Startup Startup - The platform connecting talent to build amazing startup teams

[jezza1]

The product: Startup Startup is a free online platform connecting talent to build successful startup teams. On www.startup2.net, people interested in joining a startup can create a profile to showcase their skills and connect with people looking to create or already involved in an early stage startup. You can showcase your startup or idea through beautiful profiles. If you're looking to build or expand their team, you can specify the person you're looking for and connect with Talents interested in joining a startup.

The market: We don’t only target early stage startups, but also people with great ideas and people interested in joining startups. This means it’s difficult to establish exactly how big the market is. To give you a general idea, it’s estimated there are 472 million entrepreneurs worldwide involved in 305 million startups. There are around 100 million new startups every year, with the total number of tech startups at 1.35 million.

Product analysis / comparison against competition: You could see any startup focused recruitment sites (e.g. tyba.com) as a competitors, as well as co-founder dating sites like cofounderslab.com. Where we're different from recruitment sites is first of all the cost. We believe that for many early stage startups paying for recruitment is not really an option, and offering a salary rather than equity (or a combination of both) might not work either. We differ from co-founder dating because we focus more on the team as a whole rather than bringing two people together (which is essentially what dating is). We've come across a couple of other recently launched platforms with (fairly) similar approaches to ours but we provide better UX/UI and have a broader (and more international) user base.

What stage we’re at: We’ve been backed by an investor and are not raising money at the moment.

Customer conversion strategy: First of all, we’re not selling anything but rather offering a free platform for people to connect and start collaborating, which probably helps our conversion. We find our users by speaking to the startup community, both in person and online.

Why us? We love startups. We have done a lot of user research to establish what our MVP should look like and are gathering great feedback now to continue to develop and improve Startup Startup. We have a great, well-balanced team and an amazing, rapidly growing user base.

 

[moonstar2024]

@jezza1 OK looks like this thread is full of non-roasting softies right now. Paging /@felly to help me alleviate that.

I'll take a shot but I'm on vacation so I'm feeling really nice.

I have seen this idea 100,000,000 times. Cofounderdating, founderdating, founderlab, cofounderlab, datingfounderlab, and a million other variations on the same 3-4 words. You just cut to the chase and used the same word twice. As a matter of fact, I think I'm at the point where I could just build a "cofounderdating building site" which can generate cofounderdating sites for you and you can name them whatever the hell you want. Shit I'm even tempted to do it now but again I'm on vacation. Yours is called "startup startup" - I want you to reflect on this for a minute. You're just missing the "making the world a better place" tag and you're golden.

You're a techie? Good - prepare to be bombarded with e-mails by morons who want to help you grow your company and who really think they're what's missing in your life because they once had an idea while taking a shower.

But you know what let me register to your site.

OK - even the same template as most of the other sites, with what is probably the most used background image on the internet. Lots of things broken on the UI, pretty crappy overall, lots of dupes, but let's get to the meat. So who's on there?

Visionary. Visionary, Vi, another Vi, more Vi. Everybody's a visionary. So cool that your site is full of such visionary geniuses. You know what, you should probably send those guys here for a little dose of reality.

The most accomplished team on there is a guy whose Kickstarter was overfunded. And made 3,000$. Wow.

Ultimately, your site will be used for the same reason young start-ups post to a million other cofounder sites. To improve their SEO score.

 

[jezza1]

@moonstar2024 Thanks for the refreshing reality check . I understand the principle of roasting so I won't write a long comeback tackling each point. If there are any aspects in particular you'd want me to respond to please do get in touch with me. Let me just quickly reply to two points you made (I can't help myself):

"The most used background image on the internet": most of the images on the site, including the background image on the homepage which is a recurring theme, are actually photos taken by our Designer so they're pretty unique .

The point you make about who's on the site is very interesting and a very valid question. Although Visionaries are indeed the largest group of users, the spread is fairly even so there's a good mix of all archetypes on the platform.

Anyway, thanks again for roasting Startup Startup, after all that's what this subreddit is all about. Sorry I couldn't help but respond to a couple of your points, hope you don't mind. Really appreciate your honesty and feedback though!

 

[benjaminjoseph]

@jezza1 ... I want your website. Seriously thats awesome.

 

[jezza1]

@benjaminjoseph Thanks! Please do sign up and let us know if you have any other feedback .

 

[benjaminjoseph]

@jezza1 I left my bio section blank when I pressed submit, why do I have to reload the page for the validation to run? Can this be made into an ajax call once I hit the submit button?

do the validation check, if its all good then submit the form?

 

[jezza1]

@benjaminjoseph Cheers for the feedback, I'll have a chat with our Developers about that one. Do let us know if there's anything else you think we should improve!

 

[benjaminjoseph]

@jezza1 Is 6 place holder images really necessary for me to see in the SHOWCASE YOUR STARTUP area? I haven't uploaded any photos yet, Is 6 the limit?

 

[jezza1]

@benjaminjoseph No, 10 is the limit for Startup showcase items. Would you like it better if you just saw one and every time you added an item another one would pop up?

 

[benjaminjoseph]

@jezza1 Yeah, Have two to start then as I upload keep the one gray box there. Then I can always see that more to upload until i get to 10

 

[jezza1]

@benjaminjoseph Excellent. Great suggestion! That's going straight onto our backlog .

 

[benjaminjoseph]

@jezza1 I really dig the startup profile after I make my edits. cool stuff there

 

[benjaminjoseph]

nvm this is the browse page. still I like it.

 

[613jono]

@jezza1 The site looks good and welcoming. I am currently working on a startup project, an idea I have. I might come back later and see what I can get there

Good job and great idea. I hope people will use it.

 

[jezza1]

@613jono Thank you for your feedback! Please do feel free to come back and sign up to promote your startup and maybe grow your team. We've been seeing some really good early traction so people are definitely using it but we're working hard to keep growing and adding value to the community!

 

[613jono]

@jezza1 By the way what I think can be improved: Put some kind of tags or categories next to the list of startups. Also browsing ideas/startups feels a bit hard, since the space each row has, is kinda big and you have to scroll too much (at least it feels for me )

 

[jezza1]

@613jono Thanks for that! Searching and filtering startups and ideas is definitely something we will revisit in the not too distant future. In terms of the amount of scrolling when browsing startups, we've tried to create a preview that would give you a very clear overview of a startup to help you decide if you're interested in clicking through to the profile, but it's very good feedback and again maybe something we should re-think. Thanks!

 

[dakotastewart]

@jezza1 I like the website and the concept (and the fact that your About page is a Startup Startup profile for your own company).

As someone browsing, I was unsure exactly what a "hustler" does (maybe it's common terminology for you, but I'm not in this space), and I'd have appreciated a way to search startups near me. I also didn't understand why a number of startups listed just have the founder and aren't looking for anyone else - why are they there, just looking for exposure?

Overall though I think there's a lot to like about it.

 

[jezza1]

@dakotastewart Thanks for that! Firstly, we explain the archetypes in detail when you sign up but you make a good point that if you're browsing without having signed up we might have to make it clearer what the different roles mean. FYI, the Hustler is the person responsible for getting the word out there about a startup and basically covers and Sales and Marketing roles but you're absolutely right that not everyone would necessarily know that.

We will definitely improve the way you can search and filter startups (including a location search) in the future, again a very good point. Finally, you're exactly right about the startups not looking for anyone at the moment. Some startups use the platform to promote themselves and get some exposure. Although this is not necessarily the point of Startup Startup, we believe that allowing startups not looking to grow their team (yet) is still beneficial for the community. These startups and their teams might inspire people who are in earlier stages of their startup journey.

Do let us know if you have any other feedback!

 

[sanguinecross]

@jezza1 Huh, I actually know the guys at cofounderslab... let's be clear, this is still a rather nascent space, so there is definitely room for growth here. But people's issue here in the past has always been the same thing: monetization. As you say, paying to recruit is not going to do you a whole lot of good.

The second issue this kind of platform presents is substitution risk. Existing methods of recruiting such as events, meetups, recommendations, etc, while slower, but generally are more reliable. Much like dating, the primary function of taking on the web is that you can meet a lot more candidate a lot quicker. Just like online dating though, you experience the bullshit of inflated portfolios, and strangely adjusted expectations. (i.e. one thing is off? whole profile is worthless) And much like online dating, there are a LOT of other tools out there. i.e. angellists, linkedin, cofounderslab (as you linked), crunchbase, and good ol' fashion meetup groups can all fill this role.

And let's face it, the information you share is going to be more or less the same. So either you need a way to extract more meaningful data from the individual and the team, or you need make one of the aspects of pairing much easier to do. i.e. a "tinder" for finding project partners or the ability to get REALLY in depth look at a person with maybe even some analytics to go with it.