Is this possible?
There are also a lot of "What do you want built.." posts, so lets consolidate.
Answer any of the following questions:
1) What needs in your life do you wish were fulfilled online?
2) What online sites do you admire and how could you see a similar concept working in lateral industries?
3) What offline sectors do you see as the least represented online?
4) And then to go back to the original ycombinator.com/ideas.htm - feel free to elaborate or add to the list. (in the same vein, generally speaking)
I feel like maybe it was started or sold by someone who was interviewed on Mixergy. Anyone know what I am talking about?
Wufoo does a fantastic job for this with forms, but what other areas could this be applied to?
What other tools could be made to help businesses benefit in a similar sense?
It got me thinking about a CRM created largely with the freelancer in mind. Users create a form of sorts to embed on their site, potential clients then fill it out and it's funneled and organized in the app. I think this could be a really great tool, especially for people who get a lot of requests.
I'm mainly wondering if:
1) Do you think this is a good idea or does email suffice in managing new and potential clients?
2) Can you think of any other features to go along with this idea that would also benefit freelancers (besides the obvious ones like invoicing and time tracking as those two spaces are very crowded)?
3) Would you pay for a tool like this?
And also, on that note, what about a workroom of sorts (similar to Elance) where you can pass back and forth all communications?
Certainly some of these areas are very well-covered and considerably crowded spaces, particularly team and client collaborating and invoicing. I was wondering if any of you saw areas or niches that were being underserved or all together missed?
So a startup or concept would come on and post their idea and the community would then buy shares/equity into the company?
I was thinking that because actual profit can be skewed so much, in exchange for buying equity/shares, the startup would payout a percent of revenue back to the investors. That way it couldn't be up for debate what that number is. Thoughts?
I will throw out some questions to get things going:
1) How did opentable overcome the Chicken and the egg problem? Did they build up a roster of restaurants before they even opened the consumer side of things?
2) Did OT start with just San Francisco? How fast did they expand into other cities? Or did they go from SF to nation wide in two steps?
3) How hard was it for Opentable to change the way people made reservations? Was the market ready for it or did it take a long time to get people to make reservations this way?
Thought I would get some discussion going on it: -How do you feel Etsy was able to overcome the Chicken and the egg problem? -Were they able to just find a great market that was being underserved by eBay? -Do you see other markets that could flourish by being "spun" out of eBay? -How were they able to market themselves to not only shopkeepers but consumers as well?
I am sure there are other good questions as well..
1) 37 signals approach - which is a very limited hidden free plan and then numerous other paid options.
2) Squarespace approach - 15 day free trial, with no credit card required. If you don't upgrade then your account is canceled
3) Carbonmade approach - funnel everyone into the site via a free plan and then once registered try to get them to upgrade
4) And then another pretty common one is - credit card down on sign up with a 15 day free trial, which rolls into a paid plan if you don't cancel.