- ISSUE: Our process actually being slow.
It's true that spending a week and a half on something like a logo design is not exactly lean production. But we're actually going above and beyond that. Junto is as much about bringing in feedback on all aspect of production as it is about providing entertainment and developing relationships with potential users – not to mention education about startup process. We want to create advocates earlier and give them reason to feel connected to the startups. Allowing their feedback on things like logo design is easy, inviting and fun for a lot of people. The amount of time it takes is simply a by-product of leaving enough time for people to respond.
And more importantly, behind the scenes, we are bustling with back-end development, wireframing, putting together the business plan and doing a lot of things that don't really make for good public updates... until they are completed. So there's definitely a constant-feedback aspect but it only publicly appears slow when many hours are being spent behind closed doors, iterating away.
- ISSUE: General assumption testing and not going with gut.
We'd also agree that saying something like "people are willing to date within their friend group" is pretty general and kind of a 'duh' statement, but our assumption tests are actually more geared towards allowing viewers to share their experiences and gain insight from their stories. We've gleaned a nugget of helpful insight from every test we've done so far. And again, all of this kind of goes back to building a dedicated audience well before product launch.
So in many ways, we agree with you! And will try to be more conscious of such as we move forward. The order in which we do things and what we show publicly will surely change a lot in the coming months.
Basically, for the immediate moment there's no reason to register as you can comment on updates using Livefyre (Twitter, FB, etc.) Once these first projects go into alphas and betas (and need testing/feedback), registration will come back into play and we'll also sync it with the commenting system.
Yeah, our front page has come a long way but if it's still unclear what our mission is (it's a complicated one, I admit), that's a problem. There used to be a visual sequence on the About page but perhaps we need to bring that back in.
Re: funding... yup, we have had a problem where people think we provide funding as a solo feature, or that funding is our primary feature... and not true. Troy from Excelerate Labs was great to point that out and work with us on it, but if it still appears to be a primary feature then that's a problem. Eventually crowdfunding might have more of our spotlight but not until our community is of a certain size/interaction level.
Team info is at http://thejun.to/about (tab on right says Meet Junto Team) but could be easier to find (other than that, it's only in the footer.)
new to HN so not sure who sees my replies or who don't, but I should've clarified - what you're saying is what I agree with, in terms of prefab themes.
it's just the spec work that gets me. that stuff isn't being sold multiple times like prefab themes. college students do spec no matter how much I yell at them and then end up (in terms of time spent) making so little an hour that it's just atrocious.
but, time and a place, etc.
and the type of work I do is very front-end heavy.... tends to go from mvp to beta launch quickly... and we have designers on staff. so, just spoiled. bad bias!
I wish I could do a general reply to everyone (new to HN) but I think I temporarily confused themeforest with themegarden (and similar.) Well, they are all similar, but it's mostly in WordPress that the prefab stuff really bothers me. For quick 'gotta get the point across' for html5 or trans to ruby or whatever, yeah, themeforest definitely makes sense.
We deal with mostly very design-heavy, frontend-ish startups, where I work, so that may be why we hate spec and prefab work so much. We value originality but YES most definitely agreed, there's a time and a place for it!
Not the tools I'd pin down, but in particular I am majorly against prefab themes like themeforest, and crowdsourced work like 99designs or crowdspring. You get what you pay for, and it's crap. I think both are a major insult to originality and craft that comes with quality design work - the exploitation of the latter, crowdsourced design work, just makes me flat out nauseous.
that said, WordPress, from that list, is indeed the best!
p.s. saw your mentor application! will get back to you asap.