Platform to find collabs
Hey all,
I'm developing an idea I had for a long time (since I was in college, to be honest) and would love to know your thoughts.
The basic idea is a platform where creative people (artists, musicians, developers, designers, etc, etc, etc) can post their projects/ideas to find collaborators to work together. As a full-time software developer, part-time musician and a generalist that likes to know more about different fields I always see people trying to find collabs (this is the word they used to refer) to find partners for a music collaboration (rapper looking for a producer, game developer looking for a visual artist to collaborate on a game jam, band looking for a specific instrument musician, indie hacker seeking a co-founder, etc, etc). So I feel there's a real niche here. People like to make stuff but finding a partner is not easy. The idea for collab-o-mate is just that: "the simplest way to find a partner to collaborate on anything. Arts, games, music, apps, whatever. Let's make it better, together."
What do you think?
Well that sounds great. I'd see this happening.
There are many people with connected interests, either hobbies or business related that don't have a good enough platform to do that yet. The 'Find a partner' section on here is one of the good examples, but it's pretty limited.
If you'd need someone to design it ping me. I'd be willing to help you push this to an MVP.
Hi @SteLofo! Thanks for the feedback! Yes, the 'Find a partner' was really an inspiration. But as you said, it's pretty limited and usually focused only on business projects/ideas (for obvious reasons). My idea is to expand that to other creative fields (visual artists, musicians, video makers, writers, etc, etc). I have some simple design ready right now (bought a template and did some customization, so really not the best design of the world). I will definitely ping you if I see the project is gaining some traction. Thank you very much for your availability!
Hello
There are some social networks for creative people out there who provide opportunities for collaboration.
Take a look at The-dots. Others are in the same space too more for visual artists. Behance, Ello
Cheers
Preeti
Hi @pshukla81, thanks for the comment. That's interesting. I didn't know about The-dots (Behance and Ello I know). Thanks for pointing me out to those. But as you said, they all seem to be social networks, which makes me think if my idea would be more simple than that. Just a place where people can post project ideas and maybe collaborate right away. No portfolio, friends network, messages, etc, for now. I envision something more like a craigslist (actually, while writing this reply I've just found https://frederick.craigslist.org/d/artists/search/ats and https://frederick.craigslist.org/d/creative-services/search/crs). Not sure if that makes sense. I totally appreciate your comment and thanks again!
Based on your response looks like craigslist kind of provides that functionality?
You can probably provide a better interface for collaboration but If you plan to monetize, you need to give it a deeper thought. The very reason people create networks is for continuous user engagement, one-off features can make engagements seasonal.
People join networks for connections, content, and opportunities for collaboration are lateral advantages of networks.
Just my thoughts!
Cheers
Preeti
Thay makes total sense. At some point, I think I will need to set up some kind of social network features (I'm thinking of comments and favorite projects right now) to create some kind of engagement. Still not sure about monetization though. I really want to create something nice to put on the web. My server costs are still low (5 dollars/month) but I believe this will increase if the project somehow scales, so... yeah, I will need money to pay the bills.
But thanks for the thoughts! You definitely put some good points here.
No worries Bucica!
I see that you are pursuing your idea for the right reasons.
In the future, if you want to explore another idea to work on, I am working on an idea that's vetted by Venture Advisors. I am looking for react/redux/node technical founding team members. You can ping me if you are interested!
Good luck!
Might be hard to get going unless it's for some specific field? Or at least starting with only musicians, or only gamedev collabs etc.
Hi @bemmu, thanks for the feedback! Yes, I think this is really a valid point. I understand that from a growth perspective the idea to have a specific niche would be much better. So I can focus on doing marketing for that specific field.
But on the other side, I believe creative people are a niche in itself. I mean, there are differences between musicians and game devs, writers and visual artists. But there are similarities too. For example, a designer can either work on a game dev project or a book aesthetic gig. A musician may find interesting to work on a game but also can be interested in a sound design project (movie, doc, etc).
My rationale behind this project is to be more like a place where folks can go to find other interesting creative people and maybe interact with them by doing things together.
But having said that, I will definitely see how things go. To be honest, right now I have most of the site ready to launch so I don't want to disrupt things right now (did that before in the past and ended up losing enthusiasm for the project ). But I really appreciate your feedback and will definitely keep an eye on that point.
Ahh, that makes sense. An artist might want to collaborate with a game developer, but they could also want to collab on other kinds of things.