Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Slack Meets GitHub Issues

373 pointspdrummond156 comments

Last year I gave in to the temptation of doing my own startup and quit my job, just like many others have done on this site. Since then, I’ve severely changed my lifestyle and reduced my living costs to a crazy low figure and worked my ass off for the last 8 months to achieve this:

www.openloopz.com

I have written more about it on Medium here: http://goo.gl/JN03yf

I knew from the start the odds were stacked against me. I’m almost 36, I have a family and I live in the North East of England where - without wanting to sound negative - the opportunities are few and far between compared to what I see on here. When I made the BETA announcement, I knew no-one would just magically sign-up, but I watched and waited anyway and became extremely pissed off when it didn’t happen. “It’s been 2 hours - why haven’t I got 100 sign-ups already?”. Silly really.

I used up all my savings to get this far and I don’t regret any of it (except maybe the weight gain, lack of a social life, and development of bad sleeping habits!). I wanted to prove to myself I can build a production quality app that I honestly believe in without bias, and I can truly say I have achieved that now.

But now comes the hard part. I need to force myself to stop coding and start actually talking about OpenLoopz and trying to spread the word. I am the first to admit I am not very good at this. I am struggling to even write this post because I already know that probably no-one will read it. But I just have to learn to get over that and keep going. Any feedback - good or bad - will be greatly appreciated, thanks.

View on HN

I read both your post and your website copy. The short version is: you're failing to explain yourself concisely and effectively. I want you to succeed — here's some critique.

I think I'm in your expected early-adopter demographic. I am a heavy user of Trello, and this smells like a cousin of tools like Trello but with a very different information architecture. I couldn't understand your product and how it would be useful to me without actually signing up and using it.

An introductory blog post is great, but most people are going to discover your product from your product's website. The copy there fails to communicate the crux of your product in the first ten seconds. I'm awash in a kind of marketing babble of your own invention. Loops? InnerLoops? Why should I care about your invented terminology?

Start over with your copy — you've just started out, so it doesn't really matter what was there beforehand. Cut it down to a short 'graf which:

1. Explains what your product does in a concrete way. 2. Shows me where and why I would use it.

You don't need to communicate 100% of what you do or what your product could do. You need to communicate your product's _most important self_ quickly. Stay away from empty banalities about how more and more people are using your product to keep in touch, because that is generic to the point of meaninglessness. Focus on a use-case where your product excels and where you can tell a compelling story. The fact that people could use the hammer you're selling as a screwdriver doesn't mean that you ought to point it out.

Good luck! I'll be signing up and trying your product out.

Yes, exactly this. I read a few comments here, went to your website, and then sat there for a few minutes trying to figure out exactly what your product was.

I finally broke down and created an account and was amazed by how nice the interfaces looked. I like the idea of how your project is structured, but your website really needs to do a much better job of showcasing what it is that it actually does. Maybe even start out with a nice high-res video quickly showing me what it looks like.

Very cool looking product, very poor front-page marketing. Improve the front-page marketing and start getting active in marketing yourself (through blog posts and the like) and I think you'll do fine. You're on the slow, painful "acquire users" path now. Stick with it.

Holy crap! I wasn't going to come back here until tomorrow at the earliest, then my own post popped up in my Feedly! Surreal. Thanks for all the feedback!!! I'm still reading, but here are some quick responses from what I have seen so far.

1. I will update the openloopz.com asap - oversight on my part. Not sure how I missed that tbh.

2. The word "openloopz" was coined about 7 years ago when I first started working on this "project" and 'z' was kinda cool back then ;-) The project has changed a lot since then but the name became quite close to me and I put a lot of work into the assets, so I stuck with it. I have considered changing it to Loop and would love to do that, but it would be a lot of work and I was focused on getting something out there as quickly as possible.

3. The welcome page is a work in progress. I originally had something more detailed with LOADS of screenshots and features, even a video with my own voice (eugh!). But I was advised to focus on why customers would want to use the product as opposed to focusing on features, and all the content became obsolete when I changed the look and feel. Anyway, I will take all the comments on board and revise the landing page - I agree it could be a lot better.

Still reading... will respond to individual feedback separately.

I really like the concept and a bunch of the features but echo other thoughts. Also, plzplzplzzplz don't keep something a bunch of people have said they dislike because it came about years ago and you're attached to it.

Thanks. I was just explaining how the name came to be, but if it's a problem (and it looks as though it is) I will change it.

I agree. "OpenLoop" and "OpenLoopz" is enough to justify it.

I was speaking broadly and not actually directly about the name but using the name as an example. :)

Ok. I still think my view is valid in terms of what people are trying to say. But yeah, what's best for business > being overly attached to something.

Congrats on finishing and launching your product! Not to rehash everything that has been said already but, you can tell this was designed by a programmer because we love abstracting things. It's not a bad thing, but it's impossible to market something that is everything to everybody.

My suggestion would be to think of all the customers that you are marketing to that will never give you $5/month. For example, high-school kids looking to chat and have fun will never bother learning your concept and pay you $5 for the privilege. Get rid of all marketing messages aimed at that use case. Will college students pay you $5 to collaborate on a school project? Stop marketing to them. Will a family use this to plan their vacation? (etc)

If you do that you should be left with a smaller group and that will allow you to make a definitive one-liner that describes your product, for example "OpenLoopz is a collaboration tool for event planners." Or something to that effect.

Even though your service can manage any type of content, you will do better if you just select a few use cases and then customize your marketing to fit them.

Unfiltered First impressions:

Your medium article is 50X better than your website. Your website is useless for promoting your product. I don't like the headline font for your site, the lack of screenshots, basically the lack of focus on a product that will live or die on its usability and interface. I'm not a fan of the Z in openloopz. Combined with the comic sansy looking headline font it doesn't feel polished.

The inventing of a new words ("loops") is to be avoided unless absolutely necessary. You are now not only trying to tell a (very) mildly interested reader about your product you need them to learn a new language in order to understand it. This is an unrealistic cognitive burden for a sales pitch for a todo app. I strongly suggest that you use the simplest possible terms in plain language to describe the focus of your product, how it fits into the users life, and what problems it solves for them.

Your post here is more focused on your personal suffering than on your product. We are all eating shit to try to launch our companies, but too much focus on that makes for a downer intro to your product. I'd try to separate your moments of sharing the struggle and the moments of sharing the product. Do you want people to be genuinely excited about it, or pity you? Which emotion do you want to be a stronger first response?

Scanning further over your medium article (It's longer than a casual browser will give it time, ie 5 seconds) I suggest you take whatever the salient feature of your product is, maybe the hashtagging to create inline tasks and put that front and center in a huge picture and font. I'm still not sure what problem you are solving or who you are competing with, is it todo lists, slack, what? Where does this tool fit in my life? I suggest you take a look at the way that slack conveys information https://slack.com/is/team-communication (notice even the url hammers home their function).

I think that honest feedback is very imporant and that your main problem here, which is something that affects us all, is that you are too close to the product. You already understand it, you speak its language (invented words and all), and you are now longer able to communicate it to the passing man in the street. I suggest workshoping your pitch and language with fresh ears constantly until you are able to get someone to understand the basics of what it is and how it helps them in 10 seconds or less. All that said, I'm rooting for you, best of luck!

Ditto all this. I haven't read the Medium post, but just looking at the website: I have no idea what it is or what it does for me, and I'm being asked to sign-up first thing. Further reading still doesn't answer any questions.

Honestly, it'd be a miracle for anyone to look at the website and decide they need to sign up. Not because the product isn't amazing. But because I have no idea what it is and I'm not in the habit of signing up for services if I don't know what they are. That's how you get Cat Facts.

EDIT:

Also, you need an Editor really badly. I don't mean to be a dick about it. But this is your family's welfare on the line. Find someone hyper-critical to tear your writing.

ie:

> What is OpenLoopz? > OpenLoopz makes it easy to manage and share your digital content online, as well as helping you get things done quicker and communicate better!

I've just tuned out. That sentence is as empty and as much bullshit as they come. A very direct question was asked and you disrespected my time. You could be describing Facebook for all I know.

If you want your site to be compelling: Be Brief. Every word needs to tell me something useful and important. Your broadcast is all noise and no signal right now.

Anyone saying the Medium post is good: Don't believe them. It's better. But that'd be difficult not to do. It's still completely useless for moving units. People are just being kind.

Get an editor. If there's one rule you need to follow, it's brevity. Brevity. BREVITY. It's not rocket science. This isn't beyond you. You aren't doomed to failure. Be brief. Be critical. You've failed at communicating your product's worth. Now try again. Not tomorrow. Today.

And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. It's not going to take you a week to fix this. Limit yourself to 400 words, and some screen shots. Fix it today. After that's done, keep iterating. Revise revise revise until you have the perfect 400 words and can't think of how to improve it further. Then find someone who can.

Good luck!

Seriously, I would kill the content on your website and replace it with what is in the Medium post. It's 50x clearer. I read your website copy like 3x and still had no idea what openloop is.

Harsh, but pretty good feedback.

I hope whenever I submit something to HN that 1) someone cares enough to be this critical\constructive and 2) I am adult enough not to take it on the chin and not get sulky. I'm most worried about #2

I am the OP and I would hate it if I had a few "this is cool" comments and no constructive criticism. I really appreciate it. When I first read some of the harsher feedback on here, it did feel like a punch in the face - I won't lie ;-) But then I took a deep breath and read it again objectively and actually tried to take it in. And 99% of what's here is excellent feedback. I wasn't expecting any responses, honestly - I can't believe it! ;-)

I'm not in a position to critique the product at the moment, but it looks like there's plenty of feedback for you to work through anyway. Good luck!

Happy you take it like that ! I wish you the best

The Z thing is killer. It puts you in company with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsez, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bratz, and numberless rappers, none of which make a professional impression.

Names don't matter if you have a good product, unless you create brand confusion (Windows Live Messenger, anyone?). I thought "Google" was the stupidest name, and I still don't find it attractive.

While the name is not perfect, I don't believe it is as dramatic as you are making it out to be

http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz

If you're Joel Spolsky you can release a piece of software with any name you care to choose and people will still take it seriously because you have earned the respect of your peers. Other people who don't have decades of experience producing exceptional software don't have the same luxury.

Fogbugz is a terrible name and if an unknown developer had released it there's a good chance too few people would have looked at it for it to get the necessary traction it needed to succeed. It really isn't an example of something people should follow.

Also, people who can't pronounce voiced consonants at the end of syllables (such as german, dutch, french people) can't help but hear it as FuckBugs.

"Ve still neet a buck trecker, I vas finking about Jira, or do you haef a better idea?" "Yes, I recommend FuckBugs!"

To be fair though, FuckBugs would be a brilliant name for a bug tracker.

Let's build it.

In BrainFuck.

FogBugz was released in Nov 2000. How big was Joel Spolsky then? (It's before my time.) It looks like Joel was hardly blogging when FogBugz was released ( http://joelonsoftware.com/backIssues.html )

To be fair, as early as 2004 he had this to say on the name:

"Yeah, it's not an ideal name... But the brand equity is already worth significantly more than the cost of having a yucky name... (There was a period for about 6 months when "Z" was all the rage. Antz, Dogz, and Atomz come to mind)."

Hate to be another person to do the +1 thing but this does sum up pretty much everything I feel. Especially the Z.

Also your HN post had a very big air of uncertainity, lack of confidence etc. If you want your product to succeed, you'll need a lot more confidence in it & yourself. Don't put yourself down like that. I agree there might be less choices up north than say London & SF. But at the same time, living costs are far lower. So it's swings & roundabouts - there's never an ideal situation. This stuff is hard - that's why everyone isn't doing it and making millions.

Wow, this is fantastic feedback, thank you for taking the time to write it.

Apologies if my post came across as personal suffering - I certainly don't want any pity! I didn't intend for it to be too negative - I was just being honest and got a bit carried away! This has been a very, very hard slog and I realise most people on here are going through the same thing. I would never write something like this on a more mainstream site - it was written for hackers in the same position as me so I felt I could afford to be more down to earth. Having said that, I take your point - it was probably too much for a "Show HN" where the main focus is to sell the app.

I agree with everything you say about the word "loop" and me being "too close to the product" and not knowing how to sell it. I will spend as much time as I can going following this and all the other advice on here to learn how to sell this thing. It's all new to me, but I am determined to learn it all.

Thanks again, excellent feedback.

You've got this, these are all problems we've all had before, and there are solutions to them ;) We will all be here to give feedback, commiserate, and help you succeed. You have a great attitude in this response. An ability to take honest (often unpleasant to hear) feedback and use it to improve your product and pitch is the single most important thing you can do for yourself. Keep on crushing problems and I look forward to your next showing!

I'll come out with a contrarian point of view: I think you're wasting your time and certainly your money.

To have invested your life savings into this app which, uh, is really hard to determine what it does seems silly to me - especially since you have a family to care for.

Slack Meets GitHub Issues? Doesn't Slack already meet GitHub issues in that it integrates with GitHub fine?

The fact that you need a very long blog post to explain exactly what this does should be a warning sign that it's unfocused and released too late.

"It can help you manage everything from todo items to chat messages to blog posts to photos to fully-fledged projects, photo albums and even mini social networks! Really, the type of content you create is completely up to you."

That sounds like a nightmare to me, now I have to invest a lot of time to figure out exactly how this thing works? Start small, focused, make one small thing that does one thing well. Release it quickly, try to get a few people using it (hopefully paying for it) and gather some of their feedback. Find out how they're using it and what their pain points are. Grow from there.

I know you said opportunities where you live are few and far between, and you clearly have the skills, why can't you build a production ready application at an established company?

Finally, I'm being overly critical because I've been in a similar situation before - you spend months building something, release it, and argh! why aren't people coming? It's frustrating, I know, but your skills are better put to use elsewhere.

I agree with your assessment. I don't think this product has the type of competitive advantage needed in this highly saturated communications market.

I think you can use this to lead to better things. Iterate on the product, get some feedback, and attack it again. In the meantime, blog throughout the process. Get your voice out. If you generate interest about your product before you release it, you can generate more momentum when you launch.

Good luck!

Right on. Somebody should've told Mark about the saturated social media market, or Larry about the saturated search market.

There are so many communication tools, surely its a solved problem right. Ask a knowledge worker today about their favorite communication tool, and you will end up with a dozen answers in about a week's time. Definitely a sign that the problem is solved. There are a dozen solutions after all. :)

This is needlessly reductive and misses the point: the issue isn't saturation, the issue is that OP hasn't identified the USP of the product. Zuck knew full well that the USP of The Facebook was helping students get laid (or at least, find out more about that pretty boy/girl in your class). Larry knew full well that the USP of Google was that PageRank helped identify better quality web sites.

OP doesn't really know what the product is himself, so cannot begin to differentiate.

I'm latching, probably unfairly, to the comment about "market saturation". I give OP +1 for conviction, and -1 for lack of validation.

#middlebrow_dismissal

Please don't mistake harsh but constructive criticism for middlebrow dismissal.

I don't think the top-level comment even criticized the app, though. The impression I have is that he has not tried it and doesn't even know what it is. If anything, the only thing he criticized is the landing page.

(And that's certainly valid criticism, but it's not a strong basis for telling someone they just wasted their time and money. A marketing problem can be fixed.)

overly harsh criticism.

I agree, and disagree.

What this product would be useful for isn't explained well, and I'm not sure even the OP knows.

But there's clearly something compelling here based on the attention we've all given it.

> But there's clearly something compelling here based on the attention we've all given it.

It should be noted that the original title contained an "I quit my job" affectation, which may have biased the original upvotes for the submission. (which is why the affectation was removed)

If the submission was simply a link to the service instead of a story, I would imagine the results would be much different.

I'm not sure that conclusion necessarily follows here. This wasn't just a link to a product, but a story, starting with, "I quit my job and sacrificed a lot to get here."

Something being is interesting or worth talking about doesn't necessarily mean that thing is valuable (or a good idea for a company). An upvote doesn't necessarily mean, "I like this," but rather, "this is interesting" (or whatever other metric one uses when determining whether to upvote).

I upvoted the OP because I thought it was interesting that someone had quit their job and sacrificed so much to work on something. I didn't look farther than the Medium post because I feel like Slack already has this angle covered.

Or it could be that I'm just not the right audience or I don't get it.

You spent 15 minutes looking at the beta version of a product, and you've made the decision that the creator is wasting their time? Have you considered that, having thought about it for months, they might understand the problem domain significantly better than you?

What if the product actually has tremendous value, but suffers from a marketing problem? That's a pretty easy problem to fix.

Rather than using your severely limited understanding to encourage the creator to throw the baby out with the bathwater, you should focus on tangible, solvable problems, or just keep your mouth shut.

Wow, great advice there "just keep your mouth shut".

For anyone who has actually invested a large amount of time in a dead idea, the above poster is right on the money.

I think you should take you own advice and talk only about things you know intimately. Lest your sentimentality gets the better of you, when actually trying to address a problem that could suck OP's life down the proverbial toilet.

> For anyone who has actually invested a large amount of time in a dead idea, the above poster is right on the money.

I think the issue here is that the above poster has probably not done his due diligence to actually verify the premise of this statement (that the idea is a dead one).

I could be wrong on that, but I see almost nothing in the post that refers to anything about his experience actually using the app.

For what it's worth, I'm trying to use it right now but I think the site is getting slammed by HN, so I can't actually use it. Therefore, I'm not going to tell the OP that he just wasted all his time and money.

> I think the issue here is that the above poster has probably not done his due diligence to actually verify the premise of this statement (that the idea is a dead one).

Correct, and further, I don't think a passive bystander can make that judgement. The opinion of any one person is irrelevant. If the idea is bad, the market will reject it.

I don't know whether you really are just hedging your bets to karma farm or whether you believe what you say but the author has stood up and asked what people think. What on earth is the point of everyone on here going "oh well it's not up to us to say what we think; he should just start stacking up debt on credit cards and bank loans until it's finished and then the market can dictate!"

That is the logical conclusion of your statement, and that notion is utter bollocks. If in 15 minutes someone is convinced that the product is lacking focus and vision then that is a valuable insight. It might just be that the person reflects on whether his call to action is obvious enough and tweaks his site to make it clear what his proposition is. Or maybe he has been holed up for months by himself in a bubble and has developed something no one wants. Rather sooner he finds that out than later.

This kind of namby-pamby "if you can't say something positive say nothing" mentality that I see in replies does a massive disservice to this community and people in it who risk much more than just a little bruising to their ego (whether it be financial or career).

How was traffic today?

1. I don't comment often, and when I do, it's not to earn magical internet points.

2. I am certainly not advocating diffuse positivity. If you knew me, you would know positivity is not my strong suit. :)

There's nothing wrong with saying that the product seems unfocused or overly complex, or suggesting that the creator focuses either the execution or its messaging. That's useful, constructive feedback that the creator can do something with.

There's not really even anything wrong with saying "I don't understand why anyone would use this" -- although that's not particularly useful feedback.

Jumping from these reasonable positions to "you're wasting your time" is where I take issue. It's a dangerous leap of judgement that none of us can or should make for someone else -- certainly with the limited understanding that we can gain after a few minutes.

The creator seems to have come here to get feedback on the product, not for an intervention.

stole the words out of my mouth. probably with less grammar issues.

"fewer grammar issues" !

If I had a dolla' for every similar throwaway comment about my own project, I would not need any funding.

Hey, maybe this can be a new startup funding mechanism. I propose "haterade.io", a betting pool where you can bet that projects will fail by a certain time. If you lose, your bet goes to the project.

Edit: the real problem is the OP's tone. I do agree that the founder of this project has an explanation problem, but the tone was "your project sucks and you're wasting your time."

My first bet is that haterade.io will succeed. Insert cash where?

I'm too busy to disrupt the hater market. Anyone else is free to take that idea.

Don't let people tell you your ideas won't work!

Don't be too ready to listen to people's words of encouragement, unless they're telling you:

Shut up and take my money!!!

"Did he say he wasn't in SF? Let's all yell at him and tell him that he sucks and his idea sucks. SF is the only place anyone who knows how to code / market / launch products lives and everyone else everywhere is dumb."

- Paraphrased 95% of the users on this site lately

Whoa, a contrarian point of view on HN?

For what it's worth, releasing something and finding little or no adoption of the product is often where the interesting learning begins.

I can't tell you whether or not it's worth pursuing, but I know that in my own experience it was. Our team spent almost a year building and launching a product that we ultimately shut down. We could have stopped and gone back to our day jobs, but the silver lining is that the core technology became the foundation for our current (seemingly unrelated) company.

While the now-forgotten product we launched was a failure, pushing past that resulted in a product that has been far more successful (funding, product-market fit, etc). There's no guarantee you'll pivot into success, but there's zero chance you will succeed if you stop iterating.

This is actually the description of how Slack came to be.

"If you build it, they will come" just doesn't work for startups. Your first 100 users will be won painfully, one at a time.

Think of your first public launch as the start of the development process, not the end. You need to track down people who need what you've built (or need something similar), talk to them in person, listen to their problems and make sure your product solves them.

If you can convince 100 people to try your product and a decent proportion of them turn into daily active users, you're onto something special. If you can't do that, keep iterating or find a new problem to solve.

If I'm honest, I read probably 70% of the text on that page and I'm still really not sure what it is or what it does. Words are good, but maybe some screenshots or something would help.

The medium article provides a nice bunch of screenshots and explanation - https://medium.com/@pdrummond/openloopz-beta-is-live-fbe4c71...

Probably video tutorial, which explains how all things works may help even better than screenshots

I think the most sensational aspect of your Show HN is your story, so I'll focus my comments there (seems like you're getting a lot of critical feedback on the product, mine is just that I don't know how to use it). I've done exactly what you have, betting everything, and then put the fruits of my work out to the universe. I've racked up $80k in credit card debt. One mentor once told me that if I was to start my own company, to be completely prepared for $100k in debt and divorce.

But every single time it's been worth it, and I learned and grew in ways I may not have anticipated. Maybe the product will succeed, maybe it won't, but usually there's a great opportunity (consulting, job offer, realizations that lead to the next thing, acquisition, friendships, other learnings, etc.) that comes from building something you know is great. I expect that this will be your story, so I just wanted to say congrats on your journey from a YC founder, 34, and forever at it.

Just a note: if you go to http://openloopz.com (no "www") it displays "Heroku | No such app". I'm guessing you mean to redirect to the "www" subdomain.

yeah...heroku is weird about naked domains. you need to use a DNS provider like DNSimple to set up your domain correctly with Heroku. Then your users will be able to drop the "www". This worked for my side project, konkourse.com.

References: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/apex-domains.

Are naked domains generally considered "something you shouldn't do" these days?

For most cases they're just fine and many people feel quite strongly about wanting a naked domain without an "extra" www subdomain.

So, DNS A records point to IP addresses. In the specific case of Heroku (and maybe other PAAS providers), tying your site to an IP address makes them less fault tolerant as they can't do things like shift your app between availability zones if one blows up or something.

I used to like the aesthetics of naked domains but after having dealt with DoS issues and integrating a CDN, I'd say it's better not to use one for future flexibility. Since you (mostly) cannot use a CNAME for a naked domain, things can get difficult in certain types of setup that you might want down the road.

Using your base domain name gives you less DNS flexibility - for example, you can't use a CNAME for your base domain name.

Given that it's fairly easy to put a www. (or whatever) redirect on whatever IP your basename does point at, your users don't have to worry about remembering to use it.

You might have a hidden diamond for team collaboration here, but after reading more than most potential customers will, I'm not sure exactly what it is.

I'm not a fan of the to-do/chat combination. There just isn't a lot of intersection between the things on my to-do list and the things I want to chat about. Who wants to chat about their grocery list? Who would contact their family about dinner plans with this instead of a phone call, text message, Tweet, etc. just because they can easily save a to-do item? Perhaps this has other uses.

Consider extremely detailed user stories. Who might want to this? A software product manager communicating with the technical team about features and bugs; a high-school student and her study group; an extended family planning a vacation together?

What would they share, and how does this tool help? Why would they use something new instead of a phone, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, preferred existing group to-do list app, or a thousand other tools? What are their favorite colors; favorite words; turn-offs?

Kudos on what you've done so far. And remember, even if this fails as a startup (most do), it certainly demonstrates your skills. Hopefully it will open doors.

Oh...and don't bankrupt yourself working on this. That would just be crazy.

Hello everyone!

Wow, yesterday was surreal! :-) I’d just like to say a massive THANK YOU to everyone who has commented on this so far and to all those who sent encouraging messages of support via email as well. It really makes a difference.

I honestly didn’t expect anyone to notice my post and with all the unexpected traffic that came from it, the servers caved in unfortunately! As soon as I noticed, I increased the capacity on Heroku and everything should be working fine now. So a big sorry to anyone who couldn’t access OpenLoopz yesterday - please try again!

I also want to apologise for the tone of my original post. I wasn’t looking for pity and I definitely didn’t want to give the impression this has been the worst time of my life or that my family have been seriously affected or anything tragic like that. For the most part this has been an amazing ride and my family have been behind me 100%. I had enough savings to be comfortable financially throughout (up until now at least!) so it wasn’t as bad as all that. I’m not saying it hasn’t been tough because it has, but for the most part it’s been a very positive experience and great fun!

I am a programmer who sucks at marketing and I know that more than anyone, so all the harsh feedback is more than welcome! From this feedback I now have the missing piece of the puzzle and I feel like I can finally do the landing page some justice. You guys make it sound so easy, but when I am staring at a blank screen, trying to think of ways to get the message across about a project I am so close to and know inside out, I always come up blank. But that’s no excuse - I just need to stop coding and start learning some new skills so Challenge Accepted! ;-)

So thanks again. I’m going to focus on the landing page today and hopefully I will have something much better to show all you very soon.

> I am a programmer who sucks at marketing

That's the mission critical bug that will kill your business ;)

Read these three books ~many~ times:

-> The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank

-> Traction by Gabriel Weinberg

-> No B.S. Direct Marketing by Dan Kennedy

Then split your overall time 50% dev, 50% marketing.

Plan B: keep an eye on the contracting market in your area of expertise ...

Good luck!

@pdrummond

Some feedback, all related to solely to the frontpage web site of www.openloopz.com:

1. openloopz.com doesn't resolve (heroku error message), only www.openloopz.com.

2. there is no clear message stating what your products does (I'm still confused) besides simply stating that it help people "communicate better and get things done quicker."

3. Is the product still in "BETA"? What does that mean nowadays in 2015?

4. When I click on "Pricing", how do I sign-up? When I click a plan (e.g. Basic, Premium, Business) - nothing happens.

5. I don't understand your pricing strategy. You have free, you have $5/mo and then you have "contact us" which implies to me super expensive. How do you go from $0/$5 to super expensive with no middle ground?

6. I'm confused, is the product ready to be used or not? I see that I can sign up for a $5 plan (under Pricing tab) but I also see I can provide my email address when the product RELEASED (under the BETA tab). So which is it ... is the product available today or not?

7. What the heck is a "loop". I read the "What is a Loop" but am still confused.

Please don't take my comments as being harass. I'm simply trying to provide my personal opinion on how you can be successful (which I believe all of us at HN want).

I fundamentally see a complete lack of focus on the homepage.

I'd suggest you reconstruct the homepage to be more focused, something more similar to https://campfirenow.com/ where you get a quick screenshot of the product. The home page is simply (mainly all "above the fold"). Sign up and pricing is clear. etc.

All the best. I wish you well.

Good luck, I used to live in the NE of England (hence why this is the first Show HN I have actually looked at.

Maybe is all the front page HN traffic (or my slow connection). But after 30 seconds of waiting for the page to load, I was greeted with a..... blank page.

sigh maybe it was a timeout, or maybe I really must allow JS to see anything on the page. Maybe this is just me, this annoys me and if a site won't display SOMETHING without JS I leave, but a fellow NE Englander, I will make an allowance.

Anyway, am another one man shop, so don't really need a communication tool. But did the same as you couple of years before, no actually a few years ago now. Quit job / in the 30s / with family to go out on my own.

As you said STOP CODING AND START PROMOTING. It is hard the knockbacks hurt, but whore yourself to all potential customers. You do know who you potential customers are, don't you? Find where they are and do all you can to get them on board. If it is a forum, offer some respected members full free access, people like free things, get them to talk about it.

Learn marketing / seo. Yes it is the spawn of the devil and all marketeers should kill themselves, but you have mouths to feed, morals go out the window.

Again, good luck

> Yes it is the spawn of the devil and all marketeers should kill themselves, but you have mouths to feed, morals go out the window.

I understand the sentiment, but really -- is it impossible to market something without being immoral? I think it is. Lots of startups have provided great products that help people get their work done or make their lives easier. Marketing can just be the process of letting those people know that the product exists, and why it's useful, right? Not all marketing involves brainwashing kids into buying fast food, etc.

Take the "How it works" section of your Medium post - _Particularly_ the excellent screen caps - condense the text, and then make this your homepage.

Reading takes more time for me to understand what your product does than looking at pictures.

I can't agree more. Scrolled down and saw "This is Loops" section and wondered why this wasn't on the landing page, and whether other people would have scrolled as far down as me.

yes but when you do it, put more effort into the screenshots. Create realistic conversations, realistic todo lists, etc. Realistic context can really help a user understand the app better.

You should spend some time watching folks use your site.

Sit down with a few friends new to this system, and silently watched them use it for two minutes. Get them to think aloud, and ask questions when they are silent to better understand what they are trying to do and what they expect. When they ask you how to do something, you ask them how they think they should do it.

I think you really need to see this for yourself. Users are often consistently blind. When you see 2 out of 3 folks struggling with the same thing, it needs to be changed.

-Is the first thing users want to see a search box? -How quickly do users figure out how to use the system for something useful? -How quickly do users figure out why loopy is better than sliced bread? -Do users struggle to find a way to get rid of the welcome message? -Are users able to progressively find the more complex features the more they use the system?

I look at your website and have exactly zero idea what it is. You start with Why. Don't start with why, start with what!

WHAT IS IT!? Is it like Slack but self hosted? I need screenshots. Are there companion apps? Show me.

I like the idea of "chat is your to-do list, and your to-list is your chat", but you're website doesn't communicate this, I had to try it out to really get what the product was about.

It's annoying that I can't delete the first loops from Loopy.

I also think the app needs an easier way to navigate between loops, rather than relying on the back button.

I think the user list is not very privacy focussed, I remove it for a username search instead, rather than just listing everyone.

It looks really polished though and I think you have proved the fact that you can create a web app by yourself.

Have you made a pitch deck yet? I've done a bit of fundraising in the UK.

Good luck from a fellow northener!

"chat is your to-do list, and your to-list is your chat"

OP, I think this phrase, or something like it, should be front and center of your communication effort. IMO it describes your product better than all the stuff I've read in ~5min on your sites.

First off, congrats on shipping! That's a big step.

As others have suggested, I think you need some serious help with positioning and messaging. I showed up to your site wanting to try it just because it was new (early adopter stereotype), but I couldn't tell what it is.

The Medium article is better, but I think you'd be well served to partner with someone who is really good at branding and messaging. This isn't just about window dressing, it goes a bit deeper than that.

For example: you need to show me one painful problem your product solves within 2 seconds of me coming to your homepage. When in consumer mode, I don't really care if you're solving ten painful problems - just show me one very clearly and I'm almost sure to kick the tires on the product. A strong branding & messaging partner will intuitively know how to help you do this for your product, in addition to providing a more user-level view on how to talk about it.

I think you have an interesting idea here after reading the Medium post. If you can help me use Slack as a to do list and you're solving that single problem really well, that's definitely something I'd pay a monthly fee for.

That said, while I would gladly pay SaaS-level monthly fees for sexy todo integration in Slack, if you make me learn an entirely new vocabulary to do it (loops and whatnot), this cost alone immediately prices out my interest.

A few thoughts:

I like the setup - the layout is very nice, and once you get used to the concepts involved it becomes much easier to see what you can do with it. That said, "Loop" is not the word I would use to describe the main unit of content. It is not intuitive at all, which is a large part of the problem - I think "Stream" is a clearer name (or "Feed" if you prefer the FriendsFeed style of things). That also means you don't need "Bundles" for saved searches - everything is a "Stream", some of which are "pinned" to the sidebar.

I really like how composable streams are - the use of tags makes it easy to merge content across streams, but by not requiring the use of tags you make it easy for me to jump in and start adding content.

Tags with values is a genius idea - want to add ratings to your photos, simply add `#rating:{n}` - then create a stream of your favorite photos by simply pinning a search for `#rating:>3` ... awesome! I could also seeing using this for triaging bug reports, assigning priorities to #todo entries ... very elegant.

I will be adding more thoughts into @loop feedback stream as they come to me.

One last time, nicely done - and good luck with your next iteration!

"Open" to me leads me to think it is open source, but it isn't. I suppose common folk may not have that presumption. But I don't even think "Open" is descriptive to what your product does (other than maybe how it is quick to open). Loop is fine, as it express to me how you can be "in the loop". If you are getting rid of the Z or thinking of other names, I suggest using parts of another commentor's suggested tagline: "chat is your to-do list, and your to-list is your chat" for the name: e.g. "ChatToDo", "TagToDo", "LoopToDo", "TagChatDo", or even simply "InTheLoop" is better. Something along those lines that is more direct, specific, & descriptive than OpenLoopz, so that an uninitiated potential consumer has a bit of an idea about what it is your app does before even considering to click your link.

(Regarding the www., I was another of those who just visited the naked url, and I immediately thought negative thoughts like, it's down, and almost didn't try again. You should atleast redirect the naked url to a valid url or landing page.)

Some constructive feedback. Don't place a 5mb image served over s3 on your home page. https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/olz-web/welcome/masthead-...

'Your marketing page sucks' is true, but not useful or insightful.

My suggestion is something like: 'Your chats, to-dos, and project management -- free, and in one place.'

That is compelling enough that I might sign up and try it.

Contrary to some of the advice on here, I would not try to explain how this product works in any great detail on the homepage. This is because it seems (I haven't tried it) like a complicated tool.

Focus on building a solid onboarding process that walks users through the usage of the product. This will be more useful to your users than any video or screenshots.

This is all without having tried the product or knowing too much about the space/your ideal users, so take it with a grain of salt.

I created an account, which is apparently more than half the people commenting here were willing to do (most people apparently took one look at your landing page, didn't understand the product, and closed the tab).

1. The first page after logging in says "To get started, type something in the Edit Box above and hit ENTER when you are done. Everything you create here will be visible to you and I because we are the only members of this loop." The last point on the page says "If you have any questions or feedback, just add a note in the Edit Box above and I'll make sure I forward it to the right people!"

Which is it? Private testing ground or feedback form? This isn't a good start, confusing and contradicting your new users.

2. The default/showcase loops are annoying. I don't want my account to be cluttered with tutorial content. An intuitive interface and clean documentation should be enough.

Worse, you cannot delete these default loops. I spent 10 minutes simply trying to remove the tutorial content without receiving "not found" or "permission denied" errors. Turns out you can only remove the shortcuts from the menu, not the loops themselves. I imagine this is because you implemented these as a single loop shared across all accounts rather than importing a copy of these loops per new account. Bad implementation - why are you presenting me with the functionality to delete the loop only to prevent me from doing so?

I would not clutter every new account with tutorial content. A new account should be perfectly clean so I can start using it, rather than wasting time trying to determine what are core pages vs. tutorial content. Also cannot remove the annoying "Loopy" page.

3. The transitions and animations are not cool. They are very distracting and slow down the use of the application by several factors. You said this project started a long time ago, and the way the UI tries to be fancy in my face seems to confirm this. An animation on every single mouse click is not acceptable since 2010+.

4. The hassle of just trying to kill the tutorial content imported to my new account, coupled with the in-my-face transition animations wasted the full amount of time I invest in trying out a new web app. The initial process frustrated me and chased me away from checking out the real product.

Sorry, I spent 15 minutes reading the landing page and exploring the first steps after logging in and got nowhere. That is too much time spent trying to evaluate a product and not seeing any progress.

$5 a month for premium makes me think theres not much value behind it, multiply by at least 10.

remember, "expensive = good" see cialdini - http://goo.gl/9vvE8S

add some testimonials to add social proof

read up on lead funnels. i'd wager you'd be better to offer the $5 premium accounts via email to your free members (after they've used the product) than showing the low price on your homepage.

if a tool is awesome, it's invaluable. once its invaluable, it can afford to become less awesome (see salesforce)

add an email capture tool like drip to get contact with folks who want to follow but arent yet ready to commit.

Best of luck!!

Put this line on your website:

"OpenLoopz puts communication first. Imagine a chat app like Google Hangouts or Facebook Messenger where — as you are chatting away - you can create a new todo item directly in the conversation simply by adding a #todo hashtag to your existing chat message. Or maybe it’s something that you want to be reminded about later? Just add a deadline directly to the message. The user interface updates in real time so you can watch as new Loops arrive and users make changes to existing Loops."

Or something similar. it actually tells people what the product does

Quick scan:

Oh, it's like Google Wave. Cool, ish.

other thoughts:

Does it integrate with LDAP/AD/SAML or other sign on solution? If yes, then it can be a enterprise candidate, probably. If no, then, "aargh".

The FAQ is almost unreadable in my (OSX Safari on widescreen monitor) browser. Literally.

If you can swing an experienced someone to play Product/Marketing, you'll probably be in a decent spot for information management type people (PMs, admin assistants, etc). I /think/ the tech has possibilities, but I am not really a "make a new account and play" kind of person.

Congratulations! I'll try out the app today as well. I'm in a similar position with you as well (i.e. family, closer to 30s) so I very well know what you're going through.

You've just pointed out that now comes the part about communicating what OpenLoopz is all about. Once you've done that well, you'll see the beta sign-ups come through. They may not necessarily buy from you just yet but keep in touch with them and learn from their user interactions to improve the product.

One of the hardest things is landing the very first customer. But it's not impossible. Good luck!

My early thoughts: Based on the website, it's not fully clear what OpenLoopz does and how it does it (i.e. How will it make me communicate better and get things done quicker?). You got me somewhat hooked on "communicate better and get things done quicker" so now, tell me can I achieve it with your app. Since a "Loop" is a new concept, you'll need to explain it but keep it subtle - as a user, my point is to communicate better and get things done quicker. If a "Loop" helps me do it, great. If not, I'm not really interested in what a "Loop" is.

I'd focus on trying to serve 1 customer segment at the moment. Having multiple price packages for multiple customer segments will be tough to serve because all their needs and demands will be quite different.

I hate to show you this, but looks like app I already use, Mammoth https://mammothhq.com/ :) I like the concept.

Design wise it looks fine, but I feel the page doesn't do a very good job at explaining what it is and why should I be interested. I got it after reading the blog post, so I would suggest to condense that information and make it glanceable/scanable in the main page (that is to say, the visitor should be able to understand what is it and why is it useful without having to read much).

Take a look for example at the landing page of stripe dedicated to bitcoin: https://stripe.com/bitcoin — in less than 10 seconds I can get what is it about (and even how to integrate it) and I didn't have to read or watch a video. That's more or less what you should aim for so completely new visitors can go "oh, this cool, I could use it, let me signup". As it stands right now, your copy (keep friends in the loop, communicate better and get things done quicker) isn't very compelling to get someone to sign up.

Also, what is your target group? For example, do you expect the product to be used mainly by developers and makers? Because in that case the main page should be tailored to speak to them (the current copy, imo, doesn't, too generic to get a dev excited).

Does the name need to be OpenLoopz? To me the z there makes it sounds like a product for kids and not very professional. Personally I'd consider going for another brand if it's possible at all.

Resolving these issues won't get you users and customers overnight, but I think it'd put the product in a much better position to start.

My 2 cents.

People have really short attention span these days. If I can't figure out what OpenLoopz does in 10 sec, I'm probably never going to use/sign up for it.

Try to work on it. Good luck :)

the loopz seems to be a cool concept. Still I'm not sure what problem you are solving:the website doesnt help me to understand anything and only the blog post helped.

btw I'm in a similar situation : 34 with 2 kids + one on the way and I'm almost out of money after investing on my 2nd startup. You shouldn't see this as a desperate situation but as a challenge with an opportunity to focus on what really matters ( in your life and in your company ). Good luck ;)

Would you be interested in connecting? I'm looking to connect with entrepreneurs with families who are still trying to make it all happen.

Likewise. I'm also mid-30s with 2 kids, and I'm currently pivoting from a science career to a software developer one. I'm currently deciding whether to go down the self-started startup route or get a normal job, and I'm blogging about my experiences at http://www.hacker-dad.com . Combining parenting and startups presents a set of pretty unique challenges, and I'd love to find other parents who are grappling with them, figure out what it takes to overcome them, and then share the results with the community.

Thanks for the link. I will check it out. If it's fine with you, I'll drop you an email tonight and we can connect?

Sounds good!

sure, email me at y{@}mxh{.}fr

You need to adjust the content on the first page of the site to match some things from the blog post, describing what it is. It would be great if you could add screenshots / gifs so people can quickly understands what it is.

There are too many apps created that say nothing on their landing page, and it feels frustrating for users when they cannot find / understand "what is this?".

Best of luck!

This image is blocking the rendering of your website 5.0MB is really long to load on mobile devices. https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/olz-web/welcome/masthead-... First it should be compressed better. Then it should not block the rendering of the page

Congrats on launching this! The site looks nice.

Some feedback:

1) $5 for the Premium Account is too cheap. There is nothing that is $5 a month that I want to use for my business. Its a signal that this is probably a hobby. Make it free or charge a real price (at least $29/month, but $49 is better). If its not worth real money, you should reexamine the value proposition.

Amy Hoy says you need 500 people to pay you $30 a month, which seems about right to me. At $5/month, you're going to need 3000 people paying you every month! That's really tough! Don't do that to yourself!

2) You have to explain what this does, succinctly, right at the top of the page.I read your site, and your Medium post, and I'm still somewhat confused.

How about this headline instead:

Improve Your Accountability With OpenLoopz: Public, threaded, shareable to-do lists.

Anyway, congrats again on launching! And keep in mind that 90% of the readers of your HN post do not have anything in the wild for which people could actually pay them money, so you're way ahead of the curve. Keep going!

The site was pretty confusing. In fact after I left the top I couldn't find where to sign up again.

I also couldn't get back to the homepage without logging out.

Everything about the marketing has been said before. Work on the branding and work on the content etc.

About the app itself: I REALLY like it. It has potential.

There are some UX aspects that need looked into. Making the UI stand out more. Making it easier to get back to the loop list from an inner loop. Cut down on what loopy says all at once. People don't like walls of text.

Make the first login interactive look at how duolingo does it http://www.useronboard.com/how-duolingo-onboards-new-users/ (I'm in no way affiliated with that site but it gives an overview of duolingo)

Keep it up. I really like it! Hopefully it will work out for you I would/will use it but without a better tutorial I can't send it to my boss and say "we should use this." Hopefully someday!

Looking at that page it's hard to understand what the product is about, or why should I care. Above the fold I can read:

"Keep your friends and colleagues in the loop!" "Every day, more and more people are relying on OpenLoopz to communicate better and get things done quicker."

Which doesn't tell me what the product is or does. Reading the why section:

"ACCESS AND SHARE ALL YOUR CONTENT IN ONE PLACE" "IMPROVE COMMUNICATION WITH FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES" "INTEGRATE WITH YOUR FAVOURITE APPS" "ULTIMATE CONTROL OVER YOUR DATA"

I continue to have no clue about what the product is. I just know that I can integrate it with apps, control its data, etc.

So my suggestion is to focus more on the copy of that page. What is the product, at its core, what does it do and why should I care?

Good luck with it (sorry if this comment sounds too negative, I'm not trying to attack, just to provide what I think is valuable feedback for improvements).

I spent a lot of time on your site & the medium article trying to understand what it does. I wouldn't have done this if I didn't read your HN post, so I really did try and understand it. Right now it seems like this would create more work for me than reduce it. Just my thoughts. Good luck though!

Definitely seems like an interesting idea, I like what you are trying to do here.

One thing you might want to do is update your dns so that your app also answers on openloopz.com.

Currently you receive a heroku message stating "There is no app configured at that hostname. Perhaps the app owner has renamed it, or you mistyped the URL."

Some of this you've already heard in other posts, but since I'm figure you're hungrily looking at all these posts to help yourself out, I'll give some bulleted advice at the risk of repeating:

1) Get an editor. You may be a great coder, but you're not the best copywriter. Neither am I. So I don't write my own product copy. It will do wonders for your product's image.

2) Video / screencast / visually show me the product without having to sign up for Beta. I'm busy and words take too long to read.

3) This might be nit-picky, but the name really puts me off. It's the Z, man, it hurts.

4) Does your software solve a problem? If so, can you explain the problem to me in two sentences? I still don't understand as I don't use Slack, even though I know what it is.

Best of luck to you. I hope to hear about your acqui-hire or buyout soon enough.

I guess I'm kind of late to the party, but I wanted to share a view of what 40 people looked at during the first few seconds on your landing page: http://imgur.com/feTONXk,fFUUXCD,WCs9oJG

Personally, I think the design and UX are quite beautiful, and I find the basic mechanic of OpenLoopz to be very appealing. That said, I think your challenge will be how to pitch such an open-ended product in a pithy and engaging manner. Like some other people on the thread, I wish I could have seen the product in action before signing up and verifying my account (whether a video demo or an actual demo).

Disclosure: I work with the company that made the eye tracking images. Happy to talk to you if you find them useful, or if they bring up questions.

Very cool! I really prefer how the medium article explains the functionality, though I think other commenters here have voiced the same opinion.

I think you should use the demo page to tell a story. Instead of pictures with 'demo1', 'demo2', etc let's have a family planning a vacation. There's a group chat about destination and everyone is posting airbnbs/hotels they find. Then there's a loop for items list to see who's bringing what. Oh, did Cindy say we spent too much at restaurants last year? Let's have another loop so we can plan who's cooking what for dinner as we take turns for the week. May as well create a shopping list so we can get all the ingredients for the week in one or two goes. etc...

You could have a series of these to show off the product.

Good Luck!

Side-point, but hopefully relevant. I helped out at the Techstars London demo day and after bugging the managing team on one of the prep days, we were able to find out what they saw as some issues unique to the UK and the one they always saw was "too much code, not enough talking to customers" - they've had start-ups apply with over £2 million spent, and a stunning product, but with no real customer input thus far or dveloped target market after.

My fear, though I hope I'm wrong, is that openloopz will be another one of those failures created by our apparent 'Original Sin' as a tech community.

I wouldn't consider that unique to the UK. That's a common problem throughout the startup community (I'm on the teaching team at an accelerator here in NY and it's the same way).

It's just more fun to build a product than it is to talk to customers before touching a line of code...

You could have validated this idea (for next to nothing, I might add) before quitting your job and investing all of your savings.

There's a lot of good reading out there around how to do what you've tried to do here in a safe and sensible way that doesn't waste time and your own hard earned money, but you seem to have ignored all of that. I suggest you purchase a copy of http://theleanstartup.com/

I genuinely wish you all the best of luck, but the way you've gone about this seems to me to be very, very foolish. Reckless even, given you have a family.

I already have the leanstartup and I have read many, many books on the subject, but I didn't do all this just to start a business. Of course, I want it to become successful, but this project means more to me than that, so I didn't need validation before starting on the journey. In a way, I was scratching my own itch. This is something I will use on a daily basis, and if that's as successful as it will ever be, then it was still worth it.

Seriously, I apologise if I make out in my post that this has been the worst time of my life! It wasn't the intention. For the most part it's been an amazing ride, and I had enough funds to be relatively comfortable while doing it (once I got used to the adjustments).

The advice to "scratch your own itch" is fine if you're building a hobby project. If you intend to build a real business then doing at least some "validation" (I hate how entrepreneurs use that word, but that's beside the point) is critical.

Even just talking to 10-20 people is better than nothing. Hindsight is 20/20, but hopefully anyone reading this reply takes a moment to do that before coding anything.

"... to communicate better and get things done quicker" could literally mean "we provide 5 Hour Energy and megaphones for the office". Tell the visitor what you do, more specifically (not too much detail - just enough so that people have some idea).

I think your website looks nice, though. Whatever you do, resist the urge to redesign it (regardless of feedback herein). Do focus on getting your first customers through guerrilla means, and refine your website slowly over time.

Final, bike-shedding note: Get rid of the animation delay in your scroll-the-user-down navigation.

As an aside, cheers to @pdrummond for taking some frank feedback in stride.

On first glance, the marketing site is clean, tidy, and professional. Nice work there! I'll try out the app today. In the meantime a couple of things I looked for: A screenshot or demo and a help site for support.

The red introductory price text feels a little out of place. It's left justified when the rest feels centered, and I feel like it could be a better callout with improved formatting. It may be a British spelling, but I saw misspelled 'occassional' in the Beta section.

Best wishes with the project it looks promising!

Reading the main page I am not sure what it is. Is it a chat application? What would be the elevator pitch? The story you would tell someone about how it is inevitable that all chat clients would do X and how openloopz does it today (todo lists?) What is the problem it solves? Or how does it help me make money? Maybe that is in the FAQ, but from a marketing perspective I stopped reading after the Why section (also the big black bar under made it look like the end of the page).

Want to do this sort of thing myself one day. So many congratualations on getting it out there!

Which is why I'm so sorry when I say: I read a bunch of the text on there and I don't know what it does. I'm no marketer either, but I highly recommend Start Small, Stay Small for the basics on market research and marketing. You could read it in an afternoon.

You need (at a minimum):

- screenshots

- testimonials (I think you just make them up)

- a BUY NOW button. It's after that you tell them it's a Beta and get them to put their email address in.

You should allow people to sign in using its email, i've tried multiple times to sign in and got an error til i realize that i had to use my username.

Every software landing page that lacks a screenshot of the actual software being sold completely baffles me. Just show me the thing please.

I really recommend MIT's Entrepreneurship 101 course on edx.org, it taught me a lot about finding your end user, which is what you're doing now. https://courses.edx.org/courses/MITx/15.390.1x/3T2014/info

Is there supposed to be some sort of content on this page? I don't see anything?

My feedback:

1. No idea what this does, even after logging in and clicking around.

2. It wouldn't load for me at the start/seems VERY slow. Saw some comments about a 5MB file... maybe that is it?

3. "Slack meets github issues" means nothing to me! Who is your target audience? Those both seem like dev tools, but it looks like you're hitting consumers?

Good luck!

Low hanging fruit: localize your marketing site for US english. I know it sounds silly, but language matters and is proven lift conversions.

Research: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/american-vs-british-english-...

I read the first couple paragraphs of your medium post before I got bored. Way too much unnecessary content.

THIS IS ALL ANYONE NEEDS TO KNOW: "create a new todo item directly in the conversation simply by adding a #todo hashtag to your existing chat message"

That is what separates you from Slack or other todo apps. LEAD WITH THAT.

This came off harshly. I REALLY LIKE the hashtag feature. I'd LOVE that in my productivity apps. I think it's really cool but for you're not promoting that aspect on your site. You should! Also, screenshots on the site would be ideal.

Good luck with the project! Just thought I'd point out there's a fair amount of competition out there. Not just Slack, but Flowdock for example, which offers very "loop-like" functionality as well. If you've not looked into Flowdock, it'd be worth it to check them out

Forget all the people who say "the solution already exists" plenty of people have built successful businesses by building a solution that already existed.

I did have a hard time figuring out what your app is. Work on the copy and you might see a better response.

Lots of advice here. I would also check out other Show HNs to get a feel for how other people present and talk about their product.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9145007

The site is terrible. I have NO idea what it's supposed to be. Github is mentioned twice, in tiny lettering.

Your blog post is what your homepage should be. If I'm a first time customer coming to your site looking at this, I close it and move on.

Can someone explain to me the apparently common obsession with creating to-do lists and chat programs? I can't figure out why so many people devote this much of their time to building to-do lists.

Developers tend to have a lot of activities and tasks they need to keep track of, and it's too much to remember. So we all wind up making lists: on paper, on whiteboards, in text files, in email, in apps. These lists always start out being fairly simple and manageable, but they also always grow into an unmanageable mess.

Being developers, we wind up blaming the record-keeping tool for the unmanageable mess rather than our own habits. That leads us to think that if we could just create a better tool for keeping track of our TODO list, our lives would be easier to manage, and maybe others could benefit from the tool as well.

Of course it never seems to pan out, because what we're trying to manage is our (work) lives, and our lives cannot be represented as a simple task list. There's a lot more nuance and complexity to it. And that's why we end up with a million different implementations of simple TODO lists.

That sounds very plausible. Thanks for the insight.

I read throughout your whole site. Way too much content. I still don't know what the product does or why I should switch from Slack to OpenLoopz.

The z in the name is not great. OpenLoop would be so much nicer.

As others have said, your website is not very informative but I signed up after reading your Medium post.

I really like the project and think it has a lot of potential but could do with some polish. Well done!

Hi, sorry, my first impression is it's nothing I couldn't do today simply with email, that would require everyone I'd want to communicate with to sign up en-mass.

Also, there's a bias on HN (and the world in general but here in particular) against giving real, polite negative feedback (note downvoting without comment).

Going to openloopz.com (no www) serves up a Heroku error page.

Much has been covered by others, so as a designer with 10 years of experience my recommendation would be to change the logo into something cleaner.

When I registered, the URL in the email had the port number in the URL (i.e. openloopz.com:443/confirm....).

Pretty sure that's a bug.

Other than that...Good luck!

Can you add the explanations on medium to your website. Currently, I have no idea what a loop is based on your website

Small feedback: link to google+ returned 403

So far looks very close to something I'd like to create/use myself.

I don't get it. What is it? Could you just present a video of you using your product?

Good on you for going at it and pushing through. Chin up and keep moving forward. :)

It would help to see a demo.

good luck! code time is over and now business time begins. trim down the intro so someone can understand it in 10 seconds.

Lots of people leap before they have a parachute because the plebeian view is that entrepreneurs take risks. The reality is that good entrepreneurs manage their risk neurotically. It doesn't help your situation now, but always start these endeavors as night + weekend projects. Manage your risk. Test the market. Get 5 paying customers, then start thinking about quitting your full time job.

So, some feedback...

From what I gather, OpenLoop a tool for me to organize information and/or projects, generic enough to be used across many verticals and company orgs. It sounds similar to Trello or Basecamp. And that's OK. I'm not sure if my view is accurate, but that's what I feel like you're trying to sell.

"Show, don't tell". Go look at trello.com. Go look at basecamp.com/tour. As a potential customer, I want to see screenshots of the software before I signup. I want to see what's different. I'm asking myself "is this worth my time?" Show me a gif of OpenLoop in action. Or make a short screencast (with actual video of the software, not a high-level animation) and stick it right in the hero. Put up a demo at demo.openlooopz.com. Automatically wipe/reimage the account every night to keep out spam and vulgarity. Let people play with it.

Explore verticals. Are there verticals currently using OpenLoop really well? Project Managers? Nurses? Accountants? Is it really great at bug tracking? Highlight those on your website - "Project Managers use OpenLoop to Deliver Great Products", "Squash bugs quickly with OpenLoop". Build some dedicated landing pages for those verticals and buy some FB ads. Measure pageviews/signups and see who is most interested.

Testimonials or Case Studies. Talk to people currently using OpenLoop and ask them for a quote to put on your page.

Blogs. Setup a tumblr in 15 seconds and start blogging about how people are using OpenLoop. Publish guides on popular workflows. Publish ways you're different than your competitors.

Refine your copy. People generally don't read large blocks of text. I could tell you were struggling to describe your product because the first item in your FAQ is "What is a loop". Ditch the copy and show me the software.

Ditch the "Slack Meets Github" tagline. Perhaps you only used that here. But it didn't help me understand the product.

Naysayers come and go. Don't give up, but make sure you're providing if that's your role. If you're out of fuel (money), time to do a contract gig to earn some more runway. You might even have to go back to full time work and do OpenLoop on the weekends. There is no shame in that. If you can, take a 2 week break from anything OpenLoop related (perhaps a contract) and spend time with your family. You'll come back refreshed and find yourself with tons of new ideas for ways to market/advertise, new verticals to research, better copy, etc.

Best of luck to you sir!

Neat. I'll give this a shot this weekend. :)

Fundamentally, your website doesn't remind me of any problems I need solved, and that's why I don't know if I want it. Check out Slack's promo video. The first half of it is talking about the catastrophe that is collaboration these days. The reason that's great is because people who have this problem have already told themselves the first part of the story about their own organization. When the team is talking about how much of a clusterfuck their communication is, potential users are nodding along and saying "Yeah man, that's what my life is like right now", and then - surprise! - Slack is the answer for them, which means maybe it's the answer for you too.

Whenever I see anyone making a pitch I recommend this talk to them: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspi...

The basic idea is pitch to people's emotions, and not their logic. For example, this paragraph is awful:

> With OpenLoopz, you don't have to worry about the implications of sharing your data with us. You can download your own dedicated OpenLoopz Server called a Pod. If you wish, you can either download and configure your own Pod or you can let us do all the hard work for you. Either way, once your Pod is set-up, you will have complete control over where your data is stored and who can access it.

Blah blah blah. It kind of goes back and forth. It explains this feature, but it doesn't pitch it. It also positions 'sharing data with us' as something 'to worry about', which is not an implication you want. I'd write something like this, personally (but I'm awful at this):

"Your data is important to you, and we get that. Whether for compliance, privacy, or retention, if you need your data stored in-house we can help. Set up your own Loopz on-premesis, or we can do it for you, and you'll have complete control over where your data is stored and who can access it."

It dispenses with the wishy-washy "Hey, you could do this. Or not. But whatever, anyway, here's a thing." language and gets to the point.

Likewise:

> OpenLoopz seamlessly integrates with all your favourite apps. Are you a software developer who wants GitHub code commits to appear in your conversation or project as you work? Maybe you are a manager looking to keep all your personal and professional appointments/tasks in one place? With integrations you can truly keep all your data in one place, including data from external apps!

"You use a lot of services, and checking them all is a pain. OpenLoopz can integrate with other services to bring all that data into one place, saving you time and simplifying the flow of information. Github commits for developers, <some kind of task management system e.g. Asana> milestones for project managers, and <specific calendaring service, e.g. Google Calendar> events for management, all in one place so you never have to miss a thing - or repeat yourself twice."

The main difference here is that your pitch starts out with "Hey, integrate your stuff", whereas my (kind of bad) one mentions a specific pain point and then goes on to solve it.

Then you can have a specific page that goes into detail. Tell me what integrations are already available, and how I can build my own. Tell me what I have to do to host my own service (is it an app? a VM? a docker container?), and what it does (can it integrate with my LDAP/AD/Kerberos/CSV file database?), but leave the technical aspects out of your first pitch.

So yeah, that's my input, for what it's worth. Maybe it'll be useful.

I wish people did not spend their own money on start-ups, it's so sad :(. Learn from Silicon Valley.

There's nothing wrong with bootstrapping. Plenty of small/medium businesses don't go for VC (unless you count straight up debt like a bank loan, which I don't).

Very few people have access to angels or vcs at first. And they usually want to see some traction first.

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