106 karma · joined October 4, 2011
1) college bookstores. It's a distribution issue. Students are used to walking into the bookstore to buy something. The bookstore is used to selling them something. Digital books hurt that experience so there's an inherent disadvantage to bookstores promoting digital. This is as big a factor as any.
2) price. Publishers think they've priced digital books fairly, because they use the full retail value as their point of reference. Instead of paying $200 for a full retail copy, students will surely pay $100 for a digital rental, right? They fail to understand that digital books are going to be acquired online, meaning there is a greater chance students purchasing these books will be comparing prices. College bookstores which offer digital as an option even compare that price to their other (often more affordable) options, like buying it used. That $100 digital rental is frequently available for less than $60 on Amazon or sites like it.
It's not a feature problem, it's distribution and really bad pricing.
Until publishers pay attention to these things, digital will never catch on (regardless of how much they innovate technology).
1) don't assume that because you're bootstrapping, you "have to charge something for the app". View free/paid as two different marketing channels (that's really all that they are). With free apps - they are ad, in-app purchase and/or lead supported - while paid apps support themselves. There is no right or wrong way to monetize, but by having one of each, you're eligible in both top app chart categories, which helps.
2) you may have benefited from this (or maybe you didn't) - but one thing that surprised me was the market for "apps gone free". We released our app as a free app at first, but once the downloads started to fall off, we figured "what the hell, let's make it paid" after which we rose even higher in the rankings on the paid side than we ever achieved on the free side. Then when paid installs started to fall off, we switched the app back to free, which had a surprising result: it got picked up by all of these "apps gone free" feeds (tons of blogs subscribe to app pricing updates - so it was suddenly eaten up by this niche market of users who download all of the apps that recently became free). Granted - these weren't engaged users, but it padded download stats for a few days. When that happened we experienced our best two free install days ever before normalizing again.
Interesting to see your stats, thanks for sharing.
Note that their stats about how rentals save students $1160 a year are sort of BS. On books where renting saves you a lot of money over the full retail price (which no one ever pays anyway), you can usually just buy the book outright for the same amount on Amazon (and then sell it back when youre done for a ridiculously lower total cost of ownership).
-The biggest issue is that custom editions segment the global secondary market for a given textbook into slivers of useless fragments. Instead of Campbell Biology, Regular Edition being bought and sold between Stanford students and students at every other college in the country (this significant supply drives the price down), Campbell Biology, Stanford Custom Edition is only ever going to be bought/sold by Stanford students. This hurts students in multiple ways: 1) the bookstore is the only place they can BUY the book from. Period. 2) the bookstore is the only place they can SELL the book too. Custom editions are a perfect storm for bookstores/publishers.
-Custom editions are cheaper than what the regular edition costs in terms of what the bookstore would charge for each, but if you compare prices on the regular edition online, there are usually significantly cheaper prices out there than what the custom is being sold for at the bookstore.
-In the rare case where a custom edition is being used, but a regular edition is acceptable - the bookstore presenting both options and telling you to pick one will almost never result in you considering that the regular edition would be cheaper online. By adding this extra noise, they artificially make custom books look more affordable.
I agree - there are tons of professors that are on the right side of this fight. Textbooks SHOULD be free. And the fact that custom editions are even adopted is proof that professors care about students. They're just a terribly poor solution which reinforces the problem instead of solving it.
Give the publishers credit - custom editions are a genius business move.
There are over 16,000 classes across the country that can save >$100 on their books. Haven't run the numbers yet but the use of custom materials/access codes has EXPLODED, which prevents savings.
We are diff than other comparison engines bc of that course search component. Most students don't realize how easy it is to save (it's surprisingly daunting for students to do this the first time), we facilitate that process.
I am from SlugBooks- a web app that compares prices between the college bookstore and online options for ~800 universities in US and Canada. This topic hits close to home. We've been watching bookstores and publishers do this for years, and it's only getting worse. When professors assign customized or packaged books, it becomes nearly impossible to save money through sites like Amazon.
The most surprising thing is how many professors eat up the bullshit that custom editions actually help. They're supposed to be champions of critical thinking. Profs WANT to save students money - that's why they opt for custom editions (since publishers tell them it will save their students money). It's just sad.
They do a pretty nice job of explaining why and what they did - might be a nice framework if you're planning on justifying your decisions.
I personally find these designs more "fun to look at" than anything - it's always cool to see what and how someone who isn't a part of the day to day sees a product as. To me, these designs are just a super detailed pieces of user feedback. Keep going at it!
Probably the best use of the Netflix API I've seen - accounts for the search areas where Netflix lacks, without losing discoverability.
Your project is obviously much closer to the netflix design than IW is, but check it out, might give you some ideas!
Honestly - it seems like there's not really a premium for non-eng roles, so that might be why the threads haven't really arrived (I haven't noticed them either). Not to say any given startup can't use a rockstar marketer or biz dev - they just probably don't expect to get them from HN :) It seems that by most standards, hackers are engineers. I don't agree with that (and not saying anyone here necessarily does either) - but that might be another reason for it.
Most startups have non-eng needs but don't know they need them until after they're hurting pretty bad. I've had the most success applying to companies (instead of jobs) - tell them what you're good at and why you like their product - if they think there's a fit, they'll get back to you. By applying to companies this way, you also manage to avoid a lot of the potential competition you'd have for the job once a formal job req/post has been generated (no one else even knows the job exists, because you just sent in your stuff and asked them to respond if they think there's a fit).
Do keep in mind - the more hype the startup has gotten, the more generic cover letters/resumes they get - so find a way to stand out, and understand it's a numbers game! Lucky for you, there's tons of startups that need great people in SV, so if you play the game enough, you'll get a job with an awesome company.
Good luck!
I'm a huge fan of the hover on the search results page - very well executed. I think the browse by category on your homepage could be more clearly defined - I see what you did but the actual apps draw way more attention than the category titles, so there's a bit of a disconnect there (you feel like you're just browsing a list of featured apps, without much order to them, despite the fact that they're organized by category).
Excited to see the next version..
I don't understand the "buy a low cost usb writing pad". Shouldn't be necessary. But other than that, anything in the tutor providing space sounds useful - there's a need there, and tons of companies trying to address it (study aid sites like notehall/cramster, course management platforms like piazza) that's more than enough validation to keep moving on it.
Carefully examine the real reason why you're leaving the comfy confines of G - that should push you closer to one or the other. Go with your gut.
"Here is an exmaple from a new startup whose website I joined yesterday:"
Let's look at some positives of what the clone did: 1) It generated buzz for both sites. And forced people to consider this idea as a legitimate product, instead of a weekend hack. 2) It validated the market. More people doing similar things suggests there's a valid space there. 3) Provided that both sites continue to operate and grow, they will continue to push eachother to do better.
I don't think the fact that the core product was copied is discouraging at all. I think it helps. I think the real problem you have is the manner in which it was copied. You nailed it with this line: "Real creative comes from a personal connection to a project or idea." <-- this is true. If the idea started with you, and you have the passion to continue executing on it, you'll stay the long haul and it will become a great product, it's your baby. Why does it matter what else is in the market? Shipping a product is half the battle - especially when you're dealing with space where there's no proprietary technology powering the product. Where real differentiation occurs is marketing execution, and that's where innovation is forced to occur.
Social is a proven channel and there's a lot to lose when you keep your business off of their platform.
I doubt that's the top corporate motto (I think that would be "making the world more open"), but it's been associated with them quite a bit and it rings true (in both good and bad ways).
Next up - Grubhub!