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Do you need this? #ask-ih

A platform for free, in-depth and truthful feedback about your startup/side project.

Key features:

  1. Anonymity. In communities, it's hard for various reasons (friendships, your name, and face, the fact that you are trying to build relationships/an audience for your product) being brutally honest but sometimes is needed.

I believe that anonymity can solve this problem with a caveat: all comments are manually moderated before submission. Honesty and obnoxious behavior are two different things.

  1. Depth. All comments need to have at least 1000 characters (that's the number I was thinking about, obviously it can be changed) of thoughtful feedback to be approved. If you want others to take the time and give you valuable feedback, you need to do the same.

  2. Giving before taking. Do you want your project to be reviewed? Cool, you need to have three approved feedbacks first (again three is a number that can be changed, I feel that 3 to 1 is a good ratio). I don't know about you but I find annoying when people register to a community, ask for help/advice, disappear. My goal isn't to be a community but to make it possible for everybody to receive a good amount of feedback for their project/startup, without spending crazy amounts of money.

Business model (for the future, if the project is successful): active users have free feedbacks (one every month?), others have to pay a fee.

I thought about starting this platform because I need something like this. I asked a few friends and some of them (7) are willing to actively participate but I want to hear from you first.

TL;DR A platform for feedback. Give 3 feedbacks and get 10+ feedbacks for your startup/side project. Feedbacks are anonymous, in-depth (manually reviewed, at least 1000 characters):

Do you need something like this?

#ask-ih

  1. 2

    It's certainly something that I think would be useful to the IH community. You'd need about 3x the number of users than the number of products listed I think.

    I do like the idea that you're not allowed to post a product until you've given feedback on a select number of other projects.

    Maybe your revenue model could come from charging businesses that don't want to review products, they just want their products listed.

    1. 1

      thank you for your comment.

      I find very annoying people that register on a community, ask for help, disappear and return only when they need something more. So if you want to disappear, cool, at least you gave help to others. That was my thought process.

      Building a business in this particular case is not the main goal but I was thinking at something like that for an eventual revenue model :D

  2. 2

    I really like this idea and I'd use it. I think 1k characters is too many. If you're busy it would get left and you'd never get round to it, the 1k limit would put me off a little. People may also ramble just to fill the space.

    Good feedback can be given in much less (a min of 300-500 maybe), plus it will reduce your workload to moderate too.

    Get in touch if you make it.

    1. 1

      Thank you for your comment

      I was looking for a number high enough to both put-off people who just wanted to get without giving anything and give valuable insights. You are right, I should reduce this number, it's hard to find a single comment on various communities that reach 1000 characters. 500-600 sounds more reasonable.

      1. 1

        No worries. I understand you wanting to put off those that want to get without giving.

        Yeah 500 would be better. I guess you can always adjust once you have a few months baseline to compare with. Over time you'll be able to find your "sweet spot" by tweaking the limit and seeing the increase/decrease of submissions.

  3. 2

    Look at indiehackers or hackernews, plenty of people give their advice for free... and some of it is even good: sure there're a lot of bad seeds and useless comments but that's why there's an upvote system (which doesn't work btw hahaha)

    You as the maker will need to read 1000 character for everyone who submits their feedback and rank it yourself (or with friends?). Sounds like a lot of work for something like this!

    1. 1

      I'm currently writing from indiehackers, so I took a look for sure. In the section #landing-page-feedback you will see plenty of posts with 0 comments or with a couple of vague feedback. I like indiehackers but this clearly isn't what I would like to accomplish. On hackernews it is even harder to get attention. If you know one website where I can get 10+ in-depth feedback I would love to use it.

      Regarding the time needed, I would put a cap on the daily submission and there are lots of AI that can help me easily manage the problem. Plus 1000 characters are something like 180 words, less than one minute per each review.

      I suppose that if it was so easy to find valuable feedback, you wouldn't see services charging thousands of dollars for 10-50 feedbacks. https://betatesting.com/pricing

      1. 2

        I been on IH and its sad to see that the community is way more "dead" than 6 months ago. Not sure what is killing it..a lot of posters but very little engagement.

        Finding feedback IS easy.
        Finding good feedback IS HARD.
        That's why you have to PAY!
        If you launch your product hit me up, I'd like to see what people say/write about stuff!

        1. 1

          I know it's hard to get good feedback and that's the reason why I want to push anonymity and minimum requirements. Ideally, these requirements should improve with time and the growth of a user base.

          I want to check out if there is interest before launching. In case I do, I will hit you up.

          Thanks for your feedback anyways :D

  4. 2

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      thank you for your comment.

      My goal isn't to build a company but I can something like this becoming a low six figures business. I never heard about the toothbrush test but I don't get why people should've to use a product multiple times per day to be willing to pay for it.

      Think about betalist, they charge $ 129 to be featured in four days and $299 to choose the day. They are a high six figures business. There are lots of websites that use this model (betapage, launchinext and so on). They offer traffic, I would offer feedback.

      I don't know if you saw the link I posted but betatesting.com pricing starts at $ 2500 for 10 targeted feedback. Clearly in their case and in my case too the target customer is not the average indiehacker but the company that can easily afford to spend 3-4 figures to save time and avoid mistakes. The indiehacker leaves his feedback so that he can get for free a product that otherwise would be too expensive.

      Obviously is something possible only if you have a good community and, as you said, can target feedbackers from their industry.

      Thanks again for your comment :D

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