously consider. I agree that the copy on the site needs to be redone- I actually had a copywriter do that, and even though it didntl completely feel right with us, we went along with it- after all, the copywriter (no names) was a highly sought after professional with a solid track record. Thank you for the kind offer to mention to your colleague, it would really be appreciated if you could do that. Even if it doesn't increase conversions, it's still worth a definite try. Please feel free to reach me by email if you need more information. Thanks

Heads up: a few days back I sent you a before/after doc which may have been filtered out by your inbox. I can resend elsewhere if you want - I used the address at the bottom of the Terms page.

Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.

- Yours truly, Richard Branson

;)

99% of folks running their own businesses have and are going through this exact same thing. You aren't alone, and like others are saying, you are actually in great shape and growing a ton.

I know very well how depressing and devastating this stuff can be. Email me (nate@inklingmarkets.com) immediately if you need to chat with someone about this stuff and we can talk on the phone.

Also, I know how this stuff you are talking about can lead to depression and then lead people to do some awful things to themselves. If you have any thoughts going down that road about life not being worth living, please, please talk to someone trained to talk about this stuff. Many of us have gone through thoughts just like this, and it will get better. They are just thoughts, and I guarantee you will feel better given some time for your perspective to change.

From what it sounds like you've learned an enormous amount. You probably have getting a great job as a fallback if you need a temporary back stop.

You are definitely on the right track with finding something people want. But it's a very steep climb. Brilliant people fail at finding ideas that 1) actually make money 2) make a dent in the universe or 3) they actually care about in the future.

But the great entrepreneurs know how to move on and start the next thing. And failing and learning is integral to the game. You have to learn to love the game, instead of depending on success of a single idea to value your worth.

It might take a dozen ideas. I know that sounds daunting. A great book that motivates around this point is Little Bets. I'd give that a read. There's some great people mentioned in there who had to try and try and try before finding the right thing.

I like the example of the guys that did Aardvark which they got a bunch of traction with and eventually sold to Google. That was their 6th idea in 6 months.

Keep trying!

I won't get into too much specific advice on Groovy. But I will say you picked a field that is a but more challenging than others to find financial success in my opinion. I remember 10 years ago there was a "meet people close by over instant messaging site", Meetro, that was awesome, had a bit of traction, and led by some smart people. But they couldn't get magic or money it would take to keep themselves going.

I personally prefer creating startups that fit into something someone is already making purchase decisions for. They are already spending money on some kind of pain directly or indirectly. And you drop in with a better product they can spend that money on.

Creating another social network is going to be a very hard challenge. I'm not saying stop. But I just feel if you want something easier, you might want to step back and work with some different problems people have that have different business models than having to rely on a network effect kind of thing.

This got too long. :) Hang in there! You are playing a good game so far. Getting stuff done is better than what 99% of the other folks who want to be entrepreneurs are doing. You'll figure out the rest eventually and hopefully find the perspective to just enjoy this learning process and the entire game of starting and running businesses.

A few points.

The idea to refocus on a few cities is probably the best shot you have at salvaging it. I don't know if you've noticed, but almost any geo-social-network app launched always starts in 1 or 2 cities. Frankly, it's annoying for pretty much everyone who doesn't live in SF (cause that's inevitably where the initial focus is) but there's a reason for it, and you've hit that reason.

Find a few cities where you've got friend/family/connections, rebrand the app for that city, and focus on getting everyone you can to help promote in that location.

Another idea - make brandable versions of this and sell them to convention centers or visitor bureaus. Having an app that they promote to everyone visiting a city will ensure that people in a geo area - who don't know the area well and are looking to meet people for a bit - will be a win for you and a win for the city and bureau. Branding it for each city separately or as part of a chain ("grooovy detroit", "grooovy dallas", etc) - not sure which direction to go in, but I'd hit up visitor bureaus to see what they'd want and just go with that.

On a design standpoint - http://gyazo.com/e5cba3c4db14db4f668a4a6c815b6c3a - I'm running 1280x800 (not a totally uncommon resolution) and can't see half your call to action button for the app store). Too much whitespace below the groovy logo. Yeah, perhaps it seemed minor, but that's just one more nail that's making it look amateurish. And there's nothing wrong with amateur, but you need to iterate and improve. The one downside is you only get one shot to make a first impression with the people you've already first-impressioned. Move on and find more people, but improve the site.

I agree with the other comments - "create/connect/enjoy" tells me nothing. All your action explanations are way down at the bottom, and even then they don't match up - the screen with "snack/drinks/meal" doesn't go with the text of "snack/drinks/meal".

This feels like a foursquare wannabe - badges and reviews? There was nothing in any of your screenshots that actually showed me inviting friends or making new ones. I thought that was the whole point - to meet people and make new friends. Based on your HN post, that's it. Based on the website, this is a coffeehouse review system.

My advice would be to not buy in to the tech porn that we all drink in way too much. "Believing" in something doesn't really help all that much when basic mistakes are made or overlooked (not saying you fall in this camp 100%, but no one's perfect). "we tried to follow every piece of advice given" sounds a bit more like desperation than conviction on the idea. While I feel like I'm publicly beating you up here, I don't mean to be, and am actually very grateful that you've posted this. We need more of these 'coming out' stories to show the human side of non-success (I won't say failure cause I don't think you're done with this yet!). I've known several people over the years who've fallen in to similar situations as yours, and they feel very isolated and like personal failures because they're not the next Facebook. Everyone else's successes look so easy, and you did everything they did, etc. It's just not like that. I sometimes feel I come across as a bit overly negative on the whole 'startup' scene, but I don't think I'm negative as much as a realist. That realism just balances out so much positive hype that it seems negative :/

You're not a failure - someone with as much drive as you've demonstrated will end up being more successful in life at some point, but right now may not be the time. Perhaps it's time to put some of these startup ideas on hold, rebuild some of your emotional and financial life, and come back to this world when you're more stable. Right now I think almost any decisions you make will be from a position of financial, emotional and mental weakness, and I'd be pretty certain those decisions will not be beneficial to you. As much as people want to celebrate the 'pulling all nighters' and 'last minute pitches when we had $5 left in the bank that led to $100 million buyout!' stories, the world mostly doesn't work that way. It'd be a lot easier to make more informed and well thought out decisions when you've got a year of savings in the bank.

For all the feedback you claim to have gotten during your dev, I don't think there's anything more revealing than getting a group of semi-anonymous tech geeks to give honest feedback on web sites/services. Yes, get 'regular users' too, but you'll get a lot of great useful info from HN-type geeks because we can all relate our own successes and failures in to your project as well. Not saying we can all predict successes, but being able to learn what works and what doesn't (plenty-of-fish style outliers aside) may have saved you more time and heartache months ago. Gosh... perhaps an HN-style "review my app idea" - without dozens of flashy ads and hype - might be worth pursuing? You still end up with chicken-egg situation - who will use it without intelligent reviewers already there? I think there's some review services out there sort of like that, but nothing I've seen that can bring out the level of detail, experience and honesty like HN.

FWIW, thank you for posting so honestly here.

maybe you can seed the database with event that are already available.

I did consider it but it would still be meaningless because there would only be tht one person attending that event. The problem is that the downloads are too sparse within the US, so users aren't able to join each others events as they're too far.

just asking..cant you change the name and relaunch it?

I could, but even with a new name and relaunch it wouldn't fix the problem of the users being too far spread out sparsely in te US

your product name sucks.

let's see what the main idea (and issue) is. proximity. you need to educated people, remind them constantly what the core of your product is.

75 miles is a bit much, meeting people is more realistic within a 5 mile radius, isn't it?

call the product "5miles".

super simple, everyone will understand. if you ever branch into metric countries, add "5kilometers".

You have fouled up in the marketing department. You need to geo-target. You need to focus on a geographically dense close cluster for you initial release. Probably a business district with lots of small offices where there should be plenty of people who have lunch alone. Market with flyers in and around this office and probably go and volunteer for lunch yourself. Release and solicit feedback from real users , iterate, market to other such dense locations and improve based on feedback.

You might have had to start in a particular city and promote your app heavily there. You might still be able to, I don't know. But this was a risk from the beginning, you knew that, right? You might find this post-mortem interesting: http://meetro.lefora.com/2008/05/21/meetro-post-mortem/

Very good reading, thank you. We did launh an update to focus in only SF bay areas for now but will still need work to securing users.

I hope you learnt something about using magic numbers.