Reading this I find myself in the same position as PG: I know nothing about the app and trying to “get it”. The later explanations are more enlightening but I still don’t get what this app does.
> So what is Rocketr? > “Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management. We connect people through their notepads. Basically, people take notes and decide how to share them. The primary mechanism by which they share them is through co-authored notebooks.”
> Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management.
That reads like pure marketing fluff. That's your opening statement, and the first thing I hear is dead air. Rocketr is, from here, a methodology. It's an idea. Nothing more.
> We connect people through their notepads.
Okay, this is what it wants to accomplish. My notepad is on paper. How is this methodology going to help me share my notepad and connect me with people? Which people, btw? Why do they want to see my notepad?.
Up until this point, we still don't know what Rocketr is. What is the actual product? Hell, I'm not even sure what the problem is. A notepad is, for me, a place to jot notes down in. It's not a formal document. It contains phrases and doodles. So, I'm not even sure I'm in the right frame of mind.
> Basically, people take notes and decide how to share them.
Again, is note sharing a big issue? I can see content management being something, but note sharing?
And the "decide how to share them" has me confused. I thought that was the problem you were solving, how to share them. Maybe you just mean permissions, which is really something I would assume anyways. It's not a feature.
> The primary mechanism by which they share them is through co-authored notebooks.
So... what? This is going to be an iPad app? I'm assuming here, as it could be something like one of those pens that you take a note with and records the sound (I forget the name), and it has the ability to share the actual notes. That would be interesting. But I'm assuming that's not what you are doing, and so you are going with an actual iPad?
Maybe real time notes, for a meeting? Seems that could get confusing fast.
Regardless, I'm still not sure what it is, or where it sits, or what problem it's solving for me.
You need an elevator pitch. Something that describe what the product is, who the customer is, and what problem does it solve for the customer, and how it solves it.
From there, you can expand, but something simple, something straight forward. Something that is filled with nouns and verbs. Because, I honestly believe if you can't define your product like that, you don't completely understand it as well.
I think you're referring to a Livescribe Smartpen (http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/). I have one and even extra notebooks but I never ended up using it. Very cool device, at least at first.
But I do have to say the best part of this whole blog post is the part when he talks about the problem he imagines YC to have. He paints a compelling picture of the pain point.
I still have no clue how he plans to solve it, but at least that paragraph told me what he envisions as the problem he's after.
I wonder if I got that right.
Anyway, great blogpost!
It's taking serious effort to try to work out what pain this solves that isn't catered for by the above options.
(wow this was painful to find)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPtJd6AzU8c&feature=youtu...
That style of fun product demonstration would be perfect for this type of app.
Also google docs now work offline really well and across multiple devices, which is incredibly useful.
But what I've found with Google Docs is that if someone is making a trivial change (like correcting a typo), they'll just go ahead and make the edit in the doc. If they're suggesting a substantial change, they'll add the suggestion as a comment and let the author decide whether to incorporate it.
But what is "it"? It does sound like a wiki, or an article with comments.
Tell me a story. Get me to empathize. :)
In designing another system recently, I wrote down my entire thought process as it developed in the form of questions and answers to myself. When I read it back now I can see how I had this mixed up set of ideas and was actually quite confused. Then, as you read down, things start to become clearer and ideas become more developed. I guess it still has quite a long way to go as well because things certainly aren’t as clear as I would like them to be.
So the point I’m making is that definition and clarity can take as long, and sometimes--although I think this is infrequent--longer, than the software development.
As for the question of whether you should blog about it. I think it’s a difficult call. In a way you could say this story has wasted everyone’s time because I still have no idea what the app drupeek’s developing is about. But on the other hand we wouldn’t be having this conversation now were it not for it.
You have the opportunity to get exposure to thousands of hackers, entrepreneurs, and investors, right here on Hacker News. And yet, you haven't yet provided a compelling story that anyone can actually understand.
What does your product do? What problems does it solve? How is it better or suited to a different niche than many other tools (wikis, bugtrackers, Google Docs, email) that people already use?
I grew my last business to an awesome success. And one of my regrets, looking back, is that I didn't blog more about the process of getting it there. About all the hurdles we had and the missteps we took.
I look back fondly on the few blog posts where I did talk openly about what we were going through, in part because I am so proud of how far we came from those darker moments, and in part because I can remember what I was feeling then and re-absorb the lesson.
I think this is great. You should never hold back when you have something to share with a wider audience, but more importantly, to share with your future self.
He'll have plenty more chances to get on Hacker News in the future. This isn't a one-time opportunity. :) So blog, blog, blog!