4 ms·
Ask HN: Review my startup - Banksta
Check it out at http://banksta.com/
In short, Banksta is a simple and fast-paced auction site. It pairs up users anonymously and randomly as they bid against each other for an item. The highest bidder wins the item while the second-highest bidder forfeits their bid. This was, of course, inspired by Professor Bazerman's classic in-class example of human irrationality. And in staying true to that inspiration, we are currently allowing users to bid on 20 dollar bills. But we would like to expand into other items.
We think it would be remarkably insightful to watch real users actually use the site. So please feel free to explore the site. You can click on 'BID FOR FUN' to get a feel for how it works.
Would love your feedback on the idea, execution, and its direction!
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- growt 16y agohttp://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2952 http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2952
- pinksoda 16y ago- Why would the auction loser forfeit their money? - Bidding on a $20 bill is stupid. - I understand you wanted to get it up fast and try it out, but you couldn't design it a little better?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- troygoode 16y agoThis is incredibly silly because nobody will ever win a $20 for less than $20. As an example, let's say you & I are bidding on the $20 bill... - After bidding for a while, I eventually place a bid of $19. At this point if you quit I make $1 and you lose $18. - So now you bid $20. At this point if I quit you would break even and I would lose $19. - So now I bid $21. Why bid $21 on a $20 bill? Because if I win I only lose $1 (rather than $19) and you lose $20. - Now of course you would rather lose $2 than $20, so you're going to up the bid to $22, right? I'd be interested in hearing from somebody more knowledgeable than I in game-theory: When should an agent quit bidding and accept their losses?
- apsurd 16y agoWhen I read the loser will "forfeit" their bid I took that to mean the bid is voided or cancelled, so I don't lose anything. But in your scenario it is much harsher and therefore much much much more stupid of a proposition.
- shaddi 16y agoI'm not an expert in game theory (I just had a half-completed econ degree once upon a time) but your analysis is spot on as far as I can tell. The pareto efficient outcome is for the first agent to bid $1 and for the second agent to quit without bidding. If there is a counter bid, then the first player will have an incentive to bid higher to avoid a loss. The second player would then have to counter bid in order to avoid a loss as well, and so on. At the $20 mark nothing changes: at that point both players are now trying to minimize loss. In any case, any other alternative from the pareto efficient $1 vs $0 bid will cause at least one agent to have a less preferable outcome, and hence that strategy would be chosen by a "logical" player. Maybe more interesting would be to have each agent pick a bid in advance and reveal the bids simultaneously. Of course, the optimal strategy there would be to just bid as close to $20 as possible and hope for winnings to accumulate over time. And in all of this it's not clear how the proprietor of this site will make money out of this deal. Feel free to correct me if someone thinks this is wrong: perhaps there is a reason I never finished that degree. :)
- F50V12 16y ago
- jat850 16y agoFor a lot of questions here concerning the psychology of the $20 bid: http://mfinley.com/experts/bazerman/bazerman.htm http://mfinley.com/experts/bazerman/bazerman.htm
- notahacker 16y agoHow do you prevent gaming the system with a limit of two bidders? With low user numbers at a given point in time, is anonymity enough? With an unlimited number of bidders it's not dissimilar to the pay per bid model used by the likes of MadBid and Swapoo and at least as potentially profitable, at least until the point the government realises it's essentially gambing and decides to regulate accordingly.
- F50V12 16y agoGaming the system was an early concern - one that we believe we solved.
- apsurd 16y agoFor lack of a better, more constructive comment: This is no good. This is clearly the framework for those shady penny auction sites like beezid, quibid and whatever the hell other thousand clones have sprung up. These sites are unethical. I feel like your about page is trying to present banksta as some other more positive purpose when it's really not. The design is lacking and of course the sample bidding thing consisted of me clicking a button... not sure what I was supposed to get out of that... I do not support your site.
- growt 16y agoYou're right, they are unethical and they face some problems at the moment. In germany swoopo is laying of 50% of their staff and dealstreet closed. The main problem is, that their "customers" never come back once they've been ripped of.
- yoseph 16y agoHere's the best tip I could give you: Hire a designer. Personally, I don't see a business here. I even tried to bid for fun and it wasn't fun. I guess you're trying to create a new form of gambling?? The thing for me is that it sounds like such a losing proposition I don't know why I would risk my money. There are plenty of other forms of gambling that, at the very least, have better odds, surely..?
- sergiu 16y agoAre you pairing only 2 people for an auction?
- F50V12 16y agoYes, that's the idea. In the event that another user is not available at the time a user joins an auction, that user is paired up with a bot.
- sergiu 16y agoWhy limit to only 2 people?
- F50V12 16y agoNo reason really - 'cept to study one-on-one auctions.
- ac132 16y agoAre you trying to "study" auctions or make money? You need to be more explicit about the goals of your site and as other people suggested: hire a designer. Another really bizarre aspect of your site is the use of Adsense. If this is supposed to be a real business why attempt to make some small pocket change off Adsense? It's really quite confusing. These things all add up to make you seem untrustworthy. 3 things to do: 1. Clarify your purpose. 2. Clean up the design. 3. Get rid of Adsense. Unless you're a content site that is living off ads it makes no sense to have Adsense. Given that you're running a gambling site, the inclusion of Adsense just makes it seem even more obvious that you have this naive get rich quick ambition.
- flipbrad 16y ago4. Move it out of the jurisdiction of Costa Rica... no?
- Geee 16y ago
- edanm 16y agoThis sounds like the scam auction sites which are actually gambling, as described by Jeff Atwood here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/profitable-until-deemed-illegal.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/profitable-until-de.... Sorry to be harsh if I understood this wrong, but right now it sounds like this is nothing more than a way to get money from people who don't know better. It might work, but I'd never go there myself.
- vaksel 16y agoyour site just screams scam to me...not only the actual business model, but the actual design too
- dotcoma 16y agoThis is really a banksta paradise! (not that real banks are much better, mind you)
- w1ntermute 16y agoThis is highly unethical. Like Jeff Atwood has said, they're gambling: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/05/penny-auctions-theyre-gambling.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/05/penny-auctions-they...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ElbertF 16y agoClickable: http://banksta.com/ http://banksta.com/
- owkaye 16y agoWhat software are you using to deliver the auction status updates which appear directly below the image of the $20 bill?