reflect

Personally I think ‘SaaS’ is too broad a topic for a once a week newsletter and it doesn’t give me (or any potential subscriber) much context into what I should expect to see in my inbox each week.

I would suggest trying to get hyper-focused, so you reach a very specific and tight audience.

Off the top of my head here are some potential example topics - Weekly SaaS Case Studies, Weekly SaaS API News, Weekly SaaS Design Breakdown, Weekly SaaS Failutes/Shutdowns, Weekly MicroSaaS Spotlight, etc.

Just my two cents, good luck!

I agree, being able to articulate the value you and your skills will bring to a company in a fresh and succinct manner is a superpower for any job market.

thanks I missed that announcement

I thought this same thing, tough sell but I suppose it’s a decent option for those starting up; zoom for phone, meetings, collaboration, and then I guess email fits in.

I really can’t imagine many established teams moving everything over but Zoom may as well shoot for the moon or die trying.

I think there is an opportunity for them to make a calendly competitor that handles self service zoom meeting scheduling.

Another spot I’m surprised they aren’t embracing more is becoming a training and learning management platform since a lot of zoom recordings are trainings and they could help facilitate this in the platform.

This might be a way to get a post-mvp idea that was built using No-Code/Low-Code to a code base but for a new unproven idea I would say buyer-beware, unlikely to get you what you want.

Productivity adjacent discussions and communities are great places to strike up a conversation and find like-minded people that could benefit from your tool.

Asking how others are currently solving the problem your tool does is a good entryway. You can follow their answer with a suggestion to try your product if it sounds like it could be useful.

For more of a shotgun approach you can post on betalist, reddit /startups Share Your Startup thread, ShowHN, etc.

I think this a really interesting take on social chat/collaboration!

The main reason I closed it was I felt disoriented when I opened the threads. Since it brought me to the end of the chat I had to scroll to the top to catch up (which has some loading lag) so it felt like I had to do too much work to get engaged. Perhaps the opening post could be pinned at least?

The other part I got kind of lost with was the lack of a back button to return to the topics. Using the browser isn’t an issue, but the way the UI is presented it seemed like it would be there but I didn’t see it.

Congrats on a cool project! It’s nice to see some fresh takes on social.

very cool project, unfortunately a bit depressing!

There may be some room for innovation in the way the results are handled, such as secondary searches and more powerful filters to make it easier to get where you wanted to without having to run a new opening search or using advanced search.

Honestly I’d be happy with a google that just let me quickly hide results from certain sites.

I’m still shaken over the fact that Mavis Beacon was a made up character.

As a kid I had felt really encouraged that this nice woman was able to take her typing skills and turn it into this awesome software company.

No joke, hit me a lot harder than finding out Santa wasn’t real.

This is an interesting thought experiment.

Unfortunately i don't think this removes all the friction of having to add your items, writing descriptions, photos, getting things picked up or shipped.

the author agrees there are inherent problems in this model like what happens when things break or come back damaged, how much wear is acceptable, etc. but the magic contract is the solution, and the nuke option seems like it would need to be used heavily to solve disputes.

a peer to peer rent-a-center sounds cool in theory but not sure how it holds up at scale.

Ambitious project, it’s great to see people going big even if it’s a long shot.

Name is a little off putting, plane go boom is usually a bad thing.

I’m a big fan of this one. This is a great tool that is easy to use, brings attention to you on Twitter, and is just a fun gauge of your follower count.

Clubhouse may figure out how to make it work long-term though I’m not convinced- but what is clear is the incredible speed that the larger social properties copy popular apps. Do they have dev teams just drop everything and get it done or do they have a team focused on copying the next big thing?

Naming new businesses is hard but come on- this type of horrible name should actually create a stock sell off.

It's best to start with an early validation website, showcasing an MVP or at least testing interest and pricing with sketches or other mockups.

You could use one of the various landing page websites out there like leadpages, kickofflabs, etc. and have an email sign up form. From there you can email updates to your list of early adopters.

Buffer's MVP story is an easy to follow example: https://buffer.com/resources/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-w...

NY makes you file based on the source of the income not your residency, "You must file Form IT-203 if you: were not a resident of New York State and received income during the tax year from New York State sources", also NYC has it's own tax rate and form, as does Yonkers.

Before I even do any real-world validation I like to score my idea based on four criteria -

1. how much time is needed to get this idea off the ground, 2. how much money is needed to get this idea off the ground, 3. how many new skills are needed to get this idea off the ground, 4. How much will I still enjoy building this a year from now?

Sometimes an idea is just too big or ambitious at first and this helps me sanity check it.

After that I like to validate my idea - for that I need to learn if people are:

1. interested in the idea 2. willing to pay/use it

I always recommend keeping it simple, fast, and cheap - customer interviews, landing pages, mock ups, etc.

This example from buffer - https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-wee... has been around for a while but I still like to point it out as a good way to test a concept and see if people are willing to pay for it.

I'd love to hear what you are working on, I'm a business coach and do a lot of free coaching for new startups ping me if interested [email protected]

perhaps rather than suppressing everything, a "trustworthiness of this news source cannot be verified" tag could be applied to the posts that seem legitimate but have no ranking.

This is a loaded question but to try and be helpful I would say just focus on finding your early adopters - who is actively looking for a way to implement your solution, or who has cobbled together an imperfect solution on their own, or who has the extra budget to easily justify your solution?

Now where can you reach these people? Where are they on the internet? Play where they play. e.g. You already found this large group of potential interested parties - why not post a Show HN? Subreddits? Betalist? etc.

As the quote goes “If you don't build your dream someone will hire you to help build theirs.”

There is always a need for business research, especially in sales or investing. The question is can you make a better product than existing competitors such as Crunchbase, CB Insights, Pitchbook, etc. and give it a a viable business model? Mattermark couldn't.

Interesting, I had also read she created it. Maybe I missed it in the story, but who did actually create and popularize these silly things?

/Startups has a "Share Your Startup" each month which is great

For us ( http://www.startupdaybook.com ) a few things have been very effective -- but it did take a lot of trial and error to find those few things.

BetaList and Reddit have been a big driver of signups as they have the exact audience we are looking to help (startups) and a wide audience.

Blogging has also been a big part of getting signups. Creating helpful posts on Medium with a small product mention at the bottom brings in a good amount of the right people.

Twitter is great for driving traffic to the blog posts which then in turn gets people interested in us and our product. Buffer is awesome, and Quuu is a great service that has a community retweeting your tweet for a nominal fee.

Overall our landing page conversion rate is 29.8% right now, so driving the right traffic really matters.