hi5
Discuss local news and get invited to events
After listening to IH podcast chat with ClickMinded, I decided to try creating a Meetup group to experiment with "inbound marketing"; my reasoning is that people interested in meeting new people are already on meetup, so people who would sign up for my group might be open to joining experiments to improve socializing.
Meetup group: https://www.meetup.com/Friendship-Matchmaking-Troy-20s-30s/
After getting approved (Meetup's process took five days from submission to approval), 44 people joined the group over three days, and 18% (eight people) RSVP'ed to the first event.
Reading up about other organizer's stats, I anticipate only a third of the people showing up so hopefully tomorrow's event will bring in three attendees. Yeehaw!
I've been lovin' this website building tool (thanks to the indiehackers interview with AJ of carrd). Following yesterday's launch of the web app and in preparation for user acquisition, I published a landing page.
Also really liked the YC startup school website content advice of being able to answer the typical first-time-visitor questions:
- What is it? I'm trying a new one-liner pitch on homepage, "hi5 is a website to discuss local news and get invited to events with people who respond to your comments"
- Is it right for me? I put on homepage that it's for people in their 20's and 30's who live in Troy and looking to meet new people
- Is it legit? This one is tough to answer right now, so not sure yet. Maybe in future I'll put stats around how many users, number of events organized, number of people who exchanged phone numbers?
- Who else is using it? I think same as above
- How much? What's the catch? I made an attempt at answering this on the "how it works" page; event tickets are expected to be $10-$40, and the catch is that you have to exchange comments with people before being invited to hangout
- Where can I get help? I added the chat tool Drift (bottom right corner icon), as well as my email and text info for folks to feel comfortable reaching out to me directly
Read local news and get invited to hangout with people who like reading similar stuff
Functionality deployed in MVP:
- access app via official hi5 url, but only my current city of Troy,NY is live
- code system (playcanvas) communicates with no-code system (bubble)
- gameplay involves earning points by clicking on cat or physically shaking phone (if using mobile browser)
- points are used to participate in local news articles
- choose branching narrative choices for articles (provides data for compatibility model)
- write comments about the articles (admin manually sends letter to other users who might be compatible)
Next steps:
- update landing page
- start social meetup group for Troy / Albany to start acquiring first users
- reach out to local university professors who might be open to letting me run a pilot user group with their students in exchange for me giving a talk on using no-code tech stack
- find journalism experts to provide advice for sourcing interesting local stories
Thoughts on this update:
- Finally finished integrating my game with a no-code wrapper; overall I'd use this tech stack again because Bubble plays nicely with stuff that can be embedded into iframe through postMessage logic.
- I ultimately chose PlayCanvas over Unity because PC publishes into really small file formats (my final game was ~2mb vs unity games that are typically >30mb), so the webgl game runs nicely on web browser. Unfortunately the learning curve was immense because PC has limited tutorials & community engagement relative to other game engines.
- The gameplay is...weak (I'll be the first to admit), so after several failed attempts at creating games I admitted to myself that game development is an art that requires subject matter expertise. TBD on partnering with game developer. Despite the weak gameplay, I think the idea of using "gameplay" might be an interesting alternative to the typical "endless scroll" / facebook/twitter designs commonly used today.
- I also like the implementation of the "interactive story" for news; it chunks an article into bite-size pieces, and provides interesting analytics for which parts of a story appeal to a particular user segment.
Tech stack used:
- PlayCanvas: 3d assets, camera movement, click/touch recognition, javascript
- Bubble: 2d interfaces, database, account management
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How is your plan progressing?
FYI - Tech Valley Center of Gravity resident here.
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Woo there's two of us @adamsiem; wonderful to run into another person around capital region!! Wanna trade stories of launching businesses here over some coffee?
I attempted a few more redesigns that equally tanked, so trying new approach to prototyping with (1) leap-of-faith assumption and (2) simple design abstracting game features.
Close to relaunching https://app.hi5gang.com/troy
(1) assumption: I can convince people to opt-into a blind penpal conversation through mutual topics of interest.
(2) design: paused on the whole game dev stuff; instead built a simple form (text and choices), and took messaging out of the app to instead use sms.Unfortunately no happy news of progress yet :)
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Awesome! You should swing by this meetup that my friend Sam organizes downtown at Tech Valley Center of Gravity... and you should spend more time in this space. It's the closest thing to IH in Troy. https://www.meetup.com/CDIEMNY/events/266076264/ Hope to see you there!
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Woah Gavin is doing some surprising work with organic materials - looking forward to catching ya at the Jan30 event and taking a look at what the CoG is upto! Appreciate the invite @adamsiem
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Functionality so far:
- access game via URL (works fine on both mobile and desktop browsers)
- move camera around
- click on object (cat) to earn points
- sound effect and coin animation for clicking on cat
- shake phone (if using mobile browser) to earn points
- city asset is a 3d map of my city's downtown (Troy, NY)
Next features being planned:
- add variable to count and store points
- add clickable objects to mark points of interest on the city map
- setup postMessage logic to send data over iframe
- draw user interface to show points earned and local news content
- start working on Bubble (setup database, setup game iframe, build interface)
Thoughts for this update:
It took me a while to figure out how to do animations, sound effects, and camera linear interpolation effect, but those small details made a big difference to making the gameplay feel smoother. I also thought the "shake phone for points" idea was fun (inspired by the shake weight); I track the device orientation and when phone is tilted a certain amount, it triggers a point to be awarded.
I was also going to just use a google map screenshot, but found a nice tutorial on exporting 3d maps; I'm starting to like the idea of the city being 3d (used the free version; might upgrade to paid tool in future to make the city look more realistic with colors indicating parks/river/etc).
This week I found myself doing every possible errand on the planet except sitting down at the computer to work on my web app, so of course I decided to procrastinate further by researching procrastination. I found one concept that stood out to me - procrastination due to having a fear of failure.
The way I understood it for myself, I spent the last three months telling so many people about my startup ambitions and convincing myself this was my path to happiness, that I've manufactured a personal fear of showing the world some crappy prototype and having all those people lose faith in me. And I think this fear manifests itself in procrastination - if I never sit down to work on app, then I can never finish it, so I never have to face the reckoning of app showcase.
A few ways I'm trying to overcome this fear of failure:
- Reminding myself about all the things I'm learning (I pretended to update my resume; listing out all the things accomplished to date reminded me that at worst case scenario this experience can help me get a job)
- Giving myself permission to spend 3 months making jibberish (all credit to my mom on this one; she helped me get comfortable with the fact that this is a time-boxed life experiment, and it's ok if it ends with me having built some silly product no one wants because it will make for a funny story to tell at parties)
- Before going to bed, spending a few mins writing down small bullet list of app features to draw/build and starting my day by journaling on each bullet point (got this idea from Marc Andreesen's index card system; helps me overcome morning static friction to at least do something towards app progress).
I'm happy to say that I've started writing code again. Built a feature where you shake the phone to charge your points lol
Decided to pursue hi5 idea full-time, so moved to Troy, New York and found downtown studio apartment for $675 per mo. Put student loans into deferment, so my savings are estimated to last four months. Would like to validate idea in this city, and then move to SanFran to continue pursuit.
What I think I'm building: you go to hi5 website to play a simple game, discuss local news, and get invited to hangout with people who get along with you.
Goals for next four months:
- Build web app penpal game (using Bubble & PlayCanvas tools)
- 100 monthly subscribers (paying $1 monthly)
- 25% weekly-active-usage rate for onboarded players
- 25 event tickets sold per week
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