Your friends are lying to you. For $10, I wont. | Hacker News Reader

Your friends are lying to you. For $10, I wont.

brutalhonesty.io

370 pointsgoodoldboys217 comments

I, personally, cannot imagine any question to which I would get a more valuable answer from a 28-year-old software engineer in California interested in finance, men's fashion and weightlifting than I would get from my wife, family, friends and peers -- people who know me; whose lives actually overlap with mine in some way. What is "telling it like it is" if you don't share the same context? How likely is it he can pick up on something you should really know (like: "you interrupt women more often than you do men") if all he knows about you is what you've told him?

I imagine myself paying $10 and asking "hey, what do you think of my outfit tonight?" And he would kindly inform me that my chances of scoring (or whatever they call it these days) wearing these sandals, hiking pants (pull these zippers and they become shorts!) and grey kinda stretched-out long-sleeve t-shirt are next to zero. But my Friday night activity was going out with my wife, toddler & 5-year-old to have dinner with a bunch of retired English expats in the middle of nowhere in central France. I sat next to a guy who was a large-scale industrial engineer back in the 70s -- extracting helium & natural gas in communist Poland, in Iran when the Shah fell... And my little ones had great fun racing around and then choosing the winning tickets for the lottery.

But: there are plenty of people in this world (or at least in the more Californian parts of this world) who share his particular little slice of the human experience, who are a bit less far along than he is, perhaps, in figuring out who they are and who they want to be, and who have not yet built any meaningful friendships.

(It seems like it should go without saying: if you have built a meaningful relationship with someone who cares about you and has a bit of wisdom, they will find a way to tell you the things you need to know with no brutality required. You will also do this for them.)

Who the fuck cares if you don't see the need. It is a niche product, like an impulse buy in a supermarket. I don't see need for 99% of the crap what is sold in a dollar store, but the dollar store is still a quite solid business.

That said, I just bought my advice, paid but I still don't see email. Damn.

Sorry about that - this got popular faster than I thought it would! Did you use paypal or bitcoin? I think I'm having issues with Coinbase at the moment.

Could you send me an email directly at brutalhonestyio@gmail.com? I'll get to yours next :)

The lesson learned here is that the cost of living is so high in California that $10 only has the buying power of $0.02

And wasn't someone complaining that HN had no humour just the other day! Nicely done ;)

damn, can I send you my $10? That's at least a $5 joke in any housing market.

He isn't trying to suggest this is a service which everyone will find useful or interesting. It actually takes a lot of honesty with yourself to even understand why you might need this service. Thousands of people every day make decisions on their own, or on the advice of others, which are badly informed decisions. This guy could help them.

For $10, he isn't going to send you a 5 word email and ignore you forever. He is going to have a reasonable dialogue pertaining to your question/concern. If you say "No bro, I am not looking to score" he will ask "OK, well what are your intentions? What is your actual concern with your outfit?"

Usually the consultants I pay or meet are much more expensive than $10.

I am not sure what the point of that comment is.

It is that people in any kind of business pay much more than $10 for quite bad advice. $10 is quite a small investment.

I'm usually willing to offer bad advice and uninformed opinions for free, so what is his competitive advantage?

How about $75?

http://talkshopwithus.com/creatives/

They also likely have a clear expertise.

That was part of my point -- I personally don't have any real overlap with his life context (and I do have people who can discuss my flaws with me, with enough honesty that it's not always comfortable).

But there are people who could seek him out as someone a bit further along than they are, on a similar path, plus some market for people who'll try it for fun.

I think you run some very good points. For me, I agree. I have very few people in my life, but the ones that are happen to be great at notifying me of the things that I do that aren't good.

I'd wager that there a lot of people out there that ultimately do not have such friendships. A lot of people have poor self-esteem and surround themselves with crappy, dishonest, alike people. The idea here is that some of those exact people will have just the amount self-actualization that you need to email this guy. Hopefully this guy is willing and ready to meet these people more than half way and do his best to empathize.

I realize that I just issued a lot of insults to a group of people I explicitly said I do not belong to. Self-acceptance is a great thing to encourage and facilitate though. I wonder if that's this guy's intention...

> If you say "No bro, I am not looking to score" he will ask "OK, well what are your intentions? What is your actual concern with your outfit?"

RainSunshine, you registered at HN today and have posted only on this post and nowhere else, speaking with high confidence about how a random person on the Internet will respond to specific example questions.

What is your relation to Jordan and/or this site?

Holy telling it like it is!

everyones gotta start somewhere

I have no objections to RainSunshine's commentary, it's actually quite valuable in the context. I just believe that whatever link they have to the site should be clearly disclosed, if such exists.

I have none. His website looks nice, his business model is sound, and people are talking crap about it simply because they don't personally see a need for it. I felt like defending that.

> like: "you interrupt women more often than you do men"

Nice enlightened example.

"Telling it like it is" is typically a cover used by assholes who want to give a simplistic, boneheaded, confrontational opinion completely devoid of context and empathy.

Your Friday night sounds pretty awesome.

This made me laugh.

I think we're missing the joke here:

this is an update on the concept of "my 2 cents", with the difference being...

...he has adjusted for inflation, with a markup.

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

From 1913 to 2014, $0.02 cents inflated to $0.48 cents. At that rate, wouldn't it be over 100 years before reaching $10? In which case, in 2014 he'd have to share 20.83 opinions per session to justify the cost.

I tried to find a year for which $0.02 in today's money today would be approximately $10, but it turned out that you'd have to start somewhere in the middle ages, and the error bars get pretty large.

That's inflation adjusted, but now you need to do the compound interest to get it from $0.02 to $10.

> I imagine myself paying $10 and asking "hey, what do you think of my outfit tonight?" And he would kindly inform me that my chances of scoring (or whatever they call it these days) wearing these sandals, hiking pants (pull these zippers and they become shorts!) and grey kinda stretched-out long-sleeve t-shirt are next to zero. But my Friday night activity was going out with my wife, toddler & 5-year-old to have dinner with a bunch of retired English expats in the middle of nowhere in central France.

I imagine you meant to include at least a modicum of detail to establish the context of your question to get any value out of your $10; or maybe you just wanted [to imagine] the exchange to be frustrating.

Sure; my point in that example was that his pitch (esp. including his chosen list of interests and potential questions) felt extremely narrow to me; I'm also a white American male and only 10 years older; but the world he seems to be inhabiting (men's fashion! weightlifting!) is not even adjacent to mine.

If we met in a social situation, we could probably find something to talk about; but we'd not be paying either other for that.

> but the world he seems to be inhabiting (men's fashion! weightlifting!) is not even adjacent to mine.

I doubt the service would be valuable if he were offering advice on subjects you're already comfortable judging for yourself.

But your friends have been lying to you.

About your website/app/resume/outfit.

You need to know the truth.

How can you afford to not know?

This is really my point. There are probably better sources of truth than "some people I hang out with sometimes".

Those sources vary depending on the subject, but they probably won't be "someone I don't know, from the internet" either, unless he happens to have that specific expertise and you have a common need.

Website/app/resume: for me this just equates to "how is the business doing", and I don't ask friends; this is what data is for. There's a possible conflict of interest here with our CEO (my primary source of truth for financial status), because he wants to motivate the company (and hence generally add a positive spin); but he's also well-aware that transparency & trust are far more important than any temporarily gain from faked positivity.

Outfit: sure, appearances matter in life & work. But I have better sources of truth here as well than "ask a friend"; hello again CEO/founder, for one. We talk about what we're wearing if that's going to be relevant, and (more likely) how we're speaking on phone calls, and what can be better. Think he's honest? Well, he'd be a fool not to be.

But most of the time my wardrobe only matters to the extent that my wife feels I'm appropriately dressed if we're out in public, and she's perfectly capable of pointing it out if I've misjudged. It's just "oh hey, don't forget we're going out to dinner before we come back home tonight", and that works.

This is actually an intriguing business idea. I believe that most of the upvotes the submission is getting here are genuine expressions of interest in a radically different idea. (It's also fun to make snarky comments about this submission.)

I won't be snarky here, but will suggest a news story of related interest. Journalist A. J. Jacobs turned on his full sense of humor as well as his honesty when he wrote a story for Esquire magazine in 2007 about the "radical honesty" movement. The story's title gets him started: "I Think You're Fat."[1] When I read this story the first time, right after it was published, I laughed out loud and immediately shared it with my favorite online group of friends (this was pre-Facebook, for me). I shared it with a new group of friends this summer, and found out that they like the story too. Try it. I think you'll like it.

A guy who could take the business idea proposed in this thread and execute it with as much humor as A. J. Jacobs could become a millionaire.

[1] http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707

You would be surprised how often you just... lie. Even if it's something unimportant, or a story that doesn't exist. You can lie about the most meaningless things. If you pay attention to your lying you will be horrified how often you do it, and how pointless the things you lie about are.

I guess I form part of this "radical honesty" movement. Once you learn to trick your mind out of lying it's so refreshing. Lying is extremely stressful, I have no idea why we have a natural tendency to employ it.

Instead of worrying if my wife finds out I've lied about drinking with colleagues ("I'm working late"), I know that I can ask her to fetch me if I go over the limit.

Although, there's a difference between being honest and being a dick.

There was a pretty entertaining Ricky Gervais movie called The Invention of Lying in which everyone on earth is physically incapable of lying, save one. Before you ask for ubiquitous radical honesty, watch it :).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfmXodInxTU

I was really disappointed in this film for how unimaginative it was. For example, they still had money (actual physical tokens) whereas in a world where everyone was honest you'd just have a number written down on a page that you would update with every transaction, or some other trivial mnemonic device for accounting.

They also didn't deal with the question of people who were honest but mistaken--how would dispute resolution work in a world where everyone in the world was telling the truth, but no one in the world had a very good idea of what the truth actually is? And so on.

It was a one-joke movie that could have been a much deeper look at how lying and our strategies for detecting and dealing with lying are embedded into our every social interaction, including those that apparently have very little to do with it. And it could have been incredibly funny, instead of just kind of meh.

This basic idea was my first startup back in 2007 before the Startup boom. Obviously didn't really go anywhere but if someone wanted to do it, it would be much easier now with smartphones and a consumer group that is more receptive to this kind of thing.

We were even written up in the Houston press: http://www.houstonpress.com/2007-10-11/news/night-of-terror/...

I think in this case we are dealing with a discrepancy between what people think they want, and what they actually want. I wouldn't be surprised if a fair number of people try this once, but he might have trouble getting repeat clients and I have concerns about how helpful, outside the most narrow niche cases, this will be.

I'm a counselor, and going into the field I naively thought that straightforward evaluative statements were central to what therapists did. I thought that what people needed was "objective" feedback on their situations, and I thought myself ideally suited to providing it.

You can imagine my shock when I found out that "direct, reality-oriented feedback" is one of the most ineffective forms of intervention, and leads to a significant rise in client dropout. In other words, people don't like to be judged, however politely or compassionately, and it doesn't help them (1). People need love, not honesty - especially when they are going through troubles which are likely already causing them to question themselves.

The one exception is, as jtheory noted above, within the context of an already established attachment relationship, in which mutual respect and affiliation is already firmly in place.

In general, the best interventions are those which, rather than telling the client "what they need to hear", compassionately lead them towards the acceptance of what they more than likely already know. But it must come from the person themselves, and in their own time - that alone is what damns or saves.

Addendum: The research also reflects my experience. My internship was as a career counselor at a university and the most common client I saw were students about to graduate (often with little to no work experience) expecting to immediately get prestigious/lucrative jobs. I remember one philosophy major in particular who stopped by to see me 3 months before she graduated, whose only work experience was as a manager of a strip club and who wanted a 60k + job writing children's books right after she graduated. I told her, as kindly as I possibly could, that her expectations were more than likely unrealistic. Not only did I tell her but I sat with her and searched through the job ads for the position she wanted so she could see for herself what the requirements were for those positions. She left in a huff and I never saw her again. In fact, not a single client with whom I took a "brutally honest" approach did I ever see again. However, when I took a questioning approach, the difference was night and day.

(1) http://mobile.williamwhitepapers.com/pr/2007ConfrontationinA...

Are there any books that teach this leading/questioning approach that you particularly like/recommend? Non-pop books are fine.

Although basic and lacking a bit in depth, the book I found most helpful when transitioning from confrontation to questioning was "Demystifying Counseling" by Arlene King. It's short, clearly written and jargon-free.

Most therapy manuals are awful though - and so much of my progress since then has been helped along by reading bios or analysis's of the greats in the field, and adapting their methods to match my personality. It's very much an art and not a science - and my progress has been determined as much by my self-knowledge and the strength of the integration between my conception of life and my practice as my knowledge of specific methods of inquiry.

So all that to say I don't have much - although you've motivated me to look around for it. Feel free to drop me a line so I can share when I find something.

You may want to take a look at Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata. It is basically a coaching technique based on questions, used on learning environments. Lean Education and Toyota Kata are also related, so you may find good info when searching for those keywords as well.

It is not exactly the same situation, but if you treat that person as someone who needs to learn something about herself that she didn't realise (or refused to accept), it might be very similar.

Here is a video explaining it with a bit more details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3G0V7Wthbc

Hope this helps.

After 3 days of answering questions, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that your premise here is exactly right.

I've definitely been able to help a few people out based on limited feedback I've received. However, I get the sense that most of the people whom I haven't heard back from (around 75%) probably aren't too thrilled with the brutal honesty. I've been very compassionate, but still. This comment definitely hits home.

This makes a lot of sense - esp the part about - 'people need love, not honesty'. It takes a lot of effort and work to give good feedback without being brutal, but it is really the only way that has worked for me.

Thanks for the Esquire link. Very entertaining.

I love these kind of "man behind the curtain" things. I've had a few somewhat similar ideas I've meant to make, though they were more in the spirit of being silly and fun rather than "brutal truth telling."

They don't really make much(/any?) money or involve cool tech, but I think they are fun, and good times. Maybe I'll get working on the one I've been wanting to do most.

Angry man: WHADDAYOU WANT?

Man: Well, Well, I was told outside that...

Angry man: DON'T GIVE ME THAT, YOU SNOTTY-FACED HEAP OF PARROT DROPPINGS!

Man: What?

A: SHUT YOUR FESTERING GOB, YOU TIT! YOUR TYPE MAKES ME PUKE! YOU VACUOUS TOFFEE-NOSED MALODOROUS PERVERT!!!

M: Yes, but I came here for an argument!!

A: OH! Oh! I'm sorry! This is abuse!

M: Oh! Oh I see!

A: Aha! No, you want room 12A, next door.

M: Oh...Sorry...

A: Not at all!

A: (under his breath) stupid git.

Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

And I always thought gobutit was one word -- I've been saying it wrong all these years! I still think it would be a great name for a source code control system, though.

Hey everyone - thanks for the feedback. I wasn't sure how the response would be but it's been mostly positive so far.

I came up with the idea because I wanted to use such a service, but when I couldn't find anything I figured I'd create it and thought it would be fun. Most importantly I want to help people out - the $10 is so I can (somewhat) justify it from a time perspective. So far it turns out I'm spending a lot of time on each request, but that's fine because I'm enjoying it.

I'm really appreciating the snark as well!

The idea is terrible because you lack the qualifications to answer questions outside if your own personal expertise (whatever that may be). Second, assuming you get questions, you will be working at $20-10/hour. Not much money. So yeah, two thumbs down. awful idea

Dude, what a troll comment.

Brutal honesty. Dot io.

Well, this whole thing IS about being honest...

Well at least he's got a high IQ =P

The comment is terrible because you lack the qualifications to comment outside if your own personal expertise (whatever that may be). Second, assuming you get to comment, you will be working for free. Not much money. So yeah, two thumbs down. awful comment

See what I did there :P

Would be interesting for you to share how many takers you get within the first few days (and then ongoing) of this post.

> I'm Jordan, a 28 year old software developer living in California. I've always been direct and never had a problem telling it like it is. I have a wide variety of interests outside of work that include Finance, Men's Fashion, Diet/Nutrition, Weightlifting, Sports, Travel, Music, and countless other topics.

Brutal honesty: nothing here leads me to believe that Jordan's feedback is any more useful than the feedback of a random person on the street. The fact that Jordan is only charging $10 and hasn't focused his offering on an area of interest where he has demonstrable experience and expertise leads me to believe that Jordan himself doesn't think his feedback is very valuable.

If anything he's in a bit of a bubble based on his age, location and interests.

If I pay for honest feedback I'd like to get it from someone who is not exactly like me.

Preferably someone much older, life experience seems like a pretty good indicator to me.

Well, that depends on my goals for the specific feedback. If I want to know how to get a good reaction from people in bubble X, then asking someone in the bubble makes sense. Asking someone further is valuable for different reasons.

That self-description and his picture (of himself drinking beer out of a bottle at a bar) gave me second thought about his ability to give an advice that's different than one that would be dispensed by a typical 20-something 'bro' working in IT.

> bro

And your whole assumption gives me the impression that you are a ridiculously superficial person.

Maybe I was being too harsh.

It wasn't my intention to use 'bro' as a derogatory term.

That's a very strange opinion you have. It isn't necessarily supposed to be helpful, but rather truthful. How many people are comfortable asking someone on the street for complete honesty? Very few. The ones who are, are not the target market for this service.

To me, his bio says "I am a pretty average guy, with above average intelligence. I am the guy you are trying to impress at the bar, I am your bro who never invites you to the gym, I am in the front row of your concert."

I can get brutal honesty on Reddit for free. (And polite honesty, also for free, from Dear Abby.)

But will it be a thoughtful, well written response?

exactly what kind of thoughtful, well written response can I expect from the landing page's example question of "Am I socially awkward?" or "Why isn't she texting me back?"

What kind of a stranger could give me actual answers to those questions?

I can imagine a few good (applicable) answers to someone who'd pay ten dollars to email someone those questions... but I can't imagine any answers that are actually worth than ten bucks.

> But will it be a thoughtful, well written response?

/r/subredditdrama

It's full of self-righteous people who enjoy watching other people fight. On the other hand, they tend to be people who are less interested in fighting and rather enjoy engaging conversation. I've had some brilliant belief-altering discussions in there, and most importantly, situations where both parties "respectfully agree to disagree."

You just have to find the sweet spots in Reddit - it takes a fair amount of participation to finds those places (but SRD is a good start).

Holy shit, of all the subs you could've mentioned. SRD is incredibly biased in certain topics, they ALWAYS brigade the subs they are against, and have the most awful crowd of the site. Seriously, the whole metasphere is incredibly toxic.

Reddit sprung to mind for me too.

This is a bad idea. Fine, you pay $10 for someone's honest opinion, but it's just one person's opinion, you really want to consult multiple sources to get a balanced view, otherwise you could make a bad decision based on another person being in a shitty mood (for whatever reason).

Plus, I find friends will be honest with you if you expressly give them permission to be, and promise not to take it personally.

Exactly, it's one person's opinion, and you know next to nothing about him, so why should you value his opinion.

But if he makes money from giving people unqualified advice on random subjects, good for him I guess.

You aren't legally prevented from spending $10 at other honesty vendors in addition to this one, or required to follow the advice in order to avoid a penalty.

There are other honesty vendors? Who else is doing this?

Plus, like vlunkr said, I don't know the guy, if I wanted the honest feedback of random strangers I can already get that for free on the Internet. It's not exactly like brutal honesty is in short supply, and if you target the right places it can be articulate as well.

Seems counterproductive to claim that this is a "bad idea". The only point you prove is why you're not going to be his customer. Lets see how many people take him up on this to wait and see if its a bad idea.

Yeah sure, let's see how many insecure people he can find to charge before we class it as a bad idea.

judge.me (YC16), specializing in honesty-as-a-service, is hiring!

Pitch: Bringing experts and non-experts together, making non-experts feel bad and sucky.

Also specializing in questions starting with "If you're such an expert... " to totally undermine the claimed expertise of said experts.

But Reddit is not private - it's a public forum.

(unless you're sending [unsolicited?] private messages there)

That's the most important thing. It's private. Also, redditors tend to tell others they are the most beautiful unique flower in the world, when everyone else sees a hideous ogre. This is why a service like this is so much better.

What you can't get, not easily, is brutal honesty and privacy about your eponymous self. This is typically what psychologists do, although they're more reassuring and comforting, not telling you the hard truths.

Not really. /r/amiugly will never tell you you're ugly. 4chan, though, will.

I imagine Hot or Not would do as well.

I'll give him this much. Have you seen /r/rateme? People there are way too supportive. Doesn't seem to matter that every post starts with "give me the brutal truth". That or there's always survivorship bias in those who think she's hot and choose to reply.

I don't know what this guy is talking about.

Maybe I'm lucky enough to have these friends, but this week I asked multiple friends and one person who I don't know that well about my current situation and they told me things like "You are really stupid you did that!" or "Get your shit together!", or "Do something already you idiot!". (Not joking or something, these were they actual, serious answers to me on the topic.) I don't know how could I get more honest opinion than these.

Also I think your best friends care enough to tell you the truth, and your responsibility should be also to tell them if you care enough! Yes, sometimes it's hard. One of my best friend says me things all the time which hurt my feelings very badly, but he always adds "I don't say this because I want to hurt you, but because I want the best for you.". He shouldn't say that because I know his intent and he is one of my best friend for more than 10 years now, even though he is brutal. :) Another example when I complained years ago to another friend about something, she told me how I dare to feel that way, I should feel lucky, I have a lot of friends and that's just stupid to worry about something like what I told her. She shocked me with her opinion but the more I think about it, the more I think she was right and I never heard an opinion like that before. We were very good friends at the time also!

While the copyright attributes to "brutalhonesty.io" [1], the privacy policy [2] more accurately identifies this as a venture of "Warrior One".

The only "Warrior One" I can locate is a coaching firm for lawyers, with no one named Jordan listed on their about page [3] as a member of staff.

I've asked this Warrior One on Twitter [4] if they are the actual owner of the site, and will reply here if they respond.

[1] which implies that either a DBA filing exists for that name, or no such name exists

[2] "I reserve the right to transfer your personally identifiable information, as well as any other information, in connection with the sale or other disposition of all or part of Warrior One’s business, assets, or both."

[3] http://www.warriorone.com/our-story/

[4] https://twitter.com/floatingatoll/status/520745627278270465

And thanks to the psychological effect of effort justification, you will even like what he says.

Since this is a product over email, would be less friction to support payments over Square Cash. Just ask the question and cc cash@square.com. No need to visit the website and can be done from mobile easily :)

Wasn't aware of this - thanks. Seems like a good fit.

It reminds me of this: (´･ω･`)

The Saga of Denko and Her Stalker.

http://vgperson.tumblr.com/post/21533650696/help-the-girl-i-...

Bastard! 2 hours later and I'm still reading that...

Interesting...I was thinking about starting a site called comfortinglies.io, where I'll tell you how wonderful you are, how it's all going to be ok, etc. Maybe we could swap links?

Siri should implement a service based on Mad Magazine's "Don Martin's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions".

Something like awesomenessreminders.com?

This is a ridiculously awesome business idea. Either you'll make millions or nothing with that. But the costs aren't that high, and at least the buzz can be used for something else. Good luck!

He would have to respond to a lot of messages (100 000) to reach a million.

or one.

Question: "Would you like a million dollars?"

"Thoughtful reply": "Yes."

That's the thing about business ideas where revenue is directly tied to the work you have to do: scaling is super easy. getting more questions than you can handle by yourself? hire some friends to help.

>"After you pay $10, I'll email you to start the conversation. You then share whatever it is you're looking for feedback on, and I'll tell you exactly how I feel about it. Most submissions are handled within a few hours, but some might take up to a few days. All submissions are completely private." //

Assuming he is an honest actor in this process he can't share your submission with anyone as then they wouldn't be private. It is specified that it is he, Jordan, who will email you, he will say how he feels.

It could have been set up differently to allow for scaling but part of the drawn I think is that it's a real, named and identifiable, individual that you are contacting.

Of course "Jordan" could be a made up person and this could be a way to gather information for social manipulation or straight-out blackmail, but you know ...

Presumably he'd update that bit of text as part of expanding.

In this case I would agree, probably relatively easy to scale.

I've long thought about the differences in scalability and margins when comparing service-based businesses to product-based ones.

In the ad agency world, it is all service-based for the most part still, margins are razor thin, pay is low, and the stress is massive. The problem then becomes maintaining quality of service as you scale, and efficiency of operations to keep your margins as healthy as possible. Stressed out service employees are basically the equivalent of delivering a shitty product. If it becomes a big enough loss in quality, you lose customers.

Eh, no. The credit-card info and money is taken already, before any response is given.

> Either you'll make millions or nothing with that.

Or somewhere in between, more likely.

If I wanted brutal honesty from my friends, I would ask them for it.

If they're not being brutally honest with me, it's typically for a good reason, and they'll do it on request.

I have no idea how a random software engineer on the other side of the world is going to be useful in regards to giving me brutally honest advice without seeing any perspective but my own (the only information he will have to go off is what I tell him).

Is (insert idea here) a good business/app/website idea?

Would you pay (amount) for (product/app/service)?

Do you like my app? (web/iOS only, for now)

Does my landing page look professsional?

Getting one guy's opinion about any of these things is anecdotal at best. It's not a comprehensive information source. And it would be foolish to use it in your decision making process.

There's better ways to collect data:

1) Spend that $10 towards an adword campaign for a pre-launch signup page for you website/app idea. Maybe this guy won't sign up, but maybe a dozen, a hundred or a thousand other people will. Why waste your money on one data point?

2) Put the money to buying beer. Invite your friends and family over, get them liquored up a bit. I guarantee you'll hear a great deal of honest feedback.

3) Post on HN, reddit, slashdot or any other number of web sites where armchair cynics freely administer scathing advice.

The only thing he should be telling people willing to pay for his opinion on anything is "sucker."

For those old enough to remember 1-900 phone numbers, there used to be 1-900-4INSULT (or something like this) that you called and paid $10. The person who answered would just insult you until you couldn't take it anymore. This reminds me of that.

Does this remind anybody else of: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/05/26

also relevant: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/06/30

Okay. I did it, paid my $10 bucks and waiting for an email. I actually run a much more expensive, competing service:

http://talkshopwithus.com

Interesting. Will you be sharing your email/conversation with him?

Sure, what the heck.

Awesome! It will be cool to see what his response is to a business idea that is somewhat similar to the service he is providing you.

It's interesting if he notices that the email conversation will be shared here and therefore puts extra effort into his answer.

Here's Jordan's first email:

-----------------------------

Hey there,

Thanks for buying Brutal Honesty. What can I help you with? Ask away.

Cheers

Jordan

-----------------------------

And then this is my reply:

-----------------------------

Hi Jordan,

So I was hoping to get your honest opinion on a business idea I'm working on. It's a bit similar to your business I guess.

Here's our site:

http://talkshopwithus.com

Let me know if you think this seems like total bullshit, or if it's cool.

Thanks!

-Alex

Here is a free one: The "See More Creatives" link 404s hitting against makers.html

On your site, in viewports less than 768px wide, the header background image disappears, leaving a light background that makes the text very difficult to read. The image should probably not disappear, and the background-color should also be changed to something dark like the image, so that in case the image doesn’t load the text will still be legible.

Thanks for catching that!

Interesting idea, I'm starting a startup consulting company and plan to be more expensive but laser focused on early stage startups with < 10 employees. How has the initial reaction been towards your service? Do you have customers?

One thing I've noticed as a freelance developer is that people are more willing to commit to per project contracts rather than hourly. I wonder if that's the case with a service such as yours where it's a one time deal.

You have a broken link:

http://i.imgur.com/NG4VfYN.png

I would totally use this if the guy running it was closer to robot than human. A highly logical walkthrough of whatever problem I present is something I would value immensely, as I think anyone else who's watched any sci-fi films with all-knowing, oracle-like talking computers would.

But I don't think this is a problem that can be solved by ordinary people, and AI is nowhere close yet. Perhaps there's room in the world for Psychopaths-as-a-Service.

Perhaps you are looking for Spock-as-a-Service?

Exactly

Why spend the $10 with brutalhonesty.io when you can just post your question on Ask HN? The way HN is going these days, your honest answers will be here within 24hrs!

Exactly. The Internet is full of people who have no problem openly and honestly calling it like they see it. Often cynically and viciously so.

Paid version of "Nathan"

> Paid version of "Nathan"

You mean "Ethan": http://www.textethan.com/

He's probably referring to Nathan for You, a recent comedyish show[0], though 'Ethan' seems like an interesting app. Have you tried it?

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_For_You

Honest question - Is there like a useful version of this for ,you know, hard CS/ML/... questions. Like what ML model should I use for training this dataset, & some advice on hyperparameter tuning ? That sort of thing. There's a void between the completely free stackoverflow ( even with bounty ) and an odesk. Some in-between system where you pay $10 for 5 minutes of legit expert advice. Anybody ?

We used to have completely free "brutally honest" feedback from legit experts on comp.xxxx newsgroups in their heyday. The eternal september killed it forever.

I think you could look at short term consulting services like AirPair (recent YC company) or HackHands- they offer on demand video/audio calls with specialists that can help with specific technological problems. OP's service is more about absolute honesty than specific knowledge.

http://www.codementor.io/, although you'll probably end up paying $30 for 15 minutes, since 5 minutes aren't enough to explain your question.

I saw it here, and I've been mentoring there quite successfully, although I haven't had any clients with really advanced questions yet, only beginners. I am looking forward to helping people with hard design issues.

You probably won't get hard design issues there.

I'd talk to these people. They say they do consultancy

http://caffe.berkeleyvision.org/#contacting-us

Google helpouts too

Shallow responses to shallow questions for $10? SOLD!

So you watched the Ethan app go viral yesterday too, huh?

For those that missed it: http://www.producthunt.com/posts/ethan and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8434045

Not saying this is the case but if this guy is really thoughtful and insightful, then why not. The economics might not make a ton of sense. A thoughtful reply to a difficult question takes at least 15-20 minutes to compose. That's about $30-$40 an hour. You can make better wages as a counselor in private practice.

Idea Fail, Internet's collective intelligence can do this better than 1 person plus these website are free to use:

1. UX, Design: Dribble, Behance 2. Code : Stack Overflow 3. High Level Architecture questions: Stack Exchange 4. Business Idea etc : HN, Reddit, Quora 5. Miscellaneous other questions: HN, Reddit, Quora etc

If he's in your target audience it could be $10 very well spent. He's not in mine; it was helpful to see the rundown on his background.

And of course the best way to get a detailed informative reply from an expert for free is to post an incorrect answer, and then get your ass flamed off and handed to you on a platter for being wrong.

His name has just vanished from my head... but there's a famous chef whose secret trick for finding the best restaurants in a city he's visiting is to locate the most active community discussing food online, and post a comment saying how much he liked (random restaurant here) in that city.

Then just scan through the flood of indignant response/corrections.

50 points in 13 minutes without setting off the anti spam detector? Impressive.

I still believe this is vote manipulation, though.

Maybe he just has 34 friends online right now and has asked them to up vote? Does that count as manipulation?

YES.

Normally, Hacker News detects and penalizes stupid upvote rigging. I'm curious how the OP bypassed it at such a scale.

Me too. I've gone over the data and if he's figured anything out, it's plumb fooled me.

Actually, judging by the ridiculous number of flags the post has also gotten, I think he just touched a nerve.

Yeah, typically it would. Ya know the other possibility is it is legitimately getting voted up.

Yes. From the FAQ:

> Can I ask people to upvote my submission?

> No. Users should vote for a story because it's intellectually interesting, not because someone is promoting it.

> When the software detects a voting ring, it penalizes the post. Accounts that vote like this eventually get their votes ignored.

Creator here - no vote manipulation. In fact, I don't actually know anyone who has a hacker news account, believe it or not. Just an intriguing title I suppose?

Can we trust this post? Or does that cost $10?

> Creator here - no vote manipulation

That's what I would say ;)

But I do believe you, without reading your comment. I just liked the idea and upvoted. I'm extremely curious about how many people actually do this though. I'm sure we could crowdsource $10 on HN to learn those stats, say, a week from today ;)

No vote manipulation but you used another new account 'RainSunshine' to talk sugar about yourself? That was a dumb move.

Nope - I'm actually trying to figure out if that is one of my friends and I just don't know it. I can certainly see why you'd think that, though. They must just really love the idea I guess!

Don't be ignorant. I am in Canada and this guy is in California. I have never met him, have no link to him in any way, and just found this site like 3 days ago.

I voted because I thought it was hilarious. Who would take this seriously?

What scares me, I believe that somebody would.

this is basically what management consulting firms do, except for a million times more money.

This guy has turned Larry David's social assassin service into a business. I can see similar services popping up such as ask a New Yorker and ask a southie where people are real. Real opinions outside of high school may be marketable.

So it's an online psychic. No idea if $10 is cheap or expensive for psychics.

I would have done it on Fiverr or something so that payment was easy. Actually that could be kinda fun! Here's mine...

https://www.fiverr.com/s/6e795u

Any takers yet?

If you focused it just on reviewing websites, it would basically be a weak and relatively expensive version of http://peek.usertesting.com/

Nice idea!

Some (all?) sample questions can be answered with yes or no. I know that you mention a conversation at the top but you might want to make it a bit more clear that your feedback will be more than yes or no.

Clearer than "There will be no one word answers - I'll make sure to elaborate and make my opinion clear."?

No that's clear enough. I must have missed it. sorry.

Damn, I just paid $10 in Bitcoin and I'm not sure if the checkout works. The only thing I was asked was my email address, and I don't see anything in my inbox. Well, I hope they deliver.

Give it a bit of time. He is going to reply personally and probably got dozens of questions. It might take a day to reply to them all.

So, who are you, sockpuppet?

This site doesn't have a way to report troll posts like yours? Shame. Doubt I will make it a habit to visit here.

Looks like we got more brutal honesty from the comments than your site.

While this might be a good idea, but if you want the truth just post it to Reddit or Hacker News, those motherfuckers are brutal and won't take it easy on you, anyways, i wish you luck.

Must be a cultural thing. In the Netherlands, you can get that for free. #1 source of culture shock for Americans coming over here. "Did he just say that?"

You should put an option when people ask a question to allow you to post it on your public website. It would be interesting and might attract more traffic to your site.

I think its not about paying someone $10 for a review of an app.Instead the real deal should be to make someone pay $10 for some idea/app.

and I think that is what he(brutally honest) is trying to do as well.

Is this some kind of ironic/tongue-in-cheek thing? I feel like some of the people in this thread are taking it too seriously.

Reminds me of http://www.assholeconsulting.com/

Q1: what are your bank account credentials?

Hey just gonna "tell it like it is"

There is already an army of unpaid critics working around the clock on HN and Reddit.

Good stuff! I had an extremely similar idea a while ago:

2. Brutal Outfit Advice

Pay to get brutally honest feedback on your outfit. Give commission to (vetted) critics.

Alternative name: What Would You Think? (http://startupideas.posthaven.com/2-brutal-outfit-advice - now defunct blog)

Good to see someone do executing on it. Good luck!

I can see the headlines...

Silicon Valley capitalizes on "penny for your thoughts"

He forgot "German Language capitalization Rules" among his interests.

This is awesome, I love it. I want to try it but don't know what to ask

You don't think $10 for someone's opinion is a tad pricey?

That's what, the cost of a drink (a pricey drink, but nonetheless)... It's not bad value. For a well thought out, written opinion...

Asking him to be brutally honest about himself. I like it.

For some strange reason, I want to get the him to review the website from this submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8440057 and then vice versa....

Or it could be too cheap, maybe charging $99 is the way to go.

It works for consultants

Q: What's the difference between a contractor and a consultant?

A: A contractor knows the difference.

Lucy only charged a nickle.

Well the trick is that it's cheap enough that almost everyone can afford it while being pretty sure that, for that amount of money, he will probably take his time to write a decent answer.

Perhaps 5 bucks would be better, but considering an hourly wage and how much time I take to write stuff myself, ten bucks is not unreasonable. Also consider that, assuming this is a business (or could be), he's taking risk because there is no subscription or recurring payment whatsoever. I imagine this being a very variable business. If it would make a business in the first place.

$5 is Fiverr, and $5 on Fiverr gets you rubbish.

Ask what to ask?

I get all my brutal & honest feedback from IRC channels... for free.

At the very least he is sure to make back the cost of the io domain.

The LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This site is for entertainment purposes only.

Stupidity rules for ever.. ..the people who do it, and the people who buy it..

Please, send your valuable money to the people suffering real poverty, you might save some children from sexual abuse and raise your soul.

Just ask a father in law

I give you $10 when you give me your credit card nr, so I can take $20 from you if your answer is not satisfying for me. The $10 for me is for my time wasted on you..

Dude, the fact you propose this seriously, gives me the only answer I need from you.

Weightlifting? Is this guy an actual "brogrammer"?

Shit, I've been giving this away on facebook for free.

No his landing page does not look "professsional"

I don't know why, but "Pay with Bitcoin" at the bottom made me laugh. I think it's because that really just completes the picture of a certain sort of kinda tactless bro who Has Lots Of Opinions.

I'm disappointed there are no samples.

what if I give him some feedback for free?

Whatever happened to feedbackarmy.com?

Are you really a head of Kwik-E-Mart?

Hahahaha only in California!

No money back guarantee?

good point :)

Is this a joke?

Send him $10 and he'll answer that question for you!

>Nope, not a joke.

no need..

love the bitcoin acceptance

> I've always been direct and never had a problem telling it like it is.

I know that type.

Yes, generally rude whilst ignoring the consequences (honesty should not be used as a 'get out of jail free' card).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com