Our YC Interview Demo - we just launched it | Hacker News Reader

Our YC Interview Demo - we just launched it

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12 pointsblader21 comments

So our team wanted to start on a new app after we got the interview notice, and we decided to launch it today. We'd love to get your feedback on it before PG grills us.

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On the buy page, I would prefer if you don't redirect me to the profile of the pet I just bought. It would be a much faster interface if I could just keep buying. Also, I can buy a pet I already own from the "Steal this pet" button on my profile.

The game itself is oddly compelling, especially for a game where the mechanics haven't quite been sorted out.

I would too. It was just quick a dirty to do it that way. We'll definitely be changing that very soon.

Yeah the steal this pet link is a limitation of the Facebook profile FBML unfortunately.

Ok some feedback

1) The scrolling back and forth to buy one pet is annoying. I want a shopping basket for buying pets 2) You could be way more aggresive with my minifeed. Saying Sumon has bought Irra K as a pet in my minifeed would be awesome for virality 3) Where is the box within my profile? It would be cool to see what pets i owned in my profile widget. Then have a link saying buy them back and make cash! That would get people adding this app.

Its a good start - and having a celebdaq equivalent for facebook would be awesome. Study fluff friends for some more inspiration.

Hm the profile box should be there .... we'll take a look.

Minifeed stories are coming, couldn't fit that in to our schedule on time.

Selling friends--hilarious concept.

So our team wanted to start on a new app after we got the interview notice, and we decided to launch it today. We'd love to get your feedback on it before PG grills us.

Can you add a search feature to the "Find Pets" page? Paging through 60 pages of friends isn't exactly my idea of fun...

I think you should be able to use one of the built in fb:friend-selectors with some ajax to make it pretty slick.

Yeah that's coming. Took longer expected to deploy so we couldn't get everything in in time.

Great idea. And, unlike most Facebook Apps, it has potential for continued use after the first time. Best of luck.

Thanks, we tried to make it as fun as possible (and as quick to develop as possible!)

Although news.yc is really upsetting the gender ratio right now =)

Who wants to buy trevor blackwell off me?

You applied to YC, or got the interview?

We're interviewees.

Note: This is going to come across crappy, but please don't take it that way. I'm actually curious.

Care to share anymore of your ultimate goal? From the outset, I don't see anything too compelling, and I didn't really expect YC to jump on the Facebook App train. Is there more to it that you're holding back on for now?

Yeah I totally understand. This app is pretty tangential to what we're doing, but I think it's too early to talk about that. Our goal was to see if we can design, develop, and launch a Facebook application in a week.

Cool. I didn't expect you to be able to say much at this point. I wish you luck, and keep us updated.

I like the sounds of that approach.

Could be a good opportunity to get your team working together, learn from some small mistakes, etc.

One of PG tips is to have evidence that you can build cool things. Doing that app in a week probably qualifies.

This makes me so sad. Sour grapes.

This isn't what we applied with, if it makes you feel any better.

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