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Comment by flipside | Hacker News Reader

Cool that the application explicitly asks for progress updates for those of us that have applied before (8th try is the charm?). Before I was never sure how much my previous applications impacted things so it's nice to be able to make my own case for things.

Really glad for the application overhaul, looking good.

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That's great that you're still hacking away at it. Same here, I've applied about 4 or 5 times? I lost track. I've changed a lot, so has my project, but things have also stabilized as I learned how to push this forward. At this point, it's almost a ritual just to apply because it helps me think about what I've done and what I need to do next. This year I'm too busy to spend days on the application but hopefully all the prior practice helps. Regardless, it's ready to submit so I'll meet my quota for this year. :-) (As soon as the submit works but maybe it's just me.)

Applying to YC has definitely been a great way to asses the current status of Tinj. In the early days, we'd spend over a week working on the YC application which was definitely a sign that we weren't ready. Thanks to all that work though, I've gotten better at communicating who/what/why we are.

Is that four years you've been applying? Would you mind sharing your idea or project? Maybe we can give you some advice.

Things have changed a lot over the years (team, product, etc), but the overall vision hasn't, reinventing how people share information. What's changed the most though is me.

From the start I new that my limitations were the only things holding me back, so the past 4 years has been largely dedicated to reinventing myself into the type of person that could make Tinj successful.

As for the product, we'll be starting a private beta of Curv soon, a simple way to rate videos after watching by drawing how you felt over time. Can check out the demo at http://tinj.com

If anyone is excited about the potential of tinj or curv, email me at mat at tinj. PS - We're hiring. ;)

This is an interesting idea. The Swiss national television made a somewhat related app for the FIFA World Cup 2014 : You could thumb up or down your time during a game and see how other people reacted in realtime. And you get a nice graph at the end : http://ledefouloir.rts.ch/

The most interesting thing about Curv is that it isn't realtime. I know a lot of realtime rating startups that have closed up because they never got traction.

Just checked out the demo. This inflicts too much work on the watcher. Why would I want to draw curves after watching a video? What do I gain as the user?

Future versions will be easier for users and have better incentives. Gotta start somewhere.

An example of things we can build is a recommendation system.

no doubt you can build lots of interesting things (including recommendations), if people are giving you UGC.

question above comment was asking was why would people generate that content for you.. incentive needs to be there for each piece of content produced.

How do you judge whether or not what's holding you back is your inability to move on to a different, less fantastically tedious, idea?

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