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You're absolutely right. I never actually stated what my reasons were. Sorry, we had been up too many hours by the time we wrote the earlier HN post so we left

You're absolutely right. I never actually stated what my reasons were. Sorry, we had been up too many hours by the time we wrote the earlier HN post so we left out our reasons entirely. Like a lot of the other startups here on HN, we're boot-strapped. We have basically no funding besides our own personal savings and a dream that we'd like to persue. When you're in that situation, you're forced to really get down and dirty and try to do everything yourself. Nobody will miraculously jump out and offer you a hand, so you're forced to learn everything and try new ways of entering the market by yourself. From each time we've failed a startup, we always learned something new. We took that experience and used it to build what we have today, Persona. It's like riding a bike, you keep falling and injuring yourself but eventually you learn. That's how we feel about Persona. We're confident enough that this is the app that's different from all the other times we've tried. So back to the topic, because we've gone so far doing everything hands on ourselves, we wanted to try and get funding ourselves without having to rely on YC. We get that YC is a fantastic program and they have exactly the right connections to put you in the spotlight, but if we join YC now without trying ourselves the very last step (getting money to continue), we'll regret that decision for the rest of our lives. Because we'll never know then if we would have been capable of making a dent in the startup community we live in. It'll answer the question "Are you able to successfully grow your userbase and product without relying on VCs or Angels?". Thanks for the heads up!

RuggeroAltair 14y ago
Thanks for your answer. I think your idea is good and has a lot of potential. Don't get me wrong. I understand what you say, but still I'm not sure I get what the relation with YC really is. To me it doesn't matter if I make it into the startup world with or without YC, it matters if I make it. And YC is not as important for the funding, as much as it is for the advice and the experience. They could help you avoid making mistakes. Best of luck with Persona! I think I'll sign up.
bira 14y ago
Have you already watched DHH's "How to Make Money Online" presentation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY&feature=playe...)? If not, watch it ASAP. If you go down the bootstrapping road, you must have profits coming in, to fund and further the development of your product. Sooner or later you will have to make money and since you don't seem to have a lot of funds laying around, the sooner the better. Moreover, have you validated your idea(s) (included the previous, failed attempts to excute them and build a viable business)? Are you sure that there are enough people out there with the burning desire to throw money at you for this app to make it worth the hustle? (assuming you want to sell your app, which would be the best and most simple way to make money) As PG says, the worst mistake one can make trying to build a company is building something THEY think is NEEDED by their customers and not what the market actually needs. Listen to your audience. Do the people need an iphone app to "truly define us"? Creating a kickstarter campaign was a good move, by the response you'll get you'll understand if you are solving a real problem or not. To expose more people to your app (and validate it or not with a wider set of data) you can use an adwords\facebook voucher and create a campaign (just search for them). Link to your homepage, track how many visitors opt in vs how many of them just land and bounce away, not interested. Ask questions on Answers sites, open threads on forums your ideal customer hangs out, the more eyeballs the better. Best wishes
- bira 14y ago
  BTW I liked your previous headline more. (thanks to Google cache) "It's everything you are, in pictures" is clearer and easier to understand than "your autobiography in graphic novel style". I still think you miss something unique and diverse at a feature level (what your app can do that other don't) and not on a concept level ("IT'S ABOUT YOU! NOT YOUR FRIENDS OR FAMILY, BUT YOU!").
- iamjonlee 14y ago
  I'm watching the link right now- very interesting, thank you. I think we've truly taken bits and pieces that worked from our failed attempts to build a viable business. We've cut down from what we had before to focus on the core features that we believe will work. From what we've seen from our signups so far, we're sure that there are enough people who are really to give us support, but they're far spread out and hard to reach. We've had quite a lot of signups, but almost no tweets which I don't understand. Our last revision had a lot more tweets. PG is right in saying that one of the worst mistakes to make is to build something that we THINK is NEEDED, and not what market actually needs but it's a difficult situation to address. What if your product faces the chicken and egg problem? I'm not sure how accurate I am here, but I wouldn't have believed that the market would actually need twitter. I think twitter believed that people could benefit from their services and find it interesting to use and therefore build their business that way. Maybe I'm wrong, or twitter is a very rare example, but I get where you're coming from. I think people generally need a way to define who they are. Take mySpace for example. I think they really understood the importance of showcasing a person's uniqueness or individuality. Your profile page on mySpace used to scream everything about you, from your background image to the number of friends you have, your moods, what music you're listening to, the About Me section, your blog- it was basically everything about you. Sure, it's true that mySpace is no longer doing as well as they have since then and they're changing their profile page layouts, but giving back the user focus is what led them to success in the first place. From what I've gathered (omitting my own thoughts to avoid bias), your friends on Facebook don't know anything about you. Ask most of them what they know about you and they won't be able to tell you much. That's the point we're trying to illustrate. People spend so much time caring about how they look in real life and it's really all the idiosyncrasies that you talk about in life with your friends and the people you meet that make you interesting. So why is the web not picking up on this? With Persona, we want to bring back that very intimate connection you see in real life. We want to make a product that binds people together rather than just another social network about your friends. We've launched a small Reddit campaign, and we've been getting a ton of signups from that, but the problem is we have no idea how they feel about the Kickstarter. People don't give feedback and Kickstarter doesn't offer analytics to track how many people have seen your page. So far, we're getting a 10% conversion from people who visit our homepage and do signup. I'll take your advice on the answers sites and the forums. I'm really looking for a way to promote sharing on twitter though - I feel that it would be the best way to generate more traffic. Thanks for such constructive feedback.

RuggeroAltair 14y ago

Thanks for your answer. I think your idea is good and has a lot of potential. Don't get me wrong. I understand what you say, but still I'm not sure I get what the relation with YC really is. To me it doesn't matter if I make it into the startup world with or without YC, it matters if I make it. And YC is not as important for the funding, as much as it is for the advice and the experience. They could help you avoid making mistakes. Best of luck with Persona! I think I'll sign up.

bira 14y ago

Have you already watched DHH's "How to Make Money Online" presentation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY&feature=playe...)? If not, watch it ASAP. If you go down the bootstrapping road, you must have profits coming in, to fund and further the development of your product. Sooner or later you will have to make money and since you don't seem to have a lot of funds laying around, the sooner the better. Moreover, have you validated your idea(s) (included the previous, failed attempts to excute them and build a viable business)? Are you sure that there are enough people out there with the burning desire to throw money at you for this app to make it worth the hustle? (assuming you want to sell your app, which would be the best and most simple way to make money) As PG says, the worst mistake one can make trying to build a company is building something THEY think is NEEDED by their customers and not what the market actually needs. Listen to your audience. Do the people need an iphone app to "truly define us"? Creating a kickstarter campaign was a good move, by the response you'll get you'll understand if you are solving a real problem or not. To expose more people to your app (and validate it or not with a wider set of data) you can use an adwords\facebook voucher and create a campaign (just search for them). Link to your homepage, track how many visitors opt in vs how many of them just land and bounce away, not interested. Ask questions on Answers sites, open threads on forums your ideal customer hangs out, the more eyeballs the better. Best wishes

bira 14y ago
BTW I liked your previous headline more. (thanks to Google cache) "It's everything you are, in pictures" is clearer and easier to understand than "your autobiography in graphic novel style". I still think you miss something unique and diverse at a feature level (what your app can do that other don't) and not on a concept level ("IT'S ABOUT YOU! NOT YOUR FRIENDS OR FAMILY, BUT YOU!").
iamjonlee 14y ago
I'm watching the link right now- very interesting, thank you. I think we've truly taken bits and pieces that worked from our failed attempts to build a viable business. We've cut down from what we had before to focus on the core features that we believe will work. From what we've seen from our signups so far, we're sure that there are enough people who are really to give us support, but they're far spread out and hard to reach. We've had quite a lot of signups, but almost no tweets which I don't understand. Our last revision had a lot more tweets. PG is right in saying that one of the worst mistakes to make is to build something that we THINK is NEEDED, and not what market actually needs but it's a difficult situation to address. What if your product faces the chicken and egg problem? I'm not sure how accurate I am here, but I wouldn't have believed that the market would actually need twitter. I think twitter believed that people could benefit from their services and find it interesting to use and therefore build their business that way. Maybe I'm wrong, or twitter is a very rare example, but I get where you're coming from. I think people generally need a way to define who they are. Take mySpace for example. I think they really understood the importance of showcasing a person's uniqueness or individuality. Your profile page on mySpace used to scream everything about you, from your background image to the number of friends you have, your moods, what music you're listening to, the About Me section, your blog- it was basically everything about you. Sure, it's true that mySpace is no longer doing as well as they have since then and they're changing their profile page layouts, but giving back the user focus is what led them to success in the first place. From what I've gathered (omitting my own thoughts to avoid bias), your friends on Facebook don't know anything about you. Ask most of them what they know about you and they won't be able to tell you much. That's the point we're trying to illustrate. People spend so much time caring about how they look in real life and it's really all the idiosyncrasies that you talk about in life with your friends and the people you meet that make you interesting. So why is the web not picking up on this? With Persona, we want to bring back that very intimate connection you see in real life. We want to make a product that binds people together rather than just another social network about your friends. We've launched a small Reddit campaign, and we've been getting a ton of signups from that, but the problem is we have no idea how they feel about the Kickstarter. People don't give feedback and Kickstarter doesn't offer analytics to track how many people have seen your page. So far, we're getting a 10% conversion from people who visit our homepage and do signup. I'll take your advice on the answers sites and the forums. I'm really looking for a way to promote sharing on twitter though - I feel that it would be the best way to generate more traffic. Thanks for such constructive feedback.