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hanskuder@gmail.com
I had the idea for Goalfinch while reading an article here on Hacker News about economic incentives and how effective they are. It got me thinking: What if there were an easy way to set up economic incentives for the goals I have in my own life?
A few months later, after working on it off and on in my spare hours, it's ready for prime time.
With Goalfinch, you define a goal and make a contribution of cash that acts as an incentive for you to complete the goal. Your Facebook friends confirm whether or not you've accomplished it. If you succeed before your deadline, you get the cash back. If you fail, it gets donated to the charity of your choice. The combination of money on the line and your friends breathing down your neck makes for a very powerful motivator.
It's a pretty simple idea that could go in many different directions, but I wanted to share it with this community in its first, fledgling stages. Please let me know what you think!
http://goalfinch.com
I have a dozen or so beta testers who I've been working with throughout development, but it's time to put some real energy into driving lots more people to my site.
This is a pretty niche product. How would you market it? I have an adwords campaign set up, but haven't quite seen the volume I need to get signups. I've hit up the major bloggers in this arena with offers of discount codes and extended trials for their readers, but nobody has written anything yet. My next step is to go out to forums and other discussion sites and just start posting and conversing, but I think that could take some time to build up a critical mass.
Has anybody had luck with print advertising? What about industry trade shows? Any other suggestions?
Thanks!
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/09/11/techstars-first-class-of-boston-startups-launched-at-microsoft-hosted-gala/
"Baby monitors are a $350 million market in the US"
Is this a wild-assed guess, or are these sorts of things tracked and tabulated somewhere? When looking to start a new business, where do hackers look to discover the size of their target markets?