RepressedEmu

I used to get very discouraged whenever this happened to me (which is often since very few ideas are original). But then i had a thought:

"If you want this offering and have never heard of this other company then THAT is your opportunity"

It means that at least one customer(yourself) has not been reached by your competition so there are probably many others in the same position as you. You just have to reach those uninformed potential customers first or more effectively than your competition.

I hope that thought helps!

This is an interesting service and I love your website design! I'd be interested to know how many paying customers you have? I don't know many people who need 50+ reminders.

This bot i'm building is less of a "recommendation engine" and more of a "customized web alert engine" where the customization interface is the conversation with the bot. Recommendation engines are a non-trivial problem that companies like Amazon and Netflix spend lots of money on and still don't get right for a lot of people(I have the same issues with both services-- Grace and Frankie Season 3 is not something i'm interested in Netflix, geez). People like us can make google alerts or use Feedly or setup searches for custom hashtags or a million other ways there are to create a personalized information stream. But many non-technical people have to settle for scanning a Facebook feed full of junk, fake news, and ads trying to find the best nuggets of what they actually are tracking. The bot aims to solve that problem and give these people some of their time back.

I'd love to hear any more thoughts on it.

whispe.rs

Right now I am just working on getting it to understand "topics" such as Technology, Science, Fun Facts, Business, Politics etc. and then use those topics to create a personalized channel that pushes you updates of the "best/hottest" stuff. Right now the topics are going to map to subreddits and news sites since the category data is there. Eventually I hope to add tracking for companies(or stocks), actors/directors, and bands/artists to add to the stream.

So you could just tell it "Hey can you keep and eye on Taylor Swift for me?" and it will know thats a musical artist and give you album updates or related news. Or "Track Hugh Jackman" and it will let you know when he is in talks for a new movie or whatever.

The next step after that would be getting feedback from the user about the different articles it pushes to them and then building some kind of intelligence into that data. Or just being able to say "Hey I'd like more tech and less science, please" and it would adjust the ratio accordingly.

Yes! I'm just starting with this idea using Rails and Wit.ai but I think it could have some legs and would love to collaborate with you.

email me at seanmgrahamnj at yahoo

I actually was just thinking about this problem the other day in the context of active vs passive systems and customization. I used to use Reddit a lot and found it to be a powerful tool for finding things related to my interests but nowadays(post college) I'm finding it hard to justify the time waste of actively scrolling through for new things. I have started building a chatbot that will learn your interests and then actively bring you the best things it can find. Then you can tell it "Good job" or "I'm not interested in that" and it would learn over time what news sources our prefer, what topics you like, or even the average length of an article you prefer. I also think Reddit is powerful but can be difficult to set up for non-internet-nerds. Turning the initial setup of a custom "channel" into an active conversation might lower the barrier and help get more people access to the content they're craving.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

Without any authority or credentials in this space you are going to face a very rough time with sales. The kind of startup willing to hire a random "general startup consultant" without a proven track record is also the kind that will fail and leave you with an even worse reputation.

You should focus on a single area or niche that you can do very well and has direct monetary value to a startup. What that area or set of skills turns out to be is for you to decide. It is better to be loved by a handful of people than try to be "maybe helpful" to every startup.

Personally I have been getting into the business of Pre-Launches for startups and programmers who are still working on finishing their MVP's. These programmers don't want to spend dozens or hundreds of hours learning about cheaply finding their customers online, building landing pages that convert, or growing their email list of future customers. They just want to be able to launch their product and acquire their first batch of users. Taking this headache away from them gives them the validation and encouragement they need to finish their MVPs and the time they saved by not building and marketing their pre-launch landing page can be used to instead finish their core functionality.

Thats just my 2 cents.

I've been through this cycle too many times to count. Eventually it sunk in for me that having a great product/website doesn't mean much for its success rate. I've realized finding cheap ways to promote the product to its target audience is the real make-it-or-break-it part of the equation, unfortunately, and has little to do with conventional dev skills.

If you've started on the MVP then you definitely know enough to Pre-Launch and start building momentum behind your business. The problem is doing all the research and execution for a successful Pre-Launch can be a big time-suck(dozens of hours) that takes away time that can be better spent from working on your critical code.

Nugget > Protolaunch > LogoJoy > Namecheap API > Sendgrid powered with emails scraped from AngelList.

Throw in a startup buzzword lorem ipsum generator and this sounds like a winner. Instead of domain squatting it will be like startup squatting.

I'm working on a service called Protolaunch that does exactly that. You get help finding your ideal customers, a custom landing page optimized for conversions, and a digital marketing strategy to promote your brand and grow your email list of future customers. Getting market feedback and validation has always been the single best motivation to finish an MVP or business project for me personally and Protolaunch aims to make it a one step "pre-launch" process.

I'd love to get your thoughts and feedback!

I built something very very similar at Whispe.rs except it took me a bit longer than 2 hours :P

I built it first using Twilio but didn't think the ad revenue would pay for the messages so I switched it to using SMS-email gateways.

Great job! What did you use for the captcha?

I spent a few months working on a biz lead generator for web dev freelancers which still hasn't been released. Then I spent a couple months on a news summarizer called Kiwi which never got finished enough to be useful to anyone.

Eventually I got sick of spending weeks and months on things that were too big and serious to actually release and spent one week to get www.whispe.rs out into the public eye. It started as a paid Twilio wrapper for anonymous texting but has now morphed into a free web tool for anonymously texting goofy messages to friends and family for free.(For anyone who has ever wanted to anonymously text "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of Elderberries!" to an unwitting friend) I don't think it will ever make money or anything but it was fun building it, getting harsh feedback, and then rebuilding it. It has also already made a few people smile so I consider it a worthwhile use of my time :)

At some point I will start finishing bigger and bigger projects but for right now I'm happy with Whispe.rs.

Haha I actually stole the idea from dollarfuckyou.com but have yet to reach his level of success. I hadn't heard of spoiled.io but from their FAQ I can tell we have the same sense of humor. I'm actually planning to rebuild the site with dropdown options rather than "send anything" since I think its too much work for most people.

I'm using Stripe.js for the actual payment which uses SSL and sends the payment info directly to Stripe without ever touching my servers.

There is already bitcoin integration. Click on the blue "Send Message" and click on the bitcoin tab.

There should be a bitcoin tab on the stripe payment form. Is it not there?

Thanks! The hardest part right now is finding the right audience to put it in front of.

I definitely will! Another benefit of actually finishing a project is being able to share with others the challenges/successes/unexpected that happen during.

Well I think Whisper is more of a social sharing site while this tool is about sending anonymous messages to a specific target number. As for the stack it is Rails(which was probably overkill but I have yet to do much with Sinatra), Twilio, with Stripe integration. I send the messages via Twilio and then use their API to redact the logs so I can't see what people are messaging using the service.

Hey guys! I built this little tool after seeing all of your wonderful side projects in a recent Ask HN post. I decided it was time I stopped working on multiple large projects that I never wind up finishing and just build something small. So here is the result of your inspiration and a few nights of work :)

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

My friend and I are currently working on an app called Krux that aims to resolve this problem. We found that in most news stories fifty percent or more of it can be fluff/intro/unimportant so we built a summary algorithm to cut the articles down. The app harvests the news from a growing list of RSS feeds and then summarizes them to 4 sentences for quick consumption. We plan on launching with Tech, Business, Politics, and Culture sections so you can follow only what you're most interested in keeping up with. We think it will be a good way to stay on top of fast moving industries and keep informed of the top events.