Ask HN: Did your YC (or other incubator) startup fail? What are you doing now?
What year did it fail, how long after the program did things end and what are you doing these days?
Am now doing https://circleci.com, so it has a happy ending.
I've never heard of Beacon, so I went to your site. The site does not immediately and clearly tell me what Beacon does. That sucks.
No, I don't want to watch a video to find out.
Only at this point do I know what it does:
"When you fund a writer on Beacon, you also get access to every story from every other writer. New writers are added each month so your subscription becomes more valuable over time."
Weird that I "also" get access, as you didn't actually tell me that you get access to a particular writer if and only if you fund them.
It seems like your product is niche journalism. What you are apparently currently triyng to sell is "Pay a journalist." That is not a product and it is not a value to anyone except the journalist.
An alternative sales pitch would be: "We're building a grassroots journalism network. For $5 a month, you can sponsor a writer whose work interests you to get access to their work, and as a bonus, we'll give you access to the entire network."
It's realize highly presumptious of me to say all this. I would expect that you already know it. Plus, maybe your model for generating new subscribers does not include "they go to the website never having heard of what it is before." So, sorry if I'm wasting your time.
I'm well aware of the lack of mass consumer appeal right this instant, and you're quite right that niche journalism is exactly what we are going after right now. The pitch will become much more consumer oriented in a few more months when our offering becomes more appealing to "random visitors."
For what it's worth, we think we are building a wedge that ties nicely into this http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html
I, for one, rarely watch videos, due to the disruption of a soundtrack to those around me (get out the headphones, etc.).
If I am going to buy one of these authors work, I need to see that work. You need a front page, with the best stories this day from your selection of writers (for free). People will come back for that page, creating stickyness, a feeling of personal relationship with frequent featured writers, and sales.
That might get you into google news, or linked on sites like this, so people hear about you.
Also, I think giving access to the whole network dilutes the product. I don't know what other model to suggest.
Oh, and if you are paying these people, you might hope to be able to write to them and suggest they cover particular topics.
To me, consulting is 'providing outside expertise and advice, to teach a client what to do and how'. For instance, you might have a sales consultant teach you how to build a better sales pipeline. A software consultant would show you how to commission outsource work, or design a service architecture, but not actually implement them.
I get the feeling that on HN it means something else?
Often, people here transition very easily into consulting, and treat it as a worst case fallback job, which is crazy because I figured the kind of consulting mentioned above is engaging, well paid, really hard to get started in, and a business in itself.
Terminology, meh...these days I just say I was a hired gun, because some people think there's an actual distinction between consultant and contractor, but I was never clear on what it was, even though I was doing it...
It was really tough to pull the plug, but it was really obvious it was time to do so. We were out of money in the bank and weren't making enough revenue to stay aloat
Were they more about the product, or how you approached the process of building a business?
Just curious about your experiences. It can possibly be both.
Now I'm kicking around some ideas.
Actually, after nReduce failed I thought I might try a second take on the idea of a community-based incubator.
Check it out: http://launchway.net/posts/blog
Anyway, I'd appreciate any feedback from HNers on the project, it's very new (went live as a rudimentary version last night).
Now doing a new startup. Launched on November, so help us grow: http://www.allthecooks.com/download
Sometimes ideas just take a while to take off and will be ultimately successful. Sometimes ideas are just bad, and you need to kill them and move on. Sunk costs can be a bitch, but you're not getting that time back, so make the most of the future.
Now doing Pitcher.io :)
But, that said, Google search traffic isn't a likely source of users, so I've not spent much time figuring out a solution yet. There are much bigger problems to solve before that. Like how to stop posting on HN when I should be working. :)
On the evening of 12 November 2011, Zhitomirskiy was found dead in his San Francisco home by police responding to calls about a suspected suicide.
Zhitomirskiy’s mother, Inna Zhitomirskiy, did not comment on reports of his history of mental illness, but she did say on his participation in Diaspora, "I strongly believe that if Ilya did not start this project and stayed in school, he would be well and alive today."
My main squeeze is http://featurekicker.com -- software that helps teams “make something people want.”
With FeatureKicker, you can quickly add a button representing a new feature on a website. When a user clicks on the experimental button, our tech opens a modal window and gets user input on the new feature.
You can also get feedback on existing features of their website, so they can improve their product.
Any and all feedback is welcome...
Most of the answer will be bounce backs from a failed startup to a surviving/successful one.
Engineering -> Business oriented role was the easiest thing I could think of.