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Emperor Akbar, on a whim, once asked his minister Birbal to find him ten fools. You can get the gist here (Source: http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202 http://folkl

Emperor Akbar, on a whim, once asked his minister Birbal to find him ten fools. You can get the gist here (Source: http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202 http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202). Birbal stumbled across the third fool while the latter was looking for something at night. The guy was looking under a streetlamp and couldn't seem to find whatever he was looking for. Birbal asked him what he was looking for so frantically. He explained that he lost his wedding ring in a dark alley a short ways away. Birbal is confused and asks him why he wasn’t looking in the alley, and in the street instead. Get this. The guy replies that he’s looking under the streetlamp because there’s more light there. Moral of the story: dont ask on HN, go ask the folks who dropped off. Here's a suggestion on how you could do it. Take a look at Tumblr or Intercom and see how they collect an email first and then ask for a password and eventually more information. Collect an email address just before anyone clicks get started. So that you have a way to reach them in case they dropped off and helps you figure out at what point folks are dropping of (My thesis: Your shady credit card collection process is the culprit. Typeform doesn't seem to fit your story of helping folks be more professional. If you are a professional trying to help freelancers be more professional, you should be using something more professional) Sorry, if you felt, I called you a fool. Perhaps reading the story and learning who the 10th fool is would make you feel better. :-)

cod3boy 9y ago
Thanks for the story, in fact, looking back, I feel quite foolish to ask too much information in one go :D The gist of the story is very interesting, but in our current scenario I don' really have a way to reach the folks who dropped off, that's why I came to HN. I'll be exploring the other points you noted, and work on them.
- IanCal 9y ago
  The forty people who signed up surely put in some contact information?
  - albaqawi 9y ago
    how many people signed up so far? and is this Elite 100 program still valid? even with the new subscription structure?
    - cod3boy 9y ago
      We've pulled the program at the moment.
      - albaqawi 9y ago
        First of all, asking for help everywhere is awesome, as humility is the key to take the right steps to fix a problem. If you cannot talk to those who did not sign up or like the offers, then you need to take to people who have extreme pains in using sites like freelance.com or upworks.com these sites have crazy traffic but until today they have not resolved key issues for freeelancers or seekers of freelance talents.I must add, they are SUPER hubs for Freelancers as they are the status quo but key values are missing. I saw your site and I love your approach but you must refine the big uppercut punches that will make any free lancer on your site standout and choose your platform. I suffered a big deal of problems when sourcing freelancers from freelance.com, upworks.com and many more. I found many others suffer the same thing. I love to help you to share my stories and help you refine where is the real true value lies for a customer that wants top talent. If you like to plan a short power call soon let me know. I will drop my email in your Freshchat with attention to cod3boy!
        cod3boy 9y ago
        Thanks, got it! will get back to you soon.
        mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
        If you don't mind me asku, what sort of problems were you having with sourcing from freelance superhubs?
        9y ago
- lawpoop 9y ago
  > looking back, I feel quite foolish to ask too much information in one go To the contrary -- you are wise to learn from your mistakes : )
- arjunvpaul 9y ago
  the intent was not to make you feel foolish. Maybe its a good thing you feel embarrassed. It probably means that you haven't released late. Listen to Episode 4 of Reid Hoffman's Podcast Masters of Scale. "So don’t fear imperfections; they won’t make or break your company". Forge Ahead!
- muzani 9y ago
  That might be your problem too. The absolute next thing I build, after features, is a feedback pipeline. I do this before even integrating the payment gateway. Often it's in the form of some support forum or in app public chatroom. Take a close look at any comments wherever you advertise. I'd even recommend against FB/Google advertising at first because it's difficult to get feedback. Analytics might help too and you can see where people are dropping off. But they're quite inefficient. Sometimes you just have email people who signed up in person to ask them. People are usually very open to giving brief feedback; just don't drag them into some focus group or 10 minute talk. Being able to iterate based on feedback is usually the make or break point of an early stage entrepreneur.
  - cod3boy 9y ago
    Thanks, I think I have tons of feedback from HN now, honestly, I did not expect this much! :) I am currently sorting out each feedback and converting to actionable items, will probably come with a blog post or something soon about the actions :)
danieltillett 9y ago
I love this story because it is a new angle from the usual drunk looking for his car keys under the street lamp.
- beautifulfreak 9y ago
  The first version of it I ever saw was in a Baby Huey comic book in about 1967, a single page comic, and it struck my infant self as wise and unusually funny. I wonder how old the joke is.
  - arjunvpaul 9y ago
    Not sure if the real source can be traced. Birbal lived in the 1500's and I have heard another version atributed to another court jester called Tenali Raman who lived in the same century.
  - ci5er 9y ago
    The first I heard of it was a translation of a 13th Century Sufi tale. So,... older than Baby Huey.
vfulco 9y ago
What's the beef with Typeform? It is a slick service, award winning, very well thought out and designed. With Zapier it integrates to over 500+ apps downstream including Invoice Ninja (another amazing service integrated with 40 payment vendors). A happy customer for one year. Would appreciate your take on it.
- detaro 9y ago
  As a user, if I see typeform I expect a long questionnaire (e.g. from someone explicitly asking me to give them some time to help them research something) or it to be an e-mail list signup. Neither are things I want when trying to sign up to a service - it looks like you are just fishing to collect user data and don't actually have anything yet. I have no idea if they are prepared to actually handle financial data properly (unlike I'd be with a conventional payment gateway I've heard of). The entire presentation with "pages", asking question after question (I think OP updated the signup already, now it asks 3 questions and doesn't manage to fit the 3 form fields on a Full-HD screen!), progress bar looks like "this is complicated". The keyboard hints it gives me don't actually work. It's a massive contrast to the relatively polished (if content-less, which again makes one question if there is an actual product) landing page, which makes it look even more like you prioritize looks over quality. These guys supposedly help me sign up customers, is their solution to that going to be "set up a typeform"?! It might be slick (I'd argue that, but my tastes don't necessarily align with people creating such labels) and award-winning, but primarily it sends the wrong message.
  - cod3boy 9y ago
    We actually had many more questions, we were asking all the questions that required to make their personal website like this https://bighead.sievehq.com/ https://bighead.sievehq.com/, then scrapped all the questions when users started dropping off.
- herbst 9y ago
  Sounds like frankensteining third party tools together.
eps 9y ago
> Collect an email address just before anyone clicks get started. That's a sure way to collect a bunch of mailinator.com addresses.
- dfabulich 9y ago
  Is this common on a SaaS site? My experience with landing pages is that people will cheerfully enter their work email address without a second thought.
  - tfmatt 9y ago
    Cheerfully enter my work email!? I am way more reserved with that than my personal address!!
    - dfabulich 9y ago
      Me, too! I may have been as surprised as you.
    - wruza 9y ago
      Don’t you have a second -t testing email? Actually having one, I can say that there is nothing wrong happening inside it, despite it was used for lots of “seems legit” evaluation registrations. (Not that I’ll check it often, answer questions or connect to audio notifier; this somewhat defeats the purpose we’re discussing.)
  - eps 9y ago
    Can't speak for everyone, but it is common on any site. The assumption is that they _will_ spam, sell the data or do something comparably exciting, so it's nearly always a disposable address first, changing it to a real address later if needed.
- oliwarner 9y ago
  And if the end goal was to get everybody's real email addresses, this would be a calamitous failure. This guy just needs some feedback. Even just a fraction of real emails would be better than none.
wtvanhest 9y ago
I'm not a freelancer, but I'd assume the biggest problem getting started with freelancing isn't the NDAs etc. It's getting clients. Maybe your marketing should be geared to people who are already freelancing and who want to upsell/become more professional?
- cod3boy 9y ago
  Thanks for the feedback, I think I've been hearing this a lot now, will think about this deeply and do something :) We actually had a lead generation too inside the platform, but its still in the process, ideally picking up all the leads around internet form slack groups, LinkedIn etc and qualifying the leads.
  - wtvanhest 9y ago
    That would likely be a better stand alone product.

cod3boy 9y ago

Thanks for the story, in fact, looking back, I feel quite foolish to ask too much information in one go :D The gist of the story is very interesting, but in our current scenario I don' really have a way to reach the folks who dropped off, that's why I came to HN. I'll be exploring the other points you noted, and work on them.

IanCal 9y ago
The forty people who signed up surely put in some contact information?
- albaqawi 9y ago
  how many people signed up so far? and is this Elite 100 program still valid? even with the new subscription structure?
  - cod3boy 9y ago
    We've pulled the program at the moment.
    - albaqawi 9y ago
      First of all, asking for help everywhere is awesome, as humility is the key to take the right steps to fix a problem. If you cannot talk to those who did not sign up or like the offers, then you need to take to people who have extreme pains in using sites like freelance.com or upworks.com these sites have crazy traffic but until today they have not resolved key issues for freeelancers or seekers of freelance talents.I must add, they are SUPER hubs for Freelancers as they are the status quo but key values are missing. I saw your site and I love your approach but you must refine the big uppercut punches that will make any free lancer on your site standout and choose your platform. I suffered a big deal of problems when sourcing freelancers from freelance.com, upworks.com and many more. I found many others suffer the same thing. I love to help you to share my stories and help you refine where is the real true value lies for a customer that wants top talent. If you like to plan a short power call soon let me know. I will drop my email in your Freshchat with attention to cod3boy!
      - cod3boy 9y ago
        Thanks, got it! will get back to you soon.
      - mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
        If you don't mind me asku, what sort of problems were you having with sourcing from freelance superhubs?
        9y ago
lawpoop 9y ago
> looking back, I feel quite foolish to ask too much information in one go To the contrary -- you are wise to learn from your mistakes : )
arjunvpaul 9y ago
the intent was not to make you feel foolish. Maybe its a good thing you feel embarrassed. It probably means that you haven't released late. Listen to Episode 4 of Reid Hoffman's Podcast Masters of Scale. "So don’t fear imperfections; they won’t make or break your company". Forge Ahead!
muzani 9y ago
That might be your problem too. The absolute next thing I build, after features, is a feedback pipeline. I do this before even integrating the payment gateway. Often it's in the form of some support forum or in app public chatroom. Take a close look at any comments wherever you advertise. I'd even recommend against FB/Google advertising at first because it's difficult to get feedback. Analytics might help too and you can see where people are dropping off. But they're quite inefficient. Sometimes you just have email people who signed up in person to ask them. People are usually very open to giving brief feedback; just don't drag them into some focus group or 10 minute talk. Being able to iterate based on feedback is usually the make or break point of an early stage entrepreneur.
- cod3boy 9y ago
  Thanks, I think I have tons of feedback from HN now, honestly, I did not expect this much! :) I am currently sorting out each feedback and converting to actionable items, will probably come with a blog post or something soon about the actions :)

danieltillett 9y ago

I love this story because it is a new angle from the usual drunk looking for his car keys under the street lamp.

beautifulfreak 9y ago
The first version of it I ever saw was in a Baby Huey comic book in about 1967, a single page comic, and it struck my infant self as wise and unusually funny. I wonder how old the joke is.
- arjunvpaul 9y ago
  Not sure if the real source can be traced. Birbal lived in the 1500's and I have heard another version atributed to another court jester called Tenali Raman who lived in the same century.
- ci5er 9y ago
  The first I heard of it was a translation of a 13th Century Sufi tale. So,... older than Baby Huey.

vfulco 9y ago

What's the beef with Typeform? It is a slick service, award winning, very well thought out and designed. With Zapier it integrates to over 500+ apps downstream including Invoice Ninja (another amazing service integrated with 40 payment vendors). A happy customer for one year. Would appreciate your take on it.

detaro 9y ago
As a user, if I see typeform I expect a long questionnaire (e.g. from someone explicitly asking me to give them some time to help them research something) or it to be an e-mail list signup. Neither are things I want when trying to sign up to a service - it looks like you are just fishing to collect user data and don't actually have anything yet. I have no idea if they are prepared to actually handle financial data properly (unlike I'd be with a conventional payment gateway I've heard of). The entire presentation with "pages", asking question after question (I think OP updated the signup already, now it asks 3 questions and doesn't manage to fit the 3 form fields on a Full-HD screen!), progress bar looks like "this is complicated". The keyboard hints it gives me don't actually work. It's a massive contrast to the relatively polished (if content-less, which again makes one question if there is an actual product) landing page, which makes it look even more like you prioritize looks over quality. These guys supposedly help me sign up customers, is their solution to that going to be "set up a typeform"?! It might be slick (I'd argue that, but my tastes don't necessarily align with people creating such labels) and award-winning, but primarily it sends the wrong message.
- cod3boy 9y ago
  We actually had many more questions, we were asking all the questions that required to make their personal website like this https://bighead.sievehq.com/ https://bighead.sievehq.com/, then scrapped all the questions when users started dropping off.
herbst 9y ago
Sounds like frankensteining third party tools together.

eps 9y ago

> Collect an email address just before anyone clicks get started. That's a sure way to collect a bunch of mailinator.com addresses.

dfabulich 9y ago
Is this common on a SaaS site? My experience with landing pages is that people will cheerfully enter their work email address without a second thought.
- tfmatt 9y ago
  Cheerfully enter my work email!? I am way more reserved with that than my personal address!!
  - dfabulich 9y ago
    Me, too! I may have been as surprised as you.
  - wruza 9y ago
    Don’t you have a second -t testing email? Actually having one, I can say that there is nothing wrong happening inside it, despite it was used for lots of “seems legit” evaluation registrations. (Not that I’ll check it often, answer questions or connect to audio notifier; this somewhat defeats the purpose we’re discussing.)
- eps 9y ago
  Can't speak for everyone, but it is common on any site. The assumption is that they _will_ spam, sell the data or do something comparably exciting, so it's nearly always a disposable address first, changing it to a real address later if needed.
oliwarner 9y ago
And if the end goal was to get everybody's real email addresses, this would be a calamitous failure. This guy just needs some feedback. Even just a fraction of real emails would be better than none.

wtvanhest 9y ago

I'm not a freelancer, but I'd assume the biggest problem getting started with freelancing isn't the NDAs etc. It's getting clients. Maybe your marketing should be geared to people who are already freelancing and who want to upsell/become more professional?

cod3boy 9y ago
Thanks for the feedback, I think I've been hearing this a lot now, will think about this deeply and do something :) We actually had a lead generation too inside the platform, but its still in the process, ideally picking up all the leads around internet form slack groups, LinkedIn etc and qualifying the leads.
- wtvanhest 9y ago
  That would likely be a better stand alone product.