5 ms·

Ask HN: Who is starting a startup?* (July 2019)

18 points by kunle 7y ago

Please state the problem you're solving, the team you have, the stage you're in (bootstrapped, pre-seed, seed, series A, B, etc), and whether you're pre or post revenue. Please only post if you are one of the founding team. Only one post per company Also include some detail on anything you need help with (finding customers, finding cofounders, technology, legal, operations, sales, investors etc). Commenters: please don't reply to posts to complain about something. It's off topic here. Readers: please only email if you are personally interested in helping *This is a new monthly post that I've wanted to see for a while. Starting it now to see what happens. Feedback is welcome

kunle 7y ago
I'll go first: Building: easytts.com Stage: Bootstrapped, Pre-revenue We make: easy text to speech / text to voice conversion tools. Started with a basic web based conversion tool, and want to make something deeper that helps bloggers turn their blogs into podcasts, read by human-like voices, for cheap. Team: 2 We need help with: Finding customers. To date we've relied heavily on SEO. Would love to figure out inbound marketing or something similar.
- verdverm 7y ago
  Try some cold outreach for conversations. I'm doing that before spending anything on marketing. Good luck!
- carlotapia 7y ago
  Some unsolicited feedback: 1) I typed "Hello" and pressed play, and was expecting it to play "Hello". Instead, it played, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." What happened? Either the product didn't work as it was supposed to, or there wasn't enough guidance from the UI (i.e., I clicked the wrong play button). I think your app could really benefit from progressive disclosure, which is all about minimizing clutter and focusing the user on fewer, logically connected actions. For example => Type > Play > Export. Here's an article on Medium that covers this, with examples on how companies do it: https://medium.muz.li/design-technique-progressive-disclosure-1980def8dc97 https://medium.muz.li/design-technique-progressive-disclosur... 2) As a founder that regrets not deeply understanding their market's problem first - What is the problem you solve? Who do you solve it for? Is that problem painful enough and is your solution good enough that someone will pay for it? Are there enough people experiencing this problem to sustain your business? It sounds like you're targeting a very specific audience: Bloggers that do not want to put the effort into podcasting or do not have the ability to podcast, but have enough readership and pent-up demand for a podcast that they would pay to have a text-to-speech tool do it for them. Have you made sure that market exists and is profitable? What are they currently doing to solve this problem?
  - billconan 7y ago
    yes, that play button is confusing to me too. It actually plays a sample of the voice you choose, not what you have typed. I think the website should provide a sample of what a user has typed.
- philipkiely 7y ago
  What do you use for the voices? On my blog, I use Amazon Polly and add a link and web player at the top of each article.
  - kunle 7y ago
    Currently using Google's text to speech endpoints.
carlotapia 7y ago
Building: Vested Yeti - app.vestedyeti.com Stage: Bootstrapped, Pre-revenue, Public Beta We make: A new home for your web pages. We help people organize and share web pages. We also have a Chrome extension to bookmark and comment from the sidebar of any web page. Very useful for people with too many tabs. Team: 1 + contract developer We need help with: Users and feedback. We started with the solution instead of the problem (three years ago), and are now working backwards to find product market fit. Thanks for creating this forum OP. I'll make sure to check out easytts.com.
billconan 7y ago
Epiphany - https://epiphany.pub https://epiphany.pub Stage: Bootstrapped, Pre-revenue, Public Beta A new blogging experience allowing interactive content in js or python. Think of it as a mixture of Medium.com + Jupyter notebook. Team: myself Needs: Users and feedback.
wjossey 7y ago
Eager Connect - https://connect.eagerlabs.com https://connect.eagerlabs.com Stage: Seed Stage We Make: A eight session cohort program for new supervisors looking to improve their leadership and management skills. Team: Four full-time, two part-time We need help with: Scaling our program by figuring out a funnel for HR & managers to join. Our first program (this fall) looks like it will be full, so we're already looking forward to how we can build trust with HR departments and managers looking for help. I'm the co-founder. You can email me directly! Email is in my profile.
dbla 7y ago
Climbalytics - https://www.climbalytics.com/ https://www.climbalytics.com/ Stage: Bootstrapped, Public Beta We make: A fitness tracker specifically designed for rock climbers. Team: Three part time Needs: Feedback
cultofthecow 7y ago
GoAndCall - https://goandcall.me https://goandcall.me Stage: 70% done, trying to find the market The widget to let your website visitors call you or send a callback request from your website. Team: just me Need: Idea feedback, advices on how to sell it, cofounders.
photonios 7y ago
WebRale - https://webrale.com https://webrale.com Stage: Bootstrapped, Private Beta, Pre-revenue We Make: A website crawler for SEO purposes that gives you dedicated machines, dedicated IP's and unlimited crawling at an affordable price point. Why: We all have a background in working for large e-commerce and real-estate portals. We've seen our friends and (former) employers spend insane amounts of money for crawling their websites. As an alternative to paying some company to do it for them, they often reach for subpar desktop based tools which run out of breath with large websites or take way too long to complete. We've built our tech to run in resource constrained environments to keep costs down. Team: Four, part time We need help with: Marketing and writing. We have a UX designer, but none of us have significant experience in marketing or content writing. It's going to be painful for us. We're all first-time founders. We're currently relying on our connections in the industry to get going. You can e-mail me directly. E-mail is in my profile. Any feedback is much appreciated.
ThePhysicist 7y ago
KIProtect - https://kiprotect.com https://kiprotect.com Stage: Bootstrapped, First PoC Customers We Make: A security layer for modern data infrastructures. Why: Keeping data secure and private should be easy. We help organizations to keep sensitive data secure by enabling them to easily pseudonymize, anonymize or encrypt it. Team: Five, full-time We need help with: Marketing and community building. We're building an open-core solution and want to open-source our first libraries / tools in the coming months, so we're looking for people that are passionate about data security and privacy and that want to help us build a great toolkit. We are looking for developers, writers, open-source volunteers and community builders. Please reach out to hn@kiprotect.com for more information. Let's make data security easy!

18 points by kunle 7y ago

kunle 7y ago

I'll go first: Building: easytts.com Stage: Bootstrapped, Pre-revenue We make: easy text to speech / text to voice conversion tools. Started with a basic web based conversion tool, and want to make something deeper that helps bloggers turn their blogs into podcasts, read by human-like voices, for cheap. Team: 2 We need help with: Finding customers. To date we've relied heavily on SEO. Would love to figure out inbound marketing or something similar.

verdverm 7y ago
Try some cold outreach for conversations. I'm doing that before spending anything on marketing. Good luck!
carlotapia 7y ago
Some unsolicited feedback: 1) I typed "Hello" and pressed play, and was expecting it to play "Hello". Instead, it played, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." What happened? Either the product didn't work as it was supposed to, or there wasn't enough guidance from the UI (i.e., I clicked the wrong play button). I think your app could really benefit from progressive disclosure, which is all about minimizing clutter and focusing the user on fewer, logically connected actions. For example => Type > Play > Export. Here's an article on Medium that covers this, with examples on how companies do it: https://medium.muz.li/design-technique-progressive-disclosure-1980def8dc97 https://medium.muz.li/design-technique-progressive-disclosur... 2) As a founder that regrets not deeply understanding their market's problem first - What is the problem you solve? Who do you solve it for? Is that problem painful enough and is your solution good enough that someone will pay for it? Are there enough people experiencing this problem to sustain your business? It sounds like you're targeting a very specific audience: Bloggers that do not want to put the effort into podcasting or do not have the ability to podcast, but have enough readership and pent-up demand for a podcast that they would pay to have a text-to-speech tool do it for them. Have you made sure that market exists and is profitable? What are they currently doing to solve this problem?
- billconan 7y ago
  yes, that play button is confusing to me too. It actually plays a sample of the voice you choose, not what you have typed. I think the website should provide a sample of what a user has typed.
philipkiely 7y ago
What do you use for the voices? On my blog, I use Amazon Polly and add a link and web player at the top of each article.
- kunle 7y ago
  Currently using Google's text to speech endpoints.

carlotapia 7y ago

Building: Vested Yeti - app.vestedyeti.com Stage: Bootstrapped, Pre-revenue, Public Beta We make: A new home for your web pages. We help people organize and share web pages. We also have a Chrome extension to bookmark and comment from the sidebar of any web page. Very useful for people with too many tabs. Team: 1 + contract developer We need help with: Users and feedback. We started with the solution instead of the problem (three years ago), and are now working backwards to find product market fit. Thanks for creating this forum OP. I'll make sure to check out easytts.com.

billconan 7y ago

Epiphany - https://epiphany.pub https://epiphany.pub Stage: Bootstrapped, Pre-revenue, Public Beta A new blogging experience allowing interactive content in js or python. Think of it as a mixture of Medium.com + Jupyter notebook. Team: myself Needs: Users and feedback.

wjossey 7y ago

Eager Connect - https://connect.eagerlabs.com https://connect.eagerlabs.com Stage: Seed Stage We Make: A eight session cohort program for new supervisors looking to improve their leadership and management skills. Team: Four full-time, two part-time We need help with: Scaling our program by figuring out a funnel for HR & managers to join. Our first program (this fall) looks like it will be full, so we're already looking forward to how we can build trust with HR departments and managers looking for help. I'm the co-founder. You can email me directly! Email is in my profile.

dbla 7y ago

Climbalytics - https://www.climbalytics.com/ https://www.climbalytics.com/ Stage: Bootstrapped, Public Beta We make: A fitness tracker specifically designed for rock climbers. Team: Three part time Needs: Feedback

cultofthecow 7y ago

GoAndCall - https://goandcall.me https://goandcall.me Stage: 70% done, trying to find the market The widget to let your website visitors call you or send a callback request from your website. Team: just me Need: Idea feedback, advices on how to sell it, cofounders.

photonios 7y ago

WebRale - https://webrale.com https://webrale.com Stage: Bootstrapped, Private Beta, Pre-revenue We Make: A website crawler for SEO purposes that gives you dedicated machines, dedicated IP's and unlimited crawling at an affordable price point. Why: We all have a background in working for large e-commerce and real-estate portals. We've seen our friends and (former) employers spend insane amounts of money for crawling their websites. As an alternative to paying some company to do it for them, they often reach for subpar desktop based tools which run out of breath with large websites or take way too long to complete. We've built our tech to run in resource constrained environments to keep costs down. Team: Four, part time We need help with: Marketing and writing. We have a UX designer, but none of us have significant experience in marketing or content writing. It's going to be painful for us. We're all first-time founders. We're currently relying on our connections in the industry to get going. You can e-mail me directly. E-mail is in my profile. Any feedback is much appreciated.

ThePhysicist 7y ago

KIProtect - https://kiprotect.com https://kiprotect.com Stage: Bootstrapped, First PoC Customers We Make: A security layer for modern data infrastructures. Why: Keeping data secure and private should be easy. We help organizations to keep sensitive data secure by enabling them to easily pseudonymize, anonymize or encrypt it. Team: Five, full-time We need help with: Marketing and community building. We're building an open-core solution and want to open-source our first libraries / tools in the coming months, so we're looking for people that are passionate about data security and privacy and that want to help us build a great toolkit. We are looking for developers, writers, open-source volunteers and community builders. Please reach out to hn@kiprotect.com for more information. Let's make data security easy!