Do you think that IntroHub would work?
Brainwave, "IntroHub"!
Imagine, Peter wants to talk with Mary. But Peter does not know Mary. Peter finds IntroHub. On IntroHub Peter finds Paul who listed Mary as potential Intro. Peter dares to try and requests an Intro to Mary via Paul. When Paul listed Mary he knew that he got 5 business days to accept or decline the Intro request. When Paul listed Mary she knew that Paul may ask about Intro requests he might get in the future. Why should Mary want that? Because Mary can promote herself on IntroHub. Either by herself or via Paul.
Now, when Paul is accepting the Intro request, it means that Paul asked Mary to talk to Peter and that Mary actually agreed to get her contact information to be forwarded upon Peter's Intro request. Declining the Intro request means that either Paul or Mary did not want to accept the Intro request. For whatever reason, this is fine. In either case real people acted upon their promise. Their promise was to act, one way or the other. Maybe Peter gets even a message why neither wants to talk to him. Peter got feedback from real people. That is something. Way better than shooting right into the blue and never knowing if Peter's Email to Mary ended up in some spam filter or just got lost in the ether.
Let's say Paul does not react to the Intro request Peter made on IntroHub at all within 5 business days. Then Paul loses all network benefits of IntroHub for 3 months. Not even Mary could introduce someone to Peter during that time. Uh, that hurts. So why should anyone want to participate on IntroHub? Simply because any wantrepreneur needs connections to people other wantrepreneurs and entrepreneurs already have. The whole point of IntroHub is do be a healthy member of the network. The point is to be a good citizen. The point is the selfish gene.
And now let's connect and destroy the idea pretty please. Worst case we go and build it. <3
So your just trying to force LinkedIn intros to work smoothly?
I am trying to design an incentive system. Happy to be wrong, but people are on LinkedIn to get help. Not to help other people. LinkedIn is about self promotion. IntroHub should be the other way around. Which is why you got the penalty by design.
Mmm... I think you miss something about human behaviour.
Not saying you can't get some users.
But it sounds like the thing that needs mass adoption.
So your telling me to join this thing that would punish me for inaction... And It's not a thing I pre selected that I 100% care about..
You can find your users is the "lion" groups and likers of "never eat alone" and other extreme extravert and network marketers.
But these guys are likely doing the same right now in LinkedIn, they wouldn't deny you an invite or into request... I don't think they would find anything special or new about your offer
The more I think about it the more I see the reverse incentive than to use that...
Maybe you need to consult a behaviour economist on the matter
Wouldn't "preselection" mean to decide for yourself to make use of the platform, or not? What do you think could a behaviour economist contribute here in your opinion? Do you know any by any chance?
Like I can't really point a specific finger, but I feel everything from Dan Ariely (social economist, has the book predictably irrational...) and Jordan Peterson (Psychology + ) says this won't work for the majority of people. + gamification stuff
And as I mentioned I think the group that thinks this is awesome already has the solution. I don't think the fact that they are a subsection of a product matters, unless you actually have some crazy feature to offer which makes it solve a new sub-problem. You should really target that group with your research IMHO. That group and type of people would likely rather be part of a bigger system if I understand the type correctly which also goes against this.
maybe put in the game context, you'r sounding like you'd put the most hardcore game out there, one life and your out, real time = no time off, social - you might lose from both sides, both clicks are dangerous (social, people, relationships) in a way and not clicking is fatal... sigh (the only savour is the above group sees social and relationships way different than then general population, but I'm not sure in the way that you need)
Hey thanks for the book suggestion of "Predictably Irrational". I will check that one out. Found it on Audible.
I think entrepreneurs are a specific categories of people, and are not necessarily comparable with the majority of people.
I like the feedback. Will think about it. Thank you so much.
is there 1 definitive thing one can say that would apply to ALL of them?
I'm not sure I can.. in my eyes it's as diverse group as any.
You are right. Did not want to imply the opposite. What I mean is that entrepreneurs have a certain drive and motivation. My assumption was that due to these circumstances their behaviour and usage of a given tool could be attributed in a given common way.
Bootstrapping is an issue. Open for suggestions. My answer would be a lot of hard work.
No thoughts on monetization yet. I pretty much just had a shower thought and the engagement that produced was quite something so far. I am not sure though what paying someone to accept an Intro request would do to the "quality of service". One could just accept all the requests to get payed and not care. Then you would need to validate if the Intro you got was good and that makes everything a bit more complicated.
I think being hard is kind of the point. When you have better things to do mark yourself away or unavailable or deactivate your account. That is what I would like to see from "good citizens". Nobody expects you to do what you do not think is right. Though when you once said you come with us and then you are acting against the collective interest your own integrity is on the line. I am sure there is a smart way to go about it.
LinkedIn is just one dimension of the flywheel. LinkedIn is more like "here I am, look how good I am". There is no "contract" we agreed on when registering on LinkedIn. You can let your account sit there vacant and "nobody cares". Not saying the idea of IntroHub figured it out or there is a super cool solution I can present here. Just my thoughts on the topic.
I think this is a good idea, but it's all about the execution and not solely the idea! Maybe start by creating a "fake" landing page to illustrate the idea and why people need it, make something simple that takes less than 24 hours. Honestly, this reminds me a lot of twitter, because that's what I mostly use it for, but I guess if you want to make it more visual you could do a graph/mind map of user connections. Where you could see people visualized by their connections/needs, and you could click onto a person, make a "request" and then get their other social media information/DMs. I'm not sure how useful it would be to have the user's information on the account, because then it would be come a glorified twitter/social media site when there are many options currently available. Good luck!
Thank you so much for your thoughtful suggestions. I like the 24h effort landing page. If not applied here I will keep that in my toolbox. <3
I like the idea but maybe losing access for 3 months might be harsh and become a barrier to start. Maybe a score/index on following through on connections. I think there needs to be a better way to facilitate relationship building at scale and remove certain fakeness / awkward dance to ask for warm intros. A similar concept to incentive folks is a referral program at an organization level - https://www.hunterz.io/
Hey cool thing. Thanks for sharing Hunterz. Are you affiliated with them in any way? I am still not sure about the economics here. Is it that a hunter can talk to startups or is it only for startups to talk to hunters?
No I just thought it was a great site. It's basically where a startup can pay for a lead / warm intro and the hunter can get paid for it. The hunter can be anybody so it's close to a referral network program.
I see. So I guess you can refine search terms to find the right role or persona in a given organization. Do you know the ballpark of the investment you have to make? Sorry if I ask questions that the docs somewhere explain well. Happy to read it up myself.
I think the cost per lead is fixed. Maybe around $1500?