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11 Comments

Your thoughts on this idea?

#idea-validation Startup Talks - a curated list of most actionable startup talks complete with summaries, timestamps, community, related talks and a rating system.

I don't know if this is a problem for anyone, but I personally found this to be inconvenient: There are a ton of great talks out there and seemingly no way to pull great information from them other than watching hours and hours of video. This is okay, if you have time, but if you have a full time gig and family, I find it difficult to go out there and search topics and watch videos.

Youtube is a great place to start, however, often there are no time stamps in the video and you have no idea when someone is talking about a topic you care about. No idea to know what stage of the startup they are in, what their goals are or anything for that matter, other than watching the full video or skipping around.

What if there was a community that rated talks, but also provided 1 page notes you could download and skim if you are short on time. Time stamps to get you to topics you care about. Tags and easy navigation to find topics of interest.

Target audience: would-be founders / co-founders, people who are already running a startup but need to get to the next phase.

Not sure how to monetize yet. 1) Could work a relationship with conferences so you can allow people to book tickets to go see talks in person. 2) just grow a community and see where it goes - could get expensive up front though! 3) affiliate deals with speakers who sell products / services / books etc. 4) plain old boring ads - least preferred.

Please pardon the mess that is the wireframe below .. it's a mix of Youtube and Ted (just for reference, not exact layout or anything).

  1. 1

    I like the idea and would use it! Having a summary of talks and timestamps of topics would be extremely helpful. The main reason I don't listen to many talks is time.

  2. 1

    For me, the key is availability of transcripts.

    That's because I can listen at 2x speed if I'm really paying attention, but read at more like 6x or 7x. It's also possible to scan for certain information or skip the parts that are already familiar when dealing with text.

    1. 1

      Would you find condensed notes (takeaways) useful or is transcript just enough?

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        I don't want someone else's takeaways. They're generally not what mine would be.

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          Good point. I guess I called them takeaways but what they are is just a summary of all the talking points for anyone who doesn't have the time nor cares to watch the video. I currently do this with videos I watch (take notes) and have a bunch of them pinned in front of me for reference. Not that it's helped so far, but I look at them often to ground me back to where I need to be - so as not to waste time on crappy ideas where there is no demand, kinda like this product perhaps? ;)

  3. 1

    I loved it when users in the comment section post this kind of thing. Like at what time in the video you can find specific topics/lessons that the speaker talk about and you just jump right there. It's a workaround that proves validation. So I believe your idea is solving this problem directly and even providing more solutions.

    I would use it for sure if I need to watch an hour talk on youtube.

  4. 1

    Interesting idea. I'm curious why you think this would be expensive to run? Unless you are thinking of hosting videos yourself.

    1. 1

      Well, this is not a typical launch it and charge for it type of business. It would require adoption by a wide number of people, forming a community worth sticking around for and making partnerships with either VCs, entrepreneurs, conferences or what have you to monetize or provide additional value. This is lot a simple thing to do and would require time investment without immediate return. Not to mention opportunity cost. So, no direct cost, but a lot of indirect cost.

      If anyone wants to develop this, let's talk (email in profile).

  5. 1

    Interesting. I often explore videos about startup!

    1. 1

      How do you currently find videos, what kind of information are you looking for and what's most important to you?

      1. 1

        Search on Youtube and subscribe to some channels there. I want to know much more about the speaker.

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