Ask HN: Good feature, minimal product. Go forward or move on to something else?
11 comments
I would step back and think about the problem this is solving for people and why your early users are getting value from it. Opening/closing times are helpful, but what about the fastest times in an out of the DMV over the course of a day/week/month? If you are visiting Disney World, when are the best times to hit the popular rides? If you could figure out a way to save people a few minutes a week you could charge for your app, it would likely be popular enough to get good ad sales (GTD Books/Workshops for sure!). As it stands I would agree that it probably wouldn't be a good standalone company, but you are onto something smart.
AS you say, the value is in the data, not in any website or iPhone app you may build on that. So you could expand the data, build an iPhone app just for kicks, and try licensing or selling that data (not the app) to companies. The value is in the data, and perhaps even more so in the systems you build to expand that data and keep it up to date. That's what you can license/sell.
This isn't really a feature or a product. It is a data set.
Your best bet might be to develop the process to gather, store, and maintain the data, then sell the set to implementers for their sites.
This is really interesting--I've always been annoyed by this problem, and amazingly Google hasn't fixed it yet. My startup is actually selling a product that is very similar to this, and looks to solve the same problems, but I really really like the "if a business isn't open, it'll tell you about similar ones in the area that are."
I'd like to hear more about your app, how much traction you have, etc. The biggest problem with making this work, of course, is to have city-wide (or country-wide) buy-in by all the businesses. Because is a good percentage are not updating this product with info for you, than it's useless to the end user. This last problem is the one we have solved.
Feel free to contact me if you'd like.
I'd like to hear more about your app, how much traction you have, etc. The biggest problem with making this work, of course, is to have city-wide (or country-wide) buy-in by all the businesses. Because is a good percentage are not updating this product with info for you, than it's useless to the end user. This last problem is the one we have solved.
Feel free to contact me if you'd like.
+1 on the value is in the data comment. Pick one platform and go all out. You should be able to partner with quite a few existing products.
+1 on the time of day comment. It's most definitely a different business to the one you are proposing but a valid thought. There is value to a system which can show how many people are in line at a given establishment at a given time. Both to the consumer and to the company. Can you coordinate how many cell phone signals are in an establishment similar to the companies that track cell phones on the freeway for congestion monitoring?
Provided that you find a way to have a substantial amount of businesses listed, you have a great idea.
you do both. don't ever bet on a quick exit. if it happens, and you get an offer you can't refuse, great. but you have to have your own course of action: turn it into an iphone app, sell the data via an API for others to embed in their app, etc. the big companies will take notice.
every business looks like a feature in the first few months. MS-DOS probably looked like a feature of IBM PCs at the time. when a feature becomes really useful, it turns into a product. when a product becomes really useful, it turns into a business. when a business becomes successful, it creates an industry...
every business looks like a feature in the first few months. MS-DOS probably looked like a feature of IBM PCs at the time. when a feature becomes really useful, it turns into a product. when a product becomes really useful, it turns into a business. when a business becomes successful, it creates an industry...
Release an iPhone shell to test the concept. Refine until people buy it. Then make a web service and so on.
As product manager for the restaurants product at TripAdvisor, I'd love comprehensive opening hours.
I believe google acquired a super early-stage startup that was doing precisely this.
data set is useful.
what if you build an app for this. and also provide this data from API.? I think that would be good!
It's annoying, it's a big waste of time, and it's a problem I've always wanted some local search tool to solve. Like Yelp, Google and other major search engines are only helpful some of the time. A lot of small players have tried to take on the problem, but most have been hamstrung by data that's woefully incomplete or just plain bad. It's a pretty hard nut to crack, in large part because half of the restaurants in a typical city don't even have a website. Data collection is a complete pain in the ass.
Still, I've created something that solves the problem really well. It only covers about a third of one large city as a proof of concept, but it's really helpful. Looking for beer at 3:00 in the morning? Wondering when the DMV office opens? Searching for one of the three places in town that actually serves teriyaki on a Sunday? This app can tell you all of that. If a business isn't open, it'll tell you about similar ones in the area that are. It's just a click to read reviews of the place on sites like Yelp and Citysearch, get directions, etc. It's exactly the product I've always wanted someone else to create.
But that's the rub: it's not really a product; it's just a feature. I'd love to refine the thing, gather loads of information, and roll it out in major cities across the country. It's perfect for a mobile application. It's easy enough for anyone to understand and comprehensive enough for anyone to get value from. But once the data's out there, it'd also be incredibly easy to recreate. There's a definitive first mover advantage, but it would only go so far. This is all a big concern for me; even though I know that a lot of people would use the app and enjoy it, generating revenue is important. Solving this problem on a large scale will require several years of hard work on my part, so there needs to be some sort of sustainable path to get there.
Assume you're in my position. What do you do? Is there some way to build a product around the feature and create a company with a chance at making money? Or do you leave it to an established business with more resources to add the feature to an existing product?