A startup product search engine I built | Hacker News Reader

A startup product search engine I built

11 pointsuatec6 comments

Several months ago I was looking for cool new startups that might be doing something interesting. I know that there are thousands of startups that are doing cool things, but if you are really looking for a particular type of thing, it's hard to find out if a startup has thought about it and started building it yet.

So I built this thing called UpHunt.

I've collated data from thousands of startups and modern businesses and made it searchable so you can just search for the kind of product that is on your mind and see if someone has made it for you.

Search for whatever product you hope someone has build, or services they might be offering, and see if someone has thought of it and started a business doing just that.

If you are doing something I haven't listed, or know of someone let me know: https://neutrino.typeform.com/to/MJczkK

Right now I only have businesses operating in London, UK, and I do have alot of work to improve it; but I hope to rolling out new data sets in the coming weeks. Let me know if you think your location should be next: https://neutrino.typeform.com/to/zMr14u

You can find it here: https://uphunt.neutrino.io

I'd appreciate feed back on all aspects of the site. Design, content, any ideas you guys might have to make it cooler.

(Small recommendations) Visiting the landing page, for a search-engine site whose entire purpose is to search for startups, the search bar should not be mid-way down the page. It should be right in the header. Also, instead of the word "Go!" on the search, use a magnifying glass to again help identify it as a search input.

On search results, did you specifically opt not to display logos? It may actually be nice not to have them so focus is placed on mission statement / slogan, but I'd be interested if this omission was intentional.

Overall, seems like a site I'd use if it expanded to the U.S. and other countries. If this site is targeting people interested in products (rather than investors / job hunters) then maybe you could add a feature to subscribe by email for specific search terms. For example, what if I want to be alerted once a month if there are new companies posted that match the term "coffee"? This would be a great addition to help encourage users to return to your site.

I've addressed some of the issues you mentioned.

You idea about subscriptions/alerts is a good one. Right now I don't have any kind of work flow except google sheets, so that would be a bit tricky, but I'll bear it in mind for the future.

And yes, the US is obviously on my list of countries to service.

Thanks for the feedback.

I think the search relevance is not that great.

The perceived relevance is worth because I am not seeing any signaling on the home page that I will find anything of value to me. Some things that would help: substantiative content, testimonials, well-written value proposition as seen from my point of view.

I have mixed feelings about the descriptions of the companies. Sometimes I think these are the official blurbs they wrote. Some of them are succinct, other ones are buzzwordy, often I get no idea of where these people are in the process. These blurbs are the only way people are going to understand your search results, providing a unique viewpoint will people a reason to use it.

The URL for your site is not clickable in your post.

Going to the page, the two sites you currently feature look interesting, but only if you click on the small link at the bottom of the description that says "website". If you instead click on the big link with the name of the featured site at the top of the description, that instead takes you to medallia -- which is probably not where you want to be sending visitors right now.

I could see this as a site that is frequently visited, like producthunt -- once you get a bit more content.

Where I can see your site potentially adding value is when you're helping startups gain traffic and ultimately customers. The more you can funnel the right types of people to the startups so they can start gaining traction would be useful. Any content that helps validate that a startup is legit will also be great.

In my opinion you should show all the content by default with filter options. I don't want to search for anything specifically, so there's not much I can do with the site.

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