Show HN: Sparkmuse, story and beta of my side project
The Story:
Well here it is, the beta of Sparkmuse. I'm pretty happy to "get there", but I'm really just relieved. Don't get me wrong, I'm F'ING STOKED to get this in front of some more valuable eyeballs, especially the Hacker News crowd. Right now though, I'm just leaning back in a rickety old chair thinking "I did it."
Several months ago I was pretty down on myself. I wanted to get out there and meet new people, do cool projects, explore new technologies, and just jump into a swimming pool full of what I love. Some people call it passion and maybe that is cliche, but what is passion if it sits on a couch all night? But it was just a dream, I worked the 9-5 at an enterprise job, put in an extra hour here and there, and then came home to waste time on the tube.
I love my job, enterprise software is challenging at a technical and a strategic level, but the inspiring stories here on HN are just too hard to resist. I wanted to be part of it, but I couldn't: all of my work is NDA'd to the end of eterity, what did I have to show others? I didn't really want to quit and I probably couldn't afford to do it anyway. The only solution was to change my life from within.
Cut the cable bill, change the diet, stop thinking and start doing. Ok, but what do I work on? I live in the butthole of tech, so I needed to bring the community to me. The whole "do cool projects and meet new people" bit doesn't work without one. So that is what I built, Sparkmuse, a site dedicated to bouncing ideas and meeting new people with which to do them. It's Ask HN: [My Idea] for the action-oriented.
For several months, I came home every night and did what I set out to do. I coded, I designed, I made magnificantly bad attempts at marketing, I networked. Some nights it was just 30 minutes and others I was up until 3am, but I was committed to doing whatever I could each day. It was fun, I mean alot of fun. I used to play poker professionally and the rush of huge wins was unsurpassed until now.
So maybe it will work, maybe it won't, but it doesn't really matter (hey, I didn't claim to be a salesman). When I crawed out of my shell just a little, I found a world of insanely generous, helpful, and passionate people. It's almost hard to explain or believe. What I thought was someone else's story on HN, when I thought they had to be "special" to get into the club, was open to me the whole time. All I had to do was wake up and join the party. I've spoken to people who are a million times richer and more famous than I am, and I felt like every single one of them was on my side.
This is my message to the guy I was 6 months ago and anyone like him: you don't have to quit your job, you don't have to take a huge risk. Everyone can do something. Be it for profit or not, there is a whole community out there that wants to know YOU and wants YOU to succeed. You will meet awesome people and learn tons of new things. Just get out there and try, you won't regret it. I only wish I had started years ago.
The Site:
Oh, and if you'd like to know what the site is about, here is the pitch:
Sparkmuse is a community focused on discussing, refining and acting on innovative tech ideas. We welcome any ideas which aim to solve an identifiable need through science, engineering, and technology. This includes web applications, mobile tech, robots, circuit boards, industrial design, or even the human genome. This is an environment for creativity and inspiration, a network for both you and your ideas to flourish and grow as your vision matures.
Developers, designers, marketers, angels, anyone involved in the startup scene is invited. Let's build something together. Even if no one else shows up, you can count on me being there~
Please join me at http://www.sparkmuse.com. I've set up a special invitations page for you guys to get into the beta at http://www.sparkmuse.com/invitation/Hacker-News .
I've been tossing around a nearly identical idea for a few weeks, and had a good laugh (and better cry) after reading this post.
As I'm sure most will, I felt a bit of apprehension before posting, but went ahead and submitted my first idea a few minutes ago. It might just be the perfect outlet for those more off-the-wall ideas that I'm not too heavily invested in. I love the design and character of the site, and think you already have a great identity down. The illustrations really fit the idea-bouncing, brainstorming process that it serves.
Someone said it below, but i had also first clicked a lightbulb on accident with no idea of what it stood for. Might want to throw a little question mark with a description near it?
Looking forward to see how it progresses, best of luck!
I just registered on your site, I love the idea and the design. I was also afraid that I would land on an empty site, but there is already lots of idea to read and discuss about.
One little think that I think you can improve. You seem to love to write :) and I guess talk . We feel that on your website there is a looooot to read maybe to much.I find so much text overwhelming maybe you could reduce or delete some of it. My 2 cents...
Good luck on your project and congratulations !
Seriously, there's a pointing finger with "Sparks over this way" - that's your tl;dr shortcut right there. I like this site a whole lot.
Nice cartoon work, btw - where did that come from?
On the feed page, I think you could reduce the text on the sidebar. I dont care about the welcome message, if I'm registered why do you explain me the website again I should already had understand what Sparkmuse is about. I would delete that paragraph and replace it only by the "Create Spark" button (make it big and colorful, I didnt saw it the first time I saw this page)
You can also reduce the "We want feedback" block maybe you can install uservoice or something.
On the spark page the solution appear 2 times at the top of the page and on the sidebar. Why ? Maybe you should put the question and the solution at the top of the page like Quora/Stack Overflow or other discussions board.
Again it's only my PoV. You made a great job .
I'd not say 'improve' - call it expand :-)
Being verbose has its own advantages too. One that I can immediately point out is from SEO perspective.
As most know, one thing the SE crawlers love the most (besides links) is content. Content rich (i.e. verbose) pages are usually good organic traffic magnets. (On the flip side, they can deter many human visitors! The Catch 22 is, common webmaster guidelines say 'optimize for human visitors'.)
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't care about you at all. Explain the unique benefits that that person can access right now. Appeal to their selfishness. Focus specifically on things that Sparkmuse enables (right now) that cannot also be said about alternative sites, such as Hacker News. Trim everything else away.
... while cutting out the flab, if I were you. :-)
Nicely done, as I'm using the site I'm finding a lot of nice touches. I like the tagging UI. As stated the site is a bit text heavy. Overall very nice job though. Look forward to seeing how it goes. I posted a spark =)
Best of luck.
1. Love the design. Did you do it yourself?
2. Did your employer have any problems with you working on the side (do they own the IP)? If so, how did you get around this?
My employer doesn't have a problem with me participating in open-source projects, having a personal blog, or generally playing around with tech on the side. However, I've not tried to build a profitable project on the side yet. If I were to, I would consult with them first and make sure it was cool. Most of the time, I've found people don't mind if you are 1) working at a smaller company, 2) not competing with them, and 3) still doing awesome work for them.
http://www.sparkmuse.com/about
(It points to http://www.sparkmuse.com/footer.html#)
As for action, I personally get really energized just having conversations about an idea, but that isn't enough alone. There is a function within each Spark that lets people offer help if they like the concept and want to be a part of it. Outside of that, I still want to do more to encourage action.
We've talked about running a startup version of a hackathon. An event where people would share their ideas over a couple days, a committee would pick the best group, and people could join up to do them. Instead of a normal hackathon though, you'd build a landing page and spend a week marketing to sell your idea and get people to sign up or even commit to buying your product. The winner of the event would be the one who gained the most traction, not the one with the coolest hack.
I tried to create an account using vtunnel, don't know if it worked or not. Twitter name was ocanbascil.
Would love to discuss with you about some of the more backend details of the site, is it alright if I reach out to you via email?
10 start
20 allow email registrations
30 goto 20
;-)