Rate my startup: coookin.com

Rate my startup: coookin.com(coookin.com)

15 points by logandk 15 years ago | 24 comments

Any site around pictures of food gets my vote :) However, the tag line "beautiful food photos" isn't right: the pictures aren't all that pretty.

- When you "zoom" into a photo, ie. go to the photo detail page, the actual picture is not much larger than the thumbnail. If this is about photos of food, the photo should be larger.

- All the emphasis on "beautiful photos": I think you have the wrong angle here. Amateur food photos are not pretty, making good food photos is one of the hardest things to do, even for professional photographers.

logandk 15 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback, good points! I think you are right about the wording, I'm gonna rework that.

ramidarigaz 15 years ago | |

If you click the photo on the recipe page, it shows a large image.

BenS 15 years ago |

I think this site will succeed or fail based on the quality of the food images. I would recommend you look at how opensourcefood.com cultivated high quality images from their community. If a low standard is set, I don't think there will be much you can do to make the site valuable.

fookyong 15 years ago | |

oh wow, flattered to see opensourcefood.com get name-dropped on HN!

(disclosure: I was the founder, but sold it in 2009 - it is basically unchanged though)

Setting the standard from the start is something any founder of a UGC site needs to be actively involved in.

In the case of OSF I was responsible for much of the early content, armed with my dSLR. I then invited friends who were similarly equipped and they added awesome photos/recipes, which really helped set the tone.

I also actively deleted crappy content. I felt like a douchebag for doing it, but there was a standard I wanted to maintain. People who got their content removed would receive a list of tips to help them take better photos for next time :)

Eventually this scales out of control. You can see the content from the early days is still the most popular: http://www.opensourcefood.com/recipes/all_time_best

And it's all pretty high quality. But you can't keep that going forever as you community grows from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands and beyond.

It's super important for early adoption though. Visitors have to visit your site and go "wow, I want to be part of this!".

tptacek 15 years ago |

Very pretty, but doesn't do anything I find useful. And I cook, a lot.

What's the long-term vision here?

Also: couldn't hate the name more.

logandk 15 years ago | |

It's a place to share photos of what you have cooked. I enjoy food photography, and I wanted a place like this to share my photos. It's not about recipes, there are plenty of sites for that.

Seems like it is just not for you, too bad. Your comment would be more useful if you could elaborate on what it is that you find useful, though.

mikemol 15 years ago | |

If I had to guess, it looks like it's a competition for dish presentation? So, it'd get its energy from the ego and competitiveness of the people who participate. No idea what they're looking for for a revenue model, unless they're trying to serve as a cooks' competitive photo-portfolio.

joel4039 15 years ago | |

I couldn't agree more. Pictures of food are really not very useful. If the pages contained actual information, maybe the recipe (some pages do) then this might be useful. Also, I think some type of search is absolutely necessary.

logandk 15 years ago | | |

You are right about searching, definitely on the todo list. Thanks.

huhtenberg 15 years ago |

Did not sign up for all the reasons listed in this thread -

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1665498

Nice idea otherwise, but I would move "It's all about photos" to the front page. Otherwise it is very easy to assume that it's a Dribbble for the recipes.

logandk 15 years ago | |

Thanks for the suggestion, it might serve as a better tagline. Regarding the sign in, I am very happy with the current solution - I don't see the hassle? Everybody has a Facebook/twitter/google account these days :)

huhtenberg 15 years ago | | |

I am very happy that you are happy with the current sign-in solution. Unfortunately it does not work for me. I don't have Facebook or Google account, nor do I plan on getting them. The Twitter account I have, but I am not comfortable associating it with some (essentially) random website that I am merely curious about.

CodeMage 15 years ago |

I found a recipe I liked within the first two minutes, precisely because of the photos. However, after that, I realized it just wasn't my kind of site. I like looking for new recipes and the emphasis on photos would be a great thing for me, but there's no way to filter or categorize stuff.

icey 15 years ago | |

I've got nothing to do with the OP, but what sort of filtering and categorization do you think you'd use? By cuisine? Ingredient?

CodeMage 15 years ago | | |

As many of the following as possible: cuisine, ingredients, type of dish (i.e. salad, meat, dessert), difficulty (of preparation), time (i.e. how long it takes to prepare it).

If I had to choose three, I would choose type, difficulty and time. Those three would be "must haves" for me, cuisine would be a "should have" and ingredients would be "nice to have".

logandk 15 years ago | |

Valid argument, searching and filtering needs more work!

chaosmachine 15 years ago |

Maybe it's just because I'm hungry, but I really like this site. The only thing I didn't like was the infinite scrolling. There's something psychologically unsatisfying about a page you can never reach the bottom of. I much prefer the steady progress of a "next" button.

drtse4 15 years ago |

Made me think about foodgawker.com and tastespotting.com,imo you should add some sort of categorization. The average user probably will use you site as source of inspiration, so being able to choose with a tag cloud (or better, a more clever mechanism) would be a good plus. What about trying to improve the look of the photos providing a section with photography suggestions(maybe wrote by your best users)?

mminolt 15 years ago |

Looks really cool and very exciting to a foody like me. It would be nice though to have more details about the recipe structured into some of the posts. Some pics, titles, and details barely tell you what the recipe is... Maybe you can create incentives for some of your submitters to add the recipe and get entered into a recipe DB as well. Best recipe can receive major attention... etc.

barrydahlberg 15 years ago |

I clicked on a photo wondering how to make a Joakim Bugge, turns out its someones name and there's no recipe. Maybe the site is not for me?

rjett 15 years ago |

I'm no match for this Joakim Bugge character who has recently cranked out 4 new dishes!

In all seriousness, I would at least provide a way to broadly tag dishes according to ethnic influence/price of ingredients/or time to prepare.

From here, I would personally prefer a slider to browse through the dishes rather than scrolling down a seemingly bottomless page.

BTBurke 15 years ago |

Terrible name. Like the idea of photos, but when I click on them I want to see a recipe so I can make it. What about copyright? I see some of the recipes are taken from iphone apps or books. Are you liable if someone posts a recipe straight from a source that is legally protected?

andysinclair 15 years ago |

Looks ok for a first effort, but check this site out: www.mycookingdiary.com My wife loves it, it has great, large photos and a cool navigation system.

Anyway, I clicked on one of your ads, so at least you will make some money.