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The most important decision a startup makes is to choose your customer definition. It looks to me like you have chosen "anyone who sells anything on ebay" as y

The most important decision a startup makes is to choose your customer definition. It looks to me like you have chosen "anyone who sells anything on ebay" as your customer. The problem is, even if you could personally meet with each one of them, they'd probably still choose to list items on ebay because there are more buyers on ebay and they are likely to get a higher price. There are lots of ways you can go. None of these are particularly good ideas, but hopefully they can help you think of a great idea based on your strenghts: - You could choose a specific category that Ebay does poorly. Ebay has vacation lodging, but AirBNB is kicking their ass in that area. Ebay has arts and crafts, but Etsy is doing crazy well. - If your advantage is an easier UI, maybe you can build an easier-to-use front end to list or find items on Ebay. Even for this, you might choose some specific target customer. Maybe old people who are nontechnical. Maybe young people who think Ebay is uncool. - Here's a question, how can sites like policeauctions.com and propertyroom.com exist? wouldn't it be smarter to list all those items on ebay where you can get a higher price? Steal their customers and do something easier, list the items on ebay. Whatever you do, dont try to compete head-on with Ebay. Ebay will always be a better Ebay than you. Choose one thing they are doing poorly, and do it great. Imagine if Etsy or Airbnb tried to expand to do everything ebay did. That would obviously suck. So be more like them. Happy to brainstorm.

stuckk 15y ago
I think you are 100% correct on going against eBay. We don't want to do that even though it may look like it. Through some research and suggestion of others. We found out that there are lots of transactions taking place on the internet on no particular platform. They are done on forums, Facebook, twitter(as Status update)..ect. The reason why they don't sell on eBay is because eBay takes too much time and has too much hassle and it's expensive. I used to be an online seller. But never on eBay. I used to flip websites and offer my services on various SEO forums. There are hundreds if not thousands of communities that sell their stuff in their own forum section. They do this because it's free, simple and quick. I agree that pulling people away from eBay only based on the simplicity and being free is going to be hard. That's why we are open to pivoting to the particular category that might use our site the most. For example if the bitcoin community starts using Classfy more than others, we will become a bitcoin marketplace. If people start selling car parts on classfy then we will pivot to that category. However I love the idea of becoming a front-end tool for eBay and mixing the results with listings on Classfy.
- michael_fine 15y ago
  Have you considered making the community thing your only niche? For example you would have a way to embed a sales process entirely inside the forum. That's something I would use and find really cool
  - stuckk 15y ago
    Yeah some very big forums already have this. But it's not very well executed. Example: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2429403 http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2429403 On Classfy right now you can add your forum username and the url to your profile. There is no way to authenticate the user but if many members from a forum join and list with classfy. We will arrange something with the owner of the forum to authenticate the users. I have added a reddit authentication system too.
    - michael_fine 15y ago
      That's cool. Best of luck!
    - dvdhsu 15y ago
      > On Classfy right now you can add your forum username and the url to your profile. There is no way to authenticate the user but if many members from a forum join and list with classfy. We will arrange something with the owner of the forum to authenticate the users. Pretend that I'm arn, running MacRumors. Why should I switch to your service? My own "Marketplace" forum is working well. People who sell a lot on there have a reputation for not ripping others off. For those that are new, it's either caveat emptor or going through PayPal when something bad happens. There's also Heatware already. It allows you to leave feedback for forum transactions. Your account is linked to all your forum accounts, so if you're new to one forum, but established in another, you have references. Here's my feedback page, for example: http://www.heatware.com/eval.php?show=to&id=69703&num_days=0 http://www.heatware.com/eval.php?show=to&id=69703&nu... They have around 70K registered users right now. If you want to displace them, it's going to be difficult (especially because people have momentum on Heatware already: they don't want to lose all their feedback to move to another system).

stuckk 15y ago

I think you are 100% correct on going against eBay. We don't want to do that even though it may look like it. Through some research and suggestion of others. We found out that there are lots of transactions taking place on the internet on no particular platform. They are done on forums, Facebook, twitter(as Status update)..ect. The reason why they don't sell on eBay is because eBay takes too much time and has too much hassle and it's expensive. I used to be an online seller. But never on eBay. I used to flip websites and offer my services on various SEO forums. There are hundreds if not thousands of communities that sell their stuff in their own forum section. They do this because it's free, simple and quick. I agree that pulling people away from eBay only based on the simplicity and being free is going to be hard. That's why we are open to pivoting to the particular category that might use our site the most. For example if the bitcoin community starts using Classfy more than others, we will become a bitcoin marketplace. If people start selling car parts on classfy then we will pivot to that category. However I love the idea of becoming a front-end tool for eBay and mixing the results with listings on Classfy.

michael_fine 15y ago
Have you considered making the community thing your only niche? For example you would have a way to embed a sales process entirely inside the forum. That's something I would use and find really cool
- stuckk 15y ago
  Yeah some very big forums already have this. But it's not very well executed. Example: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2429403 http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2429403 On Classfy right now you can add your forum username and the url to your profile. There is no way to authenticate the user but if many members from a forum join and list with classfy. We will arrange something with the owner of the forum to authenticate the users. I have added a reddit authentication system too.
  - michael_fine 15y ago
    That's cool. Best of luck!
  - dvdhsu 15y ago
    > On Classfy right now you can add your forum username and the url to your profile. There is no way to authenticate the user but if many members from a forum join and list with classfy. We will arrange something with the owner of the forum to authenticate the users. Pretend that I'm arn, running MacRumors. Why should I switch to your service? My own "Marketplace" forum is working well. People who sell a lot on there have a reputation for not ripping others off. For those that are new, it's either caveat emptor or going through PayPal when something bad happens. There's also Heatware already. It allows you to leave feedback for forum transactions. Your account is linked to all your forum accounts, so if you're new to one forum, but established in another, you have references. Here's my feedback page, for example: http://www.heatware.com/eval.php?show=to&id=69703&num_days=0 http://www.heatware.com/eval.php?show=to&id=69703&nu... They have around 70K registered users right now. If you want to displace them, it's going to be difficult (especially because people have momentum on Heatware already: they don't want to lose all their feedback to move to another system).