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I am building the backend full time for this, I'm serious about it and see it as one of the biggest issues in the ecosystem today. I'm looking to gauge interest

I am building the backend full time for this, I'm serious about it and see it as one of the biggest issues in the ecosystem today. I'm looking to gauge interest in the concept to hopefully raise more to implement it faster. What exactly is wrong about it? I spent a fair amount of time on it and just saying "its bad" isn't really helpful feedback.

vunderba 1y ago
I'll take a stab at providing some specifics: - the black text on fog gray background gradient is... not great looking. - What's with the seemingly arbitrary floating red sun? - the name Llama.fund is a bit odd given this is for general LLM models. Thematically it just feels all over the place.
- mnky9800n 1y ago
  I figured the red sun was the red eye of HAL 9000.
- mountainriver 1y ago
  I’ve gotten very positive feedback from designers on this look, but I guess to each their own
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  The only valid criticism I feel like is the llama.fund but I mean there is r/localllama which has been a reddit space for discussing open source models. There is ollama which runs open source models so uh :/ yeah The website can be changed y'know.
CharlesW 1y ago
> I spent a fair amount of time on it… That's a red flag for me if true. > …just saying "its bad" isn't really helpful feedback. Not sure if serious, but you can start with these: • Trademark misuse – Legal exposure, identity confusion, invites takedown • Gmail contact address – Unprofessional, lacks credibility, signals amateur status • Anonymous "we" – No trust, no track record, only named person using alt email • Lovable-generated site – Bad looking, substance-free, designed to farm email addresses
- mountainriver 1y ago
  None of this is actually needed to get validation. Would me having domain email routing somehow make it more legit? No it wouldn’t, I’ve now gotten validation that people like the idea without doing any of that, which is the exact advice that y combinator gives, yet is never followed in HN comments
  - mnky9800n 1y ago
    I think your attitude to feedback from people who clearly have more experience than you is off putting and it would incline me to believe you lack the responsibility and grit to see a project like this through.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
c0balt 1y ago
To add to the other commenters, in the spirit of providing feedback for the next iteration: - responsivity, the site does not scale well on portrait screens, specifically the email input is shifted to the left and partially off-screen - layout, the header is not vertically aligned. The elements are off-center - design, it looks nice at a first glance but lacks polish. Consider starting with an existing landing page template (there are lots of free ones) and refining with AI, if you are unable to create one yourself or hire/ask someone. - contact/ TOS, you provide your (presumably) legal name and email address. If this is a real fund you should at least provide some sort of address and name of the fiscal host. A personal gmail address also strongly indicates that this is not a functional fund with proper organization of fiscal resources. - name, already mentioned by other posters but the llama part is not good. My first thought was "Meta has new fund?" however the site's content directly squashed this (no legal contact -> no proper fiscal host). Even disregarding trademark concerns, you don't focus on llama but on open-source models, so please try to name it appropriately.
- mountainriver 1y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! I would also say this is early stages and I don’t think it’s necessary to have every piece of this solved. This isn’t a fund really it’s crowd funding, and we are looking to gauge interest as we reach out to investors and early clients. I’m generally surprised by how many people on HN don’t follow their advice. Ship early, get validation
  - fp64 1y ago
    What are you shipping here?
    - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
      I think that uh they are shipping a platform through which crowdfunding can happen for AI models, which is an inherently cool idea imo. Man, I understand the implementation might have some rough edges but that's besides the point because the idea is cool, not sure why people are almost picking up on this guy. Maybe I am wrong, I usually am, but I have been on hackernews for almost an year and HN is usually not like this. Most comments here feel like bully comments, literally being too harsh is not necessary and just reflects our personality back imo. those are my 2 cents atleast.
qingcharles 1y ago
As a web designer, your design is totally fine. Not gonna win any awards. It's fine, though.

vunderba 1y ago

I'll take a stab at providing some specifics: - the black text on fog gray background gradient is... not great looking. - What's with the seemingly arbitrary floating red sun? - the name Llama.fund is a bit odd given this is for general LLM models. Thematically it just feels all over the place.

mnky9800n 1y ago
I figured the red sun was the red eye of HAL 9000.
mountainriver 1y ago
I’ve gotten very positive feedback from designers on this look, but I guess to each their own
Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
The only valid criticism I feel like is the llama.fund but I mean there is r/localllama which has been a reddit space for discussing open source models. There is ollama which runs open source models so uh :/ yeah The website can be changed y'know.

CharlesW 1y ago

> I spent a fair amount of time on it… That's a red flag for me if true. > …just saying "its bad" isn't really helpful feedback. Not sure if serious, but you can start with these: • Trademark misuse – Legal exposure, identity confusion, invites takedown • Gmail contact address – Unprofessional, lacks credibility, signals amateur status • Anonymous "we" – No trust, no track record, only named person using alt email • Lovable-generated site – Bad looking, substance-free, designed to farm email addresses

mountainriver 1y ago
None of this is actually needed to get validation. Would me having domain email routing somehow make it more legit? No it wouldn’t, I’ve now gotten validation that people like the idea without doing any of that, which is the exact advice that y combinator gives, yet is never followed in HN comments
- mnky9800n 1y ago
  I think your attitude to feedback from people who clearly have more experience than you is off putting and it would incline me to believe you lack the responsibility and grit to see a project like this through.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

c0balt 1y ago

To add to the other commenters, in the spirit of providing feedback for the next iteration: - responsivity, the site does not scale well on portrait screens, specifically the email input is shifted to the left and partially off-screen - layout, the header is not vertically aligned. The elements are off-center - design, it looks nice at a first glance but lacks polish. Consider starting with an existing landing page template (there are lots of free ones) and refining with AI, if you are unable to create one yourself or hire/ask someone. - contact/ TOS, you provide your (presumably) legal name and email address. If this is a real fund you should at least provide some sort of address and name of the fiscal host. A personal gmail address also strongly indicates that this is not a functional fund with proper organization of fiscal resources. - name, already mentioned by other posters but the llama part is not good. My first thought was "Meta has new fund?" however the site's content directly squashed this (no legal contact -> no proper fiscal host). Even disregarding trademark concerns, you don't focus on llama but on open-source models, so please try to name it appropriately.

mountainriver 1y ago
Thanks for the feedback! I would also say this is early stages and I don’t think it’s necessary to have every piece of this solved. This isn’t a fund really it’s crowd funding, and we are looking to gauge interest as we reach out to investors and early clients. I’m generally surprised by how many people on HN don’t follow their advice. Ship early, get validation
- fp64 1y ago
  What are you shipping here?
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    I think that uh they are shipping a platform through which crowdfunding can happen for AI models, which is an inherently cool idea imo. Man, I understand the implementation might have some rough edges but that's besides the point because the idea is cool, not sure why people are almost picking up on this guy. Maybe I am wrong, I usually am, but I have been on hackernews for almost an year and HN is usually not like this. Most comments here feel like bully comments, literally being too harsh is not necessary and just reflects our personality back imo. those are my 2 cents atleast.

qingcharles 1y ago

As a web designer, your design is totally fine. Not gonna win any awards. It's fine, though.