Ask HN: Do all investors need to see traction? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do all investors need to see traction?

1 pointadamzerner4 comments

This is my first raising money. Everyone I talk to, and everything I read says that investors won't invest if they don't see traction. Is this true?

The way I see it, the quality of an investment depends on its expected value: chances of success X magnitude of success. No traction (yet) doesn't necessarily mean that chances of success are low.

For example (not to self-promote, but my situation is a applicable), my website solves a real problem. Student reviews of colleges ask questions that are too broad. Applicants want more information. I ask more specific questions that provide more information, and thus solve the problem. I've shown that I could get reviews because I paid for them for 3 pilot schools. However, I need a seed round to pay for reviews at the other 297 schools. I don't have traction yet, because I need reviews first. But people say I need traction in order to get the reviews, which is a big problem.

See https://www.dropbox.com/s/8cuu8ztl4srfgb6/Questions%20Comparison%20pdf.pdf to see the questions that I ask compared to the ones my competitors ask.

can you clarify why granularity matters to your target customers over macro considerations like ranking, endowment, quality of dept'l programs?

what did you learn from the 3 experiments you ran?

why 297 schools? why not a few more pilot schools?

> can you clarify why granularity matters to your target customers over macro considerations like ranking, endowment, quality of dept'l programs?

1) Some people are anxious and want as much info as they could get. Some recognize what a big decision it is and want more information to optimize the decision. Some just want to know what the social life and parties are really like and can't find this information. Some want to know what the economics program is like, and can't find this information. Some are guidance counselors or advisors, and their careers depend on having more information.

2) Having more information will allow me to provide more accurate summaries and highlights.

3) I have stuff like ranking, endowment, department rankings. This actually happens to be another competitive advantage of mine. No one else provides info on endowment, us news ranking, or department rankings. I provide information on all 3 of these things.

See http://www.collegeinsideview.com/pitch for more information.

> what did you learn from the 3 experiments you ran?

I learned that I could advertise this offer on Facebook and get current students to answer questions: $25 to answer 50 questions, or $10 to answer 25 questions.

> why 297 schools? why not a few more pilot schools?

Because no one goes to a student review websites to do their college research when the site only has a few schools.

imo there are other ways to get students to crowdsource your content at no or low financial cost, just hustle (Yelp Elite). (in which case, maybe ping Mike Kim to ask about his experience running Yollege.)

i'd pick one thing and do it really well. figure out what that is, and go after that. e.g., Ranku solves the problem of searching for online degree programs by aggregating the info for you. once you're there, they make it easy to find/compare/apply.

i'd also spend some time with product people having them give you feedback on your prototype.

> imo there are other ways to get students to crowdsource your content at no or low financial cost, just hustle (Yelp Elite).

I've tried it all. I go to Pitt, and I had to hustle hard to get kids to answer there. Most people ignored me, and I had to keep following up to get like 5% of the people I asked to do it. I asked my friends, random people, people I just met, people I work with, play basketball with, at the dining halls, I made announcements in classes, put up flyers, handed out flyers, basically everything.

Then the question is what to do for other schools. I tried asking everyone I know on Facebook, but very very few answered questions. I tried emailing club presidents and RA's at other schools to tell kids about it. I tried asking school administrators to help me out. Tried posting on Reddit. I tried paying a representative $50 to get answerers for his school (didn't work).

Then I tried smaller amounts of money. I tried $5 for 50 questions + $100 bonus. Didn't work. Then $10 for 10 questions + the bonus. Didn't work. Finally, I tried $25 for 50 questions with no bonus... and it worked! So given all the things I've tried, I think that it's necessary.

> (in which case, maybe ping Mike Kim to ask about his experience running Yollege.)

Thanks for the tip! He seems like the perfect person to talk to!

> i'd pick one thing and do it really well.

I am - providing more comprehensive student reviews by asking a bunch of questions that currently aren't being asked.

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