inluvwithjc
New member
Hi! Can I please have my startup roasted? (Is that "question" clear enough? :- ))
About the product, and unique selling point: EffectiveDiscussions (ED) is Forum software with Chat and Question-&-Answers features. Often, organizations setup a chat (e.g. Slack), a forum (e.g. Discourse) + use e.g. StackOverflow — but then they've split their community into three. However, with EffectiveDiscussions organizations get all (?) they need and can gather everyone at one single place.
Homepage: https://www.effectivediscussions.org/
Who would want it: Companies, to talk with users & customers. Non-profits. Political parties, for their members? Open source projects, for support and for their contributors. Well, "anyone" who wants to create some kind of online community.
The market (size, competition, dynamics that we should be aware of):
There seemed to be about 1 billion possible users of forum software (not customers), about 7 years ago. (I estimated how many people had been using discussion forums on the internet — because my software is fairly similar to discussion forums.) Today, the market seems to be ... larger than large enough, + growing (people in developing countries get access to the Internet).
Competition: Competitors include forum + chat + question-answers software. Lots of companies & open-source-software have appeared the last few years that do online team chat. E.g. Slack, Discord, Gitter. And some companies are building better forum software. E.g. Discourse and Flarum. Things like Facebook and Email are also competitors / alternatives.
Product analysis / comparison against competition:
The competitors I've found are single-purpose (either forum or chat or Q&A). However, organizations often want both a chat + a forum, it seems to me. Then they setup a chat and a forum, at different Software-as-a-Service providers —> people visit either the forum, or the chat. Half of the people in the community then is "invisible" to the other half. — With ED, however, an organization can gather everyone in one place.
Another difference is that ED includes Reddit and Hacker News type discussions + improvements. Which I think is needed for some types of discussions. Imagine Reddit without threading.
What stage are you in?: I've built a minimum-viable-product (or so I think).
Do you need money? Not right now.
Customer conversion strategy (where do you find them, and how do you make them buy shit from you):
Not sure. Ideas welcome :- ) I found this list: https://triphappy.com/blog/131-startup-directories-to-promote-your-startup/1 and will submitt to the relevant places. I'm also going to email organizations and ask what they think about creating an online community for their members / users (I should have done this long ago I suppose, to gauge interest), and offer ED to them for free for a few years. + there's lots of stuff out there for me to read & learn ...
Why am I a good person to do this: Well, I can create software. And I have a vision about where all this is going. ... Otherwise, at least initially I was not really the right person — I did everything wrong the first few years, and eventually gave up and got a full time job instead. ... But continued with ED in the evenings & weekends, and finally reshaped it into something useful. ... Did I? (A bit later, if ED seems to become popular, I'll look into creating a team.)
Thanks for reading, and for any feedback & thoughts & rosting.
/KajMagnus
About the product, and unique selling point: EffectiveDiscussions (ED) is Forum software with Chat and Question-&-Answers features. Often, organizations setup a chat (e.g. Slack), a forum (e.g. Discourse) + use e.g. StackOverflow — but then they've split their community into three. However, with EffectiveDiscussions organizations get all (?) they need and can gather everyone at one single place.
Homepage: https://www.effectivediscussions.org/
Who would want it: Companies, to talk with users & customers. Non-profits. Political parties, for their members? Open source projects, for support and for their contributors. Well, "anyone" who wants to create some kind of online community.
The market (size, competition, dynamics that we should be aware of):
There seemed to be about 1 billion possible users of forum software (not customers), about 7 years ago. (I estimated how many people had been using discussion forums on the internet — because my software is fairly similar to discussion forums.) Today, the market seems to be ... larger than large enough, + growing (people in developing countries get access to the Internet).
Competition: Competitors include forum + chat + question-answers software. Lots of companies & open-source-software have appeared the last few years that do online team chat. E.g. Slack, Discord, Gitter. And some companies are building better forum software. E.g. Discourse and Flarum. Things like Facebook and Email are also competitors / alternatives.
Product analysis / comparison against competition:
The competitors I've found are single-purpose (either forum or chat or Q&A). However, organizations often want both a chat + a forum, it seems to me. Then they setup a chat and a forum, at different Software-as-a-Service providers —> people visit either the forum, or the chat. Half of the people in the community then is "invisible" to the other half. — With ED, however, an organization can gather everyone in one place.
Another difference is that ED includes Reddit and Hacker News type discussions + improvements. Which I think is needed for some types of discussions. Imagine Reddit without threading.
What stage are you in?: I've built a minimum-viable-product (or so I think).
Do you need money? Not right now.
Customer conversion strategy (where do you find them, and how do you make them buy shit from you):
Not sure. Ideas welcome :- ) I found this list: https://triphappy.com/blog/131-startup-directories-to-promote-your-startup/1 and will submitt to the relevant places. I'm also going to email organizations and ask what they think about creating an online community for their members / users (I should have done this long ago I suppose, to gauge interest), and offer ED to them for free for a few years. + there's lots of stuff out there for me to read & learn ...
Why am I a good person to do this: Well, I can create software. And I have a vision about where all this is going. ... Otherwise, at least initially I was not really the right person — I did everything wrong the first few years, and eventually gave up and got a full time job instead. ... But continued with ED in the evenings & weekends, and finally reshaped it into something useful. ... Did I? (A bit later, if ED seems to become popular, I'll look into creating a team.)
Thanks for reading, and for any feedback & thoughts & rosting.
/KajMagnus