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StackOverflow for Startups

startups.com

70 pointsjmonegro40 comments

I'm not sure why I'd use this instead of http://answers.onstartups.com/ - I'm much more likely to participate in a community founded and managed by intelligent individuals that I respect. The site makes no mention of who's behind startups.com, why I should trust them, and how I know they won't violate that trust.

That said, it's cool that someone has based a megabucks domain name on Stack Exchange.

Hmm,

Excellent point. Makes me think about information design in general. Stackoverflow is a great interface and a great site. But part of it's success is it's interface is well tuned to both the kind of questions programmers ask AND the kind of expertise that a programmer would accept to have their question answered.

Most professional programmers are successful at programming - they create programs that are released and so forth. So the understanding of what it takes to succeed is somewhat "democratically" distributed. Most startups fail, the distribution about the information needed to succeed is much less democratically distributed. Also, programmers generally don't have an incentive to hide information or to try to sell you things. People who talk about startup have some incentive to do both.

In investing, there's both different questions AND a different kind of expertise one would be looking for. As a programmer, I'll accept a programming answer that has been voted up by many random programmers (hopefully my peers). As a founder/investor/business person I might not want the answer "everyone" votes up.

Why should you trust any of the info on http://answers.onstartups.com/ ? It's not like the founders are the ones answering every question. How do you know that intelligent individuals are answering your question? Isn't that a question you can ask about any internet forum?

Unless you can tell by looking at the site's history of intelligent responses. In which case you can do that with startups.com, if not most sites on the internet.

You're right, our fault. I just posted a comment and mentioned it a bit about us. We're internet entrepreneurs from latinamerica, that have build a few successful startups over the last ten years.

A quick dig shows that these folk are behind it: http://www.killerstartups.com/

I'd say that not having their blog linked all over the home page earns them a credibility point.

(The TC post linked from their FAQ says the domain cost 'mid-six-figures'. Ouch.)

Our thoughts exactly. We didn't mention the killerstartups.com name because we thought it was more appropiate (mabye it wasn't a good idea.) KillerStartups.com was launched in January 2007 and it's getting a good number of visitors per day (90k). And yes, we did pay mid-six figures for Startups.com (ouch :)

Agreed. And Dharmesh got a lot of good startup founders to commit to using answers.onstartups. Startups.com is a great domain; perhaps they can work together?

Thanks Joel for posting about Startups.com. Awesome to make it here, and it seems there are quite a few people interested on the site. When it comes to design, it's really a subjective issue. We ran some tests and this one came out as the winner. We're tarteting a broad group of people interested in "business" in general, not only on startups. We'll see how it goes. We're the people behind KillerStartups.com, internet entrepreneurs at heart. Matias de Tezanos, currently founder and CEO of HealthCare.com (sold Hoteles.com to Hotels.com back in the day, raised $10M for HealtCare.com, Inc. and funded several other startups), and Gonzalo Arzuaga, who sold GauchoNet to Terra/Lycos in 1999, and wrote 5 books about business on the internet (unfortunately, in spanish)

StackOverflow benefits from two things: 1) started by Fog Software who has a reputation, and 2) there's a natural filter in place with its content. Perhaps just perception bias but I think it helps weed out an overload of questions like "how can i get listed on search engines".

At some point there needs to be moderation to maintain quality and define the scope of the site, otherwise I think it will struggle to have merit, IMO. The first question I clicked on is regarding "social media" by a hotel owner. Certainly a valid question but how is this related to startups? Are you assuming that any business getting started = startups?

http://startups.com/questions/1447/how-can-i-define-my-strat...

The SO system makes moderators out of those with high rep. So there'll be mods as the community grows.

But you're right. The owners will have to make sure that the community gets off to a good start. It's a fine line. Axe too many questions, and you stife growth, as people will leave. But leave up too many dumb questions, and it won't be a useful resource, and people will leave.

hopefully we'll be able to find the best mix for our audience. We launched 4 days ago, and we're happy with the traction we're getting. Of course there are tons of little details to polish, but hey, did you expect something different for a startup? :)

Not at all. I've already put in some answers. I really like the SO social model, and you've got a great domain name. Best of luck!

Thank you Steve. You've got a perk from us (when you go back to startups.com again will notice :) Hope you like it.

Nice. Thank you. I just noticed...

This is not StackOverflow. This is a hosted website that is powered by the same software as StackOverflow. The content here has absolutely no direct relation to StackOverflow.

I think pxlpshr is making a comparison here between Stack Overflow and Startups.com, saying he thinks the latter will struggle to have merit since it lacks a couple of crucial traits that make SO successful. He only unintentionally conflates the two.

I'm aware of that, I was mentioning what I thought were the strengths of stackoverflow in relation to a lot of the other Q/A sites that have existed before it.

Constructive Criticism: use a softer background color and consider retweaking the logo: glossy, over-stroked, drop-shadowed site logos imply that startups don't know better and are the epitome of bad design that many associate with "web 2.0"

i would also make the "# views" text lighter. it is distracting when quickly scanning the left column for answer counts since it's the same size.

I agree, the number of views is less important than the number of answers. The font for both of them is too large.

To be honest I think Stack Overflow needs a bit of a redesign. The fonts are all a bit too large, and it's the same on this new site. The size of the font for the questions titles is too large for me to read the titles comfortably.

On the right "panel", serif font and sans serif font right after it clash terribly. The thumb tack on top is too corny and cliche, you don't need it. The ad is very distracting and even disregarding that, it breaks the flow of the design.

I don't know if I would say it's corny. I would have said it's too tacky.

(Sorry; it's Monday.)

Wow, make some constructive criticism on design and get downvoted. Great.

Isn't it a waste of money to run AdWords that point to your own site? Or is something else going on here? http://imgur.com/0RaUa.png

This is with the pointer over the banner at the top.

I think there's a way to cycle in house ads if the space would otherwise be given to those free government ads.

Doesn't quite seem like it's reached that critical mass needed to be really useful

This looks like one of the rare stackexchange.com sites that might actually go somewhere. It's a hell of a domain name to use too.

The only real question is if the answers are any good. It looks too soon to tell to me.

Yes but I think they have some serious competition by the answers.onstartups.com which has quite some momentum too

Competition is great for users, and for competitors too IMHO.

I'm not sure if competition is great on such sites. You want one place to find answers for one topic, like programming-> StackOverflow, sysadmin -> ServerFault.

How is community going to benefit from two sites based on the exact same framework, on the exact same topic ? It will only be duplicating eachother.

Ideally, Programming Questions -> StackOverflow | Business Questions -> Startups.com. Online communities are, in a way, like physical spaces (bar, restaurants, etc). You like one over the other for different reasons: maybe the music, the drinks, the food, the host, maybe your friends hang out there. We'll see how this plays out. Competition is always good because it forces you to think more and more about how to server your customers/visitors better.

If I were Spolsky, I'd be a little bothered by the fact that someone called this "StackOverflow for Startups" and also by the fact that it looks so much like StackOverflow. When I went there, the first thing I thought was that the StackOverflow/ServerFault folks had created a third website which isn't the case.

Ummm, they license the software to anyone who wants it for about $120/month to $2000+/month (?) or something.

Seriously, you can go and get a site like StackOverflow; the software is called StackExchange (http://www.stackexchange.com/)

Just FYI, it isn't my site.

view source gave me this (for <noscript>):

Startups.com | Your Business. Your Questions. works best with JavaScript enabled

please test it in IE6

I meant to downvote that but accidentally upvoted it. Anyhow, I thought it was a bit ridiculous that a startup technology site support IE 6.

I think you might be surprised. My blog, which is about technology and startups, has a fair share of IE6 users.

I work in a large corp that's still on IE6, I'm interested in start-ups and often read HN at work, so I'm surprised by the downvotes to be honest!

What do you mean by "startup technology site"?

from startups.com home page: "It's THE website for business people, entrepreneurs, small business owners, home-based businesses to ask business questions."

startups.com has a wide agenda. It is very likely if startups.com can attract non-tech types to its forum, many will still have IE6.

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