Our most recent startup venture did not just fail, it deserved to fail

One warning.

It is very easy for people to have bad experiences, decide that they know what went wrong, then proceed to act on those theories. However hindsight is not 20/20, it is just speculation in the absence of being able to be proven wrong.

Therefore until you've either had feedback from people you trust, or have a success under your belt, it is wise to temper all "lessons learned" with the provisional, "I suspect" and the emphatic "I was wrong before, and may be again." This is difficult, but it is only when we keep track not just of what we think we know, but how certain we are that we know it, that we truly put ourselves in a position to actually learn from experience.

Now feedback on the new platform, WTF. Any site which seeks to offer users feedback from other users, needs to do some careful thinking about how you're going to attract people who are worth getting feedback from. Else you won't attract a pool of people giving feedback who are worth listening to. That is why Ask HN can work - there are a lot of people already here who can offer good feedback and sometimes do. But they are not here because they want to offer that feedback 24/7. And if this site became nothing but Ask HN, then they wouldn't stay.

I can't tell you how to get the people you want involved. You'll need to form your own theory. I believe there are multiple possible successful strategies. I also can't tell you how to monetize it. From what I've seen discussion forums tend to be popular but don't monetize that well. (Though if the feedback you get allows you to launch a successful parallel startup, maybe that is good enough for you?) However if you aren't constantly trying/testing your own theories around those central questions, I guarantee that you'll not find workable answers.

tl;dr - author had a bunch of startups that didn't work because they did not do customer development. (hindsight bias?) author creates site "willthisfly.net" which is a site for vetting ideas.

this was a rather long-winded post to ultimately plug a project you created. also, I feel like we get one of these a month, it would be helpful if the post explained why this one is better than any of the existing and/or failed attempts to do something like this.

Also, for some real advice, the reason these sites generally do not take off is despite the chorus of "ideas don't matter", people don't really believe that when they have what they think is a good idea. If someone has what they think is a million dollar idea they are apt to keep quiet and not want to tell anyone about it publically like this, and reveal it only insofar as it provides tangible benefits to them. Customer Development does not mean shouting your idea from the rooftops, anyway. There's a gradient between "I will tell you nothing unless you sign an NDA" and "I will post my idea to the public on the internet complete with a full explanation as to why it will work."

Great post but author really should have said up-front that this text was a way to promote his new project "willthisfly.net". Probably doesn't affect the value but it does affect the credibility. Is an outsider's opinion valuable for startups? Maybe, but as founder of an outsider-opinion-service, you're biased, which is fine, but I would want to have that in mind reading the article.

And some feedback to willthisfly.net:

For it to have a chance to fly it need (more obvious) incentives for people to comment. Something along the lines of having to comment on three projects before you can submit your own perhaps?

The problem I see with sites like willthisfly.net is it is unlikely that the audience going to that website will represent your target audience.

Example: I'm working on an PDF replacement to support marketing automation. The people looking at this website may or may not be my target audience. Thus, the feedback may or may not be useful.

Reminds me of http://thepitch.co/