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Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

23 points by mikegreenberg 14y ago

Hello HN. I like this community a lot and want to see if there's anything I can do to make you a little more successful. No strings. To give you an idea of what I might be able to help you with, let me tell you a few things I've done to help others recently... - I'm an early-adopter and enjoy seeing new technology and ideas being put into action. If only to get access sooner, I'd be more than happy to critique and share my opinion on all things design, customer development, software, entrepreneurship, family, creativity, or productivity. - I'm participating with a team of other students in the Stanford Technology Entrepreneurship online course and helping people learn to apply the Business Model Canvas along with lean startup methodologies as well as attempt to bring our own product to market. (On the side, our team published an ebook that helped other groups in the course to effectively brainstorm toward creating a viable business idea.) (This course is also the reason why I didn't do last month's "No strings" thread.) - I organize the South Florida Hack and Tell, which is a group for geeks (and those interested in hanging out with geeks) to do interesting events here in South Florida (like learn Arduino, grab a beer, participate as a team in a Hack-a-thon, etc), - I advise a few local single founders who are without technical expertise and guide them toward good long-term technical decisions for their startup, - I write (moderately maintainable) software for a living, - I understand good design from bad design and can push pixels with the best of them (I got a perfect on this color test: http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?pageid=77&lang=en), - I have a family and juggle a mediocre work-life balance that's gradually improving. If there's something I can help you with, just ask here or @mikegreenberg on Twitter. Be specific about what you're trying to fix/solve/accomplish. The more details you provide, the better I can help you out. :) I also hope this inspires other people to help out even if you don't think you have anything useful to offer. Actions like this will only improve our community (locally and across the net). Cheers! Mike PS: I'll typically reciprocate the amount of effort/consideration that you've shown in your request. If you show me that you're thoughtful about the feedback you want from me, I'll be more apt to give you something useful. I'll accept any requests made before the end of today and will attempt to respond by the end of the weekend. PPS: You can check out my previous submissions if you want to see the sort of feedback I can provide.

duiker101 14y ago
Hi Mike, thanks for helping the community, there is actually one thing that i would love to get some input on from someone more "experienced". If you could validate my idea, the following: A service that lets you, developer, send message to the users under the form of alerts/dialogs, not push notifications. I think this service might have a lot of advantages, most of all, it should not annoy the user. In my view this service would help developers to keep a strict contact with the users, something that i think it's very important and it's usually appreciated the user. I do not want this to be something just to keep the user engaged. Some examples of how this could be used: - Send notifications about the status of your service/app - Get in touch with specific users to provide support - Messages directed to specific platforms - Fast feedback from specifed users, like if there is someone who uses a feature more than other, ask why. - Give rewards to your most passionate users. In the end i would say that this is a service to let the users know that you are there. I have a quite clear view of all of this even if i might not have expressed it in the best way. I even have already something in my hands. but i wish to know if this is something that people might actually like/use. Thanks :)
- eranation 14y ago
  Sorry to barge in, but I think this is a very hot topic 2 startups that do something like this more or less (if I got you right): customer.io intercom.io
  - duiker101 14y ago
    Thanks for this two! I didn't know them! about customer.io is something that i actually would prefer to avoid. And intercom.io is more similar to what i have in mind but with a wider use instead of more focused to one user. From what i've seen intercom is more to stalk you users. Instead i would like it to be a side feature and be more open to sending messages, maybe, all users. But anyway thanks! At least i know there seems to be some sort of interest in this kind of things!
- mikegreenberg 14y ago
  tl;dr: I think this could be a very useful service, but the execution is very important. There are already services which are in this space who are trying to get it right (olark.com comes to mind). I'm not really sure what the right way is, but if I had to take a guess, the experience should feel very homogeneous with the app which offers it. Yes, there's a reasonable amount of value you get out of a drop-in service that you don't have to configure or think about, but I think every point of interaction with the customer should be a carefully-thought decision and not a white-label feature you add as an after-thought. I think if you were able to figure out how to construct a communication's channel that could be easily added to an app while neatly integrating into the existing experience, that would be a major win that I'd give you money to provide me.

23 points by mikegreenberg 14y ago

duiker101 14y ago

Hi Mike, thanks for helping the community, there is actually one thing that i would love to get some input on from someone more "experienced". If you could validate my idea, the following: A service that lets you, developer, send message to the users under the form of alerts/dialogs, not push notifications. I think this service might have a lot of advantages, most of all, it should not annoy the user. In my view this service would help developers to keep a strict contact with the users, something that i think it's very important and it's usually appreciated the user. I do not want this to be something just to keep the user engaged. Some examples of how this could be used: - Send notifications about the status of your service/app - Get in touch with specific users to provide support - Messages directed to specific platforms - Fast feedback from specifed users, like if there is someone who uses a feature more than other, ask why. - Give rewards to your most passionate users. In the end i would say that this is a service to let the users know that you are there. I have a quite clear view of all of this even if i might not have expressed it in the best way. I even have already something in my hands. but i wish to know if this is something that people might actually like/use. Thanks :)

eranation 14y ago
Sorry to barge in, but I think this is a very hot topic 2 startups that do something like this more or less (if I got you right): customer.io intercom.io
- duiker101 14y ago
  Thanks for this two! I didn't know them! about customer.io is something that i actually would prefer to avoid. And intercom.io is more similar to what i have in mind but with a wider use instead of more focused to one user. From what i've seen intercom is more to stalk you users. Instead i would like it to be a side feature and be more open to sending messages, maybe, all users. But anyway thanks! At least i know there seems to be some sort of interest in this kind of things!
mikegreenberg 14y ago
tl;dr: I think this could be a very useful service, but the execution is very important. There are already services which are in this space who are trying to get it right (olark.com comes to mind). I'm not really sure what the right way is, but if I had to take a guess, the experience should feel very homogeneous with the app which offers it. Yes, there's a reasonable amount of value you get out of a drop-in service that you don't have to configure or think about, but I think every point of interaction with the customer should be a carefully-thought decision and not a white-label feature you add as an after-thought. I think if you were able to figure out how to construct a communication's channel that could be easily added to an app while neatly integrating into the existing experience, that would be a major win that I'd give you money to provide me.