A Minimum Viable Product Is Not a Product, It's a Process - <AUTHOR> http://www.themacro.com/articles/2016/01/minimum-viable-product-process/ <comment><USER2> I thoroughly disagree with misusing terms like this. Experimentation and the like are important, but that doesn't mean you get to throw away the term "minimum viable product".

This article is more about "how to find out what an MVP might be".

> An MVP is not just a product with half of the features chopped out

Right, it's supposed to be the absolute core of what is necessary. This requires actually knowing what your customers _want_. It's perfectly OK to say "I don't know what our MVP should be" and then go and try and find out what it should be. But until you have something that is actually viable as a product then you don't have a MVP.

> You spend months figuring out how to launch custom mobile apps for your > clients, only to find out that what a restaurant owner really wants is a > mobile-optimized website that's easy to find on Google.

So you added an extra feature that's unwanted and failed to add a required feature. This is neither minimum, nor viable.

> Or, after using all the latest technologies to build real-time chat, you > find out that restaurant owners can barely deal with email and don't want to > sit at a computer all day.

Adding an extra feature nobody needs means you've not built a minimum product.

> Or, worst of all, you might find out that restaurant owners don't want the > hassle of dealing with technology and maintaining mobile apps and have no > interest in using your product in the first place.

Then you haven't built a viable product.

> Therefore, the very first MVP could be a mockup of such a mobile app

Not really, since this isn't a viable product.

edit - I think this is a common issue, people taking terms and then bringing in what they "really mean". A "minimum viable product" is a very simple description. If what you have isn't a viable product, then I really do not understand the point of saying you've built a minimum viable product.

<comment><USER3> As with any term that becomes a "buzzword" (e.g., DevOps, Lean, Agile), the definition of MVP definitely gets muddled and everyone has their own take on it. I could replace the term with "how to build products by repeatedly identifying your riskiest assumptions and building the smallest possible experiment to test them", but I think "MVP" is a bit easier to read.

> This article is more about "how to find out what an MVP might be".

This sounds a bit tautological. An MVP is the smallest possible experiment to test your assumptions. To find out what that experiment should be, you have to do an experiment to test assumptions...

Also, one of the key ideas in the article is this is not something you do once to build a single MVP. It's a process you use over and over again to develop every aspect of your business, including the product, marketing strategy, software architecture, etc. For example, to build a large software system, you don't write 100,000 lines of code, then hit compile, and hope it works. Instead, you do it incrementally. Write a few lines of code, test them, make sure they work; write a few more lines of code, test them, make sure they work, and so on. Or to quote John Gall, "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked."

> Adding an extra feature nobody needs means you've not built a minimum > product.

This reminds me of the No true Scotsman fallacy [1].

"No MVP should have unnecessary features."

"But that successful company's MVP had all sorts of unnecessary features."

"Yes, but no _true_ MVP should have unnecessary features."

This sort of critique isn't wrong, but it's not useful. How do you figure out which features are necessary and which ones aren't? The best way I've found to do that is to pick your riskiest assumption and to test it. And to do that over and over again, incrementally building up your product as you go. If you don't like the term MVP for that, I suppose that's fair, but then please suggest a better term to replace it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)

<comment><USER2> > the definition of MVP definitely gets muddled and everyone has their own > take on it.

I'm quite surprised by this, since to me there's little to disagree about. A "minimum viable product" seems like a very simple description to me.

> An MVP is the smallest possible experiment to test your assumptions.

I'm not sure where this is coming from, unless what you get out of it is a viable product, how is it an MVP?

I'm not saying you shouldn't experiment, or that you shouldn't build small things and try them out, but I see no reason to keep referring to something as a minimum viable product when it meets none of the three words.

> This reminds me of the No true Scotsman fallacy [1].

Again, I'm not really sure why what I've said seems so odd. If it's not the smallest viable product then how is it a minimum viable product? If it's not a viable product, again, it's not an MVP.

This is more like reading an article that says "A Scotsman doesn't need to be Scottish or even a person".

> This sort of critique isn't wrong, but it's not useful.

I feel it is, since I think the concept of an MVP is pretty important because at the end of it you have a _viable product_. If people are going to use the term MVP to describe proofs of concepts and mockups and a general process, then what term do you suggest should replace it for actually describing minimum viable products?

<comment><AUTHOR> This reminds me of the discussion on the definition of "Object Oriented". It's a term of art that means a specific thing in the context of programming. [1]

"Minimum Viable Product" is also a term of art to describe a specific concept and can't really be broken down word by word. If you look at Eric Ries, Steve Blank, and Frank Robinson they have a specific meaning for MVP that matches The Macro article.

See for example [2] where Reis says "It is not necessarily the smallest product imaginable, though; it is simply the fastest way to start learning how to build a sustainable business with the minimum amount of effort."

[1] See this hilarious interchange [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HeInventedTheTerm](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HeInventedTheTerm) [2] The previously mentioned [http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/dropbox- minimal-viable-prod...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/dropbox-minimal- viable-product/)

<comment><USER4> Okay, I'm reading the TechCrunch article you linked to, and I come across this:

 _In this case, the video was the minimum viable product. The MVP validated Drew's leap-of-faith assumption that customers wanted the product he was developing not because they said so in a focus group or because of a hopeful analogy to another business, but because they actually signed up._

I think this is a very interesting quote. For one thing, it urges us to expand our notion of what a _product_ is. It isn't necessarily an actual working piece of software; it can be a mock-up or faked demo -- but in any case it's still something that can be shown to potential customers.

But the question that some of us are raising is, _when_ could the video be _called_ an MVP? The answer we would suggest is, it becomes an MVP only _after_ it receives an enthusiastic response from the market. Note that the Ries quote is completely consistent with this interpretation: by the time Ries wrote it, the video had received such a response. Our argument is that _while Drew Houston was making the video, it wasn 't an MVP yet_: it was only an experiment, an _attempt_ at making an MVP, but not yet a _validated_ MVP.

So I disagree that "MVP" is "a term of art and can't really be broken down word by word". Rather, I think that people haven't understood exactly what Ries and Blank mean by it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A more fitting title for the article could be, "Building your MVP the right way."

The whole point of an MVP is to avoid spending time and other resources building stuff no one wants or the wrong solution to problems.

Therefore the article is a cheat sheet to lean thinking.

1\. Draw a mockup, Table of content, vision statement

2\. Talk to the target customer as often as possible to clarify every aspect of what you're building

3\. If you want to sell your product, nothing says you're on the right path better than paying customers

4\. You shouldn't stop validating decisions after you've hit some success eg. Facebook and Google conduct hundreds of thousands of micro experiments on live users to determine button placements, colour choice, increase sign up rate...

So in summary, don't drop the MVP mindset when you hit some level of success. Fail fast, and more importantly, fail often. Be a scientist.

</comment><comment><USER6> This article is totally on-point. MVPs are the minimal viable test for confirming your hypotheses.

While running a startup consultancy, the idea that MVP is a thing you make once before going on to make the 'real' product, was one of the two biggest misconceptions I saw. The other one was "lean means cheap".

I ended up realising that most startup resources explain these crucial things with misleading terms and a confusing way. Really, the whole process should mirror the scientific method - I started teaching my clients based on that, telling them to forget what they'd already heard. I'm writing a book at the moment about this (working title: The Rational Startup) but that's a subject for another HN submission :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm learning this with my website ([http://muxme.com](http://muxme.com)), which is only a month old. I've pivoted about a hundred times, which makes me question what truth is, because literally every bit of copy, UX flow, and strategy has changed. Yesterday the site was personal, friendly, and quirky. Today the site attempts to create the illusion that we're multiple people operating a business. The one truth that is true and universal is that people can enter and win with no purchase necessary, which is what the website revolves around.

</comment><comment><USER8> Buying a lottery ticket and tweeting demands at Paul Graham are almost certainly feasible methods for obtaining several million dollars by the end of next week. However, neither method is viable because that's not the way things work: to a first approximation, lottery tickets lose and the evidence is that Paul Graham doesn't give millions of dollars to people he doesn't know when they tweet at him.

Unfortunately, it's easy to conflate feasibility with viability because anything that is infeasible is also nonviable: e.g. buying a ticket for last weeks lottery or tweeting demands at Charles de Gaulle. Fortunately, the Brikman's article does not fall into this confusion.

It's easier to determine what is feasible -- two app developers can build a restaurant app and put it in the app store -- than what is viable: build a restaurant app that people use. To be feasible, it only has to be technically possible for the developers to build an app. To be viable, it has to be useful enough that people use it.

One might say that viability is checking feasibility against non-technical goals. If the reason for building the app is to make money, feasibility is based on projected prices, costs, and sales. Viability about assessing those projections.

Brikman's position appears to be that a product is whatever can be put put in front of customers or potential customers. It's reasonably consistent with a world in which many things people tend to consider products are free or fundware. It's plausible.

But I can see why someone might choke on that, so YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER9> _> The problem is that these teams do not understand the point of an MVP. [...] In fact, the MVP doesn't have to be a product at all._

By definition, a minimum viable product is always a product: [http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/08/minimum- viable-...](http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/08/minimum-viable- product-guide.html)

<comment><USER3> That article, and Eric Ries' book, define an MVP as a " _version_ of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort." A "version of a new product" doesn't have to be a product.

The classic example of an MVP that Eric Ries uses is the explainer video Drew Houston created for DropBox _before_ building the actual product [1]. The video worked as an MVP by helping Houston test his assumptions, but I don't think you could say the video itself was a "product."

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/dropbox-minimal-viable- prod...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/dropbox-minimal-viable-product/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a lot of disagreement in this thread about the definition of MVP, and I think it stems from the interpretation of the "Viable" part.

Based on the definitions by writers who helped popularise the term, like Steve Blank and Eric Ries, I think this word should be clarified as "viable for the purpose of the entrepreneur". Then the definitions of MVP as a process or marketing experiment make more sense. A MVP does not need to be viable for the customer (e.g. a complete, but minimal product) , just as an experiment.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yeah I saw this on Reddit too. I'm not sure what the point of the article is. It references Ries in passing as if it's only vaguely relevant, and proceeds to say precisely what Ries said 10 years ago in the first few pages of probably the most prolific book in the startup community. It then tries to make the article more relevant by conflating Lean with Agile and suggesting that they're both only vaguely relevant, when the entire article is specifically talking about Lean concepts. (And I say all this as someone who hated The Lean Startup).

??

</comment><comment><USER12> If something is called a "product", then its in search for users. If its called "process", then its the way to do something. The author exchanges the terms – but mixing both will get you nowhere while both are neccessary to succeed: You don't go from zero to MVP but have to develop a process to create a working MVP.

</comment><comment><USER13> The definition I found, and it works for me is:

MVP is a tool to test an assumption:

Ask:

* What are you trying to learn with this particular MVP?

* What data are you collecting about your experiment?

* What determines success or failure of the experiment?

I am not sure you can figure out in advance what is your riskiest assumption (like to OP suggests), it's more likely to be obvious in hindsight.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have to agree with the other commenters, the logic is super muddled here. Building an MVP is a process, and determining when you have an MVP and can now launch is a process. But an MVP itself is emphatically a product.

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree with the sentiment wholeheartedly. MVP has been bastardized in most shops I have been in. What's actually built is a "minimally compliant product." We need a better name for the idea that we are searching for something valuable for customers to buy. How about Market Viable Product which is the anticipated end result of the process of searching for product/market fit?

</comment><comment><USER16> There is a big problem with the term MVP. It does not work uniformly in all markets, especially in mature markets when you are trying to substitute either your own product or competing with a very mature product of your competitor.

</comment><comment><USER17> I give author credit how to break down MVP process easy enough to execute fast. Folks startup isn't academia. Please do not discuss purity of this article against lean.

</comment><comment><USER18> This was insightful. Google Car - classic example. Once you can prove you can do something, doesn't mean what you've done is something you can market and make a profit, etc. Regardless of the outcome (including failure) your MVP is where your process took you and it ended (with every stakeholder happy or everyone agreeing to stop).</comment>


Realtime Responsive Head Tracking and Proximity Detection - <AUTHOR> http://freshtilledsoil.com/the-future-of-web/demos/media-capture-streams-api/

<comment><USER2> Interesting application. I know sabalaba @ lambdalabs (lambdal.com) is doing some similar stuff -- you two might want to get in touch.</comment>


Manually Testing SSL/TLS Weaknesses - <AUTHOR> https://www.contextis.com/resources/blog/manually-testing-ssltls-weaknesses-2016-edition/ <comment><USER2> Amazing work! I'll be following through your post on Saturday; it will be a pleasure to reproduce some of those attack vectors.</comment>


You Are the Average of Your Five Closest Friends - <AUTHOR> http://bufr.tumblr.com/post/12126279275/you-are-the-average-of-your-five-closest-friends

<comment><USER3> "Bottom line: If the main topic of conversation you have with your friends is not how you can better yourself, you need to get new friends."

Thanks, but I'm happy with the friends I have and with the kind of conversations we have. If your friends love talking about "how you can better yourself," then fair enough -- whatever works for you. On the other hand, if your friends love talking about the things they do, interesting things they've learned, neat ideas, activities, etc. then don't ditch them just because they're not talking about "how you can better yourself." You'll "better yourself" by being immersed in a social environment of new ideas and options and acting on the things you learn, not by dumping your friends and finding people who want to talk about self-improvement.

<comment><USER4> But doesn't this hinge on the definition of 'bettering yourself'.

To me, your comment isn't mutually exclusive with the original.

People discussing things they've learned, ideas and activities who, by my definition, are bettering themselves. You might like your friends, then probably, your friends _are_ bettering themselves, and so are you. You mightn't realise this, but spend some time with people who have a social circle where complaining and moaning and hating the world are pre-requisites for membership, and you'd probably realise how good your current friends are.

I don't take 'better yourself' line to mean climbing a career/social/income ladder, or obsessively reading Dr Phil type books, to me it just means improving yourself continuously.

If you flip it over and get: "if you find your friends talking themselves down and complaining all the time, you need to get new friends"

I don't think too many of us would argue with that.

While the thought of dropping friends might seem harsh to some, you are definitely the product of your relationships and the thinking that goes along with them. Your life is also a product of the opportunities that come along, and having the wrong surroundings will produce the wrong opportunities.

You can do a lot worse with your time than make a new friend with someone who is positive and likes to continually learn. There's a lot of people out there who could use that advice.

<comment><USER5> If you broaden the definition of "better yourself" to enough to include all constructive human conversation, then maybe you could read this statement as a truth. But if you read it as plain English it's obvious that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about a very specific sort of conversation around improving one's career and skills.

<comment><USER6> From the article:

> _Today, Jane doesn't know what the celebrity gossip is._

I venture to suggest that it actually refers to the former one you mentioned, which, being constructive, leads to the latter one in various occasions (but not exclusively).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Somewhat misleading headline I think given the content of the article but still a valid point. My question to you folks out there is this: I came across this statement sometime back and realized I need to change my friends if I am to better my situation. My friends, while good people, are not goal oriented and have for all intents and purposes given up. The people who I'd like to hang out with and who can help me grow reject me most of the time (they perhaps intuitively have internalized this wisdom and don't want me contributing to their average since they are at a better place than me currently). What are some practical ways to upgrade your friends especially if you are highly introverted?

<comment><USER8> Just like anything else in life, you have to do this step-by-step.

First, don't sell yourself short. You have some valuable attributes and characteristics that others will find valuable. You find a friend or group of friends who are a notch or two closer to where you want to be, people that have something valuable to give you _and to whom you can give something back_.

You slowly replace your friends with "better" ones that will bring you closer to your goals and will make you more of who you want to be, and you climb that ladder to the top. It'll take time, but it's also a far more guaranteed outcome versus suddenly jumping into a circle you don't yet belong in, where even if they'll accept you, chances are you'll change your mind and back out.

<comment><USER9> "You slowly replace your friends with "better" ones"..."will make you more of who you want to be"

I believe the talented Mr Ripley used this strategy to good effect. There's a saying about never trust anyone who doesn't have at least one friend left from childhood.

<comment><USER10> Not sure what the point of the childhood friend thing is.

I was a very very awkward youth (I didn't speak English well and I was one of few Indian students at my school) so I had a lot of trouble making friends. I don't have many friends from my childhood because I wasn't very good at it, I didn't really establish lasting friendships until High School and College.

<comment><USER11> High school counts as childhood, and more to the point, childhood friends are an indication that a person is not a disloyal back stabber and is someone others value. It's social proof.

it's just a saying though and is useless past its intended meaning. It does't seem to apply to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been in technology for 15 years. In that time I went from QA to networking/IT to independent software development. Along the way I learned how to run a business, optimize my websites for search engines, create persuasive marketing copy, and a lot more. With each new skill I acquired, I have one or more friends who I attribute to helping me along the way. I could not have done it without them.

You definitely are the company you keep, both in your friends as well as with your spouse/significant other.

<comment><USER13> And I did more or less all that stuff too and I have no one I attribute it to except myself.

I would definitely not say definitely. Some people are highly influenced by friends, some are not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I studied finance and economics in college and spent 5 years in banking. Last year I quit my job and taught myself python/django, HTML, CSS, and Jquery. Last week I did a demo of my financial software for my old boss and he loved it. It's going to allow his analysts to do their analysis in a few minutes instead of a few hours.

My wife and I moved to a new city while I went through this process, and it was mostly a lonely road. Friends matter, but don't let a trite saying deter you from making things happen. If you want to do something, just go do it. Your friends will soon follow.

</comment><comment><USER15> "If the main topic of conversation you have with your friends is not how you can better yourself, you need to get new friends."

Friends serve a number of purposes. Some make us better people, some accept and support us for who we are. The best ones manage to do both at the same time.

But I think looking at a friendship from the angle of how it can benefit you and make you a better person is a somewhat selfish metric upon which to judge the quality or value of a friend.

I have certainly learned a lot from my closest friends over the years and I'm better for it, professionally and personally, but it's not the reason I chose those particular people as friends. It's a side-effect of having friends with similar interests and values, who happen to have different skill sets and different perspectives on life.

Neither is the sharing of that wisdom intentional, either, but rather it just sort of organically happens over time as we share experiences together and help each other out with work, family, and life in general. The motivation isn't to "make me better" it's to "be a better friend."

We are, after all, talking about friends here, not co-workers or colleagues or instructors or employers. This "bottom line" just feels rather shallow and selfish.

<comment> eric-hu > But I think looking at a friendship from the angle of how it can benefit you > and make you a better person is a somewhat selfish metric upon which to > judge the quality or value of a friend.

I was put off by the article in a way I couldn't quite pin down. What you said was exactly it.

I'm all for intellectual stimulation by interacting with people in the same profession, but that's not all there is to life. It's certainly not all there is to being a happy and successful person, at least in my book. If my friends happen to be in the same profession, that's great. I'm not ready to declare that anyone outside of development is unworthy of my time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't have "five closest friends". Who am I, then? :)

<comment><USER17> The average of your n<5 closest friends, and 5-n nobodies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand how the title of the article is relevant. I'm inclined to believe that there's some truth to it, but after reading the blog, I didn't gain any insight on the topic. It just seemed like a nice story about a girl who turned her career around.

At the very least, I don't see how an automation engineer is the mean of two Google engineers, a brogrammer, an architect, and a soccer team president.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps you also have to average in her previous job?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The title suggests some sort of study involving more than one person, the content isn't a study, it's an anecdote.

Also, your "bottom line" is worse than patronizing, it's bullshit. I have friends that I talk movies with. I have other friends I talk music with. Others I talk about technology with. Even others I talk about relationships with. None of my goals in knowing and interacting with those people include "get advice from them and become a better person".

Have I become better through interaction with all of them? Of course. But that's expected as long as you are receptive to changing and you have friends that are competent.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this really a true story? Can you tell us a bit more about it? I'm not asking for details that would identify her, but for more details on how she got there.

<comment><USER22> Hi, yeah this is a true story and it is about me. Ask me anything.

<comment><USER21> Great!

1) Maybe "having a mission" would be the best approach at throwing yourself against the wall over and over again, but I'd like to know if that was the thing that motivated you not to stop learning. Never did the thought "ok, maybe I'm not cut for this" cross your mind?

2) You learned chinese during that time? How proficient are you in that language? Did you do it on your own or did you take classes?

3) Any time management technique you'd like to share with us?

I probably will have more questions later.. :)

<comment><USER22> 1) You are right, having a mission definitely kept me on track. It also gave me peace. The moment I decided to start learning about technology, I felt confidence. I knew that one day I will leave the mediocre jobs and be part of this new field. This thought alone gave me confidence when I went to job interviews. During the interview with Genentech I remember thinking about some html code that I just learned and how I want to go home and learn more. Having an alternative made me a more confident job candidate. My hobby is learning foreign languages, I like learning something new every day. So when I noticed that this is part of every tech position, I decided that it is closer to what I need, even if it is not the perfect match. I did question whether I am cut out for this many times, but I had nothing to lose. If I was coming from a career field that I loved I might have felt otherwise.

2) I was learning Chinese at the end of the day to compensate for not learning anything at work. I was studying on my own, mainly with Rosetta Stone and grammar books. It was an on and off process and I did feel burned out sometimes. Recently I had lost motivation, especially since I am much happier at work. So I joined my first Mandarin class to get a new direction and see where I am. It is intermediate level and everyone in the class is much better than me, because they have lived in China for 1 year. So I have a lot to learn still but I would say that during the first nine months I laid a pretty good foundation.

3) I am not good with time management myself, which is why it took me so long to enter this field. I find the study groups I attend very helpful with this. Check out meetup.com for your area and search for a topic of interest. Find the right study group which will allow you to learn on your pace, yet require your dedication. When you are surrounded with people who are also on a mission, it motivates you. Even better if you share the same mission.

<comment><USER23> "which is why it _took me so long_ to enter this field." Good one. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd ignore all the complaints here about the Bottom Line message. People will bash you for making an "absolute truth", take it or leave statement - <USER2> people will also bash you for trying to appeal to everyone with an obvious generalization. You can't please everyone so at least pick a voice and stick to it.

I enjoyed the post, even if some of the points are contentious and make me, personally, feel uncomfortable. There is value in being uncomfortable and reading someone point out flaws that I might (ok...that I do) have. It feels bad initially, but sometimes you need that slap in the face to get out of a rut or spark a change in your life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I've come to realize that posting anything on HN will always amount to some bit of criticism.

Also, I agree that you're spot on with your idea that there is value in being uncomfortable. I agree so much, in fact, that I wrote a blog article about how being uncomfortable is a great motivator.

It's called, "Please, Make Yourself Uncomfortable."

Here it is: [http://bufr.tumblr.com/post/6768971854/please-make- yourself-...](http://bufr.tumblr.com/post/6768971854/please-make-yourself- uncomfortable)

<comment><USER25> I notice a basic difference between men (which most ppl here in HN are) and women is that men's first impulse is to be critical, while women lean towards being supportive... nothing inherently wrong with either approach, both have its merits at certain times... if you're looking for emotional support, absolutely DO NOT go to men. They're horrible and want to suggest solutions, while you just want to be listened to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't think bettering yourself necessarily means getting into a career with code. Not sure if that's how you meant it, but I think the idea is to continually develop and learn and if you aren't happy, do something about it.

That's why I am learning to code. Not to be an engineer or to code day to day, but to open more opportunities to work with people and to be able to hang with the brogrammers. Current iteration is recruiter, who knows where I will end up, but I sure as hell am going to keep improving myself and keep looking until I find it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Christina! I'll be in Seattle in January. Let's meet for a coffee and show me around town!

Also, I didn't mean to imply that engineers are the only people doing anything. Continuous improvement was the point, and your friends can help you get there as long as you pick your friends right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would love to know more about this story. I think too many people out there feels in the same situation.

Randy Pausch said: "The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!"

My congratulations for her. She is another living example for inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER28> Seems like most people strongly disagrees with that bottom line about friends, ignoring the rest of the post, which is very inspiring. Thanks!

I actually somewhat agree with that bottom line. The whole point is lost when we try to put it more softly and 'appropriately'. It just sounds too unnatural for us social creatures. But it is in some way true, as it is true that your environment influences you much:

For example, people born in poor families have little chance to become rich and successful no matter how hard they work—it just requires different mindset. That mindset, it seems, can be acquired by either a) moving away from friends and family that drag you down (the earlier the better) or, probably, b) being an introvert, asocial person. I've had myself a similar experience.

I think I've read somewhere that the more social a species is, the less smart its representatives are at average—take for example dogs and cats. (I would appreciate if someone would confirm or disprove that information. And it should still be mentioned that individual intelligence doesn't appear to matter much in a group work anyway <http://lesswrong.com/lw/3mh/link_collective_intelligence/.>)

<comment><USER29> You can't train a cat like you can train a dog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I know this is barely relevant, but anyway: if we're all the average of our 5 closest friends, it means we're all identical, unless the population is split into disjoint subgroups that have no friendships between them.

If that's not the case, how could the highest-quality person have 5 friends? By definition, they're all worse than her, so their average can't be equal to her, unless we're all equal.

Anyway, back to the anecdotes about Eventbrite or whatever.

<comment><USER31> Consider an icosahedron. At each vertex a person with a vector pointing outwards. In this example, people are normalized and can be understood by 3 dimensions. There you have 12 unique persons, each of them an average of the 5 surrounding it. Pick one of them as the best, you will see that doesn't in any way violate that it is still the average.

Anyway, yeah, it also smells bad, but it could have a grain of truth.

<comment><USER30> Ah, and I had assumed we were scalars!

But you're right, and what's even better is that the icosahedron case generalizes to people walking on the surface of a sphere (assuming they're evenly spaced).

<comment><USER32> Erm, I could be wrong but wouldn't the icosahedron be the maximum "evenly spaced" set of people on the surface of a sphere (that weren't all confined to a great circle)? Lots of regular polygons, rather fewer regular polyhedra.

(Of course if we make the jump to a 4D sphere we can put 600 people into the largest regular polytope, the hexacosichoron. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convex_regular_4-polytope>)

EDIT: I am wrong, it'd only take a uniform polyhedron, not a regular one. E.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icosidodecahedron>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> FYI, the original quote is by motivational "guru" Jim Rohn: "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with."

</comment><comment><USER34> I take issue with that 'bottom line'. I have friends who I hang out with and talk about the business side of what we do, yeah. We also spend a hell of a lot of time just kicking around and critiquing PROJECT IDEAS, and sharing the stuff we've found that we think is pretty awesome.

<comment><USER24> All the things you are listed are about Getting Better...

Your conversations shouldn't be reciting self-help books to each other. Sharing stuff you think is awesome and kicking around projects are both great examples of bettering each other. Gossiping about celebrities or talking about that new World of Warcraft expansion pack are not.

<comment><USER35> What if you happen to think the new World of Warcraft expansion pack is awesome?

<comment><USER36> Improved micro is still self improvement :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Warning: This website maxes out your CPU, for no obvious reason. Happens on Firefox and Opera.

Might be related to the fancy graphical effect on the top there. Is it worth making all of our fans run, though, I am not sure.

</comment><comment><USER38> writing software is not the only way to change the world. though, if this is the life she was interested in living, this is an awesome story for her. most decent people's friends don't necessarily need to be engineers or high achievers to have great value. (none of that is positive or negative in response to the post.)

</comment><comment><USER39> Cute anecdote, but I was hoping for something about social media data analysis...

</comment><comment><USER40> Amazing article, thank you for it.

</comment><comment><USER41> What? What was with the Eventbrite 'brogrammer' paragraph? You seem to say that 'marrying' social life and technology is a bad thing, but it's the segue into her (apparent) use of user groups and networking to further her career. Also:

 _Bottom line: If the main topic of conversation you have with your friends is not how you can better yourself, you need to get new friends._

Uh. No. If you drop universal statements like that, you're probably... Well, I won't go into it. At any rate, there are a wide variety of reasons to have friends.

<comment><USER42> What is a _brogrammer_ , anyway? I am imagining something like the Cheezburger "Bro" site, but sitting at a computer??

<comment><USER43> Bros before Hoes

<comment><USER44> English isn't my first language, but I believe "hoe" means prostitute, and doesn't have any positive connotations in any context.

Your remark doesn't have anything to do with the context, and is offensive.

<comment><USER45> "Ho" means prostitute. "Hoe" means garden tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> _If the main topic of conversation you have with your friends is not how you can better yourself, you need to get new friends._

Or, put another way, if you prefer to read fiction and non-personal non- fiction rather than self-help books you need to get some new books. Why? Because Oprah said so.

<comment><USER47> I agree with the implication that talking about bettering yourself isn't usually the best way to better yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm a 99% introvert, with an EQ of 42. This post really fails to account for outliers; sometimes people are simply far out of line with respect to the average.

<comment><USER49> hello there fellow intovert. quick question, where did you measure your EQ?

<comment><USER50> <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=empathy+quotient+test>

Click the guardian one.

<comment><USER51> I apparently scored a whopping 16 points.

<comment><USER49> me having 26 seems a rather good score after reading yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> My close friends all moved away after I graduated college two years ago... am I a nothing person because I'm not a socialite like Jane?

</comment><comment><USER53> This advice is far from universal, though it's an interesting insight into the author's perspective on friends. If you are the type of person who would rather take your own advice, regardless of whom you have frequent social interactions with, then your close friends (however many you have, five is not necessary) are more than likely going to be people who accept the fact that they do not control your life. That doesn't mean that they are not your friends. It just means you don't use your "friends" as bars with which you are constantly trying to get above. Friends are people who you choose to be with, for whatever reason. So if you have the need to constantly feel like shit by having your friends tell you how much your life sucks in order to feel motivated enough to take action for yourself, than this advice is for you. But many people would rather not hang their life's course on the words of their five closest friends. Not to say I'm not impressed by "Jane's" achievements, because that sounds like a hell of a lot of dedication!

</comment><comment><USER54> I like your articles. Bookmark'd your blog. You are wise.</comment>


Ask HN: "If you build it, they will come" doesn't work. How do we market our app? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
My friend and I have been building an app (at http://getlooksgood.com/) in our spare time for more than a year, but we're clueless on how to get users to the page.
The app is fashion oriented and we think has potential, but that is not our area of expertise at all. Does anybody who has been in a similar situation have any advice? Do you think we should pursue it further or give up? It has been a great learning experience and a fun project to work on, so it's not all bad.
Thanks for your time! <comment><USER4> Reading the advice from this thread hurts. Has anyone here actually "gone to market" with what they're saying?

Having built and launched a successful go to market strategy here are my tips for you. Ultimately because it seems like you're bootstrapping and have limited funds since it's a side project, you want to aim for a scalable strategy that will give you a CPI that makes sense for your monetization path (ROI).

Note: I'm not even sure you're ready to go to market so ill assume you are.

1) Influencer Marketing: Do manual reach out and negotiations or hire someone with the network/connections who can help you with this. Since you're in the fashion niche there are tons of instgram/youtube influencers that would promote your app for a fee.

2) Content distribution: Get bloggers or guest posts up about your app on sites/blogs that have massive traffic and engagement.

3) PR: If you're running this as a business then there beeds to be a need in the market for your product that you must reach out to journalists and tell...ie your story. You can use HARO as well.

4) Viral coefficient: Make sure this is engineered into your funnel otherwise you're missing out on reaching critical mass and will steuggle to acquire users sustainably.

If you have questions let me know!

Hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to answer!

We've been thinking of going the route of approaching the route of Content creators/Influencers, that intuitively seems like the correct way. Have you done something like this, do you have any rough figures how much could a small-scale campaign like that cost, as I can't even guess the order of magnitude?

Also, the HARO resource seems great, I had no idea about it, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1) Hustle. Talk to people about your app. Tell everyone you know about it. Tell them to use it. If someone doesn't want to use your app, ask them why. If you can't find a dozen people who use your app, there's something wrong with your app and you need to go back to the drawing board.

2) Content. If your app is about fashion, make sure you have gorgeous fashion on your website. I see two half-assed selfies on your website. Get professional photos that make me think: YES I want to look like this. YES I want to look at photos of people like this. And don't fill your blog with SEO crap. If you can't write well, post pretty photos instead.

3) No ads. Ignore all advise about buying ads or hiring an SEO agency. Doing that stuff right is really hard, and if you can't do it yourself you won't be able to afford the people who can do it right. It's really easy to spend all your money on ineffective advertisement. You can advertise after you have some initial traction, but advertising wont help you get a broken product off the ground.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback!

The main problem with starting an app like this is that it basically doesn't work without having a substantial number of users. Even with a dozen people onboard, it will still feel very empty. We need a way to gain a larger following quickly to get the ball rolling, and for the user interaction with it to even make sense.

As for the selfies on the website, we had the idea of using real photos that you might find on the app, instead of some obviously professionally made photos, but, yes, that might be the wrong approach.

And yes, I really feel that the "No ads" is the way to gain a real following, and if the app is good, it will spread organically.

<comment><USER6> _" The main problem with starting an app like this is that it basically doesn't work without having a substantial number of users."_

I think the traditional advice is "fake it 'til you make it".

Is your concern that you will have too many photos and not enough people rating? Rate them yourselves.

Not enough photos for raters to feel engaged? Send every photo to _everyone_ , tune it down when you can.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, some of those tactics are being employed, however the number of users is so low it doesn't really matter.

To get technical, since this is HN, the photo distribution part is done by a Lua script running inside of redis instance which does just that, distributing images based on current demand and skewed towards recent ones. But if the number of images is small, every image will try to be distributed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This won't solve getting folks to your site, but will definitely help in getting them to actually download your app - make sure the first thing your site does is spell out the _benefit to the customer_.

Coming to your site, it was pretty clear _how_ I could interact with the site, but not _why_ I should bother. It might be obvious to you, since you've worked on it, but it's not to a casual browser. Compare to [https://www.gotinder.com/](https://www.gotinder.com/) which works hard to clearly sell the benefit of the service.

<comment><USER8> I thought the concept was pretty clear from their site.

One suggestion I have is to interface the app with Facebook and/or Twitter accounts. For example, once you take and post a selfie in the app, it can post a message on your Facebook/Twitter profile letting that user's friend's know that, not only can they rate their friend's attire, but also help spread the word of your app.

If you already have this feature, you should definitely display it on your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> This functionality is there, of course. We had it displayed, but people we showed it to were basically screaming to reduce the amount of text, so we cut it out, since that should be a given.

I'm not so sure I agree with the approach of treating your users as somebody that has the attention span of 2 seconds and after that mindlessly wanders off somewhere else, but that seems to be the general advice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This same obstacle is waiting for you on <every other product you will ever build> and is what differentiates successful products/companies from the also- rans so don't just give up, persevere and try anything you can think of until something sticks or you run out of ideas/opportunities/passion for it.

It's okay to fail _after you 've tried everything_, but if you quit now to build something new you're just aspiring to get back to this point equally unprepared to take your idea from launch to success.

<comment><AUTHOR>
        but if you quit now to build something new you're just aspiring to get back to this point equally unprepared to take your idea from launch to success.

This is a very good point, thanks! So, even if things don't work out, we can use this project as a learning project to learn about marketing.

We've tried running some ad campaigns, but those things are terribly expensive and inefficient, around $5 per user gained, which is around the industry standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think Sam Altman touched on this masterfully when he wrote about how critical it is to have people tell their friends about your app/startup/whatever. Their reaction to it is the ultimate test of whether you built something anyone would give a damn about. Even in a hyperconnected world, there is still no substitute for word of mouth. Even though his advice is geared more towards full out startups, I think it applies equally well in this case. You really need to wow people with your product.

Working backwards from Sam's thesis, it seems the most logical first step would be to get your app in front of as many "real" people as possible. Show it to your friends, family, coworkers, your mailman, your mechanic, the dude sitting beside you at Starbucks. My 2 cents anyways...

<comment><USER11> This.

The backbone of all effective marketing is product. Period. Your first goal is to identify who, exactly, wants your product, and who wants it the most. You do this by getting the product in the hands of as many objective, unaffiliated users as you can -- ideally without spending too much money doing so.

Not everyone will dig it, and that's fine. If you find yourself in a situation where everyone tells you they love it, something is either ridiculously right (highly unlikely) or nobody is really, really telling you the truth.

You'll want to have a hypothesis in mind as to whom you're targeting -- start by identifying and sampling among these people. But don't be afraid to consult total randoms. The key is to seek objective feedback and observe actual usage.

Also, think of your hypothesis testing the way a scientist would. In some respects you are seeking disconfirming evidence, not confirming evidence. If you seek feedback with a conscious bias towards confirming your preconceived beliefs, you risk "leading the witness" and nudging people down the path you want them to. You also risk overcounting the positive feedback and emotionally discounting the negative feedback.

Once you believe you've found evidence of a core user group, stick to that group and overservice it. Be the absolute best solution for that group. Kill it with that group. Just be...absurdly, undeniably awesome for it. Then play around with referral hooks, mechanics, and incentives. This is how you sew the seeds of word of mouth.

A word on gauging positive user feedback: when someone _really_ loves your product, you'll know. They will be begging you to let them know when and how they can get it. Genuinely positive feedback is usually very enthusiastic. Beware of "meh" feedback disguised as positive feedback. Remember: you are seeking awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you both for the feedback!

We've tried feeling the water with with /r/femalefashionadvice and the feedback was rather positive, that's what keeps us going still.

I have a feeling that feedback from total randoms might even be more beneficial, as feedback from your friends will probably be heavily biased, and, simply because they're your friends you share a lot of things in common, the sample will be much better.

Also, sometimes you just have to power through it and do it better than others. If we take Instagram as example, I have a feeling that a lot of their friends would have told them "why do that, there's already Hipstamatic that does the same thing" (at least that was my experience often), but they found their following online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is a lot of bad advice in this thread so let's start with the beginning:

1\. Why did you create this app and how is it different than your competitors? Do you know what your competitors metrics are?

Taking a quick look at your app, it looks very similar to The Hunt. So I would research who the hunts customers are and go after them. I would also research (i.e. App Annie) The Hunts downloads and revenue numbers and keywords.

2\. App Store is very difficult for discovery. How do you envision users finding your app? Is it intent driven or not?

This will help you refine the marketing channel. If you want to buy ads, be very precise and use it to learn more. For example, spend $1-$3 per day and use it to figure out search terms, demographics, intent or not, etc. At this stage you are doing customer research and not performance marketing.

3\. Seeding content.

You're going to have to do a lot of work to make it not seem like a dead zone. So invest tons of time on content creation.

4\. Once you have the content, expose it. Look into deep links, referrals, etc. You can connect SEO efforts but it will take time to start ranking and you'll have to have a plan and think long term.

<comment><USER13> Not sure why the parent post was downvoted - there's a lot of good advice here.

I agree with all the points listed. Knowing your competition is a very big deal. And knowing how they market (even if it's not how you would) is very smart. There are various services out there that can help you with competitive analysis from competitors ads (What Runs Where) to backlinks (Ahrefs) to other seo aspects (Sem Rush). They're all not cheap for a reason, but usually provide a free test drive.

As for the App Store, you really need to look into ASO. Probably the majority (or a good chunk) of apps on the App Store do not do any sort of optimization or planning. Check out Sensor Tower or App Annie for more on this.

Content. This is a must. You can drive traffic to your site if you can be perceived as an authority. (Well, that, and you actually are into what you talk about - you have to be genuine in this regard.) Check out Brian Dean's Backlinko for tons of great strategies that you can use to boost your content marketing. Start blogging/posting and creating content your users will find interesting and will keep them coming back.

You're going to have to tie all this into social as well. The two biggies (of course) are FB and Twitter. G+ also probably won't hurt. You'll have to spend time engaging on this level if you want to drive users to your site.

Ads can work too, but are a little tougher since they will require money up front. But, despite what some people may say, you can drive traffic to your site for a few dollars a day. I have been doing this on google for a long time. Set your daily budget to $2/$3 and see what keywords perform. Tweak these and keep adjusting. It is not a ton of traffic, but once you can get cheap click throughs and then some conversions, then you can grasp how it all works and scale up. $10 a day. $25, etc. Mix all your ad copy too and see which of those performs best as well. I don't usually recommend ads because it's the hardest, but it can also be pretty fun too. YMMV.

Others have also mentioned influencers. My current company has done well with this, but it's a constant process. You don't just get one or two and it's all good. You have to keep pulling in new influencers who can keep the momentum going.

I saw a post earlier and just want to say whatever you do DO NOT DRIVE TRAFFIC FROM FIVERR. This is shit and Google knows. Amazon knows. They all know. Fiverr is ok for logos, voice overs, translation, things like that. But never buy likes or follows or tweets or traffic. It's all junk and will get you _no where_. I've tested it and Google has never bumped my sites up in rankings using crap traffic.

Lastly, you have to be serious and engaged. Marketing is not luck and it's not just set it and forget. It's dynamic and requires time. Face to face if need be. You need to be clever and resourceful on getting your message out there. It's been said in other posts, but quality traffic and attention (that converts) are the hardest parts to making a product & company successful. You will not figure this out overnight, but you need to stick with it. Measure _everything_.

Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know if you have done this already but here are these Youtubers for example that talk about fashion..

Name:Thechicnatural with 833,449 subscribers

Name:Wendyslookbook with 633,000 subscribers

Name: Beautybyjj with 506,000 subscribers and many more..

In their profile, they have business email addresses to contact them. They will charge you a small fee and will mention your app and also include a link to your site for their subscribers to check out.

Tip: Often times, they give away a prize to their subscribers after reaching x amount of subscribers. So find a way to spin that to get their subscribers to your app and maybe get the prize through your site when the time comes?. For the example, the subscribers can sign up on your site, show their fashion sense and then win the prize of that youtuber that has reached their milestone?. Figure it out and it should help. All the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great advice, thanks! We'll look into it

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My general recommendation would be to read Crossing the chasm. Pretty good read. General idea is to solve a problem for a very core group of users (you get that users by just basically hand holding them and signing them up one by one). Once you get 100% satisfaction from them, they'll likely tell their friends in that particular (and very narrow) domain. After winning in a particular domain 100%, only then move on to related domains. Once you get a bunch of domains within a larger set, than you go after that super set.

Your problem here is your going after a rather broad group of people. That's usually pretty nigh impossible unless you got megabucks behinds you. I'd narrow it somewhat and tackle them first. I don't know anything about fashion so I can't help you there.

But if it were, say, an app for people who were buying motorobikes I might first create an app that helped people of a particular brand (indeed, model within a brand) of motorbike as they often congregate and chat amongst themselves quite nicely. Once I completely killed with that brand, I might consider building the same tool for another other brand of motorcycle. After killing a bunch of brands only then would I try to go after the motorcycle market in general.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree. I've realised we might have taken a too large swing with a app like this. My thinking about marketing this is something similar to what you're pointing to - finding a specific subreddit, online group, or even a city to concentrate on and then try to spread out from there

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Talk to a few people that you would hope would be ideal users of your app -- ask them about their habits and media they consume to better identify potential channels that you could use to reach similar people.

Your earliest users are most likely to be ones who are already doing activities with regards to fashion -- perhaps check out /r/malefashionadvice on reddit and search for other online interest communities. I would bet there are instagram, pinterest and twitter communities around fashion.

Measure the success of your campaigns across channels, and the retention of users across each. You should decide if you plan to grow users by being 'viral' (fast growth, but user's don't stay long) or 'sticky' (slower growth, longer usage).

Any users you get and keep are likely to be the best advocates and already know similar users, so empower/incentivize them to invite the friends they think would be interested -- ideally in some way that is natural to the product. In the ideal case, the product is so good, they will immediately want to tell their friends who would be interested.

Finding an effective and repeatable marketing strategy can require as much thought and effort as the product itself.

</comment><comment><USER17> This might sound basic, but it's totally true.

Go to Meetups and talk about it whenever possible.

Move your location to the epicenter of whatever industry you want to build traction in. Fashion oriented -- try New York.

I know of people that have raised money (read $50 investors) for the sole purpose of getting peoples attention.

I'm sure these are not new, but they are routinely passed over.

To be frank, getting eyeballs is by far THE HARDEST PART to launching a business, so explore all avenues.

<comment><USER18> What is a $50 investor?

<comment><USER17> "What is a $50 investor"....

Like GoFundMe or KickStarter --or the thousand other sites that have copied their business model.

Some people use fundraising in really small amounts as a way to get early adopters or crusaders for their mission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love this.

But I do think that you are missing a trick: you are pushing the wrong end of the proposition.

If this does fly it will fly not because you are offering a free appraisal of what users are wearing but more because you are giving users the opportunity to flex their fashionista status.

What you might want to do is create a panel of informed and preferably well known gurus to critique the uploaded selfies.

Go the X-factor for style route:

Your top tier of acknowledged experts critique the style 'performances'.

The 'judges' reactions to the style performances might be good or bad in the general but often enough your going to get a performance that has the potential to go viral: fb, buzzfeed, national press whatever.

Follow through on the personal aspect of these stories and create compelling narratives:

"OMG I totally took on board what (take in name of top stylis at Looks Good) told me about my style. I did what they told me and landed my dream date/job/ etc."

If you have any promotional cash to spend use it to recruit a panel of top stylists. Or if your bold enough take the roles on yourselves and spend the money on clothes/ haircuts.

In short feed awesome stories to the major players with big audiences and hope that a few stick. Obviously always point the origin of the story straight back to the app.

Good luck!

PS: Final Para: A simple yes or no from you could prevent them from making a mistake or give them encouragement they need.

Should read: A simple yes or no from you could prevent them from making a mistake or give them the encouragement they need.

<comment><AUTHOR> Everything you said here sounds great and it's opportunities like that that keep us going. We have lots of ideas where this thing could go, for instance partnering with retail stores and literally having Looks Good integrated in wardrobe fitting areas, to be able to quickly check before a purchase.

However, everything stops with the fact that we basically have zero users now.

Thanks for taking the time to answer, and for the correction, we'll fix it!

<comment><USER19> You are very welcome.

Be outrageous and have fun.

If you need any help your copy reach out, I'm happy to help.

Let me think on the user acquisition issue, I'll ping you via your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please do! you can also find us at contact at getlooksgood.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've had similar issue with my opensource tool. What I tried so far was posting at social sites where the niche users hang out. That includes Hacker News, reddit, twitter, various forums, slack groups, product hunt, stackoverflow, etc. I tried to do it in a meaningful way where I pointed out how my tool actually solved problems for the users in question. After that, some users decided to write blog posts about my tool, which in turn generated more traffic. In my opinion this generates quality user traffic, but isn't gonna do too much if you are looking to create a brand out of your name :(

</comment><comment><USER21> This is just my two cents and I'm not the most fashionable guy on the planet so your mileage might vary!

Personally, I wouldn't use it because, based off of your site, it looks like I either get yays or nays on my outfit. A nay on its own will only make me feel bad about myself, but it won't help me improve.

I'd be more into an app where I could get, "No!! Try a different tie. Bright orange looks horrible with that suit."

Of course, the downside is that then I'd be less tempted to rate others - <USER2> judging my behaviour on this site, I'd usually rather just up/down vote than explain why!

<comment><AUTHOR> We've had countless discussions on these exact topics. We've included the ability to post comments and it would be fantastic if the comments were as specific as that. We've tried to think of a system where there are predefined answers as "Lose the ____" or "Love the ____" but that's very hard to get right, especially since you have no users to test how they're using your app.

Maybe we should make the fact that you can post comments known on the site. Thanks!

<comment><USER21> Thanks for telling me that - I'm just a sample of one, but that makes your app very useful to me. :)

Congratulations on getting this far and good luck in the future!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Imagine how does a typical user acquisition and engagement happen. A prospect who is looking for feedback on their clothes comes across your app from a blog article or an ad, downloads it and requests for feedback. But then, you don't have many others to provide feedback - the result is that the user (who you may have acquired through content marketing or ad) stops/uninstalls your app.

So before I take up any of the other marketing ideas, I would first work on building a viral element to the app. Is there a way for me to publish this selfie along with a request to rate on Facebook? Or is there a unique URL that I can share on my twitter or even SMS to my friends? If this is in place, what I will do is that once I install the app and take a selfie, I would share it on Facebook or twitter and ask my friends to rate. Now my friends interested in rating would download the app, rate me and possibly go on to use it themselves. Now, I have a "friend network" within the app I will engage with every time I need fashion advice.

Once this is in place, I would identify all people in my Facebook network who will find such an app useful and ask them for feedback - this way, you kickstart usage within your network.

Parallely, I will also start talking to influencers on Facebook/Youtube, etc. and maybe even pay them to share their selfies.

Without a viral element, all the effort you put into marketing will come to nought.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you can post on FB with a unique link that will show you a Web interface. However, the point of the app would be to get feedback quickly, so the fastest way would be from other people using the app right now

<comment><USER22> You can't reach that level of engagement without starting through other avenues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Talk to fashionistas on Twitter. If they promote you to their lists of followers, you have your bootstrap.

</comment><comment><USER24> Shameless plug: my company provides a service that might be of assistance. In a nutshell, we have a network of several thousand beauty and fashion enthusiast who make videos about products like this. There is no charge for the service, so it fits your budget.

We don't have a category for mobile apps yet, but I suspect a lot of our users would love this product. We could find a way to make it fit.

Contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you're interested in learning more

<comment><USER25> If you don't mind me asking, what's your company's main source of revenue since you don't charge for this service?

<comment><USER24> Normally we charge fees around access to the network as well as analytics, but in order to promote the service and prove its value we have made it free through the end of the year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just some marketing/image sorta opinion:

Your marketing uses a lot of exclamation marks and you do that "blah?Blah?Blah?...BLAH!" cliche. Basically it has a phoney and sorta contrived tone to it. This might be a bigger deal than usual because your audience is fashion conscious and these sorts of subtle indicators of inauthenticity and fake enthusiasm will turn them off. Along those lines, your blog says "The fashion season is back" and that just doesn't make sense and spoils your credibility. One thing I've learned from fashion people is they would much rather say nothing than say something "off".

I know a few really smart people who work in the fashion industry and they can read how confident and authentically styled a person is in a quick glance. I'm wondering if your lack of expertise in the fashion world is showing through and turning away people with a trained eye for style. I think as far as that goes, your best bet would be to market your app more authentically. Go with a silicon valley/genius/geeks (don't use the word geek though) sorta approach. Fit the narrative of other connecting apps they know like Uber (innovative) or tumblr (quirky/self-aware). Don't pretend to be part of the fashion world, be honest about making a tool useful for people into fashion. Don't claim to be the best dressed community if you aren't.

Just be confident and "do you"... Ironically the same advice I'd give your users.

In a way it feels like you've picked one of the hardest demographics to pitch something at. People who want to be fashionable but don't have the confidence yet to do it on their own. So they are timid, afraid to take chances and worried that if they make a wrong choice in presenting themselves that it will actually matter.

Anyways, best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER27> You're looking at this wrong. "Get users to the page" is what you want. Who are the people you expect to benefit from this, and what do they want? I promise you, they aren't saying, "Gosh, I want to be gotten to a page because I am eager to install new apps!"

My suggestion:

Take some time and describe exactly what you think your earliest adopters have in common. These are people who you think will get extraordinary value from your app, the ones who will become incredibly devoted because you are just what they have been looking for, because you are solving a problem they have tried solving for themselves.

Now that you have a notion about who your customer is, go talk to them. Book 30 minute interviews with as many of these people you can. Before you meet them, be vague; just say you're thinking of work on a fashion-oriented app. Start out with very broad questions, so you can get to know them as individuals. Ask about behaviors around fashion. Ask them about problems they regularly experience. Ask them about apps they use, and how they use them in fashion-related ways. Only at the end can you ask them if they have the particular problem you have in mind or show them your solution.

If you do ~25 interviews, you should start to find out a) whether your imagined customer exists, b) who they are, and c) whether some of them feel substantial pain around the problem you are trying to solve. Odds are you will discover you need to pursue a different problem or a different solution. But that's ok; most startups have that experience at some point.

When you find the right problem and solution and are delivering a lot of value to passionate early adopters, then you can start worrying about other users. At that point you'll probably know your audience well enough to have plenty of ideas, but if not, return to interviews. Talk to people about the apps they use, how they learned about them, and what make them go to the trouble of getting started. You'll come up with a bunch of strategies that you can try out on your audience.

<comment><USER27> And I should add that what I'm describing here is basically the standard Customer Development approach that's part of the Lean Startup method. There's a good mailing list for it here:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/lean-startup- circle](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/lean-startup-circle)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Although I cannot say I've tried this since my products have been very niche, you could always try to come up with ten possible reasons why people might not care about your service, list them on a questionnaire, and then run them using an Online survey service (such as TolunaQuick or SurveyMonkey). This could aid in telling you what areas of your offer are lacking the most. It would cost at least a few hundred, but it's better done earlier than later.

On a side note, be sure that your questionnaire is balanced and doesn't lead respondents to answer in the way that you want them to. Remember: The goal is to improve your product, not to pat yourself on the back. Don't let your ego get the better of you.

</comment><comment><USER29> Read Paul Graham's essay about Want to Start a Startup and go to the section named Airbnb[1]

1: [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> What you really need to do is prioritize distribution highly as your are thinking about product ideas. Building the product and then thinking about distribution is the wrong approach.

Next, you need a good product idea. My immediate impression is this probably doesn't qualify.

But since it's built, I'd do things like see if you can get exposure through Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram etc. Try to find some trendsetters willing to use and talk about the product. Seed it to a college or high school.

</comment><comment><USER31> Crowdsourced fashion likes? Catalogs are full of beautiful people dressed beautifully, but you rarely get to see those outfits on normal folks. +1

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thanks, that's great to hear!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Figure out where your customers are, go to them and tell them about the product. In your case it should be pretty easy ...

</comment><comment><USER33> Read Traction Book to install a better framework of 'marketing' in your head, then go from there.

</comment><comment><USER34> Partner with indirectly related products, services, websites, bloggers in your space. Reach out with a carrot to many of them - and there are _many_ - <USER3> of them will likely want to work with you.

You'll likely need to offer something tantalizing in return...

</comment><comment><USER35> Hire a PR person and/or a SEO/Online Marketer. You have heard the phrase you must spend money to make money I'm sure. The trick is to do the part you are really good at, and pay someone else to do the part you are not really good at.

<comment><USER31> They're bootstrapping a spare time hobby project. Why would you recommend spending money on consultants at this stage?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This seems like a HotOrNot focused on fashion / learning how to be fashionable. IMO you need to get club chicks tapping on this app while they are taking a Lyft home.

</comment><comment><USER37> Try /r/malefashionadvice on Reddit. There are several fashion advice groups on Facebook as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've had them on our radar for a while, thanks! We've been looking for a group like that to concentrate on and try to spread out from there

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Full disclosure: I work for a company that does user acquistion for applications.

That being said, we got into the business because an app the company had invented was too hard to market, so we started marketing apps. There are a lot of techniques in this space -- some low budget, some high(er) budget. Happy to chat if you like. Feel free to dm me @jtm on twitter.

</comment><comment><USER39> 1\. Buy ads. 2\. Do PR. 3\. Talk to people. 4\. Have your first users refer the product to others. 5\. Do partnerships. ...

Marketing is easy.

</comment><comment><USER40> Read 'Growth Hacker Marketing'.

<comment><USER41> The only thing "growth hacked" about that book is its Amazon reviews. It's mediocre at best.</comment></comment>


Panarchism (opt-in anarchy) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panarchism <comment><USER2> wouldn't serial killers just form a government and say they have diplomatic immunity?</comment>


A landmark ruling gives new power to sue tech giants for privacy harms - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90297382/illinois-supreme-court-decision-marks-a-landmark-win-for-biometric-privacy-harm <comment><USER2> The scope of this ruling is limited to Illinois as far as I can tell, but it's a great start.

</comment><comment><USER3> The funny thing here is that the park had a legit reason for taking a fingerprint - you can use it to enter the park with a season pass. They just failed to disclose it properly.[1]

[1] [https://www.sixflags.com/national/biometric-data- tos](https://www.sixflags.com/national/biometric-data-tos)

<comment><USER4> Creating a system that requires the collection of personal data does not justify the collection of data. It's begging the question to presume that basing amusement park season passes on biometric authentication is okay in the first place. That's why informed, uncoerced consent is important: that's when people decide whether being able to enter the park is a legitimate use of biometric data. Making it the only option so people have no other choice doesn't do anything to legitimize it.

<comment><USER5> Fairly well way off topic, apologies in advance, but this is _interesting_ , to me anyway.

This is the only example I've seen in recent years of the use of the phrase _begging the question_ that _strictly adheres to a technical definition of the term_.[1]

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question)

<comment><USER6> Animats's point could easily have been rephrased in a way that avoids the "begging the question" fallacy, though: "Six Flags has a legitimate business interest in ensuring that unlimited-use season passes are used by only the person they are issued to. Of the various ways to identify a person, a fingerprint scan was judged the most convenient, particularly for a water park where people may not want to bring their wallet & ID."

Then the conclusion is not assumed by any of the premises, and yet many people (though perhaps not all) would agree with both premises.

<comment><USER5> Yes, of course, I agree. I didn't mean to comment on Animats' comment, just that philipov's usage of the term was technically correct.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bunkerpunk: Short Stories About Bunkers During the Pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://sudowriters.com/anthology/bunkerpunk/ <comment><USER2> I really like how these stories are formatted for reading on a mobile device.</comment>


London Stock Exchange record breaking system faces new open source challengers - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/in-depth/open-source/3246835/london-stock-exchange-linux-record-breaking-system-faces-new-challengers/

<comment><USER2> Usefullook at the competing claims</comment>


What alchemists got right about chemistry - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/03/15/good_as_gold/ <comment><USER2> Another interesting question would be what alchemists got right about psychology and religion.

C.G. Jung was heavily influenced by some alchemists. Jung probably isn't a psychologist in any scientific way but I really don't know enough to judge his contribution.

Another interesting place where alchemy comes up is in Valis, Philip K. Dick's semi-autobiographical attempt at making sense of his purported visions. I think he writes about a continuity between christian gnostics and alchemists. I love this book but I haven't the slightest idea how I could find out if anything in there makes any sense.</comment>


Comodo EV SSL vs. Go Daddy EV SSL, Which to Go With? - <AUTHOR>

I see a price difference, comodo $449.95 a year and Go daddy sells the same thing for $199.99, why the price disparity and which to go with if they are the same thing? <comment><USER2> I don't know about Godaddy ev cert, but I know one vendor who is always having a great offer on ssl certs. The product you are asking for comodo ev is at $99 p.a. on their site. [https://www.cheapsslshop.com/comodo-ev- ssl](https://www.cheapsslshop.com/comodo-ev-ssl) I hope this suggestion will lead you to the solution.

</comment><comment><USER3> Both Comodo & GoDaddy EV SSL Certificate offering same security factors, but the price may vary because today Comodo became the leading SSL certificate brand that secure over 33% of website worldwide which is too large compared with GoDaddy. Even customer trust level of Comodo is increasing day by day.

Why you are wishing to buy EV SSL Certificate directly form Comodo at high price, if there are many re-sellers available who offers at very low price?

CheapSSLSecurity is platinum re-seller of Comodo which offers Comodo EV SSL Certificate at very low price of just $113/year, which is too cheap compared with GoDadddy's EV SSL Certificate.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like you could get an EV cert, w/ Comodo as the CA, from NameCheap for only $145 per year.

[https://www.namecheap.com/security/ssl- certificates/extended...](https://www.namecheap.com/security/ssl- certificates/extended-validation.aspx)

A quick Google search turns up a few more that look to be pretty close to the $100-200 per year price point. FWIW, I'm not affiliated w/ any of these CAs or resellers.</comment>


Who gets rich from a Groupon IPO?  - <AUTHOR> http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/groupon/GrouponRich?:embed=yes&:toolbar=yes&:tabs=no

<comment><USER2> Only goes up to $25 billion... The I.P.O. probably will go even higher than that. $30 billion?</comment>


A project to make expensive, legally-mandated standards documents public - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2012/03/19/liberating-americas-secret.html

<comment><USER2> The article makes reference to the need for Standards organizations to charge for standards so continue fundind the development of those standards. I've contributed/am contributing to three ANSI standards and we're not compensated for that work. In fact we have to spend money out of our own (or our firms') pockets to work on these - I'm spending $1,000 to travel to Washington DC next week for a meeting of one of these standards groups.

When complete, these standards will probably sell for $80-$100 a pop and I'll see none of that. ANSI as an organization will contribute by providing some editing and review (although the bulk of that work will be done by unpaid peer reviewers) and it's necessary for them to charge a nominal fee to support their work, but having seen this process from the inside, I don't see where this money is going.

We need standards, but the gatekeeper aspect is a sham. When contributors start getting paid for our efforts, maybe I'll change my mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds EXACTLY like the scientific publishing industry. What is the motivation for you to do free work for these parasites?

<comment><USER3> _What is the motivation for you to do free work for these parasites?_

In most cases, both in scientific publishing and in writing standards, people aren't doing free work, they're getting paid by their employers. So the next question is what is the motivation of these employer to pay for you to work for these parasites. In most cases the answer is a mixture of prestige, advertising, influence and early access.

<comment><USER4> The typical situation in science is that you're expected to cover "100%" of your time through some combination of grants and teaching. There is no specific allocation for "professional service", but you're expected to do it anyway.

With standards bodies, it's common that some representative of each organization is required to attend meetings to retain voting privileges. So if the organization wants a chance to influence the Standard, they need to send people and pay for it. One reason is prestige/advertising, but a Standard also enables tactical advantages, e.g., (a) include feature X that lets us showcase our hardware or (b) prevent feature Y that would be expensive for us to implement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Upon the close of the May 1 comment period, it is our intention to begin > posting these 73 standards in HTML and begin the process of providing a > unified, easy-to-use interface to all public safety standards in the Code of > Federal Regulations

This deadline has come and gone, and apparently they've gone ahead and published a number of standards:

<https://law.resource.org/pub/12tables.html>

The background -- particularly Supreme Court cases -- given by public.resource in the article and the above link make the situation pretty clear: If it's a law, it's in the public domain, and it's legal to publish these standards. (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.)

The legal question I have in mind is the following: The government adopts as law technical documents developed and copyrighted by a (nominally) private body, and thereby places them in the public domain. The authoring organization expected to generate revenue by selling them and now that is much harder, since they are in the public domain. It looks an awful lot like the government is using _eminent domain_ : Government appropriation of private property (a copyrighted work) for public purposes (writing laws). Under the eminent domain clause of the Constitution (assuming all parties are US-based), shouldn't the government pay the organization for using its legislative powers to take their copyrighted work and place it in the public domain?

If the organization is entitled to eminent domain compensation, how do you fairly determine the value of the documents? Clearly you can't use the number of downloads from public.resource times the price the standards body would have charged. This falls victim to Hollywood's classic piracy fallacy: Assuming that anyone who downloads things for free would have bought them at full price if the download hadn't been available. (This assumption obviously defies all economic theory and common sense.) In this situation there's another effect, possibly even stronger: Relatively few people would have cared enough about these documents to spend thousands of dollars on them if they hadn't been made into law.

Would the standards body still be entitled to eminent domain compensation if they wrote the documents under the expectation that they would become law, or actively lobbied the government to make them into law?

<comment><USER6> THe government is not using eminent domain, as it is not appopriating any private _tangible_ property. Moreover, it is a simple matter to evade copyright by simply changing the language in whatever laws are adopted. Finally, if any organization were to attempt to demand compensation for its "standards" it would quickly find itself ignored and its standard would be worth less than the electricity used to render them.

In other words, the standards body would not be entitled to any compensation, nor should it expect any compensation if it has any hope of its "standards" becoming law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with the article 100% - laws need to be freely accessible to everyone. One particular standard which I hope they publish in the future is the HIPAA standard(<http://store.x12.org/store/healthcare-5010-original-guides>). It's pretty outrageous that to implement any form of electronic interfacing with Medicare, a government insurer, you have to pay $2500. And it's not just a one time cost - you have to keep buying them every couple of years to keep track of new additions / errata.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely. It's unbelievable that the WPC gets a monopoly on the healthcare data interchange standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a big problem in Europe as well. In the UK increasingly the building regulations refer you to British and EU standards which are very expensive. Want to know the EU standard methods for designing drains for buildings? Be prepared to pay £720(US$1160) [0]

[0] [http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/SearchResults/?q=gravity%20drain...](http://shop.bsigroup.com/en/SearchResults/?q=gravity%20drainage%20inside%20buildings)

<comment><USER10> At the same time, I assume a standard like that only applies to people designing drainage systems for sale within the EU.

Presumably if you are a corporation looking to design and sell drainage systems, £720 to gain access to the relevant standards is a relatively small cost in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER9> Nope, these apply to the design of any building with a sink or a toilet in it. That's just the standards for the drainage pipe sizing, layout and design of pipe bedding and cover. To be fair, for a very simple building you can probably get enough information from a manufacturers website to get by, but then you don't know how much of what they are telling you is sales patter designed to make their product seem like the only solution to the problem. For example, there are more than 320 standards referenced in the domestic version of the Scottish Building Standards and while you don't need access to all of them there are plenty that are very useful to have access to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's certainly other models. Not sure if they are better or worse. There's the W3C model. I don't even know what that is honestly as although they help propose standards much of what they do is document what browser vendors have implemented after the fact and then try to get the browser vendors to agree. I don't know what their funding model is

<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/fees>

Their specs are public though

The Khronos Group (OpenGL, OpenCL, etc) is a pay to participate organization but they make their specs public.

My point is only that even if ANSI, which others have brought up, needs money their model of charging for the specs isn't the only way to do it.

As for the original article it certainly does seem outrageous that there are laws that require you to follow some standard and you have to pay to access that standard.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article is from last March. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to post a follow up article?

</comment><comment><USER13> There was a court case about building codes, where the court ruled that you can't charge for the standard because it was the law. Let me see if I can find it...

Edit: I can't find it. If someone more versed on finding court cases can find it that would be awesome. IIRC, it involved a company suing a city(?) for publishing a copywrited building code they had written but the court ruled that you can't charge for the law.

<comment><USER14> I believe you are referring to the case cited in the first section of this article: Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress, 293 F.3d 791 (5th Circuit, 2002). ([https://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/293/293.F3d.791.9)...](https://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/293/293.F3d.791.9\)9-40632.html)

<comment><USER13> That's what I get for only reading the first few lines....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Its a worthy crusade and one which has such sweet irony. Standards organizations who spend thousands to get their standard incorporated into the law so that they can sell millions of dollars worth of documents to municipalities and other organizations that have to comply.

Only to have all of their efforts become the biggest information give away in decades! Priceless.</comment>


Intel Fortran Compiler - <AUTHOR> https://software.intel.com/en-us/fortran-compilers <comment><USER2> This is proprietary and they charge you for it. There are decent free compilers for Fortran 03-08. I recommend using one of those, instead.

<comment><USER3> That is not completely true. It is completely free of charge for academics (students/teachers) and open-source developers. That already covers a significant population of programmers in my opinion. Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Intel, but I truly appreciate their efforts in generating efficient Fortran compilers on both Windows and Mac/Linux, that (almost fully) comply with the most recent Fortran standard 2018.</comment></comment>


Biparental Inheritance of Mitochondrial DNA in Humans - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/11/21/1810946115 <comment><USER2> holy hell that is going to invalidate a lot of research</comment>