I had a problem, then I built a solution. Here's a demo.

[AdrianMC]

I talk about it in this blog post: https://medium.com/@adrianli/how-i-read-one-thousand-articles-to-get-my-startup-idea-233fdab8a031

There's also a video demo of the prototype at the end of that post. We got the idea initially from trying to scratch our own itch and we know that there must be tons of people out there who share links with their teams and want to build an info-store collaboratively. The only problem is I am not sure who I should be targeting specifically.

Feedback? Ideas?

Any comment would be appreciated. Much thanks!

 

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[Lavi Fletcher]

Not trying to diss it or anything, but can't you just make two windows and basically create exactly what your iFrame feature offers?

 

[SmoothFranko]

I like the concept but I wouldn't personally use it as I have 2 monitors and can just type away in one while listening/reading in the other

 

[AdrianMC]

I like the concept but I wouldn't personally use it as I have 2 monitors and can just type away in one while listening/reading in the other

Not trying to diss it or anything, but can't you just make two windows and basically create exactly what your iFrame feature offers?

Maybe I should take the emphasis out from the split screen view.

The real value we want to provide is being able to organize chat-like comments under each link.

Meaning that links are first-class objects, and that every discussion you have with your team is going to be tied to a particular topic.

I also want to stress that we extract the full-text of blog articles so that we can auto-identify keywords for tagging as well as enable full-text search.

 

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[AdrianMC]

But I appreciate your replies. That means we over-emphasized a feature and under-emphasized other features.

 

[div]

How are you market testing this?

 

[AdrianMC]

How are you market testing this?

That's what I'm trying to figure out. It's a scratch your own itch idea, but I know there's a demand out there just from all the existing competitors: Slack, HipChat, Gibbon, etc.

 

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[Kung Fu Steve]

I'm a little lost and I've never been amazing with technology... and I'm completely ignorant... if you can explain it to me -- you'll basically have your sales pitch down.

... so with that being said... I don't get it? What's the point? To be more efficient at slacking off?

 

[AdrianMC]

I'm a little lost and I've never been amazing with technology... and I'm completely ignorant... if you can explain it to me -- you'll basically have your sales pitch down.

... so with that being said... I don't get it? What's the point? To be more efficient at slacking off?

No this is more for design agencies or small teams that need to do research. Basically any time when you have a small group of people constantly sharing links with each other on a daily basis and discussing them as well.

 

[Kung Fu Steve]

No this is more for design agencies or small teams that need to do research. Basically any time when you have a small group of people constantly sharing links with each other on a daily basis and discussing them as well.

So I have a group of people working on a project sharing files and ideas... how is it different than basecamp?

Again, don't take offense to my ignorance.

 

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[AdrianMC]

So I have a group of people working on a project sharing files and ideas... how is it different than basecamp?

Again, don't take offense to my ignorance.

No worries, I'm not taking any offence at all. This is good because obviously it means I'm not communicating the value properly. I should be apologizing for that, I'm still learning.

I don't know if this makes sense, but "posts" are first-class objects. That means that everything needs to be under a post. And you can have "link posts" or "text posts". Think of it like Reddit, but within each "post" is a chat-room. Does that make a little more sense?

On top of that paradigm, we also want to enable the ability to store the entire text of articles and allow you to make and save highlights. Essentially, make it easier to take notes on articles, podcasts, and videos collaboratively.

 

[Kung Fu Steve]

No worries, I'm not taking any offence at all. This is good because obviously it means I'm not communicating the value properly. I should be apologizing for that, I'm still learning.

I'm on the opposite spectrum. I am old school hustler in business. I know I need you but I have no idea why.

I don't know if this makes sense, but "posts" are first-class objects. That means that everything needs to be under a post. And you can have "link posts" or "text posts". Think of it like Reddit, but within each "post" is a chat-room. Does that make a little more sense?

Not... really?

On top of that paradigm, we also want to enable the ability to store the entire text of articles and allow you to make and save highlights. Essentially, make it easier to take notes on articles, podcasts, and videos collaboratively.

Here's the big question as a potential client (quite literally)... how is this going to make me money?

 

[AdrianMC]

I'm on the opposite spectrum. I am old school hustler in business. I know I need you but I have no idea why.

Not... really?

Here's the big question as a potential client (quite literally)... how is this going to make me money?

I appreciate you taking the time to reply me. That's a good question, nice and straight to the point. Let me give it a shot.

Example - Marketing Campaign Management

A typical small business might have any number of marketing campaigns going on. The employees of a company will need to know how to execute those campaigns. Usually there's also a list of previous campaigns so that it can be referenced in the future. For those previous campaigns that worked well, it is likely that there would be step-by-step documentation on what the company did to be successful. Usually this information is kept in some Word Document that is stored on the office server or floats around from employee to employee.

Consider that an employee might have read an article on a new campaign strategy, took some notes on it, and passed it to the business owner. The business owner takes a look at her notes and says, "interesting, let's run this for a week." The employee then goes out to discuss the strategy with a few other employees over email. The employee then executes the campaign but stores the results of the campaign in a separate file.

In this situation, your information is all over the place. You've got:

- A list of previous successful campaigns
- How to execute previous campaigns
- The blog article the employee found
- The notes that the employee took on that article
- The conversation between the employee and the business owner
- The email conversation between the employee and the other employees
- The steps for how to execute this new strategy
- The results of this new strategy

Our solution will have every single one of these items stored and linked together on the website for easy retrieval. If you have a new employee join your company, she would be able to access all of the above information in a coherent time-line so that she can understand what was tried, how it was tried, and what happened.

This saves money because employees who need to know about previous marketing efforts can easily search "marketing" and get a broad overview of what was tried before, and dig into the details if they need to. No more spending time asking people about whether or not they think something has been done before, or how to repeat a previous campaign.

I used marketing as an example, but it could be any kind of knowledge that a business runs on. Some companies also call this "knowledge management software".

In a way, it's like a running documentation of your company's cumulative experience.

 

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[Kung Fu Steve]

Here's the real challenge... can you bring that down to ONE sentence that will explain why I need it?

The simpler your message the more effective it is.

"Sell me this pen."
"Ok, do me a favor and write down your name."
"I don't have a pen."
"Here you go."

4HWW shared the Apple example. They had it perfect: 1,000 songs in your pocket.

I just looked at your competition too... their sites are gawd-awful... at least Slack and HipChat... Gibbon all I found was some kind of monkey...

Here's the mentality I have going on:

Person A meets someone on the street and says "here's my business card, it has my website where you can enter your email and then my automated messages will reach you and then on day 7 you'll get the answer to the question you just asked."

Person B meets someone on the street and just sells them something because they are right in front of them.

Am I wrong in thinking this software will make my team be similar to Person A where they are now adding 6 additional steps to whatever they are doing (whether it's a sales presentation, a marketing campaign, or whatever)?

 

[AdrianMC]

Here's the real challenge... can you bring that down to ONE sentence that will explain why I need it?

The simpler your message the more effective it is.

"Sell me this pen."
"Ok, do me a favor and write down your name."
"I don't have a pen."
"Here you go."

4HWW shared the Apple example. They had it perfect: 1,000 songs in your pocket.

I just looked at your competition too... their sites are gawd-awful... at least Slack and HipChat... Gibbon all I found was some kind of monkey...

Here's the mentality I have going on:

Person A meets someone on the street and says "here's my business card, it has my website where you can enter your email and then my automated messages will reach you and then on day 7 you'll get the answer to the question you just asked."

Person B meets someone on the street and just sells them something because they are right in front of them.

Am I wrong in thinking this software will make my team be similar to Person A where they are now adding 6 additional steps to whatever they are doing (whether it's a sales presentation, a marketing campaign, or whatever)?

All very good points. We've talked to a good number of people over the past few days and we think we're going to look over everyone's feedback and tweak our offering. I'll be back to post again in a week or two.

 

[Gale4rc]

As a slack user, I can say I definitely dont need this or want this.

I post the articles directly into slack and talk about them, I never really need the exact sentence.... I don't think I've ever needed the exact quote. Same with other people posting articles, they just post the articles and we discuss them.

 

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