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Comment by pbiggar | Hacker News Reader

Here's my (long long) story: http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down...

Am now doing https://circleci.com, so it has a happy ending.

Hey Paul, I'm the founder of Beacon http://www.beaconreader.com - would be interested to hear your thoughts (if you have any) on the space now. Can I send you an email?

Not the guy you're asking but I have something to tell you.

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.

Thanks for your thoughts. Really appreciate hearing them. For what its worth, we just launched 2 weeks ago so I would be surprised if you had heard of it.

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

For balance on the video aspect - I actually significantly prefer having a video that saves me the time/effort of scrolling around and reading, and this certainly seems to be a popular trend. ("Some of the people, some of the time" etc. etc.)

I'm amazed that reading is not about 10 times as fast as listening to someone talk in a video for most people on this site. I can't stand videos for this very reason: my time is limited, and listening to someone drawl on without being able to search or scan is maddening.

However, if they're trying to sell to people who are willing to pay for READING content, maybe it's best to have a written description.

I, for one, rarely watch videos, due to the disruption of a soundtrack to those around me (get out the headphones, etc.).

We've had quite a high conversion rate, so I'm pleased with it too. We're selling the journalist as the atomic unit instead of the story, so although people often say "why not show more content?" I don't believe they would convert anyway -- and at such an early stage, I'd rather focus on the people who are passionate about the product and journalism.

The idea of beacon is really good, but I agree with PP that the implementation needs work.

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.

I hate the term "sucks" when applied to someone's serious work.

I see where you're coming from, sometimes Honest Feedback can be a bit harsh. But Honest Feedback is the Best Feedback. I've learned to turn negative feedback into constructive criticism. You can't take it personally, these are things that may potentially help your business (assuming you can identify and solve whatever problem is raised). I'm an optimist at heart, but when it comes to feedback, I always tend to focus more on the negative feedback. In terms of fine tuning my product, I think there is more to learn from the negative feedback (not to imply that positive feedback is not valuable). I don't consider my job well done until there is no negative feedback (rare), or I do everything I can to minimize the negative feedback. It has become an effective strategy that allows me to learn from potential customers and fine tune the product (customer feedback loop).

It is possible to give "Honest Feedback" with out saying something "sucks."

I'm not going to disagree, but I think it's important to note that Honest Feedback is unfiltered. So if they think it "sucks" then they should be able to say that it "sucks" and this shouldn't reflect badly on them. If anything, the person receiving the feedback should be thanking them for investing the time to even provide feedback (instead of bouncing and moving along, never to be seen again).

I took it as "That's a bummer" not "Your work is shit".

Haven't you created a chicken and egg problem for yourself? You want people to fund a journalist, but they will only be able to read said journalist's articles after they fund him. How do you get around this?

All these journalists are established professionals who are hand picked and have followings in the thousands to tens of thousands.

Sure. paul.[lastname]@gmail.com

Very honest retrospective, that was a great read.

Thanks for this awesome and honest startup story! I've mentioned it on the teamspir.it FB and Google+ pages.

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