Congrats on the progress so far 🙌

Hi Thomas, I take it you're speaking of WIP?

It's completely custom built, so it's not possible to re-use it for your own community.

Quite a few people are taking inspiration from WIP and building their own version for their particular niche. So I do wonder if there's an opportunity to start offering it as something you could use for your own service.

I guess it comes down to economics. Whether there's enough people willing to pay enough money to warrant that kind of product development. As it would be quite a bit of work.

Alternatively you could look into something like Forem which is the open-source community software powering dev.to

Are you referring to roasts on WIP or getting feedback in general?

Be easy to reach for your customers as possible. This can mean many different things depending on your product, but adding a chat widget to your site is one way. Another way is to replace "[email protected]" email addresses with "[email protected]" or just your personal email.

Feedback from customers is generally more useful than feedback from your peers (other makers).

I saw you posted a roast already so I'll comment on that one specifically.

• Make it easy for people to roast your product, the Chrome installation steps seem rather complicated
• Specifically ask about the things you want feedback on, which parts of the site.
• Answer other people's roasts. They might check out your profile and return the favor

Most importantly though, I think people are more likely to give feedback and help you out once they get to know you better and feel invested in your success. Practically that means being active on the site and participate in the chat. Make people part of your journey and they'll cheer you on, help spread the word, provide feedback, etc. I don't think there any shortcuts for that, except for just being an active community member.

One issue I've seen related to monetizing cost-saving services is that they, by design, attract price-sensitive customers.

So that might be tricky and indeed something you should test. Hopefully you can figure it out in a manner of days or at most weeks. You wouldn't want to spend months on something people won't pay for.

Unless you can find an alternative revenue model similar to comparison sites, where you take a commission. Those models are somewhat proven, but require a large enough userbase.

I wonder if you can find out this unknown, without even needing to launch the product.

Do you know what substitutes people are currently using to solve the same problem?

😄

Thanks for sharing and glad you remembered us :)

Curious to hear about your "biggest unknown" for Piggybank too by the way.

I don't use Chrome, so I tried to online version. Here's my feedback:

• From the landing page it's not clear what the site is about
• The example link is really handy, but I initially missed. Because it's so small. I recommend adding a bunch of different examples and make them more into clickable cards with a title
• The example shows me Hebrew. I can't read Hebrew, so that's not super useful to me. Instead I think you can ask the user their primary language or guess it based on their browser/location. Alternatively, make the language selector easier to spot. Right now it feels hidden.
• Selecting language by two-letter country code is not super user-friendly. I'd like to see the full name of the language.
• More/less slider isn't clear what it does. More or less of what?
• I tried adding a link but it got stuck on loading ( www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/wo… )

Overall I like the idea of learning a language through reading. Especially if it can be done automatically with the browser extension. My English reading comprehension is already good enough, so I wouldn't use it for that. But I might if I were to learn another language. 👍

Haha. That's a good doggo. What's her/his name?

I'll go first :)

Unknown: what differentiates new members who actively start using WIP and participate in the community, and members who join but never seem to get the hang of it.

How to find out: talk to early new members, track how active they are, and try to understand their differences

When I do know: I can help more members to be successful in adopting WIP (if it's something I can control), and/or target my marketing towards people who are the right fit for WIP join (if it's something I cannot control)

Biggest unknown: How hire managers decide which job boards to post to.

How to find out: Ask them. Reach out to a few through LinkedIn/etc and set up calls. Incentivise with gift certificate or something if needed.

When I do know: Decide on next steps to get more hire managers to post on Startup Jobs

Unknown: What makes for the most interesting startups for our audience

How to find out: Look at metrics. See which startups get most engagement

When I do know: Focus our site/newsletter/etc on those startups instead. Increase signal to noise ratio. Increases engagement. Which makes BetaList more valuable to qualifying startups, and advertisers.