Imagine 10 earnest, formidable, unknown founders in one end and 10 bad-looking, good, unknown ideas on the other end. It'd be great if they could find each other.
Paying is a stronger signal than entering an email. Harvesting emails might work but it'd need some proof-of-work mechanism to vet people really are interested.
What Kickstarter doesn't provide is a way for backers to show things they want built that no-one stepped up to build yet. That's a bigger set. It's all of the ideas that are left!
You don't need to create some fancy landing page or something. Just describe the idea.
If people pay before an idea gets built, it's probably a big positive sign. It means the idea is big enough of a pain point. If not, this website will be a graveyard of ideas that didn't work.
If this doesn't work I'll take it down in a week.
I can imagine similar examples for music
I'll check on adding channels. Thanks!
Or may be just refund the money back after 30 days?
On refunds there are two options. The builder can either accept the $1000 or refund them.
I don't know what would work. The reason I put a hard-cap on $1000 is to not get in legal trouble during this launch. Getting more than $1000 might make a service classified as an MSB (money services business). For the same reason, I'm thinking of refunding all the money back after 30 days, and not letting the builder keep any of the money.
But since I have no clue how this works legally, and really have no users, I can't go out talking to lawyers about some idea that doesn't have legs. I'll probably take the site offline in a week if posting on Reddit doesn't get users.
Positives: -It was 20-30 times quicker to upload to ptwi, significantly less daunting and was hassle free. I literally did this in five to ten minutes, immediately after seeing this thread. Ks felt like an ordeal, and took the best part of a week to get set up, including multiple drafts, setting up screenshots just to fit their layout, filling out a spreadsheet that wasn't really aimed at the kind of project I had - not to mention their system for verifying payment details and getting checked for fit with their rules (they tell you to allow a certain amount of business days for someone to check it, and don't really make it clear that that's only done if they're automatic system flags something up)
- your website name makes my intentions more clear. With Kickstarter there's often this impression people have, that the campaign is the main or only source of funding for a project, which can be downright harmful to projects. I remember a game console Kickstarter getting lots of flack for asking for an amount that people thought wouldn't be enough to make it work. When you only need a little bit or nothing at all, it's not helpful to have to inflate the amount you're asking for, on an all or nothing form of funding. (To me now, crowdfunding is basically a "vague acquaintances and people in the same online communities as me" round)
Negatives: 1)I couldn't change the amount I'm asking for in total. It might be because I'm on mobile, but even with zooming in, it didn't seem like that was even an input box. $1000 is way more than I need to prove that it's worth continuing on that route. I'd be happier doing $200 but on just a few days of the ad being live, since the next stage is only really a $5 per year thing. (Edit: 5$ per year is roughly what I'd want to charge each user for a basic level subscription)
2) the message about paying $10 to show I'm not a spammer. That is shown once the page is live and it's rather confusing. I don't know your brand and in my experience in the UK most companies that check if you're real by taking money and then refunding do £1, so being asked for $10 on that basis makes me nervous. Makes me question why there wasn't a captcha, or email verification, or restriction to one upload. It took me writing this up to realise posting projects to ptwi is anonymous. That also explains using cryptocurrency and having to save a specific link to administer the page. Feels really odd but kind of cool.
3) I've never used any cryptocurrency before, and I also wouldn't want to have to explain how to use it to people I share the link with. Ideally I should be able to just send the link to people with a short warm intro and leave them to it
Here's the shareable page that I got:
https://provetheywantit.com/project?public_token=pub_EDJsmGx...
1) I just made the amount configurable. I had this feature implemented but disabled, because I didn't want people to stop to decide how much to ask for. One less thing to think about. That's how uploading to ptwi is 20-30 times quicker than Ks.
2) What would you suggest to improve this? Similar to (1) I didn't want people stopping to think about spam when creating the project. I had a version where the qrcode was in /prove and I didn't like the user flow. I also disliked it visually. I made three changes now that might help. Reduced the amount to $5 (I hope it's not too low), explained posting projects is anonymous and how it fights spam, and explained in /prove that making a project public will need to pay to prove the project isn't spam.
3) Maybe /project should include a link to a page that explains what cryptocurrency is and what money is. I'll add this.
1) ooh cool! I think simply having that default prepopulated at $1000 goes a long way to making decision quick- that value immediately gets me deciding if I need to go higher, lower or the same.
2) those changes sound like they'll really help. How about also having a badge on the public pages to show a project has done that step, and saying that on the admin page as a reason to do it as soon as possible.
3) maybe also a link to set up a wallet. I realise this is extra development and payment fees, but enabling regular card transactions would be great - maybe only have it for some projects where anonymity isn't useful. PayPal (or something similar) would be a good compromise.
In theory I could use this to a/b test completely different paths for a project to take, or a selection of different project ideas. It's so simple to upload, and I can do this without having a video demo. You might even be able to just take $10 as a flat upfront fee per listing once you've proven that good ideas get funding there.
I've put in a bit, and it's been https://live.blockcypher.com/ltc/tx/bbed3a666b1399cb1a8b116b... awhile now and still not showing up.
edit: I think the amount you put in is less than the amount requested. You put in 0.01560016 LTC ($3.17 at $203 per LTC) and the project requested 0.0244 LTC ($5).
https://provetheywantit.com/project?public_token=pub_KSUPBwl...
- I don't think I'll be able to create something. I think someone else will be able to.
- Product > idea. A builder who describes a working product has skin in the game, and backers see they're backing something more tangible than an idea.
- You bring up a good point. A better angle might be "ask people to pay to fund the next feature in your project". Fund $1000 at a time.
In reality, you will have to go through literally hundreds of ideas and talk to many, many people to even get your idea to the start line. Then, you can start charging and see if people are willing to pay. To be honest, I feel like this bring-to-market test, whether that's a Kickstarter or a deployment of a SaaS product is the most efficient way to test your idea out.
There are no shortcuts in user research. This website might be better off pivoting to idea aggregator (possibly with gamification/in-game money) to better simulate the market test. People "pay" for a small MVP experiment and contribute in a sort of crowdsourced idea selection and startup formation process.
Ended up creating a project here: https://provetheywantit.com/project?public_token=pub_XAWtPgA...
<a href="theurl">the app name</a>Talking to customers is one of the foundational part of building something useful.
Two books every aspiring startup founder should read.
> https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-...
> https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Humans-Success-understanding-...