Ask HN: Please review launchly - The home of website launches

Re:Ask HN: Please review launchly - The home of website laun... by SwellJoe on Friday June 26, 2009 @07:52PM (#676383)

I often get the feeling we, as the tech startup community, spend too much time looking inward. I understand that everybody says "scratch your own itch" and "solve a problem that you have, because you can't really understand other peoples problems", etc. But, it seems like maybe you've chosen a very small market (web startups), who are broke practically by definition, and then selected a dramatically smaller niche within it (web startups that have just launched). Not only that...it's a niche that means the people who would want to post a launch would never have reason to return after the initial rush of the launch period.

So, what you've built looks very nice. You seem to have executed well from a technical perspective...but I fear you're about to find out that you don't have a sustainable business (beyond maybe paying for the server costs).

Then again, what do I know? I work on boring stuff all the time, and I thought Facebook and Twitter were kinda dumb. I could just lack the vision to see what you see in this particular niche of this particular market.

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Re:Ask HN: Please review launchly - The home of website laun... by bdmac97 on Friday June 26, 2009 @08:24PM (#676420)

That is a great comment. I did start this to "scratch my own itch" as you say, because I could not find what I wanted/needed. Specifically it is very difficult to get multiple rounds of feedback on a site at places like HackerNews.

I do not think web startups in the launch phase is that much of a niche. There are often times 20 "Ask HN: Review xxx site" posts on here a week and that's just on HN. I'd be perfectly happy with just those 20!

I fully agree that the site owners may not have much reason to return to launchly after their launch is over and they no longer need feedback BUT new launches are constantly happening. A (hopefully) big audience for launches will be web development shops that are constantly putting out client web applications. They would be able to include a launchly launch as part of their "package" to the client.

I think the returning visits will be from the "general audience" that is just interested in seeing the latest web apps and having a chance to give their valuable input... just like people do here on HN.

Thank you for your thoughts!

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Re:Ask HN: Please review launchly - The home of website laun... by ColemanF on Friday June 26, 2009 @08:06PM (#676400)

i don't think it's too niche, because as many web apps as have come out in the last year, i think there will be way more in the coming year. good, thought-provoking comment, though.

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Re:Ask HN: Please review launchly - The home of website laun... by bdmac97 on Friday June 26, 2009 @08:52PM (#676452)

Agreed (obviously haha). There are so many web apps coming out every day it's almost too much! How do you keep track of all of that? Launchly! :-)

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