26
109 Comments

Comment your startup URL and I will criticize it heavily, WARNING!

Hello fellow indiehackers 😊

Over the past five years, I have failed more than five startups, one startup per year until succeeding with one

And I can surely help you guys to avoid the failures that I've been through

All you have to do is write the URL of your startup in the comment section below and I will go through it and get back to you with the feedback and might even make a video of it

The feedback could include criticism on:-

  • Idea validation
  • Business model
  • Landing page design and respective conversion rate
  • Competitive analysis and pricing model
  • Suggestions

If I like the product I might even use it, cheers!

EDIT: this is getting out of hand lately 😀 for so many comments, I've decided to do top 50 links here and rest on my Twitter account at https://twitter.com/IKhalidBashir
Just tweet your startup idea and link by mentioning me as I just started on twitter
A follow would be appreciated!

  1. 5

    What I admire about your journey is your mindset of putting in efforts in spite failing at five startups, which must have taught you hell lot of stuff @khalidbashir!

    Thanks for doing this post! I'm eager to hear your feedback on https://ruttl.com/ 👈

    1. 1

      Hello Harsh Vijay,

      I am completely in love with your startup idea. Also, I like the motion graphics you have used on your site instead of static pictures

      A few things I would love you to improve are:-

      1. Copywriting
      2. Copywriting
      3. Copywriting

      It seems the general theme of copywriting of your website is selling a "Need" based solution, which seems like a good-to-have solution.

      You can easily change that to a "Want" based theme by just doing the right copywriting on your site by first finding the pain points of your customer.

      For instance:-
      On the 2nd or 3rd hero sections you could add a very-big-prominent headline that says:

      "Don't fall in design iterations hell" ~ that take weeks to resolve

      Also, don't sell too many features on your first landing page, sell solutions:-

      So instead of:-
      "Inspect elements and give precise values to your developers"

      you can use
      "Quick design decisions that make your devs love you"

      Also, it seems your ideal customer is:-
      Non-dev product owners/managers that wants an easy, fast, and simple way to help devs build their products quickly avoiding unnecessary design meetings.

      So your headlines should focus on a non-dev audience for the most part.

      That is why I was surprised that your headlines were focusing on "live editing" and "comment directly on live websites", both of which are features which resolve the problem:-

      "How to let devs know what the site should look like which I have in my mind? I think I should ask the designer to design it for me first and let the devs wait until then. Finally, I received the designs, shit I don't like these, gotta send a new iteration for it which shall delay another 2-3 days", So you get the point?

      I understand right now your startup just helps change text, but the design also includes copywriting, sell that, later you can add the change in color/image, etc.. and it would be 360 solutions to quickly change the design of your site without iterations hell.

      Those were my 2 cents, hope that helps.

      1. 2

        @khalidbashir Sorry for the late reply! I really appreciate the time and efforts you took out to share such a detailed feedback! 🙌

        I loved your idea of converting it from need to want based. Do any good product examples come to your mind that I can use as a reference? I am definately considering this idea and will get started working on it as soon as the my product pipeline frees up!

        A small problem, however, that I am facing is that my primary audience is designers, developers and basically any other stakeholder working on web design projects. I am trying to improve SEO, for which I need to include specific keywords on the website.

        So keeping that consistent while converting the text to a non-dev audience is a challenge indeed. But I'll figure something out for sure.

        Thanks again for sharing your thoughts! 💯

    1. 4

      Hi Marvin, you are doing great at https://pirsch.io/

      Just a few things I want to point out:-

      1. Instead of using "Try it for free" CTA, you can use "Get started for free" CTA, which seems more welcoming

      2. I personally love at least one motion graphics moving element on the landing page at it gives life to the boring static landing pages and makes users remember your product.

      In your case maybe you can use the raw web data, that is being converted to organized data and analytics by passing through Pirsch Black Box, with a little data-flow animation.

      1. On your GitHub page you have this description written on about section
        "Pirsch is a drop-in, server-side, no-cookie, and privacy-focused analytics solution for Go."

      Wouldn't it be better if it would be something like this:-

      "Open-sourced alternative to Google Analytics. Drop-in, server-side, no-cookie, and privacy-focused web analytics written in Go."

      Again this is a very amazing product and I would definitely use it in my upcoming project

      I wish you good luck! :)

      1. 3

        Thank you for your feedback Khalid! We'll see how we can work it in :)

  2. 2

    Thanks for doing this Khalid !
    I'd love to have your take on https://beanvest.com

    1. 3

      At first glance your product looks really nice, I'll definitely check it out later :)

    2. 2

      Hello Roman,

      For starters
      The headline of your website reads
      "The best stock portfolio tracker for investors"

      Instead of calling yourself as best at the startup stage, I would suggest you be more focused on letting the customers know that why should they choose you instead of your competitors.

      Also, there's a lot of text and very low motion graphics or pictures, remember "Less is More" when it comes to copywriting

      Also, the picture used in the third Hero section is of very low quality and barely readable

      Hope this helps.

      1. 1

        Hey Khalid,

        Thanks a lot for your ideas !
        I will take them into account :)

  3. 1

    Hello, I am building fashionadvisorai.com - uses artificial intelligence to help you find answers to your fashion queries.

    will love your feedback on what i can improve Khalid

  4. 1

    Hello, I am building fashionadvisorai.com - uses artificial intelligence to help you find answers to your fashion queries.

  5. 1

    Thanks for doing this , I am working on blurweb.app - it helps to secure screen sharing , you can Hide Sensitive information while screen sharing , recording or just screenshot

  6. 1

    Would love to hear your critical feedback :-) https://grunthouse.com

    1. 1

      Landing page looks good, do you have any other content to add? Is the product currently ready for launch ??

      1. 1

        Thanks @jlarole95 . We are currently beta testing the iOS/Android apps with a limited set of users

        1. 1

          How were you able to get the first few users to sign up ?

    1. 2

      Hi Mark Lyck,

      In general, I like your design sense although it had lots of text I think it's kind of is an exceptional case for your startup. I especially liked the simulation part which kind of gives the sense to the user how the bot would make their profit.

      But there is a much more important thing to focus on than the landing page:-

      What I get from your landing page is that your startup helps your customers make thousands if not millions of dollars with your AI-trade bot.

      Believe me, I am there (because I myself have literally developed such software) when I say this:-

      "People are not gonna believe you, or pay for your product, at least the smart ones"

      I would have apologized for being Harsh if I had a single grain of doubt about what I said above

      Why do I believe that?
      Let's think with the perspective of a potential investor, shall we?

      1. Even if you have the best trade bot in the world, the more people use this bot the less efficient it will become
      2. Anyone who has hands-on such a bot would keep it to themselves or a closed group rather than asking $50 a month for every to jump on it and use it as it's a "Remove background from images tool",
        If it's a golden hen treat it like that

      Solutions?

      1. For starters don't keep it an open registration rather make it invite-only and make it look like a very hard software to get your hands on
      2. And charge big if you believe your software is Leap Forward

      Hope this helps

      1. 1

        Thanks for the feedback @khalidbashir!

        We've been running this service since 2009, so trust me. I know 99% of people don't believe in it, and well, that is what it is.

        Especially the professional investor as you mention would never subscribe to this because there are so many financial scams out there, that anyone who's been investing in the stock market for a few years will be acutely aware of and ultra skeptical of anyone outperforming the market. There's even still a ton of people who believes in "Efficient Market Theory" and refuses to believe Warren Buffett's success is not just pure luck. Let alone that an algorithm could beat the 7% annual return of the market.

        Our first attempt at this was a very professional site for people who really knew what they were doing. But we found that the only people subscribing were brand new investors who had no idea how to use a professional investing tool. The few newbie investors that gave it a chance have seen incredible results, and I hope most will be with us for life.

        But yeah, that is why we redesigned the website to focus on making it simple and easy to use and understand. Help new investors instead of trying to convince professional investors that there are smarter ways to invest.

        The real end-goal of our strategy is to start a hedge fund, which is a frustratingly long process, especially when your business is not founded in the USA, we're currently waiting on this which was slowed down further by C19.

        We have 4 algorithmic strategies developed since 2003. The 2 cheap ones we sell at an affordable price were our earliest products. "You are completely right that the more people who use it the less efficient it will become". These 2 strategies can't handle large AUM capital. They are not built to do that either and because of this, we do have a limit of how many users can be on those plans at once.

        Our 3rd product is very "picky" and has a very low-diversification portfolio that can't handle AUM liquidity at all. This is why that product is not available to anyone outside our private money management.

        But our flagship product which is what we sell to funds and customers with >$1m in portfolio value is specifically built to handle very large AUM capital.

        We've previously had this price visible starting at $200k a year (for B2B).

        Before we had 4 plans so there was a 3rd one for individuals with >$1m at $20k a year

        and the 4th plan for B2B customers at +$200k a year.

        Do you think it is a good idea to bring this back? We've basically summed that up to a "Contact us" button if you want to use our system with >$1m in assets.

        ---

        As for the argument that "anyone who has such a bot would keep it to themselves". I would argue that depends on the bandwidth of the strategy. E.g. if your strategy is based on investing in penny stocks where even a few thousand dollars will move the price and it worked. Absolutely, no one would share that.

        But for a strategy that can handle +1,000 times the capital we ourselves have to deploy without issues. It only makes sense to want to expand to money management and other means of monetizing it.

        ---

        I do like the idea of exclusivity, and honestly, it would probably work. But I have a feeling marketing would be quite difficult without having at least a somewhat established userbase to get started with.

  7. 1

    I am looking forward to hearing your feedback!

    Here is my Startup: https://found.dev

    Thank you!! 👏

    1. 2

      Hi Antonio Sánchez

      I think you are aiming for a very broad audience and should narrow down your audience to a specific small section and then market yourself to that section

      Right now you are competing heads-to-heads with Upwork and other freelancing websites, I understand you are not charging for it right now but you will eventually charge so don't let price be the USP of your startup

      Try to market smaller segments of your audience, like find full-stack devs, or get the top 1% talent work for you, but again Toptal owns that market, so you have to look for the small section that you can sell to

      Hope this helps.

      1. 2

        Thanks, this helps.

        But may be the biggest problem is that I am not explaining well enough what found.dev is about.

        It is not only about freelancers and you can't hire people directly here (like in Toptal or UpWork). It is only a Job Board with some extra functions that are optional for companies, like managing the applicants.

    1. 1

      Hi Tejas, your product looks cool

      Some changes that will be good to have:-

      1. Your video needs improvement, I had to wait for 1.5 minutes for you to add each column slowly
      2. The demo button should be near the "Start for free" button in the first hero section

      That's it.

      Hope this helps.

      1. 1

        Thank you for the tips! very useful.

      1. 1

        Looks good! How did you figure out the different pricing tiers? Did you do market research or just get feedback?

        1. 1

          This product was born out of our own frustration in building importers for multiple applications. We are our own customers and the initial pricing was based on how much we were willing to pay for it.

          The general feedback was the the pricing is too low. We decided to keep it anyways.

          1. 1

            I feel like you are leaving money on the table, an opportunity to upsell and increase MRR for perhaps another feature. Would love to chat more if you free today.

    1. 1

      I would also like to know what platforms your product available for on the homepage.
      I'm also not sure if it's free. If so, change "Download" to "Free Download"

      Since there's "data" involved, you'll need to either have a page that clarifies how and where the user data is stored, or tell visitors that the data is locally stored.
      Adding a contact widget wouldn't hurt.

    2. 1

      Hi Mohammad, Seems awesome to me!

      Wouldn't hurt to see the testimonials at the end though

    3. 1

      Easy to use and very well designed website, are clients able to get their questions answered from the landing page or is it pretty seamless ?

  8. 1

    Just launched my marketing MVP landing page last week. I would love some feedback!

    It’s aimed at developers who sell their code via gumroad (first version) and other marketplaces.

    https://gitshipper.com/

    Thanks!

    1. 1

      Hi Nick, the design seems very outdated, I hope when you launch it would have a sick design, right?

      1. 1

        Thanks, @khalidbashir for the critical design review. Looking for a 'sick design' now 😂

        Do you have any useful commentary from your original post?

        • Idea validation
        • Business model
        • Competitive analysis and pricing model
        • Suggestions
        1. 2

          Idea validation:-
          I haven't ever develop ->sell->ship to more than 1 customer at a time as a freelancer. And most of the time (as a freelancer) I get requirements, develop the code, ship it, and get paid. The shipping part happens at the end of the development cycle so not sure if I might need any automation there. Maybe you are not targeting freelancers?

          Pricing model:-
          You can use zapier approach, to charge by task credits with a subscription model to buy X action credits per month for Y$

          Competitive analysis:-
          None that are returned on a quick first-page google search

          Suggestions:-
          Cant suggest until anything related to business I have the customer persona

          1. 1

            Idea validation:-
            My theory is it's aimed at the growing industry of passion workers who are using 3rd party marketplaces to generate $$$ (GumRoad, SendOwl, Thrive Cart, Woo, Shopify etc.) However, the product is code rather than physical goods. I also think there's a market for people who teach coding over video platforms like YouTube and Twitch to deliver their training materials. They can use GitShipper to distribute packaged code from their private repos and build audiences who are notified of new code updates.

            Competitive analysis:-
            Too early or not a market 🤔😂

            Pricing model:-
            This is interesting. I like the idea of allowing x connections, but you have a limit on the number of Git pushes and notifications that can occur a month.

            Thanks, @khalidbashir!

    2. 1

      Hey Nick, the site looks great. How do you market to clients? what does your sales funnel look like ?

      1. 1

        Hi @jlarole95. Thanks! I plan to start engaging within the GumRoad and GitHub communities to validate the idea. I have a small ad budget ready to go if I get some positive signals from the community. I also need to start generating some long-form content about how to sell code. I could do with some support from a freelance tech writer in this area.

        I can't decide if I should offer a free tier for a single product to Git connection. My untested assumption is a lot of developers are focused on selling one codebase. So I wouldn't want to build a userbase I can never monetise from... needs testing!

        Any thoughts on paid tiers?

        1. 1

          Yea good points! I would def recommend reaching out first for market research, you dont want to spend time on something they wont pay for. I have seen several people use GumRoad to make bank off of courses and other content. What area are you located in? Are you looking for local talent?

  9. 1

    Alright let me put my thicker skin on.

    https://teamfeels.app

    1. 1

      Hi Dave,

      Your design is sick, especially the first hero section is awesome. Your startup is very good-to-have a solution.

      But can we make it a must-have solution?

      I think your next focus should be making this product that your customers want?

      Suggestion: Use the data that you currently have and use some AI predictable algorithm to determine when there is a high chance a user might leave the team?

      Anyhow I like your product, also I would love to see a feature for the team to log their status anonymously followed by an anonymous chat between team-lead/project-manager and the respective team member, this way the team member can openly discuss their issues with the project manager

      Hope this helps

      1. 2

        Great feedback. Thanks for this Khalid!!

  10. 1

    Thanks for doing this! One of my struggles so far was not getting much feedbacks.
    Appreciate your thoughts!
    https://burplist.me/

    1. 2

      Hi Jerry,

      I like your simple straight forward design, all the notice of potential growth problem that is, when I search for a specific query, I get the list but the URL doesn't change which means I am unable to share the list with a certain person, I think you should fix that which will help you grow your product to other newer-audience as well.

      Hope this helps.

      1. 2

        You've made a good point about URLs sharing! Thanks for the help! Appreciate it!

  11. 1

    Thanks for this khalid. The product it still in production but I will appreciate your insight on https://linkchatapp.herokuapp.com/

    Thanks, I appreciate.

    1. 2

      Hi there,

      Design-wise, it needs very huge improvements as it's very confusing at first

      The "get started" button leads to the "generate" button and the "generate button" leads to the Generated box

      Why such flow?

      Can there be a simple button that reads "Open Quick Chat" that does everything for you, which will be quick, simple, and easy to use

      Hope this helps

      1. 1

        Thanks for the feedback, I will make changes.

  12. 1

    There’s much to roast here on my no-code project:

    https://jobindecision.xyz

    1. 2

      Hi Mike, bro, there is too much text :D

      1. 2

        Love it, I have been thinking the same! I think I’ve followed too many SaaS Building Block guides at the same time 🥴🤔

    1. 2

      I love the testimonials on the site, simple and easy to understand. Is the marketing part working well? Are you able to stay profitable ?

      1. 1

        Thanks, well we are doing our best to promote our product however all the traffic is from App Store at the moment. About profits, not so well as we planned but we keep growing. Right now we are focused on ASO by 2Stable (https://aso.2stable.com/). We plan to make this project full transparent with #buildinpublic and to share all the numbers revenue, subscriptions, goals, investments, ads ... etc, and the strategies we will adapt to make the product profitable.

        1. 1

          Are there any other marketing platforms you can try? I wonder if you tried FB targeted at people who travel for work or work remote, if you would gain more traction. It seems super useful with everyone who is using away from their office. Even perhaps an affiliate deal with others who are in the tech space seems doable.

          That way you would be able to gauge the customer demand for the product, product market fit, and what to do with profits. Im happy to discuss further.

  13. 1

    https://streambee.io/ thanks for the constructive critics :)

    1. 1

      Hi Matej,

      Sick Design, Good Product, But What does it do?

      After the first hero section, these are your headlines

      "The current state"
      "Streaming in the near future" ~ this one is alright
      "Introducing StreamBee" ~ Is this necessary to speak out loud in the headline? Couldn't we find a better headline for this?
      "Features" ~ followed by too much text with no images/motion graphics or prominent sub-headlines per feature
      "Advantages" ~ ????
      "Benefits" ~ ????x20

      Most products that provide Analytics have certain design aesthetics which has numbers and graphs displayed on the dashboard, following a similar approach makes it easy for the users who skim your website to understand what you sell, else everyone would have to read your headlines or text to understand what you sell and believe me those headlines need improvement!

      Hope this helps

  14. 1

    My product is still in development - https://bubtitle.com and the problem I'm solving is that is really hard to add subtitles to your YouTube shorts so bubtitle will add them for you and the subtitles will be very fast paces just like in MrBeast videos.

    I build this software in public on my twitter - https://twitter.com/codenerd39

  15. 1

    https://tennisall.co
    Two days ago I decided to start testing if there is demand for an idea I have had for a long time.

    I’ve put minimal effort into this, so there are probably a lot of points. But the problem I am having is in what should I put more effort? I mean I could redesign the page (just took a carrd template xd), add more product images (which I probably will) but are those things I will directly see into my conversion rate?

    I am using insta to connect to potential clients btw.

  16. 1

    Job Description AI
    Looking forward to your feedback

  17. 1

    All reviews are always valuable. Especially if a person had some failures and so knows the bottlenecks that could be on a way to success.

    We want to change the way our website looks, so I would be happy to hear all your critics and suggestions.

    Here is our new landing that will be our front page in a month https://viewst.com/workspace

    And here is our main website for today: https://viewst.com/en/

    Go ahead! Thanks for such an opportunity!

  18. 1

    Hi Khalid, That is very kind!
    https://segro.app

    Launched ~ a week ago. Still iterating towards a better product.
    I'm looking forward for your advice & feedback!

  19. 1

    Hey!
    Thanks for doing this:)
    It's definitely must needed

    Here's the landing page: http://sqillful.com/

  20. 1

    Thanks for doing this. Please roast this :) https://remoteleaf.com

  21. 1

    Hi Khalid,
    Thanks for that! Even though I highly doubt you have a Windows machine, here we go: https://cinematicstudio.app
    (p.s. I will redo my website this week)

  22. 1

    https://overmind.wiki

    Still a first-draft landing page, I'm sure there's some easy wins to improve on. Tear it to shreds.

  23. 1

    namy.ai

    I'm always more than happy to receive feedback :)

    Please be harsh, but if there's anything you like point that out too!

    Namy is a domain name generator. I made it because I'm always starting projects, but finding a good domain is hard. And most domain generators suck. So I started namy.

  24. 1

    Let's see how much I am getting roasted 😅

    https://www.tooltipr.com

    1. 2

      Hi Kevin,

      I think you are asking too much for too little, $10 a month to let me know about the abbreviation where I can just right click on the word and search on Google which gives me the exact word-to-word description of what your tool gives me.

      Shouldn't you lower the price at least for an individual?

      Hope this helps!

      1. 1

        Hey, I think I need to decrease the prices anyway. Will think about it in the next days somehow. Thanks a lot for the feedback though!

        right click on the word and search on Google

        This is true for most keywords, but especially for company internal synonyms, this might get tricky.

    2. 2

      I'm not OP, but I noticed a problem with the primary mockup image right after the call to action.

      If your cursor touches the image, it interrupts scrolling and freezes your screen and feels broken. It only happens on Safari on Desktop (not on Chrome).

  25. 1

    Just starting out so be as critical as you can! https://waitwhatdoyoudo.com/

    1. 1

      Hi Steve,

      At first glance on your first hero section, the title reeds such

      "Data titles are ambiguous. We fix that."

      I think before fixing "Data titles", I think you should fix this title as it doesn't tell me how your product helps me and get me confused for a minute until I see the button "post a job" and "apply for a job".

      Hope it helps.

      1. 1

        Great call out. It definitely helps!

      2. 1

        Hi Steve, are you planning on keeping the site free?

        1. 1

          The plan is to always be free for job seekers.

          For hiring companies, I am currently charging to post a sponsored job and plan to add additional services in the future when I gain a bit of traction.

          I may add some paid services for seekers as well but, that is waaay down the line.

          Did you have thoughts around that?

    1. 1

      Hi Taylor,

      As your product is mobile app-based, so I won't be able to help you much but as far as the website is concerned maybe a video would help your users understand more in-depth benefits of your app

      Regards.

      1. 1

        Hi Taylor,

        The landing page looks good. Do you have a sales funnel to convert warm leads? Do you plan on providing additional features? I feel like you have a great opportunity to add case studies or do a facebook group to get more traffic.

    1. 1

      This is awesome, I was actually looking for something similar. Do you have integrations with like zapier or other apps ?

      1. 2

        Hey! Thanks so much!

        If you join the list I'll reach out to you and we can talk specifically about what you'd need integration-wise :)

        I want to understand the needs of people who show interest to gather the data and build something truly valuable. No pressure of course!

        Short answer though - there will be integrations either in the MVP or shortly after 🙏🏼

        1. 1

          Awesome thanks man! looking forward to it

          1. 1

            Hey man! Thanks for signing up - I sent you an email at the start of the weekend, did it come through? :)

            1. 1

              Hey Max! Yes I got it, I look forward to getting more updates

    2. 1

      Hi Max, would love to try your product when you launch, but before launch please reduce the text, Regards.

      1. 1

        Thanks, Khalid!

        When you say "reduce the text", do you mean the amount of text on the LP or the text size?

        If you'd love to try, drop your details in the early access sign up & I'll let you know when we've launched! 🚀

    1. 1

      Hi, site looks great. Are you getting a consistent flow of clients ? What are some of their objections ?

    2. 1

      Hi there,

      It's awesome, everything is pixel perfect!

      To the moon 🚀

      Hope this keeps you motivated!

    3. 1

      Looks great! How do are you monetising (if at all)?

  26. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 16 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments