Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

1. And there was a "buy my kid a laptop and send her to a summer camp" Kickstarter that made all sorts of headlines and, despite being blatantly against the TOS, they kept up. I'm sure the percentage of fees they kept had nothing to do with that decision (or the possibility of PR). Regardless, their TOS pretty clearly says "no business or social websites".

2. How many bike shops do you think you can cover in your tour? How many orders of magnitude more effective do you think your site would be if that money was instead invested in other promotional means, rather than visiting a dozen bike shops in a dozen cities, for example?

3. If police are so over-worked in a jurisdiction that that's how you have to contact them to file a report (versus the hundreds or thousands of municipalities that allow online report filing), what makes anyone think that giving them the ability to view a stolen bike report on your website is going to be more effective? I'm also relatively certain that a third party who encounters an /allegedly/ stolen bike has no real option to "repossess it".

4. You're right, I don't have to like it. And maybe if you get to $200,000 of funding, /that/ stretch goal can be "our team of eight will visit one bike store in every one of the 289 US cities with a population of over 100,000". It's quite close to the least effective possibly imaginable method of promoting such a service. You could take out full page ads in multiple bike magazines, sponsor events, and the like. But that might mean your team doesn't get to go on a road trip from San Francisco to New England.

5. If registration is $6.99 for me to do it myself, or go to a bike shop and do it for free (something I probably do regularly as a bicyclist), where is any incentive to do so? Or, as you mention POS integration, perhaps it's only free if you do it when you buy a bike. Or "if it's already stolen" (better hope you already wrote down the serial), somewhat edge cases.

1. Ok.

2. Let's say 15 shops in the 10 cities.

3. The third party will undoubtedly need to call the police. But what are you allowed to do until they arrive? And what will they do when they arrive?

4. Y'see, we aren't aiming to go to 289 cities. We're aiming to raise publicity and interact with bike shops in the areas of the country that a lot of bikers live. Individually approaching all the shops in the country isn't feasible and would be stupid. But joe average shop owner in nebraska will be much more likely to sign his shop up for the Bike Index if he knows a shop in NYC that he follows on twitter has.

5. We aren't looking for serious revenue through people paying for registration. Bike shops benefit when you visit them - so they're happy to get you in there. And we're giving iframe forms to bike advocacy organizations (like EBBC) so you can register on their site (for free). We also go to events and register bikes for free. But we think the service is valuable, and people are much happier getting a registration for free that would've cost 6.99 (which to us still seems like a pretty good deal - the national bike registry charges $10 and throws away your registration after 10 years).

> But joe average shop owner in nebraska will be much more likely to sign his shop up for the Bike Index if he knows a shop in NYC that he follows on twitter has.

That is so wrong on so many levels but hugely comical!

'joe average shop owner in nebraska' is condescending, patronising or something not exactly respectful.

'joe average shop owner in nebraska' is actually working too hard for a living to be on Twitter. He works a long week and that is a six day week with a late night opening. Every morning is early for him. He stands on hard concrete floors when he is not rushed off his feet. He certainly is not following even his own arse on Twitter.

'joe average shop owner in nebraska' would not be following a trendy NYC bikeshop on Twitter, hanging on their every tweet.

Even if he was then do you think that the trendy NYC bike shop would mention Bike Index on Twitter and 'joe average shop owner in nebraska' would notice that tweet and go about some religious conversion to the Bike Index cult?

Having worked in a shop in ruralish Indiana I can tell you that winters are long, no one comes in, and the internet is a magical wonderland.

We made pixel art, checked every webcomic to see if anything new was published and raced bicycles around inside the shop. And we read a bunch of bike blogs, all the time, every day. We sure as hell would have been on twitter if it existed, if only to mock other people.

Also, only a fool stands on concrete all day. You put down a mat or at least some cardboard.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com