Ask HN: Silo, project management for software web app - What do you think?

5 points by ollierattue 13 years ago | 8 comments

I've built a team with perfectly complimentary skills. We're applied for an incubator. We're going LEAN. The marketing website (MVP) is online - http://getsilo.com - we're collecting emails and have two companies onboard for early stage customer development and feedback. We're building a V1. Things feel good.

I'm keen to get thoughts and feedback about the website, whether the problem and idea is clear, and get a guage gauge on the demand. Do you share this problem? Are Basecamp and Pivotal tracker letting you down?

Many thanks for your time, Ollie Rattue.

eranation 13 years ago |

I think all project management SaaS have let me down so far, Pivotal I think is much superior, the issue is that all of them are around tasks and timelines, a project is so much more than that. If I need to put my documentation elsewhere, and track bugs elsewhere, this is just an overhead (pivotal as example, I stopped using it for bug tracking and moved to Jira)

As a feedback, I would at least change the bootstrap default colors, it's starting to look like all startups look the same...

And in my 5 seconds attention, I didn't quite get the main basecamp killer feature, but I liked the notion of the trees. you got my email...

By the way, would be happy to hear your thoughts on http://flashissue.com if you send newsletters and think it's too painful and takes too long

ollierattue 13 years ago | |

That's great to hear that there are others out there who are dissatisfied with exiting project management tools.

It's interesting that you mentioned Pivotal trackers bad bug tracking support. One of the major issues I've experienced is that project management tools are great for new features but don't work so well for handling bugs. Silo is planned to have three main features 'Fix, Build, Maintain' which all work in slightly different ways. And your're right if you have to use a second tool then the benefit of the first is radically diminished.

You're also right in that the 'basecamp killer feature' isn't clear. Why am I going to switch to Silo? The marketing website needs to work a lot harder to convey the benefit. It is somewhat abstract at the moment. We need to really hammer out the product before we can really sell the killer features and benefits.

As for http://flashissue.com - I love the tagline 'Do you hate creating newsletters?', it instantly caught my attention and got me listening. However I couldn't then quickly work out what you were offering. My advice would be to move the in-app screenshot in place of the generic 'man and help' image which although catching doesn't tell me anything about Flash Issue. I'd also add more and clearer explanations to the screenshot as it's still tricky to work out what the product does.

Thanks for your time.

duiker101 13 years ago |

I am not entirely a sure what i am looking at. Give me a list of defined features and/or at lest some screenshots. it's hard to evaluate something when it's only "abstract".

ollierattue 13 years ago | |

Completely understandable. You're right, it is very abstract at the moment. My attempt was to define the problem and map out what a solution should look like. We are very early stage and work on v1 has only just started. I agree screenshots and examples need to be added. However I'm wondering features are best or whether sticking with 'benefits' is a better approach e.g. 10,000 mp3 vs Your whole music collection in your pocket. Thanks.

marcomassaro 13 years ago |

Ollie

Can you explain how this is different than (and why yours may be better) http://www.bugherd.com/ https://sifterapp.com/

I've seen some others but can't remember them

ollierattue 13 years ago | |

Thanks for posting those links. Those two applications are purely bug trackers. Silo is designed for all stages of software development "Fix, Build, Maintain". Basecamp and Pivotal tracker treat these three activities in the same way. Silo functions differently for each and I believe this is the USP.

sidcool1234 13 years ago |

http://getsilo.com/

ollierattue 13 years ago | |

Thanks, my post didn't link. Thought it auto-linked...