Comment by dylangs1030 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dylangs1030 | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to be frank with you, Anthony. I checked out okcofounder.com and read about you. Then I checked out your project, residen.se.

In my humble opinion, I think you should abandon residen.se and work full time on okcofounder. This is not something I'm saying lightly. Consider it this way:

1. You designed and created okcofounder with a clear need in mind. I don't "feel" the same sort of inspiration and personal connection with residen.se

2. There are at least three comments at the time of this writing in this thread that express disappointment at okcofounder not being for finding cofounders and being applicable to their lives. You just got user feedback.

3. Residen.se looks like the perfect web 2.0 model of what a tech startup should be, but okcofounder is something that is immediately relevant and comprehensible on the front page. I had a little trouble figuring out what residen.se was for immediately. Not so with okcofounder.

I'll come out and say that I'd pay for a service like okcofounder. I live in NYC and it's harder to find people than it is in Silicon Valley.

okcofounder satisfies true entrepreneurial need - despite the odd fact that it's a meta-project, you created it trying to solve a problem for yourself. But there are users saying they'd love the idea on a wider, open scale. So do it.

Only problem? The idea's hardly new. Sites like http://founderdating.com/ http://collabfinder.com/ http://www.cofounderslab.com/ http://techcofounder.com/ already exist. It's not quite a crowded space yet, and there's probably room for innovation, but your comment makes it sound like you think he's hit idea paydirt with okcofounder -- he hasn't.

You're right. But the fact that he received so much disappointment so quickly means that those venues aren't working - yet...so yes, room for innovation.

I really, really want to reiterate Recoil's point above.

The rental market is massive and real and worth a shit-ton of money. Handling the pain of repairs and stuff? it's not even been vaguely tapped! That's a fucking good idea that's going to be hard to sell but it's a domino thing. When one major rental agency starts using it they'll all start using it. 'Your flat doesn't have residee.ce? How lame!'

Finding a co-founder is a tiny market.

Your advice is well intentioned and dog-fooding and all that lovely bullshit nonsense and really, really terrible.

3 of those sites seem sub-optimal, at least for searching in non-top-5 cities.

Cofounderslab.com has a background that scrolls horizontally as I down-arrow on it. Stop that! Otherwise, the listings seem good. Best of the bunch.

Techcofounder.com provides no geographical search at all, from what I can see. Of the 3 ads in my area, 1 is from 2011.

Collabafinder gives me a list of people, but it seems I have to sign in to find more.

I have to register for Founderdating before I can find out if I want to register.

Well at least he has the best name out of the ones listed. Am I missing something though, his site seems to just be a description of what he's looking for a link to a contact form? Do we consider this a product now?

Here's the thing...

I'd never heard of any of those sites, I checked them out none made me want to sign up right now.

I clicked through on okcofounder here wanting and expecting to be able to sign up only to be disappointed.

Ideas are essentially worthless without effective implementation. This roughed out one page implementation was effective for me and I'm clearly not alone.

Don't forget http://www.startupwithme.com/

Oh please, a site for other prospective entrepreneurs on budget of $0 vs a site aimed at a fixing a very real problem in the vast and lucrative world of property?

My comment is based on how easily I understood the two projects at a first glance and user feedback I saw. I'm not claiming one is more financially viable over the other, I'm just saying one seems more inspired by the other.

Inspiration through need is organic and genuine - he needed something, he built it, and other people want it. That's been the essence of startup culture from the beginning.

> My comment is based on how easily I understood the two projects at a first glance and user feedback I saw.

You understood the cofounder project because of your background. But for the vast majority of people, residen.se would be easier to understand.

And besides, how easy it was to understand from the site is something that can easily be changed with a few hours of work. What you really want to know is the viability of the underlying business model. And I find it difficult to see very many situations in which serving entrepreneurs tight on cash is better than trying to take a cut of the (very large) real estate pie.

Good point!

Everyone in the world needs a place to live, whereas probably less than 0.001% of people need a cofounder.

Couldn't disagree more. I think I know the co-founder market quite a bit: I ran the co-founders meetup in Silicon Valley for a few years, and ran foundrs.com to get people to work together on startups.

1. As a business, targeting broke founders is not a get-rich-quick approach. I did it for love of entrepreneurs.

2. Finding a co-founder is hard. Over the years, I became convinced that personal chemistry is very important (that's why I moved from an online site to in-person meetups). And it takes time. Think 1 month of working together, minimum, before you even should consider someone as a co-founder.

After ~3 years of effort, the one very successful result fro my efforts is the co-founders equity calculator. That is something that a lot of people use, learn from, and solves an immediate issue. If you are curious, it's now the only content on the home page of http://foundrs.com

Thanks man. I... kind of built it as a joke, yeah. I got bounced back from an incubator because I didn't have a co-founder and wanted to build something slightly ironic. I didn't think other people actually really had a need for something in that respect.

But... I guess you have a very good point.

I hope you don't take it the wrong way. I'm not criticizing residen.se - I'm just praising okcofounder a hell of a lot.

But, hey, good response to being rejected. At least you're doing something about it.

Great response & bounce back after not getting into the incubator. Residen.se is a excellent idea trying to solve a problem in the lucrative real estate sector. I'm helping out Anthony, who is a good friend of mine and I use to share a house with him in Melbourne.

Couldn't agree more - focus on OKCoFounder - great a novel idea, could potentially be a thriving community of tech talent seeking on another. You're onto something here

I second this. I was just about ready to plop down a profile..

I concur. Forget the naysayers. okcofounder is great.

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