Ask HN: Review my startup, www.getmustapp.com | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my startup, www.getmustapp.com

38 pointsTheMustApp38 comments

Slick idea, I think. My feedback:

- The video added nothing of value for me. I felt like I wasted 1:20 on what could just as easily have been a SquareSpace or Adidas commercial. I'm not sure why the video doesn't just...show me what the product does and why I'd want it.

- The rest of the site probably does tell me that, but it uses a wall of text to do so. Since I've already wasted 90 seconds by the time I get to the wall of text, I'm in low-fi skim mode.

My takeaway: it's some kind of photo-sharing app. I'm not sure why I'd want it.

Hope this helps.

Slick website and an interesting idea, unfortunately I'm on android so can't check it out.

I hate to be that HN guy, but when I first went to your site, I spent nearly 10 seconds looking at a frozen image of a car, with no text or anything, wondering what was going on. Then the hero video started playing and the text was then rendered, but I couldn't actually read the text because there was so much going on behind it. I also didn't notice the play video button until I read some of the comments here too. If I was you I would ditch the hero video and go with something less distracting and less heavy on the page (scrolling was pretty laggy too). It's a shame because the rest of the page looks great and has good copy, but I'd suspect you'd lose quite a few readers in those first 5-10 seconds.

It was 30 seconds for the full landing page to show for me, and 17 seconds before the hook text flew onto the page.

The front page is over 8 megs, and even with a primed cache there are 4 megs which must be downloaded before I can even view the landing page. This will be hell for mobile users.

I agree with the parent, this will not be acceptable for many folks. After all, if your website abandon rates will rise by 5% for every second it takes to load, how many will be around after 10, 20, 30 seconds?

And while I hate to be "that guy", what value does the dynamic loading provide the end user? What could not be done with a static webpage animated with Javascript after the assets have been loaded?

A few brand things - If you take the "getmustapp" apart, your app is named "Must". So your domain, should, probably, be "must". Similarly, "must" seems to remind me of the phrase "musty".

Your website photo loads before the text, and describes a "recommendation app" that "speaks with photos". My brain has a hard time merging these two to understand it.

What is even a photo recommendation app? Do I take a photo of milk and say "this is good milk?"

The photo at the bottom that discusses "must have" and "must drink", makes it seem a bit like a pinterest?

The valuations of all of these companies are based on massive userbase turning into eventual profit per user. Your whole usage then will depend on getting massive amounts of people to use this thing - instead of the existing things.

Instagram (or Flickr, etc) are a bit more open ended, and not so consumer focused... so they can also be used to say "this is about my style" or whatever, versus consumer buying. Which to me, is more interesting, rather than bragging about what someone bought or where they ate.

(Also, I'm boring.)

How are you going to sell it? There's an age-old issue with making money with social networks. Either you allow people to be free-loaders and make it totally free, or you sell your users to keep it afloat.

Why do I want it? It seems like... Instagram. Just, that. Let me illustrate by analyzing the main value prop:

  "Must is a free lifestyle photo recommendation app for discovering, capturing, and sharing new experiences across the world."

So:

  * free: (above)
  * lifestyle: so like, anything from awesome to anodyne? I would think you'd only want to reward things that other people think are cool, as a social network.
  * recommendation: you can't sell personalization as a product. You can try after five years of having a product, maybe. But as an MVP you have *literally no data.*
  * capturing, sharing: so, Instagram.
  * new experiences: so, just photos? Or do you have a cool trick up your sleeve? This spot could be your saving grace: if you find a new way to capture events like Snapchat did with 7-second videos, then *everything else written here is invalid.* Otherwise, *yawn.*
  * across the world: these three words are wasting my time. Don't waste time. With the advent of the Internet, basically every startup could say this. Why don't they? Because it's a waste of time.

Hopefully this doesn't come across as ranty and horrible because I would like to see you succeed. (In fact, I'm being somewhat nice. If you caught a YC partner on a bad day with something like this, you might get something a little worse. ;)

I wish you luck.

My thought process as I'm reading/scrolling:

"So, Instagram?"

"Instagram... This is Instagram."

"OOOHH, that's how it's NOT Instagram. Why didn't they say so earlier? That weird copy about Shakespeare and 'trailing' [sic] wasn't actually an ad for Instagram."

Be direct and get to your value proposition much sooner than 3 pages down or whatever. I actually could see myself using this app, or at least trying it, but not when the entire hook upfront is "share photos."

Also, the name is very bad. I get it, "must do, must drink, must see," etc. The URL alone makes me twitch.

Click: http://www.getmustapp.com/

Maybe it's just me, but I found the copy insufferable. I don't think I'm the target audience, but there's some irony in hitting a wall of text complaining about how people write too much and think they're Shakespeare. It could be a lot clearer and more direct.

Agreed. Worth taking the whole thing and first running it through the filter of 'WIFM' (i.e., the first question you answer shouldn't be 'What type of app is Must?', but instead, 'What does Must do for me, the user?').

Then, worth taking all the copy and running it through http://www.hemingwayapp.com.

I'm excited by your app.

You need to do more, sooner, to emphasize that it is not a photo sharing app. The recommendations aren't the photos, but what's in them. It is for experience-sharing. It is closer to Pinterest than Instagram, but the impression you give is the latter.

You would do well to emphasize this through features in the app. The interactions you need people to have with the app are a full cycle: save, do, respond and do, share, get feedback (not just save and share). Reward users for coming back and checking off a saved experience, and reward users when someone does an experience they recommended.

Or whatever actual, better feature you have in mind that emphasizes experiences over photos and encourages the full cycle. But do it soon, and simplify.

The site is clear and beautiful, as needed for a new product.

But you ask us to review your startup and not your website right ? :)

So here's my thought on your product: Having "must have" content on one platform is a good idea. It then garantees new & quality content. But my question is about this very content: How will you filter the photos in order to keep a great content while filling up your user base? is there moderators or content-filtering algorithms? Because in case you haven't thought of that, the risk for your app is to besome an lesser instagram...

Great design work though ! (sorry for my poor english)

The video was pretty, but it didn't tell me anything about the app. Felt vapid, like a TV commercial for pharmaceuticals.

Then I scrolled down and skimmed through. It's Instagram with categories or something I think?

Nice video but doesn't really give me the details of the app unless I use it.

Photo-sharing sure but what makes you guys different from let's say VSCOcam, Instagram, and all the other Social Media sharing photo apps available?

-Even by sharing the highlight menu, you don't need to separate food and drink. You can generalize it as "Must Dine."

Having demo'd the app itself here are a few suggestions:

-Work on the metatags in the app store make it Android available. I had to filter through the first five apps and five different iterations of "Must App" keyword iterations to finally find it on my phone and install it.

The UI is a bit flimsy for me, if you can have the option to have the bottom header pop up static instead of remaining hidden that would be cool.

The photo editing, should have all "Effects, Frames, Overlays" pre-installed. Having need to install even the defaults is sort of a drag.

-After uploading a photo, the preview size and the actual size, should be the same resolution and dimensions. Because it is different it made my editing choices a bit skewed.

Draw option is nice (reminds me of snapchat), but sort of ruins the "photo centric feel" but that's just me.

Overall, I get what you're trying to be but I believe there's a bigger potential in focusing solely on video in a mobile format versus photo. Case in point, Youtube's current UI when browsing on a smart phone.

Hope this helps and good luck. If you wish to have more feedback feel free to reach out.

"Must is a free lifestyle photo recommendation app for discovering, capturing and sharing new experiences across the world."

"DISCOVER. EXPERIENCE. CAPTURE. SHARE."

I'm having a hard time understanding what this app does. The prose is too long and hairy for me to parse. Does it take pictures? Show them in a feed?

What am I going to do with this app? Where will I be? Why will I be doing it? Why will I want to, and what is the increment of improvement over my current technology this will provide? Put that as concisely as possible in the first two pages I scroll through. If it's hard to do in words, make a video or take some screenshots of someone using the app the way I would use it.

This is some solid advice from pg I like:

"Better to start with an overly narrow description of your project than try to describe it in its full generality and lose the audience completely. If there's a simple one-sentence description of what you're doing that only conveys half your potential, that's actually pretty good. You're halfway to your destination in just the first sentence."

About the site:

1) Redirect http://www.getmustapp.com to https://getmustapp.com, with www or without, with https or without

2) Cursor: default, not text

3) The second image of the mobile example is clickable and goes to the image "zoom"

4) The email subscriber it's not clear enough to me, where should I enter de email?...

5) Not favicon

Don't have a video playing in the background. Even if there's no audio, it makes foreground text harder to read than it should be.

If you're going to play a video, however, play something useful. This video was so bland that I have no reason to believe that it wasn't stock footage. Ask yourself why you wanted to include the video and give it a very long, very hard second thought.

Pretty cool idea. I few things to consider about the way I initially perceived the app:

* It took me a while of consciously skimming and reading to figure out how it was different from Instagram (this is the most important IMO)

* Given the above, it also took me a while to figure out exactly what it does.

* Your website is REALLY slow to load. Obviously, tons of people from HN alone are accessing it to check it out, but keep this in mind for later - it can cost you big time.

* To me, it's an Instagram-Pinterest hybrid - which could be a really good thing, you just need to sell it properly.

Don't worry too much about these "how are you going to make money" questions. That's something that you can dial in after you've brought in a good chunk of users. After all, you can't make money if you don't have any users.

Nice work. It looks beautiful in the screenshots, I'll download it for sure. It'll be up to you to make sure I keep it on my phone and actual deem it a part of my lifestyle! :p

Product's purpose is clearly communicated in the first paragraph, and as a bonus even the title bar. Bravo! I really can't complain about the website.

I can't use the app (Windows Phone) but I'd definitely try it out if it was available. Maybe provide an email notification option for Android and Windows Phone.

Disagree on the first point. Only after scrolling below the fold and seeing the screenshots I understood what it does.

Kudos on the launching the site! You entered into well charted waters but that doesn't mean you don't have room to grow. Try to add features that can differentiate you from Instagram or Pinterest. There are some great suggestions here so don't ignore. Here few things I noticed; the website is cookie cutter WP site, so invest little in design and I think 99designs.com can help. Your site is about photographs and video on homepage threw me off right away as I thought it's video app; and video itself is not related to your product. See https://www.airbnb.com/, how relevant their video message is to their services. Don't get discouraged, pivot!!

Great Idea!

Some suggestions: - Must have: Filter on tags (Tech, Gadgets, Fashion, Beauty, ...) - I guess one might want to add a picture from Instagram to "I must have" or "you must have".

And then I want to check a picture and say: I've done that! Would' recommend.

The pictures on the front page seemed like they should be static as opposed to stuttery and changing. (Version 41.0.2272.89 (64-bit) MacOS-X)

I think the video needs to explain the app a little more too. I agree with the sentiments of the video though and love the design.

After I went through the tutorial in-app it took a while to load just showing me a white screen. Some sample data would be nice to start with. A bit more direction in-app would be helpful.

Overall I like the concept and the idea but the implementation needs a bit of work. It's a very compelling concept and it sounds like something I would use while travelling.

Site looks good.

- I would prefer a smoother transition to play the video, otherwise it seems I navigated to a different page. Better yet, I would prefer to see the video without "leaving" the landing page - the screenshot with the 2x3 menu looks but, but I would love to see a drilldown to get a feeling of what kind of suggestions I can get Anyway I would love a product like this IF the suggestions match my taste.

As a geek, I must ask: are the suggestions curated, 100% automatic or a mix? I'm guessing a mix between user suggestions and some kind of recommendation system

And why U no android? :)

I can't speak for the developer, but my response to 'why not android' is generally:

- Development is easier on iOS (APIs, number of devices etc), and a higher level of quality can be achieved with less effort. - It's hard to saturate a market of 700 million devices.

Basically until it seems like all iOS that have downloaded will, there seems no need to go Android. You're doubling the development effort, support costs etc for little gain.

I'd counter that with the fact that this is a social app, and thus depends on being able to saturate networks of people. This means that if someone that does interesting things wants to share those on this app, and happen to have Android, you could have lost a really valuable "node" that could have helped you saturate both markets more.

Yeah totally, in theory it makes sense with a social app to consider as many platforms as possible.

Though in practise I haven't seen it hurt social networks that start on iOS. Instagram is the obvious example.

Keep in mind 700million is a really big number of addressable users, and there will be plenty of valuable node / users there.

I guess my point is still that if you're struggling on iOS in the early days, it's not because your app isn't available to 'enough' people, its because something else is wrong, which more platforms almost certainly won't fix.

I personally wouldn't use it. It isn't a huge step up vs. sharing something on Facebook/Twitter. Doesn't justify me installing a whole new app and evangelizing my network to join it.

That seems unfair. Those platforms don't even attempt the functionality being posed here (from what I gather).

All those platforms allow photo sharing, true. But the ability to categorize photos into experiences for reference isn't even covered in those other applications.

It's like saying snapchat isn't a step-up from twitter. It doesn't have to be... it isn't the same category.

Well that is exactly what I am referring to. The ability to categorize photos doesn't justify me moving all my photo sharing activities to the app.

Snapchat on the other hand is vastly differentiated from services such as twitter.

Just some feedback on the site:

The images/iconography appear to be @1x resolution, making things appear blurry on my MacBook Pro with Retina Display. I'm guessing it would be the same on my iPhone or iPad.

My first thoughts? Visited the website on my ipad, saw a bunch if pics, with no text (but big blank spaces) my first thought was too much work went into making a slick website that doesn't really work. I had no idea what the app did. After a minute or so I was about to give up when the text came in... Read some of it, still not sure what it is. Some sort if bucket list app, that my friends may or may not use. Spend more time making a slick app, and less time on a website that doesn't work ( less is more)

Website looks neat, but am I the only one who, when they see a website that loads as you scroll, scrolls all the way to the bottom to pre-load everything then go back to the top and start again. There should be a plugin to pre-load websites like this.

Looks interesting, I'll give it a shot once it hits the Play store.

At the top I would put the "Must see, Must eat, ...".

I read the copy, watched the video and until I scrolled down, I didn't get what it was all about, and why "must".

absolutely god awful video, seems like the same old tripe done again. and im sure we will see it again another 5 billion times yet in our lifetimes.

Seems like Pinterest. Might want to target the app to a particular demographic. For example: Pinterest + Match.com.

GetMustApp.com is the worst domain I have ever heard of, sorry.

I loved the video.

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