Ask HN: This is our YC W2014 application. Can you give me feedback?

30 points by sandeep45 12 years ago | 36 comments

Hello. My name is Sandeep, and I'm the cofounder of FeatureKicker. As a developer, I have built many features. Many of them were a waste of everyone's time. I built FeatureKicker so we can "make something people want" instead of software that sucks.

We're applying to YC W2014, and we'd love your feedback on our application: docs.google.com/document/d/1kv_Rgr4-y9wvrOxwZdTevhW-r-i5pktUBcw6t0ufazY

Give it to us straight. We've got thick skins.

-- UPDATE -- CRAP! Looks like we exceeded Google Docs' max number of concurrent viewers. Here's our application on Tumblr: startupsthehardway.tumblr.com/post/63091956854/featurekickers-yc-w2014-application

sjtgraham 12 years ago |

I'm not sure about the "hacked system" answer, I don't think it demonstrates a novel insight used to identify something exploitable. It's obvious that pure graft and time will let you sell a lot of raffle tickets, but would you still have won if your competitors deployed an equal amount of effort in the same way? Did you win because of a unique insight that yielded a competitive advantage, or did you win because your competitors didn't care enough? That's not clear.

That said, I do think it demonstrates some ability to hustle. Here, what you're really doing is getting HN to write, or rather optimise your YC application. You're exploiting the vanity of HN, i.e. everyone wants to look smart by providing an ingenious comment. You synthesise the best into your application, and make off like a bandit. That would be a pretty novel hack in itself. :)

sandeep45 12 years ago | |

Thats great feedback. Thank you :)

sixQuarks 12 years ago |

Your competition: "Our strongest competitors are customer apathy and DIY solutions that are cobbled together."

the fact there are no competitors gives me pause. That's actually not a good thing.

--------------- "Assuming we obtain 4500 customers within 5 years, charging an average of $1000/mo, we expect to earn $54M in annual recurring revenue from our products and services."

- this is waaaaay too unrealistic IMO. Any company willing to pay $1k per month for this would probably just build the feauture themselves, no? I don't think large companies are your target market. -----------------------

- dejamore: I love the video - dealonaire.com link didn't work

JRFuentes7 12 years ago | |

dude, awesome feedback. thanks! Especially re dealonaire.com. We'll fix that ASAP.

JRFuentes7 12 years ago |

Here's a quick overview of what we do:

Our product helps software teams “make something people want.”

When teams build or improve software, they crave data to inform their decisions, but calling, emailing, and surveying customers falls short. Product teams can’t afford to get this wrong given limited and expensive engineering resources.

With FeatureKicker, a team can quickly add a “call to action” for a new feature on a website. When a user clicks on the experimental button, our tech opens a modal window and gets user input on the new feature.

Similarly, teams can get feedback on existing features of their website, so they can improve their product.

mrgreenfur 12 years ago |

Honestly, I think it's a cool widget! It doesn't sound nearly big enough to get a 10x return on VC though. How big is the market really? I watched your intro video and came away a bit underwhelmed: Can't someone just replace this with an analytics event of "clicked" and extrapolate that only people who want a feature are clicking on that feature?

Have either of you worked on product teams before? Do you have feedback from product teams? Usually this isn't a problem of competing features, but usually of "will people use this" at an entire product or project level. MVP is how most people I know attack these things.

JRFuentes7 12 years ago | |

"Honestly, I think it's a cool widget! It doesn't sound nearly big enough to get a 10x return on VC though."

I hear ya... we worry about that sometimes. But then I think about what PG says re "it's our Altair." We gotta start somewhere.

How big is the market? There are 5M product managers in the US, according to LinkedIn. Assuming 13 PMs per company, there are many, many companies that should be using this.

I don't think you could or should replace our tech with a click event. I'll agree that 404 tests are a good start... but they lack qualitative data and a rules engine. I believe that's an inferior customer experience.

We've interviewed 100+ product teams at this point. We're getting good feedback -- especially re "getting data on existing features."

arethuza 12 years ago |

I actually think this is a pretty good idea. However, could there be some way of having these "proposed" features turned off by default and giving users an option to turn them on? Otherwise, as people have commented, it might cause frustration as people try to use features that aren't implemented yet.

Could you have a view for end users so you can see all proposed new features? Sort of crowd-sourced product marketing...

Edit: What about letting end users suggest completely new features this way? (e.g. allowing them to draw on a screenshot of the page and say "I want a button here that does XYZ").

sandeep45 12 years ago | |

Arethuza: Thanks for your feedback.

We have a rules engine, which can be used to really fine tune when and how the feature experiments are shown.

For example, you can setup so 1. feature experiments are only shown to a customer who has logged in at at least X times. 2. You can control so they don't see an experiment after it has been seen once by them. 3. You could say that if they have seen 1 feature experiment, then they shouldn't see another 1 for X days. 4. You could also only show to X percentage of your traffic. 5. And many more rules.

I like the idea of being able to crowd source ideas. It would be a great feature for me to "kick" and see what customers say :)

arethuza 12 years ago | | |

No problem.

BTW One question that I think anyone considering an investment would ask is: "Do you use your own product to collect data on features for your product?". :-)

6thSigma 12 years ago |

(I'm not involved with YC, so take this with a grain of salt.)

I think the idea is really cool and I can see how useful it could be for companies, but do you have evidence that users actually give feedback via your method?

I'm trying to look at this product from that side of the equation, and I could see me getting frustrated that clicking "Sign up with Google+" doesn't actually do that. If you have evidence showing that users are willing to give feedback, or have some type of insight regarding that, I'd definitely include it in the application.

Goodluck!

sandeep45 12 years ago | |

6thSigma: Thanks for your feedback :). To answer your question, with our beta customers, we have shown the feedback overlay more than 1K times and have gotten a 60% feedback rate.

We think this is because we ask the right person, the right question at the right time. Its the right person, because this person clicked on the feature, its the right question because the question is about the feature they clicked on and not their age, gender etc. and its the right time because they are in the app, just clicked on the feature and at the height of their curiosity when it comes to that feature.

In regards to frustration, we believe this is a valid theoretical concern, but in practicality with our 27 beta customers, we haven't yet had anyone complain.

We think this is because our customers are using this in a "logged-in" product, leveraging our rules engine to control how often the feature experiment is shown and to who.

6thSigma 12 years ago | | |

If I were you, I'd get rid of the "right person, the right question at the right time" bit in the application and include "we have shown the feedback overlay more than 1K times and have gotten a 60% feedback rate."

chrisstanchak 12 years ago |

Don't get too hung up on the critical feedback here. It's a good idea and the application is solid. In my opinion there is a big enough market for this. Stick to the idea and nail the original premise for the company - saving developer hours.

One idea would be to make your video a little more natural and less 'cutesy'. They are trying to get to know the real you.

Good luck! Our company, Loveseat (formerly Bidbash) got an interview for summer '13 - but, we didn't get in. Met PG and that was fun. We're still doing it though! Stick with it.

chrisstanchak 12 years ago | |

And....I'm the founder of TicketLeap - Eventbrite's biggest competitor in DIY ticketing. Big platforms have to jump through all kinds of hoops to figure out which features to build. Your idea makes sense to do user testing on real users all the time.

porter 12 years ago |

Here's some feedback on the last questions about something surprising you've found. Instead of putting something any middle schooler could find on google, you should but a unique insight instead. For example, what features (out of the many you claimed to have built), have had surprising results? Perhaps this could be something nobody thought would move the needle, but ended up as a breakout success. This would provide a much more powerful insight, and also help justify the product you want to build.

JRFuentes7 12 years ago | |

Very good thoughts, porter. We'll consider this more and edit our application. This is precisely the kind of feedback we're looking for here. :)

austenallred 12 years ago |

You asked me to give it to you straight.

Seems like a cool little widget, but I doubt the market for it would be big enough to be worth your time. It's a small enough of a problem that most people won't notice it, and if they do they could easily solve it themselves. People won't be looking for a solution, and it's not cool enough that people would share it just because.

As for your questions, your responses are way too long.

sandeep45 12 years ago | |

Austenallred: Thanks for giving to me straight.

I think this seems like an "easy" thing to build in-house, but we believe getting this right will take a ton of time, which companies could put towards doing what they do best.

Here is what we have: 1. The rules engine, to track visitors and fine control who see's feature experiments and how often. 2. An analytics suite, to capture all data and show it in a form which is digestible and allows a PM to take action 3. Making overlays work cross browser and device. 4. Solution which requires absolutely no-code to get feedback on existing features. A gui where PM's can visually find features on their website, tap on them and configure them to ask for feedback.

austenallred 12 years ago | | |

I'm not questioning that it's hard to build as much as I am that people will go out of their way to get it. But best of luck to you, prove me wrong!

lectrick 12 years ago | | |

hello there sandeep. this is peter. ;) keep on hackin!

bradpineau 12 years ago |

Great overall concept. I think it's something my company could use.

One concern I'd have if using this product, is that often the customer says what they think they want, but don't actually need. So I'd expect there to be some decent "management" tools for working through all the feedback. Maybe some sort of internal scoring or feedback system within the company or something.

JRFuentes7 12 years ago | |

Thanks. You're right that it's not just what users say. You have to observe what they do, too. In the next version of our product, we want to provide a "confidence score" for a person's feedback, which is based on what we've observed them doing in the application (e.g., are they a power user? are they freemium or enterprise user? did they leave yes/no feedback + commentary?).

As for the internal scoring system, we integrate with JIRA so you can send your data to your existing prod-dev mgmt tools. We hear KANO analysis is really powerful when it comes to scoring your prod roadmap.

sandeep45 12 years ago | |

FeatureKicker provides both qualitative and quantitate feedback. Besides what the customer has said, you can also see things like how many time was the feature "viewed" and then how many times was it "clicked". How long was it open for, did they highlight things when reading etc. In our next version, we r planning on building something to better digest all this data so customers can take quick action.

hkarthik 12 years ago |

Congrats Sandeep! I think your application is well written.

One thing I think you guys should consider in your target market is mobile app developers. Also consider looking at Backend-as-a-service providers like StackMob/Pars in your market size estimations.

Good luck!

sandeep45 12 years ago | |

Karthik: Thanks, buddy. We are still validating our idea, collecting feedback from beta users and trying to prove to ourselves that this things has legs. Soon though we'll release a native version of FeatureKicker. Something which tags elements and gestures. Imagine shaking the phone, and our overlay coming in to ask, "We think shaking should do X. Is that what you expected?"

What do you mean by "Backend-as-a-service"? Tell me more.

hkarthik 12 years ago | | |

Sandeep: Sorry little late in seeing these comments. Check out startups like StormPulse, Parse, and Stackmob to see what I mean about Backend-as-a-service.

JRFuentes7 12 years ago |

Ummm... looks like we maxed out the number of concurrent viewers (max: 50) who can see the Google Doc. We're going to move the application to our blog.

JRFuentes7 12 years ago | |

Here's the link on our blog in case the Google Doc doesn't work: http://startupsthehardway.tumblr.com/post/63091956854/featur...