I'm working on a website that will do just that... promote new products and give early feedback to founders. The page will be available at spreadmyproduct.com (nothing there yet!).

By the way, if anyone is interested in joining me, please drop me a line at c dot ciocov at iu-bremen dot de.

We had similar ideas. We registered RejectedByYC.com, YCRejects.com, and I think CantGetFunding.com. We've also got a server available at the moment (we're pre-launch, so nothing else is using it...), though we may need to rescind that if the main product launches and starts taking up a lot of bandwidth.

I'd envisioned roughly this feature set:

1.) Forums

2.) Startup profiles - list your logo, demo URL, description, launch status (pre-launch/launched), and maybe a few other fields. Linked to the user profiles of each founder.

3.) "Demo groups" of 10-12 startups, randomly assigned but ideally with a preference for placing startups in the same city together. Each demo group has a private forum and an area for news, feature releases, announcements, etc.. Each feature release has threaded comments for discussion and rapid feedback. Demo groups are expected to be each other's support mechanism, and give each other rapid feedback on new changes. For startups that are pre-launch, only people in the same demo group can see what you're up to. (If you want nobody to see what you're doing, perhaps you shouldn't register it on a website...)

4.) Karma, based on how many feature releases a team has put out lately and how many people click through to their startup based on that. This encourages people to "release early, release often", while the weighting based on clickthroughs prevents people from adding bullshit feature releases.

5.) Location-based meetups and events. We wouldn't organize them ourselves, but we'd have a place for people to announce their formal or informal gatherings.

I'd like to move fast on this, because I still view it as a distraction from our main business idea. I'd like to use it, but am willing to cut every corner in the book to build it. Ideally we'd have something up & launched by the end of this weekend, even if that something is nothing but a forum with profile fields for startup info.

I think it would also be important to use each other's prototypes on a semi-regular basis.

It would be hard to attract users if the site does not look busy.

Sounds like a great idea! I'd also like to be able to help other startups in other ways such as coding help and the like.

What we need first off is an easy way to get in touch with each other. Posting back and forth on YC News would get messy after a while and I think a less public venue would be better. If anybody is interested I can throw up a web forum.

I saw a site with just that intention this morning. I'll see if I can dig up the link. Other alternatives are posting it here on news.YC or on http://demomyapp.com/

The problem with demomyapp is that youtube videos have low resolution.

I think this would be a better way to demo your app:

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

Sure, then Amichail's app will start looking like Anil's app :) or the other way 'round.

(For those that dont know, Amichail's app could well become a competitor of mine)