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Show HN: Startup Wishareit – Trying to solve the bad gifts issue

8 points by joaoromao 14y ago

Hi HN! I'm quite new to HN so I'm sorry if I don't do a well built post (in terms of form) as you are probably used to. My name is João Romão, from Portugal, and I'm one of the co-founders of Wishareit, a place for collaborative gifting with your friends and family. Everybody loves gifts but sometimes finding a gift is a really hard task. And the consequence is painful: you get ugly clothes, bad books and.. cactuses. We reached out and discovered that 40% of all gifts in the US in 2011 were considered to be crap and that 83% of people had trouble when looking for a gift. That's a really annoying issue. Our vision is to transform the way gifting is done, turning it into a really collaborative experience. We started off with Wishareit, a collaborative gifting platform where you have socially curated wishlists and where you can find, recommend, give and receive the perfect gifts with your friends and family. We're still in open beta, trying to understand the space and the user behavior. I'd like to get some feedback on the general feeling for Wishareit design and usability and some inputs on what may be improved (i'm sure there are some relevant advice you can provide me). I hope you can help us grow and improve as a product and as a team! On other subject, we will probably pitch at SXSW in Austin, Texas so feel free to tweet (@joaoromaolx) or send me a message on Angel List (https://angel.co/joaoromao) and we'll have a chat there! You can visit Wishareit on www.wishareit.com (I'm sorry if you don't feel confortable with facebook login - contact me and I'll give you a test account so you can experience the website). All the best for you guys, João Romão CEO, Wishareit

revorad 14y ago
Nice design! I signed up hoping to look for a present for my wife. But once I signed in, I just see a generic list of products. I don't see how you are solving the gift finding problem. I have signed up and tried pretty much every single app like this. And not one of them delivers. So, you're right this is a problem that people face, but you will face 2 issues: 1. It's not a problem that people have frequently enough. So even if you get some users, keeping them coming back will be very hard. 2. It's a really hard problem to solve - most apps I've seen just grab my friends' FB likes. Guess what? My friends don't go around FB liking every single thing they like in real life. So, your algorithm has to be really clever and process the text and links that people share. I think it's a bit like the voice recognition problem. People have been trying for years, but only recently have there been big advances because we have a lot more data now. Right now there are millions of people sharing data on social sites. But for any one person, or a pair of friends, the data is still quite sparse. Over time, this will get better. So if you can stick around, your app might improve, otherwise you're probably too early.
- joaoromao 14y ago
  Revorad, thank you for your input! The gifting problem can be solved in three ways: 1) the easiest, through discovery on the trending products page 2) through peer-to-peer recommendations. I can easily recommend a product to a friend and thus (maybe) solve the other person gift finding problem 3) You have the quests part, where you create a quest and people can answer with products too. Do you think these methods can be of value to the user?
sw007 14y ago
Hi Joao, feel free to drop me a line - stevewhyley at yahoo dot com - my friend and I co-own http://ultimategiftlists.com http://ultimategiftlists.com (which we launched a few months ago). We launched it but didn't do much with it - you may be able to get some ideas from us or look to team up in some way! Thanks!

8 points by joaoromao 14y ago

revorad 14y ago

Nice design! I signed up hoping to look for a present for my wife. But once I signed in, I just see a generic list of products. I don't see how you are solving the gift finding problem. I have signed up and tried pretty much every single app like this. And not one of them delivers. So, you're right this is a problem that people face, but you will face 2 issues: 1. It's not a problem that people have frequently enough. So even if you get some users, keeping them coming back will be very hard. 2. It's a really hard problem to solve - most apps I've seen just grab my friends' FB likes. Guess what? My friends don't go around FB liking every single thing they like in real life. So, your algorithm has to be really clever and process the text and links that people share. I think it's a bit like the voice recognition problem. People have been trying for years, but only recently have there been big advances because we have a lot more data now. Right now there are millions of people sharing data on social sites. But for any one person, or a pair of friends, the data is still quite sparse. Over time, this will get better. So if you can stick around, your app might improve, otherwise you're probably too early.

joaoromao 14y ago
Revorad, thank you for your input! The gifting problem can be solved in three ways: 1) the easiest, through discovery on the trending products page 2) through peer-to-peer recommendations. I can easily recommend a product to a friend and thus (maybe) solve the other person gift finding problem 3) You have the quests part, where you create a quest and people can answer with products too. Do you think these methods can be of value to the user?

sw007 14y ago

Hi Joao, feel free to drop me a line - stevewhyley at yahoo dot com - my friend and I co-own http://ultimategiftlists.com http://ultimategiftlists.com (which we launched a few months ago). We launched it but didn't do much with it - you may be able to get some ideas from us or look to team up in some way! Thanks!