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Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?
185 points by cod3boy on Nov 19, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 317 comments
It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

we recently launched Sieve PRO https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sieve-pro

https://www.sievehq.com/ a saas, where we provide all tools for anyone in tech to start freelancing in 15 minutes. This includes a personal website, client on-boarding, NDAs, requirement collection, eventually invoices, payments, and agreements.

When we had 600 people coming to our website, had 400 people click the signup but only 40 people signed up and NO ONE PAID.

We were asking for yearly payment $348 ($29/mo) as a part of Elite 100 program where we give away 100,000 shares for the first 100 people and all the features coming up in the next year for free.

What did we do wrong?




Emperor Akbar, on a whim, once asked his minister Birbal to find him ten fools. You can get the gist here (Source: http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202).

Birbal stumbled across the third fool while the latter was looking for something at night. The guy was looking under a streetlamp and couldn't seem to find whatever he was looking for. Birbal asked him what he was looking for so frantically. He explained that he lost his wedding ring in a dark alley a short ways away.

Birbal is confused and asks him why he wasn’t looking in the alley, and in the street instead. Get this. The guy replies that he’s looking under the streetlamp because there’s more light there.

Moral of the story: dont ask on HN, go ask the folks who dropped off.

Here's a suggestion on how you could do it. Take a look at Tumblr or Intercom and see how they collect an email first and then ask for a password and eventually more information. Collect an email address just before anyone clicks get started. So that you have a way to reach them in case they dropped off and helps you figure out at what point folks are dropping of

(My thesis: Your shady credit card collection process is the culprit. Typeform doesn't seem to fit your story of helping folks be more professional. If you are a professional trying to help freelancers be more professional, you should be using something more professional)

Sorry, if you felt, I called you a fool. Perhaps reading the story and learning who the 10th fool is would make you feel better. :-)


I'm not a freelancer, but I'd assume the biggest problem getting started with freelancing isn't the NDAs etc. It's getting clients. Maybe your marketing should be geared to people who are already freelancing and who want to upsell/become more professional?


Thanks for the feedback, I think I've been hearing this a lot now, will think about this deeply and do something :) We actually had a lead generation too inside the platform, but its still in the process, ideally picking up all the leads around internet form slack groups, LinkedIn etc and qualifying the leads.


That would likely be a better stand alone product.


Thanks for the story, in fact, looking back, I feel quite foolish to ask too much information in one go :D The gist of the story is very interesting, but in our current scenario I don' really have a way to reach the folks who dropped off, that's why I came to HN. I'll be exploring the other points you noted, and work on them.


> looking back, I feel quite foolish to ask too much information in one go

To the contrary -- you are wise to learn from your mistakes : )


the intent was not to make you feel foolish.

Maybe its a good thing you feel embarrassed. It probably means that you haven't released late. Listen to Episode 4 of Reid Hoffman's Podcast Masters of Scale. "So don’t fear imperfections; they won’t make or break your company". Forge Ahead!


The forty people who signed up surely put in some contact information?


Yes, but tons of other people dropped without any information.


Have you contacted them?


how many people signed up so far? and is this Elite 100 program still valid? even with the new subscription structure?


We've pulled the program at the moment.


First of all, asking for help everywhere is awesome, as humility is the key to take the right steps to fix a problem.

If you cannot talk to those who did not sign up or like the offers, then you need to take to people who have extreme pains in using sites like freelance.com or upworks.com these sites have crazy traffic but until today they have not resolved key issues for freeelancers or seekers of freelance talents.I must add, they are SUPER hubs for Freelancers as they are the status quo but key values are missing.

I saw your site and I love your approach but you must refine the big uppercut punches that will make any free lancer on your site standout and choose your platform.

I suffered a big deal of problems when sourcing freelancers from freelance.com, upworks.com and many more. I found many others suffer the same thing.

I love to help you to share my stories and help you refine where is the real true value lies for a customer that wants top talent. If you like to plan a short power call soon let me know. I will drop my email in your Freshchat with attention to cod3boy!


If you don't mind me asku, what sort of problems were you having with sourcing from freelance superhubs?


Can you please explain this a little bit more? I don't exactly get what you are asking!


Thanks, got it! will get back to you soon.


That might be your problem too. The absolute next thing I build, after features, is a feedback pipeline. I do this before even integrating the payment gateway. Often it's in the form of some support forum or in app public chatroom.

Take a close look at any comments wherever you advertise. I'd even recommend against FB/Google advertising at first because it's difficult to get feedback.

Analytics might help too and you can see where people are dropping off. But they're quite inefficient.

Sometimes you just have email people who signed up in person to ask them. People are usually very open to giving brief feedback; just don't drag them into some focus group or 10 minute talk.

Being able to iterate based on feedback is usually the make or break point of an early stage entrepreneur.


Thanks, I think I have tons of feedback from HN now, honestly, I did not expect this much! :) I am currently sorting out each feedback and converting to actionable items, will probably come with a blog post or something soon about the actions :)


> Collect an email address just before anyone clicks get started.

That's a sure way to collect a bunch of mailinator.com addresses.


Is this common on a SaaS site? My experience with landing pages is that people will cheerfully enter their work email address without a second thought.


Cheerfully enter my work email!? I am way more reserved with that than my personal address!!


Don’t you have a second -t testing email? Actually having one, I can say that there is nothing wrong happening inside it, despite it was used for lots of “seems legit” evaluation registrations.

(Not that I’ll check it often, answer questions or connect to audio notifier; this somewhat defeats the purpose we’re discussing.)


Me, too! I may have been as surprised as you.


Can't speak for everyone, but it is common on any site.

The assumption is that they _will_ spam, sell the data or do something comparably exciting, so it's nearly always a disposable address first, changing it to a real address later if needed.


And if the end goal was to get everybody's real email addresses, this would be a calamitous failure.

This guy just needs some feedback. Even just a fraction of real emails would be better than none.


I never want to giveaway my email address either, unless it's really important.

I'm hundreds of times more likely to sign up via Google Account, sometimes Facebook.

So much easier and no activation emails etc...


I hesitated to provide my linkedin, which is a must for registration


I love this story because it is a new angle from the usual drunk looking for his car keys under the street lamp.


The first version of it I ever saw was in a Baby Huey comic book in about 1967, a single page comic, and it struck my infant self as wise and unusually funny. I wonder how old the joke is.


Not sure if the real source can be traced. Birbal lived in the 1500's and I have heard another version atributed to another court jester called Tenali Raman who lived in the same century.


The first I heard of it was a translation of a 13th Century Sufi tale. So,... older than Baby Huey.


What's the beef with Typeform? It is a slick service, award winning, very well thought out and designed. With Zapier it integrates to over 500+ apps downstream including Invoice Ninja (another amazing service integrated with 40 payment vendors). A happy customer for one year. Would appreciate your take on it.


1) It should not be used to collect credit card details.

2) If you claim to cater to professionals, you should not be using typeform for the signup process.

3) I am clearly not in the target audience, but I'll share my concerns : I would never use a service that hacks together a bunch of third party tools. It's great from the founders point of view (MVP, fail fast, early validation, hustle and whatever else), but it does not inspire confidence. Why? Security and privacy. God knows what poorly configured database, webserver or access control mechanism will leak user data since the product was built with the aim of getting something out of the door without much thought given to security and privacy.


Got this feedback about the onboarding process. Working on this :) While we are hacking together a bunch of tools to onboard and a home page, we really had worked on the product. Here is a quick video if you are intrigued https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c


What's wrong with collecting credit card details with Typeform?


Not being PCI compliant, for one.


Agree on all points there - slick service, award winning, very well thought out and designed. They even tout Typeform on their website for payment purposes. But to me personally (and my thesis is, to most folks), it does not "appear" secure.

The beef is not technical, its just appearances. Using Typeform to get Credit Card information is like casting Kevin Spacey in Denzel's place in John Q. Both great actors. Spacey might even integrate with over 500+ apps soon. But who would you trust with your kid?

The way typeform has been employed here does not give the impression of security. In fact, the current impression is that your credit card numbers are been given the same level of security as your 10 was given when you answered "How would you rate our Pizza on a scale of 1 to 10?" at your local Italian joints website.

And that little sign "Secured by Stripe" is like displaying a footnote, in each scene of the Spacey version of John Q, saying "Trust this guy".


As a user, if I see typeform I expect a long questionnaire (e.g. from someone explicitly asking me to give them some time to help them research something) or it to be an e-mail list signup. Neither are things I want when trying to sign up to a service - it looks like you are just fishing to collect user data and don't actually have anything yet. I have no idea if they are prepared to actually handle financial data properly (unlike I'd be with a conventional payment gateway I've heard of). The entire presentation with "pages", asking question after question (I think OP updated the signup already, now it asks 3 questions and doesn't manage to fit the 3 form fields on a Full-HD screen!), progress bar looks like "this is complicated". The keyboard hints it gives me don't actually work.

It's a massive contrast to the relatively polished (if content-less, which again makes one question if there is an actual product) landing page, which makes it look even more like you prioritize looks over quality. These guys supposedly help me sign up customers, is their solution to that going to be "set up a typeform"?!

It might be slick (I'd argue that, but my tastes don't necessarily align with people creating such labels) and award-winning, but primarily it sends the wrong message.


We actually had many more questions, we were asking all the questions that required to make their personal website like this https://bighead.sievehq.com/, then scrapped all the questions when users started dropping off.


I haven’t got the faintest idea why people like Typeform. I loathe its design for forms. (I am using the word loathe seriously.) Please just show me regular fields, don’t try to get smart about it. Things that try to be clever almost always make a mess of it. Typeform is right up there with scrolljacking. (I have never seen a perfect scrolljacking implementation, though I have come across one or two that were oh so all-but and been duly impressed.)


> It is a slick service, award winning, very well thought out and designed.

You sound like a seller of the product, not a customer.

"Award winning". Most awards are bullshit so when people use it as a plus it just indicates they have nothing more than bullshit to sell.


Sounds like frankensteining third party tools together.


Just on the home page and onboarding, I realize it was a mistake :) Here is the actual product in the show. Can you please take a look? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c


1. Get a native speaker to proofread your website copy

2. The title of the page is "Sieve Pro - The best management tool for" (missing a "freelancers")?

3. Some people might like it, but I'm always turned off when websites are using SV characters as profile placeholders - makes the site itself seem like a joke

4. As others have said, develop your own signup form instead of using TypeForm - TypeForm always gives me an "MVP"-feel (is the product actually available or do they just want to harvest my email for a later launch?)

5. The footer says "Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy" but these aren't links and I can't find those documents anywhere

6. Clarify if the virtual assistant is an actual person (someone on your team) or a chatbot - makes a huge difference in terms of value: I don't want to scare away my clients with a dumb chatbot, but if there's a human answering (easy) questions 24/7, I'd be impressed

Remember that traffic from ProductHunt is short-lived and the users may not be in your target audience (but just want to check out a cool landing page) - just because you get lots of upvotes on PH doesn't mean that these users will stick around or are actually interested in becoming paying users of your product. Find out where your target audience hangs out (freelancing forums, Slack groups, Facebook communities) and speak to your (potential) users - find out if the features you're offering are actually relevant to your target group. If they are, invite them to try out your product and give you feedback.


Woah, all my points already here. Would add, and please don’t take this personal, but get a native speaker to do the voice over. You are unlucky to have a bad stereotype matched with your dialect.

In addition:

1. Don’t use thumbs up icons and smileys in your professional website. I’m not on Facebook.

2. So many grammar errors. Also in the video.

3. First overview in the video has so much information yet tells me nothing. To be honest your product already failed here for me. If not for the Ask HN I would close my tab and never look back.

4. What’s up with all the multi-page flashy text box questions? For me, on a professional site, don’t do animations and just keep a single page for one question list. Be really, really careful with animations. The one on your landing page already touched my nerves btw. Feels like someone who does his first keynote/PowerPoint presentation. Animations everywhere.


Thanks for this one! Tried using the smileys to make it look bit relaxed :) Will consider the other points and do the needful.


Noted all the feedback, the virtual assistant is a real person who answers basic questions about the freelancers, and not a chatbot. I think that's really good as well, overall I think we failed at showcasing and on the onboarding flow and using the typeform :)


Why are they called a “virtual assistant”? I would just call that an assistant. I have always thought a virtual assistant is a chatbot. In fact, I have never even given one of them a chance bacause I was so sure of it.


Virtual assistant[0] is an accepted term for a human assistant, but agree that with the increase it chatbots it is confusing. Definitely worth clarifying as having a real person answering the questions is a lot more valuable.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_assistant_(occupation)


Noted the point, will clarify in the copy.


What grammatical or typographical errors prompt the advice to get someone to proofread the website?

I'm asking because I see this advice quite often, and most of the times I can't find anything wrong. Could someone point out specific errors that I miss? Perhaps I need to get an editor myself.


"We help freelancers become more professional with automatic streamlined process for managerial tasks like client onboarding, signing NDA and requirement collection right from their personal website."

"with automatic streamlined process" should probably be "an automatic streamlined process". I don't think the way it is now is technically wrong but it doesn't feel right.

"Never delay your client to wait for an NDA." doesn't really make sense. "Never delay your client with an NDA" or "Never make your client wait for an NDA" would be better.

"This will be automatically added to your calendar." technically correct but I think native speakers would more often say "This will automatically be added to your calendar".

"All the process" -> "The entire process"

"to call scheduling take place under 30 minutes" -> "Will take place in under 30 minutes"

"you will have all details to start a call" -> "you will have all the details to start a call"


and if you really want to get it right, you need to use proper parallel structure when stringing clauses together:

`for managerial tasks like client onboarding, signing NDA and requirement collection right from their personal website`

would read better as:

`for managerial tasks like onboarding clients, signing NDAs, and collecting requirements right from their personal website`

Copyediting is largely getting eliminated as an 'unnecessary' expense in the world of web content publishing, but when the life of your business might depend on some marketing copy, good professional copyediting is priceless.

--edited for alliteration, grammar, and oxford comma


Looks like I can get the copy changes from here too :) Thanks for this!


> > "We help freelancers become more professional with automatic streamlined process for managerial tasks like client onboarding, signing NDA and requirement collection right from their personal website."

> "with automatic streamlined process" should probably be "an automatic streamlined process". I don't think the way it is now is technically wrong but it doesn't feel right.

Ambiguous plurality. Go for either singular "with an automatic streamlined process" or plural "with automatic streamlined processes".

I believe this is a common mistake for people whose first language is Chinese, which doesn't have indefinite articles. A co-worker drops articles pretty regularly.


Thanks for this! :)


It says “29$/month” instead of “$29 / month” in the “For Starters” section. Putting the dollar sign after the number just seems foreign. The sentence right after that is a run-on sentence.


First, I'd remove the implication that the customer is not professional. Assume your customer _is_ professional, but needs help with some bureaucratic functions. The phrase "automatic streamlined process for managerial tasks like client onboarding, signing NDA and requirement collection" is pretty terrible and confusedly jargony. Who is signing the NDA? Unclear. Who is actually benefits from the service? Unclear. IS NDA signing and requirement collection a part of the onboarding process, or some other thing? Unclear.

"We help professional freelancers provide a streamlined process for creating new client accounts. Collecting your client's requirements and NDA forms can be managed directly from your own website."


Been getting feedback for "professional" a lot. Thanks, will edit accordingly, we are working on an entirely new copy of the website.


There are a number of subject/verb agreement issues ("All the process ... take place") and such but mostly it's an issue of odd clause construction and word choice, with some run-on sentences.

For example: "Never delay your client to wait for an NDA." A more idiomatic version would be "Never make your client wait for an NDA" or perhaps "Never let waiting on an NDA delay your clients."


What's "SV character"?


See the guy on their demo page [0]? He's a fictional character [1] on the HBO show Silicon Valley [2].

[0]: https://bighead.sievehq.com/

[1]: http://silicon-valley.wikia.com/wiki/Big_Head

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_(TV_series)


Using copyrighted photos for commercial purposes without permission will bring in some nasty letters from lawyers (demands for takedown, demands for payment, etc.)

And to a potential customer, it indicates a lack of basic trustworthiness - if someone is unaware of or uncaring of the basic laws about copyright, should I trust them with my credit card number?


A character from the HBO show "Silicon Valley", I believe.


I also clicked on signup, but then didn't. Here is why: I wanted to sign up to test the product, but after clicking on signup I get a Typeform modal. Typeform as a signup form makes me suspicious that the product doesn't really exists, and the startup is doing some sort of landing page -> signup validation.

You also ask that I enter my credit card and you want to charge me 10$ upfront, without having established any sort of trust, or having shown the product to me. I would never do that. I don't even do that for established trust worthy companies. I wan't to see and test the product before I buy.


update: don't let the data discourage you, though. it's actually not bad. 400/600 clicked signed up? that's fantastic!

only 40 people went through with the sign up? I would say thats just user churn because of bad onboarding.

the first thing I would do is let people sign up with just email and password, and actually let them use your product, for a free trial period.

the second thing I would focus on is getting your users to the "magical moment" of your app. Thats a term I first read in context of someone from the growth team at facebook talking about user churn and growth. for facebook, the magic moment for example, was "seeing your friends".[0]

For your app, I think, the magical moment could be the first time a user sucessfully onboards a new client through your app, and sees how easy it is to collect all the requirements etc. If they go through that, and its really much easier with your app, they can't help but start their next client project with your app as well, and upgrade to a paid plan. But to get to that moment, you probably need at least a couple of days. I would not charge users before that moment.

[0] https://blog.kissmetrics.com/alex-schultz-growth/


> user churn because of bad onboarding

I have a stupid question regarding vocabulary, because I've seen this 'inherent' definition of 'churn' used around here more recently.

To me, when I do co-hort analyses, failure to onboard is a conversion failure. In any case - 'Customer Success' territory. 'Churn' is when the custom fails to re-up (for whatever reason).

Am I using the 'wrong words'?


You are right, failure to onboard is not churn. Churn is when the customer doesn't renew or come back after a certain initial period has passed.


You're using the right words. (Except for "co-hort" which should just be "cohort" ;)


Yeah. Sorry. I'm not going to correct it, so that your comment standing here continues making sense.

(I don't know what is wrong with me... I found myself typing 're-novate' the other day... At least that makes more sense than 'co-hort')


I love HN and all the comments here, but this one particularly is very helpful for me. Thank you!


This is great advice when I envision when to ask and how much I should charge for a saas business I’ve been struggling to get going. I hadn’t seen this before despite being a near daily reader in HN.


I completely agree with this.

Personally I have never seen credit card information being asked in a typeform but that could just be me.

To start with maybe you could show a video of the product? A demo of some kind. If your product really is good maybe you could offer 7 days or 30 days free?

The site feels a bit unfinished too, if I click on the elite 100 at the top it seems to bring me to the index page again.

It looks nice though, good luck and I hope the feedback here helps.


Thank you. The feedback definitely helps. We are working on a demo video as we speak. Since the elite 100 was not successful we removed the whole thing from the page. I've explained in the previous comment what the program was like.


Thanks, Makes sense. Before we were asking $348 ;-) but then our program was that we'd giveaway shares for the first 100 people. The whole thought process behind that was,

We are a small team of hustlers wanting to build the best experience for freelancers to work with their clients. Soon in our journey, we realized building a startup is a lot of work, and it’s hard to focus on multiple areas. This is why we’ve launched the Elite 100 program and opening our platform to only 100 users for the first 6 months. We’ll not focus on growth, but only to serve the 100 users in the best way.

It was also deep-rooted in my conviction that the disparity between the rich and everyone else is larger than ever in the United States and the rest of the world. I believe a company working with masses should also give everyone a share of the benefits gained, this aligns with my personal mission as well, I’ve been working with communities for many years (and even in my personal capacity https://www.facebook.com/COD3BOY/posts/10155519455529473) and I believe the real success happens when we have a lot of people coming together on a mission and everyone is benefitted. By giving away 100,000 shares of our company we stand by that, and says when we are successful everyone who were with us will be benefited too.


Honestly, just don't bother with the share grants. There are massive legal landmines as securities are highly regulated. There's no benefit to you nor to the random people you want to give shares to. Plus the incentive is all wrong. You want your customers to choose your product on its own basis, not because you're giving out chachkis.

> By giving away 100,000 shares of our company we stand by that, and says when we are successful everyone who were with us will be benefited too.

That's not what it says to me. What it says is that you are naive and your shares are worthless. If your company ever makes it you'll just dilute those shares to nothing.


I'm not a lawyer, but the share thing sounds illegal. I don't think you should be doing that, otherwise you will probably get in trouble with the SEC. Companies usually only sell (or give away) shares to the public when they have an IPO.


I don't know where this company is located, but in US giving away securities is illegal.


I would talk to a startup lawyer about this before you destroy your captable forever.


If that's how you feel, making your company a cooperative or a platform cooperative is probably a safer bet, albeit possibly more work. Giving away shares, while it appears easy, is illegal and has other disadvantages.

https://platform.coop


It was also deep-rooted in my conviction that the disparity between the rich and everyone else is larger than ever in the United States and the rest of the world.

It's a nice sentiment, but the most proven way of dealing with this is to get actual cash into their pockets without adding to the income disparity, which in this case would be giving e.g. LinkedIn or Robert Half or whoever (exploitative rent-seekers) a big slice of any money they make through a particular gateway (you).


I’m one of the people who dropped off. Your chat person told me to try hiring your sample profile. When I went there, it was just a poorly made typeform. Your NDA process didn’t account for anything as simple as finding out what country the other person is in. Regions impact legal documents significantly. Everything else was basically the same. Overall, I think your premise of “I know we have a decent product” is flawed. Your product brings little to the table for me, it introduces risk, and extra costs.


> Overall, I think your premise of “I know we have a decent product” is flawed.

Yea, I'm not seeing $29 a month worth of value being added by this product over, say, just using stock templates on Google Drive.


Can you please take a quick look, here is the actual product in the show. I think we failed at showcasing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c


This plays more like an instructional video than a demo. You spend almost the entire time filling out forms. Consider doing a 30 - 60 sec explainer video that just shows off the sizzle if you really want to have a video.

I would also loose Bighetti. You're pitch is 'be more professional' and the first thing you see in the video is a character who's famous for being a lazy idiot.


Noted, now that we are here, can you please take a look at this one too? We had an explainer as well :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S23V3LmRUb4


That's a much better video - gets the point across quickly, and looks professional. I'd replace the "demo video" on your home page with that.

As a side note, I thought the animated video was well produced. Would you mind sharing how you made it? (email in profile, if you'd prefer to do so off-thread). Thanks!


Made it on fiverr with this guy https://www.fiverr.com/joeguilar


After getting the gist from that video and from personal experience freelancing, I would say the major pain points for freelancers are:

a) Clients being slow on delivery of requirements/content but once they deliver it, they want things done urgently

b) Clients being slow to sign off stuff after delivery

c) Late payments after a lot of chasing

Documentation and NDAs can vary from client to client and is usually initiated from their side.

These are my experiences, others may have a different perspective.


Will think about his more! Thanks.


This is a MUCH better video for "getting" what the product is quickly. Show this one before anything else. But somewhere, please, explain what a "personal assistant" really means. If it's a real, breathing human being on call 24/7, say that. If it's someone that might be there, but will definitely get back to you within 6 hours, say that. Be transparent or nobody will bite... they are trying to calculate in their head if $29/mo is worth it to them, and they need to know exactly what they are receiving to make that calculation.


Its a real human being, will incorporate all these feedbacks soon, thanks for taking time to write :)


I watched/skimmed the first two minutes of this video. The lack of audio seems off-putting and amateur (so does the Big Head). It also seems a lot like a video of someone filling out a form. I feel like most people will be able to fill out a form without needing a video walkthrough and the video walkthrough doesn't really convey the usefulness of the product - which should be in the very beginning of the product.

I'd expect an explanatory video to have audio, and to cover the core utility of the project.


Will work on the suggestions! Thanks. We had an explanation video, commented in another thread.


That's because there's no product.

There are two kinds of freelancers/consultants:

1. Successful ones - those that bill tens thousands of dollars a month/hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This group knows how to open a bank account, how to invoice a customer, how to setup cron jobs for nagging a customer, how to setup per customer support phone numbers, how to talk to attorneys and accountants. For them there's nothing in your startup that they already do not know or dont have someone else do for them.

2. Everyone else. That group does not have the money to throw at your promise because every schmuck on facebook or linkedin is promising them something for $30/mo.


:) Interesting comment. I was hoping we can serve both the groups, for 1, even when they are good at it, there is a lot of time expenses which can be reduced with Sieve. Thanks for the feedback, will definitely look more into this.


As someone who's done some freelancing as a software dev, I don't see much value in the product.

None of the features offered by the product resonate with me.

For managing appointments, I usually do it all over email. Most major email clients support calendar invites.

Also, most freelancers already have a website and if not they can setup their own site very quickly with little effort.

I think the product is in a very competitive space. All the ideas I can think of in this space are already taken or they are impossible to monetize.

For example an invoicing app for freelancers is a great idea but already taken. Also it's hard to monetize because there are so many free alternatives available that it doesn't make sense for a freelancer to pay for it.

Another great idea is a SaaS solution to allow freelancers and their customers to sign and fill out documents/forms online. That idea is already taken and again hard to monetize because there are many free solutions already available.

I think that ultimately if the problem is simple to solve, then the market will be competitive and the amount that customers will be willing to pay for it will approach $0.

If you're not among the first people to solve a specific problem or the solution isn't able to leverage network effects, then the problem needs to be difficult to solve... Or else your profits will be eaten away by the competition once their product reaches parity with yours.


Good points. I think you overestimate first mover advantage here. It's not that people are already solving all these problems, it's that the solution he's come up with is not unique or compelling or distinct from those services in anyway. It's just a kitchen sink.


I am not sure if there is always a first mover advantage in business. There is always an opportunity to improve/innovate and do things better.


Not necessarily first mover, but early mover... Just try to compete against Facebook now.


> It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

Check your dissonance. It’s the product.

There are numerous things I could pick holes in here, most noteably that the product tries to do far too much and probably doesn’t do one thing brilliantly. Personally I’m not going to invest my valuable time in finding out if that’s true. The ask is too big.

That said, nobody here is going to be able to give you a recipe for success. People are notoriously poor predictors of what will and won’t succeed in business. You’ve just got to work your way through this balancing intuition against feedback and data. It takes time, it takes money, and it’s really hard work.

Good luck!


If I needed their product, I wouldn't be ready to freelance.


That may be one of the problems is the one price for all features. The virtual assistant may be where $20 of the $29 a month goes but and could be useful to potential customer. However if the potential customer already has a website and a form nda then they look at the service as a whole as useless. Would be worth investigating splitting service categories into 'those who are just starting' tier where you provide an all in one package and a 'make your life easier' tierwhere they can pick what services complement what they already do


Why is that? Can you please explain?


Thanks, will consider the feedback and work on this :)


To me, it is the product...

You’ve essentially taken a bunch of things that are already free, bundled them together, and charged a steep price.

* Your NDA could be replaced with a simple Google search

* There are plenty of ways to throw together a quick, pro looking website.

* Scheduling calls is done over email, and gmail and outlook already add appointments to your calendars.

* Chat assistant can be replaced with Tawk.To

Moreover, I think that giving shares away is not a good idea - not because equity in general is so valuable, but specifically because your equity is somewhat worthless at this point. When you position doing that as a value-add, it makes me question your value proposition in its entirety (seems gimmicky)


This is where I am with this. I already have an efficient onboarding and process procedure in place and it's as automated as I would want it to be since client needs vary so much and the onboarding needs to vary just as much.

I "really" don't need or want yet another website/portal for my business to deal with either. Having the onboarding on someone else's subdomain is not an ideal solution at any time.

This doesn't solve any problems for most freelancers that I know, they already have these processes in place. And it's very expensive IMO for what is essentially form processing.


I don't think so. All of the things you explained below takes at least a week in real life to complete. To and fro emails to get the requirement right, using DocuSign to sign NDAs, then setting up a call. While with Sieve PRO all of this happens right away.

About equity, we've already raised an angel round, so I think it creates some value, but now I think we need to convey this better to the audience.


As a freelancer, this also just doesn’t fit with my personal experience. When a client wants an NDA, they send one. I rarely/never care. I’ll check over the language, but they don’t want to use my NDA in general.

Invoicing, time tracking is done through my accounting system.

Scheduling meeting is pretty easy.

Setting up a personal website is pretty easy, and if you’re a Webdev you probably already have one. In my experience most work comes through personal contacts anyway.

So, it was hard for me to see how this would be useful. Maybe I’m not the audience. Posting a survey might get you more statistics on what’s wrong with the site.


Exactly as my sentiment below. I would try targeting this to non-tech freelancers e.g. healthcare professionals, writers, environmental/civil engineers.


Same here. I freelance part time. All NDAs have been from clients. Meetings are rare, mostly everything is in emails. For invoices, I use Quickbooks.


Same here. I kick off call scheduling via calendly. Send PDF proposal and bill via freshbooks. All done within minutes with a few days of client delay - fairly typical. Never an NDA unless they want one. Absolutely no need for this service.


> When a client wants an NDA, they send one

Flip side: if I’m hiring, I want to use my NDA.


?

Is that not the same side?


OP said “as a freelancer, my clients like to use their own NDA.” I’m saying “as a client, you are correct, I prefer to use my own NDA.”


I read OP as the inverse of how you read it (I think).

But, regardless, good! Before coffee (AM, where I am), I like to keep all my noun-verb-object clusters straight.

Happy Sunday!


This could be the case somewhere, I am yet to do the complete validation, but we had over 150 people subscribe to upcoming and 400/600 people click signup. So I was assuming the problem was somewhere in the onboarding. https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/sieve-pro


Don't get me wrong but these numbers are not really a lot either. Especially as Product Hunt is not exactly the best traffic for buying customers they love to click and test free stuff assuming the process is fast and painless (which according to this thread it isn't)


> we've already raised an angel round, so I think it creates some value

I think this statement points to the crux of the problem. Your (future) customers are the only ones that decide if the product creates value. Not you or an angel investor, or HN commenters for that matter.


> To and fro emails to get the requirement right, using DocuSign to sign NDAs, then setting up a call. While with Sieve PRO all of this happens right away.

How does Sieve PRO make "all of this happen right away"? All of that stuff involves communication with the client; all of that to and fro still has to happen. Neither here nor on your promotional site are you making the case for how you make any of that process faster or easier.


Listen, you can say "I don't think so" all day long, but the lack of sales says what you think is wrong. The product, as described, is not worth what you are asking for it. You _know_ this to be true because not one person bought it.

_Something_ will have to change in your offering to make it successful, so stop arguing with the people who disagree with you and start working on understanding _why_ they disagree with you. You will want to do this in a way that doesn't start by telling them they're wrong and then listing reasons why they're wrong as you've been doing.


Your sign-up process is completely broken. Sign-up forms can be big barriers, why do you ask me for so much information in some modal popup for a service called Typeform that I have never even heard of.

I'd suggest that your "Get Started" button drops the user immediately into the app. Generate a "guest user" account, give the user a tour. Have a banner at the top of the page reminding them that if they want to save their information, they need to sign up. Perhaps a banner at the top or bottom of the page. If the user clicks it, ask for email, password and payment information. All other information can be asked once the user bites.

There is far too much friction there at the moment. I'd even consider offering a free trial. 7-14 days.

On the plus side, your homepage looks great (visually) but I think you're missing a trick here too. Show your product. Whether that's a video, slideshow or whatever. I want to see it before I use it.


Noted, we'll be reworking the home page completely and about the signup flow. We are already working on the video as we speak. Here is raw demo if you are intrigued https://drive.google.com/open?id=11uAP1oNm7HzLo3q9fHiAXheFg6...


Maybe a demo video is a good idea, maybe not. Personally, I would not look at a demo video at all, but perhaps others would. Don't take my word for it (sample size N=1) Presumably you've asked your potential customers and believe it would help.

Agree 100% with the other commenters: The sign-up flow is super-high friction. You did the first step right though, you measured the funnel and found out that people are dropping out! Have you measured each screen in your sign-up flow to see which one is causing the most churn? At a previous company, the best thing we did to increase active users was to remove almost all of the multi-step sign-in flow and get people into the application right away. We were down to a single E-mail capture screen, which I strongly argued to remove as well, but couldn't convince Marketing. I instead got a button to skip the E-mail capture, which helped :)

Keep measuring!


+1 no videos. Gifs yes. Screenshots and text descriptions yes. No videos:

A video can't be searched, it can't be scanned, and it can't be watched without headphones on in many settings.

I recognize lots of people learn by video or research by video, though I feel like a person watching a video has to have a level of commitment to your product that's higher than a person scanning for screenshots. Video should be "level 2"


We had gifs in our PH post. Will work on to bring them in the website https://ph-files.imgix.net/9c21f525-f715-4110-b04e-af2b3bf46...


I was thinking about the only email signup now. But really skip the email too and right into the product? :) Is there any product you've seen particularly do well with that approach?


gusto


I checked it out from product hunt a couple days ago, and I am your perfect target. Recently started freelancing, trying to figure out all the auxiliary shit I need.

I looked around, got a general idea what it was about, but what I really wanted was a demo site. Not a video, which I don't think I bothered to watch, but a demo site I can play with.

I am definitely not signing up for $300+ without trying it first. Your product seems like it could support a free trial, why not offer one? 30 days, one client, whatever.

Another thing that struck me as I watched your demo video just now: does form based lead generation like this even convert better than a simple, "hey why don't you flick me an email and we'll set a time to chat about your project"?

Is that something you should test before building a product around it? Myself, I would prefer a slightly more personal touch, but if the stats proved me wrong then maybe I would consider a system like this.

Just my thoughts


If you could send me some basic details about yourself, I'd set up a demo and see if this can be useful for you.

How much would you be willing to pay for this per month? If you want to take it private, please email me sanjay@sievehq.com

and hey thanks for the feedback.


I have a slack channel for freelancers, you are welcome to join and pick our brains for info if needed: freelancehangout.com

Sorry about the typeform!


Your message is bad. It starts “Become a PROFESSIONAL freelancer”.

Your target market is freelancers, who no doubt already think they’re professionals (because who likes to think they’re not professional?). They’ll be thinking: “I’m already a professional freelancer. I don’t need this product.”

“We help freelancers become more professional with automatic streamlined process...”

Again - I am already a professional freelancer. I don’t need this. Give me some concrete examples of what your product can do for me, how it can save me time, money, etc. There are some examples of how you can save me time further down the page, but they’re things that happen once per client (Onboarding, etc) which is once or twice per year. If you could outline a way you can save me time every day or even once a month, it’d be a much more compelling proposition.


And what the hell does it even mean to be a professional freelancer?


Noted, will completely rework on the copy.


What did we do wrong?

Not articulating, testing, and validating all of your initial assumptions before building/launching the project?

Who did you talk to first? Are you sure there's a market of people who have the problem you're trying to solve? What research did you to to identify your potential market? How do you know how to reach that market (hint: they might not read Product Hunt)? Do you know how much they're willing to pay? Maybe you're charging too much. Maybe you're not charging enough (if something is too cheap, it can be perceived as low quality even if it isn't).

Or maybe you just haven't given it enough time yet. When did you launch? How quickly do you think people can evaluate a solution like this, decide if it's what they need or not, decide how to integrate it into their business, etc? How quick could you do the same?

Maybe you just need to run a drip campaign (you have emails from the people who signed up?). Or maybe you need some good old fashioned outbound selling... go all Glengarry Glen Ross on 'em...


Thank you for all the feedback. I'll go through all of them one by one.

About validation, we launched on upcoming a month ago with a landing page https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/sieve-pro and had over 150 people subscribe.

Maybe it's about giving it time, we only launched on product hunt 2 days ago :)

I was particularly intrigued by what happens between clicking signup and then dropping off, we had 400 out of 600 people click signup and then drop off.


They probably clicked sign up hoping for more information. Found nothing and said that's enough thanks. That is the only reason I click signup. I was hoping it would explain things better. Feature list told me nothing.


I really don't like the sign up form. Is there a demo site or profile available?


https://bighead.sievehq.com/ and a demo here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32kJRAbIoU


In short: you ask too much to the user before having offered one single thing to him.

It's a classic inversion

The user has to do the effort of giving personal data, of giving highly private data (credit card), before you have offered anything.

Something else: seeing "12% finished" on bottom makes the think: omg it's going to be longgggg...


Got it :) working on a new onboarding flow.


The number one thing a person needs to start freelancing is a customer/client (one with a retainer check is preferred). That's, for better or worse, Upwork and Fiverr for the fifteen minute web solution. It's the rollodex (o.k. contact list) for the traditional solution.

The reason people build websites as the first step to becoming a freelancer is because building a website is easier than finding potential clients/customers and closing deals. It feels like productive work and procrastinates against the unpleasant hard reality.

Getting a website in fifteen minutes does not provide sufficient procrastination and so it doesn't meet an important goal of a newbie freelancer's website.

Good luck.


Thanks for the feedback, I'll think about this more :)


I think your copy might be part of the problem. Just taking the hero as an example:

Become a PROFESSIONAL freelancer

Sounds insulting to people who consider themselves professional already but could do with some extra help.

We help freelancers become more professional with automatic streamlined process for managerial tasks like client onboarding, signing NDA and requirement collection right from their personal website.

Weird mix of singular and plurals. If singular then you’d want “with an automated”. Also typically NDA is pluralised to NDAs, and you probably want to refer to “requirements collection”.

I know that sounds picky, but copy is a major part of a sale and correct grammar gives a sense that you sweat the details. Or at least bad grammar gives a sense that you don’t.


I think I never thought about it that way, I thought it like we help freelancers appear more professional like a company. Many freelancers don't have a clear process in place like a company do, to onboard clients, collect requirements etc.

I'll work on the copy real soon.


Also, not to nit pick, but the grammar in your second to last sentence doesn’t give me confidence in the quality of material on your site. I understand you are receiving a large amount of feedback in a short amount of time. However, the attention to detail needs to be there in all of your communication.


Yep - I found lots of the grammar on the site jarring, and little things like 10$/month - the convention is $10/month, and it looks really odd. You should get a couple of hours of a copywriter's time to go over it, there's lots of little quirks.


Here is the naked truth. As a freelancer this service doesn't appear to be worth $29 a month. As it sits now this service isn't worth free a month to me. I wouldn't use anything on it.

The site issues are repainting a sinking boat. It's a waste of time and energy.

I've been were you are, built things and dreamed about what a great hit they'd be then no one wanted them and it sucks so not trying to be a downer because I understand the pain but I also understand it's important that prospective clients level with you about their needs so you can re-calibrate.

Before anything, you must determine some real value you can provide. Scheduling and NDA's aren't it. I'm not going to funnel leads through your "online assistant". Nor will I use a premade web template. It's my business and my livelihood. I don't know you and am not going to take chances in that regard.

If you do want to stick with this market here is what I would use. A time tracker with hours (possibly w/ screenshots like Upwork). Invoicing based on the previous. A chat forum (like Slack but simpler) to stay in contact and preserve communication. Possibly a central document store (specs, mockups etc) and a place non git using clients could retrieve code/ check on progress. A change order/issue tracker accessible to non-technical clients. These things already exist though so you'd need to be better/faster/cheaper.


My comments are about the website your service creates for freelancers, not your (Sieve PRO's) website itself: https://bighead.sievehq.com/

1. The "Start project with xxxx" button leads to a form which says "Please be ready to spend 15 minutes to complete this process". I think this is going to be a major turn off to many prospective clients of those freelancers.

2. If they enter their email, they get this: https://i.imgur.com/2K75S2Z.png . Is this supposed to be a prospect contacting this freelancer for the first time? If so then the majority of the freelancer's prospects are going to close the window at this point. Almost no potential freelancing client is going to sign up for a whole system just to share their idea. It's also immediately filled with error warnings. (And address 2 is required but shouldn't be).

3. "Lambda" is spelled wrong in the "Do you have any technology suggestions ?" section

4. As noted elsewhere, American dollars are written as $10 not 10$; this needs to be fixed in the budget dropdown.

5. The timeline dropdown says "budget".

6. In general this form asks a freelancer's potential prospects to answer a ton of information ahead of time and I feel that most just won't and the freelancer will lose the propsect. There needs to be a way to setup an initial contact without going through all this.


Thanks for taking time to write in this detail, will go through all of this one by one and do the needful to incorporate this into our product, thanks again! :)


Let's try to visit your site, step by step.

First screen

- A gratuitous 3D animation shows sample pages from your site. Why didn't you spend that effort to make the pages look better?

- There's a profile cover page featuring a portrait of a white hipster with a sad expression, "Nelson Bighetti" from "Silicon Valley". It looks like LinkedIn, but more importantly it is strangely prominent. Moreover, who is he? A mock profile? Someone in the company? A clumsily leaked actual customer? Uncertainty is bad.

- Another skewed but readable sample page in the 3D splash is titled "Projects" and it looks very simple and sparse. Is it the limit of what you can do? Being used to ERP and CRM tools with tables of tables and rabbit holes of lookups and details and popups and cross references, I'm not impressed.

Scrolling: features list

- Personal web site? Better than what I already have? What does it look like? I can't tell by the generic self-praise words in your text-only item.

- Client onboarding: I can definitely write down contact and payment information in other ways that make sense to me. What about the "onboarding" of making them well-behaved customers?

- Client NDA? Either I don't need it or my lawyer and I designed and drafted it a long time ago before I started freelancing. Why should I use a standard form without discussing it with a lawyer? Risky at any price.

- Personal assistant? Expensive and hard to train. I'll do without, as much as possible.


One of the first things I thought was: "do they have rights to those Silicon Valley assets?". Considering that this is a small setup (which it feels like), the answer is probably "no" which makes me wonder, as a prospective client, what else they're doing that may end up with legal trouble. Sure, HBO are very unlikely to find out, or even care, but it's a silly risk, and if they're taking silly risks now, why would I trust them with any part of my business?

Now, all that's a knee jerk reaction. The guys who made the service may well have licensed the assets, or the assets may not need to be licensed. And who cares? They're just a few assets! But that's the first thing I thought about when I got to their front page. Not a good start. Then I see a bunch of bad copy as false promises (seriously, you are not going to get a professional UX expert to "engineer" my personal website). Then, assuming I'm not that pedantic or I can get over the copy, I click on signup and get a TypeForm modal popup. I assume that the whole credit card bit has been removed, as I can't see it on the form, but really, I'm not going to submit that form. A company who can't create a simple form for their own SaaS website is not one I'm going to look at in a good light. How are they going to deliver a good service if they can't even be bothered with that part?

Again, knee jerk reactions all they way down, but that's my honest feedback. And I don't even get to the product, since I've already fallen off the radar.


I completely missed that "Nelson Bighetti" was a TV character, not a real or mock user, and "Silicon Valley" his show, not his address.

http://silicon-valley.wikia.com/wiki/Big_Head

https://www.hbo.com/silicon-valley/cast-and-crew/big-head

Messing with HBO intellectual property just to make a joke? It isn't only a "silly risk", it is, or it appears to be, the expression of a completely unprofessional set of values. I cannot avoid imagining many things I don't like about the personality, culture and ethics of people who would do that.


Back to the features after taking a break. In a few hours the sample pages in the 3D splash have disappeared, leaving more space for Nelson Bighetti (could it be a Silicon Valley publicity stunt rather than an earnest startup?) and a video has been added.

- Call scheduling: the calendar is another thing that perspective customers are likely to be already managing on their own in probably better ways. For example, without a critical dependency on a startup and with sophisticated software supporting some useful forms of integration and collaboration.

- Complete client process: this must be the part with a link to more details. Oh, wait, no link. No further explanation. A fairly ineffective strategy if you want to convince prospects that you sell something worth buying: basic professional services need to be dependable, not to titillate curiosity.

Further scrolling: pricing

$29 per month for what, exactly? A simple pricing plan usually facilitates customer acquisition, but how can the service be so one-size-fits-all?

How many people would think they are light users for which $29 is a high price?

On the other hand, a very busy personal assistant alone should approach and exceed the cost of a full time employee: is there a risk of being dismissed, as a money-losing customer, at the delicate time when my freelancing activity is blooming and many clients call?

I also tried the "sign up" button. I expected a form, instead there is a "start" button and a screenshot of what appears to be a LinkedIn-like public profile page of Miranda Betts. I am not Miranda Betts, why am I seeing that?

The "start" button opens an ugly form (maybe it looks better on a smartphone) demanding name, email and (surprise!) LinkedIn URL. No other details, like for example location, company type, businees needs. "We'll get back soon". This means they'll harvest information from LinkedIn and, at best, guess something wrong.

Evidently, the difference of attitude between communicating with customers and investigating them isn't clear to everybody.


We've stopped making interim edits, it was when only a few people commented, now it's like waves of feedback :) I'll go through all the comments and work on this, will update you in a few days.


Thanks for all the feedback, will definitely take a deeper look. About the personal assistant, the assistant is supposed to answer basic questions and nothing in details, it's a real person btw.


Why does the race of the hipster matter? That’s in poor taste.


Being a photograph/character the company chose to illustrate their services, it is part of their communication strategy. Not all Silicon Valley characters are white, and not all are male.


One of the worst and shadiest-looking sign-up pages I've ever seen on a corporate website. Could that be part of the issue?

There are also some grammar and writing issues on the landing page, though nothing too bad.

The "THE ELITE 100" link leads to the landing page.

There's almost no information about or examples of what any of the core features actually do or look like.


I think so, we are reworking on the whole homepage and working on these as we speak. The Elite 100 was removed after the program flopped. I've given a brief about what the program was in earlier comments.


Typeform is fine. I don't think it's your problem here. I'd simplify the signup form to just take the absolute MINIMUM you need which is just:

1. Email 2. Password

If a user's willing to give that they're probably willing to give more but you've gotta hook them in the app first.

After signup the user should go straight into the app. You can prevent them from doing anything that costs you money until they've verified their email and added their billing details but it's a bread crumb trail. You're trying to lead them to where you want them to go.


Noted, working on the trail :)


I'm a possible customer for this. And wouldn't give you a cent because I don't believe you can do what you promise after looking at your landing page. I need to see demos, I need to see real customers with quotes of praise and links to their websites.

Give it away for free for 5 people, while building a clickable demo account that doesn't require a login, and make a youtube video to show more about your team and how to interact with your product.


Noted, we are working on this as we speak. Here is a quick video (raw) if you are intrigued https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c


Do not, not, not autoplay the video (as the site currently does). Especially not with sound enabled. That will get the site closed with prejudice by many people, and upset most of the rest. Especially when they can’t even see the video because it’s below the fold.

For user engagement, having a video available is good, but playing it contrary to user expectations is really bad.


Disabling in a moment :)


That goes in the right direction. Now play it quicker, spend less time on the data entry (which nobody finds exiting) and more on the exiting parts. Show loads of customers signing on and how they are paying their bills, which makes Tony richer and richer.

Also the video shows clearly that you miss marketing skills. Consider going out there and finding a cofounder with marketing skills. He should be older than you, good looking and preferably have a degree in economy.


> It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

Belief is irrelevant. How do you validate the product offering with the target market? Are there really people who aren't freelancing now because this service isn't available?

Second, if you do believe in your product, why is the offering you highlighted focused on future features and future performance of your company to sell it? That would tell me, as a potential customer, that you don't believe the current product features justify the price. And if you don't seem to believe that, why should I think you'll be able to do anything in the future that would make future features or shares meaningful?


There is not a single sign a product actually exist. Only a "pay here" button.

Give people a free trail or something. I would never pay for software without getting to try it first.


Working on the feedback right now. FYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c


You were giving away shares in your company in return for people signing up for your product?

I get that this might sound like a nice referral scheme idea, but it’s way too much to think about if I were one of your potential customers. Feels like a modern take on the free steak knives.

Why not incentivize around what your product does? - a 30 day demo or access to parts of the pack.. etc


Yes, I've explained the concept behind that thought process in a different thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733157


I'm a "pro" freelancer in the tech space. You've already had many relevant tips and critiques here so I won't repeat them. Just wanted to add this one, as I've seen it firsthand with startups: you are focusing on you. You fail to make me, a potential customer pretty much exactly in the market you are targeting, believe you have any idea how freelancing works and where the pain and value adds are.

Genuine question and not meant as a put down: how long have you freelanced and have you experienced the pain you mention yourself?


I've freelanced on the side for a few years. I used to put together a google form for the requirement collection, then send the NDAs on DocuSign,I had a quite number of people asking me to send an NDA before discussing. Quickbooks for accounting and sometimes PandaDoc for agreements. While putting together this product, I wanted to reduce the friction of getting started with freelancing and put together all of these in a single package. I've also spent time answering previous portfolios, my fee structure etc, which are kind of FAQs, that's why we thought of putting a personal assistant to quickly answer basic questions.

I'd love to hear your points, and probably what are the needs of a pro person like you?


Just as another data point for you, we don't generally sign NDAs, and I never did as long as I was freelancing solo either. It's close to 100% downside for the freelancer/consultancy to do that up-front, and it's a rare client whose project is going to be so attractive that we'd make an exception. A basic mutual confidentiality clause in standard terms has always been sufficient IME.

So, I started watching your YouTube walkthrough, and right after the "give me your email address before you can do anything" red flag, you got into some sort of legalese agreement. If I'd been interest at all in your product before that, I wouldn't have been any more at that point.


:) Thanks for this feedback. Will consider and work on this.


The only actual pain / needs I cover by a paid service are billing, invoicing and expenses accounting. Zoho covers this. Outside of that email and Google Docs does everything quickly and efficiently. LinkedIn serves as my "homepage".


Quick comment after skimming the ProductHunt page: it would appear that you have "half a product", with some promises of future functionality. You've got the easy stuff done. The hard stuff -- the "real", beneficial features (lead gen, invoicing, payments)-- haven't arrived yet.

Personally, I've been around long enough to never trust those promises or rely on a "roadmap" of future functionality. If what you have now doesn't meet my needs, you're not getting my money. The "Elite 100" just seems like a sleazy trick to lure in customers who otherwise wouldn't give you their money.

$348/year might be a bit much for a "free-lancer" to spend when they aren't sure your product is something that's going to be of real benefit to them -- and if you require an annual payment, it's not $29/month, it's $348/year.

> "... we couple top-notch freelancers from around the world as a team (usually a designer, developer and any special ops) along with a project manager ..."

I don't have much faith in your ability to "couple" me with unknown people. If the others fail to deliver or are "sub-par", that's going to directly affect my income. Why should I trust my future income to you? On that note, how much of a cut of this team's income are you taking, if any?


The coupling of freelancers is not a part of Sieve PRO, but a part of Sieve offering, it's very much different from this. Sorry about the confusion.


Just my thoughts.

I need to see far more, with far less commitment from me before I start evening thinking about paying you.

I need to see demos and example pages, and perhaps a trial of some kind where it basically works immediately, and I can fill in as much or as little as I want to get an idea about what it does and how it might work for me.

Basically all you have is a couple of screenshots on your landing page, and a list of features that I can't really visualize and then you start immediately asking me for email and linked-in address when I hit 'get-started'. I need to see the product first, I'm not ready to start filling in forms yet, I need to see it working to understand what it does.

Secondary to that... I'm a freelancer, and I don't think I would use your product. I put together a website myself (and in fact, freelancing as a developer I think your website is at least partly your portfolio, so doing it yourself to showcase your ability is important), I manage contracts/NDAs/Invoices and stuff easily enough already, and I talk to my clients via email/phone to gather requirements, etc. So I'm not sure of the value of the client on-boarding part. Perhaps I'm just not your target market, so take this part with a pinch of salt. Perhaps for freelancers in a non-tech sector where they don't have the skills to create their own website might be more your target.


(I'll work on the first comments) About the last part, how much is the time delay in getting the NDAs signed back? also I've tried taking the requirements over phone/email, but I it usually end up with multiple exchanges while with sieve you can get it all done in one go. Can you please take a quick look at this video, and send a feedback on the requirement collection process? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c


On the NDA specifically, I can't quite work out why I would want my clients to sign an NDA for me. Usually, it's me signing one for them. When I work with my smaller clients, sometimes they say things like

  "errr, it's super secret, can you sign an NDA before we talk about it",
to which I reply with

  "No problem, here is a standard NDA I use a lot, I've already filled it in and signed it for you, is that enough? If not, send me your document and I'll take a look".
9 times out of 10 that's enough for the small clients. Big clients have their own NDAs that I read and sign. So delay isn't really a problem, it's not me that cares, it's them. I always sign and return their documents quickly.

Invoices on the other hand. I don't generally have a problem as such, but smaller clients do often forget. I send a polite email the day before the invoice is due with something like "Just wanted to reminder you that invoice 1234 is due tomorrow. If you've already paid it, thanks." Again, 9 times out of 10, that kicks them enough to get payment the next day. Very very very occasionally I have to send another follow up a week later. But I don't really consider chasing up invoices to be a major problem in my work, it's just an occasional email to remind people. And it's fairly rare, so again, I don't really see a problem with the delays I experience at the moment.

On the subject of requirements gathering. Yes, it's always multiple conversations, but I see that as pretty integral to the process of understanding requirements. I watched the video, and I don't really see that Sieve does that I couldn't do in an email. In fact my initial email exchanges with clients do have questions very much along the lines of the questions you have in your forms. And the example answers I could see in the video show exactly why Sieve wouldn't provide all the requirements in one go. One response to "Summary of your business problem" was "I want to build Uber for Mars". Well yes, that's exactly the kind of responses I do get sometimes, and what follows is typically a discussion about scope, specifics, scale, etc. I don't see how the few forms on Sieve will force clients to actually think and provide the detail. Clients will just fill them in exactly as they would in an email conversation, far too vaguely to be useful in the first instance. So after going through the Sieve process, I will still need to arrange a call or exchange emails with the client to gather requirements details.

Another thing I've just thought of is what jurisdiction you offer services for. For example, the NDA flashed up very briefly, but I caught the word "employer" in it when referring to the client. I'm based in the UK, and there is some legislation known as IR35 that means freelancers usually want to be very careful to make it absolutely clear there is no employer-employee relationship. Now this is very UK specific. So it might not matter to you if you are targeting only the US. But it's something to think about, every jurisdiction has particularities that need to be catered for in legal documents. If you are offering this globally, you'll need to tailor your contracts and documents for each country.

I know I'm being very critical, but don't be disheartened. I suspect that I'm not your target audience. As a dev freelancer, half of your value proposition is useless to me (the personal website part, as I mentioned previously). I'd have a hard think about exactly who you are targeting, the types of freelancer, the types of work they will are doing, and then find some and talk to them. Show them what you have and find out if it's useful to them. In other words, do some really manual leg work first to find your first 10 paying customers. Doesn't matter if it's not a process that scales, because you'll only do this for your first 10, if you can't find 10 people who will sign up by manually calling them and convincing them to sign up, then you need to have a rethink - http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

(This got a bit long, and isn't really useful to anyone else. Shoot me an email if you want to talk me. It's my HN profile)


Thank you for the detailed feedback, I do understand very well established freelancers are having a process in place, We are trying to make this for everyone else, not just the pros. If someone is starting freelance, they don't have the process, questionnaire and everything in place. I'll read this again and incorporate the main points :)


It's really hard to tell if this product is any good:

- There is no way to try out the product before actually buying it.

- There are no examples of existing profiles to check out.


Working on this, thanks. Here is a quick raw video btw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c here is a quick demo profile btw https://bighead.sievehq.com/


That's not a quick video. It seems slow even speeded up 2X. Even so, the first page ("Hello There") disappears in about a second, despite having some important information. You can't expect people to wait as text is slowly being entered into text fields, so I hope by "raw" you meant that it will be edited to speed up the text entry somehow. (And check your grammar. One page asks, "What is the monetization plans or business model?" This will lose you customers! Hire an editor.)


When I said quick, I meant we made that quickly, while the comments were happening on HN. Will put together a good one by tomorrow.


>It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

It sounds like you're in a spot where people are interested in your company, (why you have sign ups) but you're not solving a hair-on-fire problem. Heck, you yourself wrote that you strongly believe you have a "decent" product—Not an amazing product, not a product that freelancers are going to rave about to their friends. Just a decent product.

Try talking with a lot more potential customers, and when they are nice and tell you it is good and such and such, actually ask for $10. I think in those cases you'll all of a sudden hear something different from them.


Thanks, the whole development was another experiment where we tried building the whole key features in 6 weeks. I strongly believe that we can make this product a lot better over time, that's why I used "decent" as it's not the best we can in the current form.


Just a simple Input from my side, tested your site with chrome and firefox (both newest version) and IE 11 on windows 8.1 pro.

# Firefox with UBlock Origin - Don't Work

# Clean Chrome - Don't Work

# IE 11 - Don't Work

Maybe there is more to this than only your Process of collecting Prospect-Info


We've tested this through, will check on this.


First off, I'm not a prospective client, but I have some questions. How can I customize the site? How about custom fields in the client on-boarding wizard? Can I use my own domain?

To be honest I don't see anything I couldn't pull off with a CMS, under $10/month in hosting fees and an NDA from Google or thrown together by a paralegal in an hour.

I think the product as you built it has legs, but in a different market at a lower price. Your overhead can't be significant here and $29 a month is way too ambitious. I would pivot to a non-technical market if I were you, like creatives, marketing or even trades.

I may also be totally wrong, but that's my $0.02. Good luck.


There are no customisations as of now, yes you can use your own domain. Thanks for the feedback, reading this in detail :)


Some more feedback... this is what your page looks like on mobile:

https://pasteboard.co/GUmoc26.png

Doesn’t instill much confidence in the professiona out there


Which is your device?


It really shouldn't matter what kind of mobile device the end user has. Get your designer to use a mobile-friendly CSS framework like Bootstrap or get a new designer.

Asking what kind of mobile device sounds like you're targeting a specific platform.


As an ex-freelancer, you're trying to do too much & don't have the credibility I'd want to turn over my business to your system. I have my own systems in place - my own website, my own contracts, etc. so why would I want to use yours? Will they be relevant to my market?

It's like looking at a cable TV lineup where I might want 1 channel but have to subscribe to a bunch of others. $29 was a lot of money to me for a SaaS as a freelancer, where some months were lean and I tried to keep expenses as low as possible.

The "Personal assistant" that will answer chat queries seems like something that would be worth $29 on it's own. Is the PA a human or a bot? I'd definitely be interested in a 24/7 message taking service that could answer simple questions about my service set (and escalate more complex inquiries) for $29/mo. It sucked to have to answer my phone or get an email from a potential client when I was on-site with another client. Generic office answering services were expensive and didn't work well with freelancer setups.

I'd at least look at segmenting your pricing model - have a "Rolls Royce" option (human PA, custom responses, etc) to make $29/mo seem like the cheap option, and a starter plan I can start with, remove the risk of signing up (30 day free trial?), allow me to choose which features I want to sign up for.

Also for the first 100 or so users, you won't find them through random web signups - you'll find them in person, where you can talk to them and figure out what they really want. You don't have a product that solves a market problem right now, you have a hypothesis.


The personal assistant is a real live human :) and exactly does like what you mentioned, answer simple ones and escalate complex inquiries.

Will consider the pricing plans, ideally, we are trying to reduce the friction in beginning and have the least number of plans.

Thanks for the rest of the feedback, will definitely go through them :)


$29/mo for a real virtual assistant who can do that is an absolute steal and if I were still freelancing I'd sign right up. That is what I am excited about. The rest is cruft. Make this your USP and you are onto a winner.


So Stripe Atlas for freelancers except it costs money. Look at how Atlas works and ask: why does Stripe do it? The answer is because it gets a new Stripe customer out of the deal and SV Bank gets another customer and the follow up legal services generate some money as well; so everyone gets paid at some point but there’s more of a value chain.

Why not give away some parts, charge for other parts on the backend rather than upfront.

Look at the Atlas model and see where you can copy that in the freelancer context. Perhaps make some deals with companies to provide qualified freelancers to members of your service; then you have a lead generation value prop to add to your product.

Freelancers need clients more than they need an NDA. So work all sides of the freelancer’s pain.

And stop with the “shares” thing. Honestly, nobody wants a piece of your business (yet,) so that’s just meaningless.

Why not $29 per year? What’s your actual marginal cost per user? Find that number, mark it up some amount and then go after scale. Alternatively, market to new freelancers — existing ones already know what they’re doing.

This is a big market but a really tough one. Freelancers are generally opposed to spending money unless absolutely necessary to their business because the one that can afford your service, don’t need it and the ones that do, can afford it — meaning the value doesn’t exceed the cost.


Interesting comment, I'll take a better look. Just that you mentioned about the different sides of business, here is a piece I've written about the whole larger vision https://medium.com/@cod3boy/startup-101-philosophy-vision-an...


(Not sure what the point of linking to producthunt is - that almost counts as a negative in my experience, due to the biased way that sites get promoted, or more often, not.)


"If you build it, they will come" is entirely untrue in the world of SaaS. Your first ten (even your first 100) customers will each require an enormous amount of effort to find, convince, on-board and retain.

Once you've built a product that ten people are willing to pay for you can probably get to 100. If you can get to 100 you'll probably be able to get to 1,000. But those first 10-100 will be like pulling blood from a stone.

There's so much good advice embedded in https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/starting-sales about getting your first ten customers, but I particularly liked this accompanying tweet:

"We made a sale for Appointment Reminder from someone whose only way of getting data into the system was to fax it to us. Guess the cheat. If you guess “CEO signs up for HelloFax, receives the fax, and types 600 patient names and phone numbers by hand” you have good instincts." - https://twitter.com/patio11/status/922491782583037953


Thanks for the reading materials. Really relevant, Will go through them in detail.


Is your signup form felt like phishing?

Its title is "SievePRO Onboarding (copy)" and it asks for all credit card details rather than forwarding to some payment gateway.


It's embedded in the typeform.


You are giving other people websites yet you cannot build your own form?


It was a part of our lean method :) We actually had tons of questions and branches there before, and using typeform helped us launch faster.


I dont think you are getting it, you have to drink your own kool aid. You are literally building websites for others and yet cannot build your own in time.

So why should anyone trust you?


I haven’t dived into the details on your product offering but I will say this : getting people to give you money for something is much harder than you might expect if you’ve (a) never tried before and (b) believed the lore from the “startup-industrial complex”.

Consider the things that are sure-fire sellers: drugs; things you might go to jail if you don’t buy; things that cure severe pain (e.g. dentists); things that might get you sued if you don’t buy. The further away your product is from these things the harder it is to sell for $$. Just being “kind of useful” doesn’t typically work unless you’re very lucky. It needs to be more like “make $1000/week extra income freelancing with our amazing secret sauce” (but what would that sauce be given that web sites and CRM are commodified long ago?)

I think also you may have overestimated the size of your market: you’re not even selling to “freelancers”, which I suspect is quite a small market, but rather “people starting freelancing” which is a much smaller market again. Anyone who is already freelancing by definition doesn’t need help starting.


Maybe because you attracted people interested in freelancing, not actual freelancers.


Very first gut impression is you might be asking for money from people who don't really have any to spend. Freelancing is a linear profit model and so margins, and costs, matter. I suspect people only at the stage of thinking of becoming freelancers may have even tighter margins.

Second, the typeform signup form feels sketchy, and the animation on the homepage made me think "MS Frontpage".


Thanks for the feedback. I am not sure about the spending capacity of the freelancer, but I think there are quite a good number of folks who make decent money. For those people, onboarding the clients, requirement collection, NDAs etc are a pain point. Eventually, we'd also automate the agreements, invoices, and payments to directly reach their bank accounts.

I am reworking on the typeform real soon. Thanks :)


>I am reworking on the typeform real soon. Thanks :)

I have to ask. What on earth could possibly motivate you to go with that hideous, broken, typeform garbage instead of quickly implementing your own form?


:) We actually had a lot more questions before, like branched questions if the user wants to fill out the LinkedIn or fill out all the details by themselves. It also had a payment embedded into the typeform. Thats when typeform was handier.


Hey man, turn debugging off on prod, right now! It’s leaking your passwords.


Why would succeasful freelancers use your site?

The market you want is wanna-be freelancers. If you can break into the wix crowd you may have a shot.


The Django toolbar pops up when I open your site. That's an indicator for me that I don't really want to work with your service.


My thoughts: your core customer group is too small.

people new to freelancing don't have the cash to put into a subscription tool, and probably don't think they need these features you provide. (if only due to lack of experience)

Freelancer Pro's are already doing their lead generation workflows, and whatever it is it's working, so the majority of them are not going to be actively looking for new tooling.

So it seems like the core demographics that would be interested in your product are: 1) pro freelancers frustrated with their current workflow 2) junior (but not novice) freelancers ready to take their lead generation to the next level

both of those demographics is probably pretty small. probably you need to broaden the features, but as mentioned elsewhere, you should follow up with your potential customers as to why they drop off. maybe even offer 1 year of free usage to them, just to see if they can get value from your product, and learn from them.


Thanks for the feedback, I am definitely looking into them in detail, but I never thought someone would say 1 year of free trial :)


It seems to require my LinkedIn profile mandatorily. Don’t have one. Also, not putting my credit card in a Typeform.

Not a freelancer, but maybe this will help in some way. I’ve never signed up for a service asking for compulsory links to other social websites. Why not just put a sign in with LinkedIn button and take credit card using stripe pop up later?


Yeah, I think so. We are moving to different flow altogether now. Thanks! :)


So my problem here is: do you offer anything unique? As a potential customer, I see you smashing together tons of third party services, and I could do that myself without paying you a dime. So, what’s the benefit? I don’t think you have a great product here, it feels like reselling.


Can you please take a quick look here and send a feedback? This is the real product https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32kJRAbIoU


It sounds like you're targeting new freelancers. Yet it is existing freelancers that understand the pain you are trying to solve.

It looks like you have 5-6 average tools in one package, not one killer tool that would make it worth switching.

Your copy doesn't read like a native English speaker and doesn't pull on any emotions or hit on the pain point you are trying to address.

I would contact all of your signups. Ask them which feature they were most interested in. Make it so the tool only does that 1 thing for now and take a MUCH lower monthly payment.

From there you can learn what people need next and add on features slowly so people aren't overwhelmed by your product.

Also you should note that you started this post with "it's not the product". It IS the product but it can be fixed.


Agreed—the copy is weak af. The features do seem compelling, but the copy makes it sound rather untrustworthy.


Thank you, working on the product and fixing all these :)


I don't know anything about your business, but just some quick comments: I went to the site, easily saw the "Get started" button. Clicked on it, there is a landing page that doesn't add any value in my opinion - why is it there? Clicking "start" takes me to a "fill in info" page, I don't know how much this is going to cost me nor what I'm signing up for.

I think clicking on the "get started" should go to a page that tells me how much it's going to be (preferrably 30-day free trial) and the obligation terms ("cancel anytime"?) and then just ask for the email to get started. I saw some other people made similar comment about just collecting the email elsewhere.

Good luck!


Got it! We are reworking on the onboarding flow now, thanks for the feedback!


Q: Are granting shares not a securities violaion in some states (like Missouri Blue Sky?)

I'm old, so I don't need most of this, but in a world where MS Office (which is an unfairly large amount of code!) costs ~$5/month, isn't this steep for a non-vertical-specific product? For example, I have something that I would generally hand-wave and call Slack+Asana-for-healthcare-careteams. I charge about $10/member/month with all the Federal HIPAA compliance and audits and whatever. If pressed, I drop it to about $3/member/month. That said - each "Enterprise Sale" is ~5k~10k members....

What would it cost you to run, at the margin, if you had over 5,000 users? (I realize that at some point, you need to make enough to eat...)


Sorry to say it is your product. I'm a freelancer and the stuff you're selling is very easy to do, thus you are overcharging and also potentially adding a problem (if I ever have to deal with you) rather than solving one.


In addition to everyone else's wise words: don't try to eat the whole elephant at once. It seems you have tried to solve every problem that freelancer might have, instead of a crisp, well-defined one. The result being, you have created something that is hard to sell because very few people want a drastic overhaul of their workflow. No one wants to replace Skype, an Invoicing software, Squarespace with a software that has just been launched.

A product can be bad for hundreds of reasons, which also includes, as I can see it here, doing too much, having no focus, and communicating the benefits poorly.


Noted, just to make it clear, we've so far made the personal website, client onboarding, requirement collection with NDAs for now. Invoices, payments, and agreements are yet to come :)


Do you intend to become a search engine for contractors, like freelance.com? If you don't, offering a public profile page is completely out of sync with your value proposition. 'Professional freelancers' already have their own website, and would use this product as a backoffice tool.

This other video is miles better than the one featured in the page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S23V3LmRUb4, it took me a while to figure out what all those inputs and forms were about.


Thanks, will make necessary edits in other video, we put that quickly while the comments in HN escalated and wanted to show :)


Whoah! You're charging $348 dollars a year and you don't even have a professional video done yet? You are already expensive and this is an MVP!

Also you have some 15 minute onboarding process. 15 minutes is like 150 years in web time. What kind of freelancer has the time for that.

im not sure who your target is. Freelancers could mean almost anything. You're not going to attract the hacker crowd but that should be obvious to you. Hackers already know how do all this and they aren't going to pay you $348/year for stuff they can do easily on their own.


Thanks and 15 minutes is for the clients coming to a freelancer's website.


I'm a freelancer. And, like other have said, the hardest part about freelancing is finding good clients to work with. Also, your value prop is at odds with the priorities of new freelancers.

When you first start out freelancing, you likely have no clients or only a few. You really don't need an assistant, automatic call scheduling, NDA generation. Also -- don't the clients provide the NDA's, not the freelancer?

With your existing product I think your target market is the experienced, established freelancer, not someone brand new to freelancing.


> When you first start out freelancing, you likely have no clients or only a few. You really don't need an assistant, automatic call scheduling, NDA generation. Also -- don't the clients provide the NDA's, not the freelancer?

This was one of the things I found confusing when reviewing the product -- if I'm "starting a project" with a freelancer, why is the freelancer giving me an NDA to sign..?


Sorta looks like a phony HTML template. And it says 10$ which is really weird.

And it seems to be trying to convince people to become freelancers which seems s strange thing to be wanting to convince someone to do.


There is almost _no_ information on your website about how any of those services you are offering work or what they look like.

I would have thought you'd at least make each of those 6 services clickable so I can see how they will look if I sign up.

Simple things like lacking a floating header so I can move up and down the site make it feel gimmicky.

Signup form looks cheap and nasty; if you're going to be presenting a polished UX for my clients, I would expect _your_ site to be a _top notch_ example of the quality you're going to offer to my clients.


Noted every one of this feedback. During the product hunt launch, we had most of the information and a gif explainer in the PH page. We are working on a video demo of whole product as we speak. I am just adding a raw video here quickly. Would love some feedback here too :) https://drive.google.com/open?id=11uAP1oNm7HzLo3q9fHiAXheFg6...

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sieve-pro


The video show me all the user you have for login into admin. Time to fire up a bot and see if any of them use a weak password.


Most serious freelancers will have accountants who provide (very crude) software portals which handle the company revenue stream tied to the business bank account. This allows each transaction to be reckoned against ongoing projects, raise invoices, handle documentation etc which are all present in that portal.

Admittedly, these tend to be quite crude but I have the added comfort that my accountant can get involved when necessary as they are familiar with it.

So perhaps the target market should be a different kind of freelancer.


I run a small consultancy and while we have an accounting firm for tax prep and strategic advice and to tell us how to stay within IRS rules, we do our own transaction accounting (including payroll and 401k) using quickbooks. It would be much more expensive if we had to pay our accounting firm to do this work. I felt it would be useful to say you can do this stuff yourself since I see several posts here talking about paying accountants to to it.


Offer shares publicly without a prospectus? You do realize that is illegal in most jurisdictions? Reading that made me think your somewhat naive, and likely your product would be too. I realize that this sounds harsh, but I'm not saying it to be mean.

Other than that, I assume your product doesn't solve a problem or need enough for people to pay for it. The best idea for next time is to try to establish that earlier.


It seems like the product handles a few of the bureaucratic nuisances a freelancer has to deal with, but forgets about one important issue: finding actual clients!


I use Upwork extensively to get work done.

The problem with freelancing is generating demand. How do I, as a client find freelancers ? So I go to such places. And all the sites that can generate demand (freelancer.com, upwork.com, etc) will manage all of this for you.

They have their own freelancer landing pages, etc. Maybe not as good as yours, but they are fundamentally solving the demand generation problem first. Invoices and Payments are fundamental to these platforms.


Thanks for showing this angle.


Why don't you contact your potential users and ask them?


You have a debugger enabled: http://i.imgur.com/PZmrcbn.png


The simplest explanation usually being the right one, you have either created a product that your target customers don't want/need or you have not reached your target customers.

Since you didn't get much contact info, you need to find some freelancers and ask them what they think, if is valuable to them, etc.

It's also possible that no freelancers hang out where you have made your launch announcements.


> It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

You may be right... but there are a couple problems with that statement:

1) "Decent" isn't good enough. Aim higher.

2) You aren't going to deliver the best product to your audience if you go in defensively insisting that your product is fine. Listen to what people say, and be willing to build the product they want, not the one you think is best.


Thanks for this, we were running an experiment to build the key features in very less time, and I had a feeling deep inside that this was not the best of our abilities, that's why it came out like that and obviously listening to all the feedback here incorporating them.


I don’t think your numbers are bad. But I think you are expecting too much. It is not unusual for a new saas company to hand carry the first many customers and only much later be able to get new customers from online ads or organic traffic.

By hand carry I mean do the sale in person to people who you know or get to know by classic salesmanship ie running a meetup or showing up at conferences.


Thanks for this feedback :)


Give people free 1 month trial.

Don't try to handcuff visitors into 1 yr worth of subscription right off the bat.

If your service worth value - people will stay. If they wont - learn why not?

I just bought a car yesterday and the dealer gave 3 days/250 miles unconditional money back. That moved a needle to my decision (even though a little less pricey car was available in the area).


Interesting, we are definitely considering free trial now. I haven't seen anyone selling cars with an unconditional money back though :D You got yourself a nice deal I guess.


Nobody is going to give you their credit card information straight off the bat, without knowing exactly what they are signing up for.


Noted, working on this feedback :) Do you think you'd give the credit card info if the money was refundable without any questions?


No. Get enthousiast users first. Get money later. Give a free trail (without entry of credit card), and lock it after 30 days with a "pay now" thingy


Most likely several reasons:

1. Audience product mismatch 2. People are just curious but don't actually care for your product because it's not relevant to them. Perhaps you are just trying to solve he wrong problem.

Note: as a freelancer I would never use your service. I have enough overhead as it is and would not pay 29 no for what you offer. My 2c


Thanks for taking time to write a feedback. Really appreciate.


It's debatable whether the things you listed are even worth a one time $29 payment. Definitely not worth a subscription.


I've built 5 products, all are selling just fine. The first rule is to make for the customer which are desperate enough to pay for your solution. The second rule is to have a product. You don't even need perfect sales pages and all that jazz. The third rule is to create a marketing angle and spend on ads.


Thanks for this! :)


Maybe allow users to set it up for free, and go through one project with one client with the tool. If it makes the process amazing people might be in a position where they would like to pay for it.

You could include a nudge to increase their pricing for that project to cover X months of usage of the tool (depending on project size I guess).


Thanks for the feedback, I think I've received a lot along this lines, will think this out deeper.


I did not read the comments first, instead I tried out your site. It's the typeform. PERIOD. It throws you off.


Whoa yeah that signup form killed the experience for me. A definite turn off. Could build a much, much simpler and elegant form.


Looks like it, tons of feedback on that. Going to change.


As somebody who has worked as contractor / freelancer for some years I don't see how this product is any useful to me. It does nothing that I can't do myself for free. For invoicing I'd rather use software supplied by my accountant who does my taxes, seems crazy to use SaaS for that.


Stop using videos for marketing material. Especially among the type of user you're trying to attract, video demos or marketing material are often a no-go; they either don't feel like taking the time to watch them, or would prefer text for higher information density and consume-at-your-own-speed. Post text, screenshots, annotated demos of an actually usable guest profile on the site, heck, even short animated GIFs if you absolutely must, but not full-length marketing/demo videos.

The sign-in flow might suck, as many others have commented, but even if it didn't, $29 just to see if something works out for them might be too much for many users. Even if they have the money to burn, that doesn't mean they'll spend it here. Offer a trial or a freemium service.

I think a lot of folks on this thread are commenting about the specific technologies, UX "feel" of the product, or how it provides the features that it does. Those might be valid criticisms, but I think they're missing a much bigger point: you have a few hundred people that said "interested" during a proof of concept, a few hundred more that started sign-in, and a few dozen after that who eventually didn't make it out the other end. The narrowing of that funnel speaks to sign up problems, sure, but the input numbers themselves are still way too small. You're marketing this offering aggressively, and they're still small. Unless you're doing B2B marketing for some huge, high-dollar product, numbers that small mean either inaccurate marketing (there's a product/market fit, and people come to your site looking for something that does what you advertise, but it turns out to not actually do it) or a lack of a market.

Consider that your offerings fall, for many freelancers, into the "perceptual cost hole": things that are minor hassles for many people, but that, at the end of the day, they often don't consider to be costs of their business. Like, DocuSign is miserable, and dealing with companies' NDAs sucks. But when reading your offering, I have to remind myself that those annoyances are (maybe) not things I have to waste time doing; that there are things that could make life easier. My gut reaction to those features is "yeah but I spending time/money/hassle on those things is something I already do and that's just a part of freelancing". This is obviously wrong after thinking about it, but, if shared by others, this is a perception that may seriously damage adoption of your product while causing the initial "interest spike" you saw.

As alternatives, consider: free initial offering/trialware; freemium services; a pivot to emphasizing one of your features as a primary offering (e.g. NDA hosting or something).


Thanks for the detailed feedback. I am seriously considering the trial/freemium model.


Please when you add video or music on your website/app, don't have that start automatically.


Lack of market knowledge. Know your niche, understand it, before asking for money test your product.


When I sign up, I like to have an overview of what is asked. It is very difficult here, and scrolling over the whole form gives me a headache, with those fields withering when not at the center of the page. Simplify the signup form, that could already help.


Thanks, just FYI here is demo we worked up just now if you are interested :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32kJRAbIoU


How much did you pay for those 600 people and were they targeted long-tail searches from google (ndas for freelancers) or random visitors? Usually the conversion rate for visitor to payed customer is 0.1-1%, depending on your product, that's normal.


We paid nothing, it was all from Product hunt. We were on the top 5 day before yesterday.


Ok, that's all very untargeted.

Try targeted long tail google ads. If you spend $200 for every acquired paying customer, you are golden. Send me an email if you have questions.


The site is pretty bare and non-functional on Android with the brave browser. All I see is the header, where the hamburger menu doesn't work. Then I see " become a professional freelancer" and "demo video " that's it.


Which one is your device?


Your site could be improved...

1) the separator icons to me looked like carousel dots so I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to see the other slides.

2) on my mobile I wasn't able to get your menu to open. That left me hopelessly loking at the front page.


Thanks for this, the separators have been removed, we are working a full revamp soon.


I am a freelance web developer. I am working as a freelancer in Fiverr and Upwork from the last 3 year. I just opened your website, hit the Get Started button, Fill the first 3 fields and next? and I did what everyone else is doing.


We'll get back to you now.


Went to your site.(Using Chrome on Android) Started to sign up. After putting in a name, it momentarily asks for an email. Then a blank page appears and all further progress stops.

You need to do basic testing on your product before rolling it out.


It should be something else, it's working perfectly fine here, and moreover its a Typeform. Can you try again?


Your website design looks like a copy of Digital Ocean. To me that shows lack of creativity or so. Getting inspired is okay, but looking 98% like your source is not good. Even the color scheme and the blue is exactly the same...


Wow there is such valuable advice in this entire thread. After you churn through it hopefully you'll be able to get a better handle on where your product is.

For me it just doesn't solve any problem.


If you've got a leaky funnel:

1. Identify the steps of your funnel

2. Per each part of the funnel, understand how many people enter, how many people pass through it and how many people leave.

3. Work on the parts of your funnel where people leave.


Noted, thanks :)


Your site looks sketchy.

No one I know who's looking for a job will add monthly expenses to his already tight budget.

I think you should build a community first or people find no value on what you are proposing to them.


There is great advice here but I’ll add: your customers are probably not just hanging out on product hunt waiting for you to come along.

Find out where they are and how to sell to them.


Thank you :)


I'd never sign up because there is no docs, and no obvious support.

If I can't read the details on what I'm getting I'm not interested.


Maybe you should try selling something people need? Seems like what you're peddling is stuff most freelancers already have.


Homepage, why do they have a fictional character as part of a profile piece? Do they have no one to actually to show, or is it suppose to be a joke? Doesn't seem that professional to me. I get the pic probably represents what my profile might look like but it is blocked by another window which I have no idea what it is about. Would be better just to get rid of the 2 windows that mean nothing to me and highlight what my profile would look like.

Clicking home hides the top toolbar which annoys me. Clicking "THE ELITIE 100" does nothing but reload the page for me which is a sign the websites isn't complete. If the website isn't complete then the service is probably not ready either. Features list lacks any real information. Can't find any information giving me details how, who, what, when, or where about the things you have in feature list.

Do I have any input on the design of the personal website? Do you have any examples or templates for the personal website? How long does it take you to get my personal website up? Do I have to buy a domain or do you handle that? Do you include ssl?

Client on boarding isn't even fully listed, just has etc at the end. What is your process for client on boarding? What is the full list? How do we have details for future agreements when we current don't even have contract laid out or requirements filled in?

How do you handle a NDA? Do I have to sign away my rights so you can process NDA in my name? Do you have a legal team to review them? Whats a fully secure digital signature?

Is the personal assistant a bot? Are you saying I get a free bot with my signup? I am assuming I be just getting a freshchat bot.

"COMPLETE CLIENT PROCESS" do you have some one qualify to even do requirement collecting? Do you have a experience arch for all linux, windows, mac, and bsd? What languages and database can you cover in this process?

The link to the sign up is the final flag. I get no details and no real information but you expect me to sign up for your service through another service. Having me pay money not knowing what I am getting at all. Not going to happen ever. Only reason I click the link to sign up was to see if I could get more information. Instead I get asked for my cred info.

Finally $10 a month even if it is a starting price to get traffic is way to low for any one of your services. A "personal website" will run you $500 upfront plus $20 a month in maintenance (This begin a dirty little wordpress site a high schooler could build). The doamin name alone will cost you $10. Having a lawyer read over a NDA is probably $250 or something in that ball park. Plus everything else just doesn't seem like the right price. No body is going to pay so little for a "professional" service.


I'll take into consideration all the feedbacks. About the questions, For NDA after signing up you get to choose your signature and works similar to other digital signature services like DocuSign.

The personal assistant is a real person to answer basic questions about you and your services (freelancer).

Will work on the rest of the questions and feedback :)


some ideas:

0. is this a product people want?

1. you need a free tier or a try for 3 months before you pay. $29/mo is a high commitment.

2. also why not give your service for free to early adopters and get some testimonials.

3. do you have adwords setup? do you know what your target market is? do you know who your competitors are? bid on those keywords and you may get a customer that decides to pay.


I think 3 mo is a pretty long cycle to test this out, we'd probably do a 7 days or until the first client comes in for the freelancer. No adwords as of now, we only posted on Product hunt.


Are you a capable freelancer that can use your own service you created to sucessfully make money (as a user, not owner)?


> It's not the product,

No, it is the product.


there is a fundamental/conceptual/trust issue with every tool a freelancer uses: his business depends on it, others can look into it. period.

why should I trust the core of my business to you guys?


I'm at problem zero, how did you get 600 people to come to your website, what channels did you use?

Some piggybacking here, if anyone is up to giving advice https://smileydelta.com/


If you really want some comments, why not start a new thread that is more likely to be seen?

(After looking at your front page, I have NFI what your company is, does, or why I should give you money.)


Well, I did, but it never got any responses.

It is a platform where peers can give feedbacks

1. to each other. It was customary at many companies I worked to evaluate at retrospectives how we did the past sprint: what went right and what to change in the next one. Who did well, who should improve

2. to management, what are the impediments regarding work, how satisfied is one with the job, whether jumping ships is imminent etc.

In my experience these kind of systems are often paper based or there is some weird JIRA project abuse going on. Sometimes people just pretended issues were never raised.


You have some misspelled words on your front page.


Have you ever talked to one potential customer face-to-face?


Here are some random observations and opinions.

1. The screenshot at the top of the page seems to show some features, but I have to infer what they are. It would be good to automatically cycle through annotations to show what the little "Expert" badge and all the other features mean. Sell your product in a captivating way. The headline "Become a PROFESSIONAL freelancer" is a good thing to A/B test, or to have rotate through words, e.g. "Become a SUCCESSFUL freelancer," etc.

2. The demo video is way too small. Make it much bigger so users don't have to squint. It's also too long. There's a time and place for a nearly five-minute demo video, but not this soon in the process. 30-45 seconds max.

3. The NDA feature is overhyped. I care much more about defining the scope of work and getting my clients to agree to my master services agreement or other contract. Does the product generate an agreement? Can I make a template for my agreement? More detail would be helpful.

4. I don't find value in the personal assistant feature, personally. I want to maintain direct contact with my clients once we make contact. It actually freaks me out to have someone else talking to a client and potentially making promises I don't agree to, or not behaving the way I'd expect.

5. As I scroll down the page, I'm not actually presented with a big call-to-action to start the signup process until I reach the bottom. This adds way too much resistance. Also, make the signup button green, or consider A/B testing signup button color.

6. The signup process is difficult. Instead of just asking for a couple quick details (e.g. email address and name), it opens a modal window that presents huge resistance. There's a splash screen adding yet another step to the process (you have to click TWICE to reach any form inputs).

7. The form is a Typeform full-screen modal form with a "0% completed" label. I hate Typeform forms, and I've found them to perform poorly in my own experience. For a signup process, seeing "0% completed" is a huge mental barrier. I immediately think "ugh, this is gonna take forever, I'll do this later" and I might not come back.

8. I'm not told before or during this signup process whether I have to pay any money or what I get for free versus for pay. Use the signup process as an opportunity to reinforce features and benefits. Is there a trial period? I have no interest in filling out this complex form if I'm going to have to pay right away. I need to be able to take it for a test drive.

9. You force users to provide a LinkedIn URL. Not everyone uses LinkedIn, for good reason. If you don't have a LinkedIn, you cannot proceed. You're killing signups.

10. The signup process doesn't actually work. It appears all it does is email you. So, it's actually a "contact" form and not a "signup" form. Upon submission, it says "Thank you! We'll get back soon. If you have any questions reach out to [email]." You've now dead-ended your user that is interested in your service. I doubt many will come back when you "get back soon" to them. Make sure you always give users a path forward, without manual intervention from you. Your post says, in all caps, "NO ONE PAID" -- well yes, you literally do not collect payment information or give users a path forward to payment.

11. Footer says "Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy". But you have neither. There are no links to a user agreement or privacy policy. This suggests to me that maybe I need to be concerned about how good the onboarding process is. This might seem like a small detail, but the site is marketing itself to web developers and engineers, who will notice these details.

12. Show success stories somewhere. Seeing an HBO Silicon Valley character screams "we don't have any users." Use real stories of people who have enjoyed using the service.

13. You mention in your post an "Elite 100" program where you give people shares. I don't think this is compelling for most users, but perhaps it's worth testing and experimenting with. Currently you appear to not advertise this anywhere. Your ProductHunt appears to include a link to it (/100), but that redirects to the homepage. If the program isn't detailed, it doesn't exist.

14. Site needs proofreading throughout.

15. Pricing says $29 per month and then right below that says $10 per month. Which is it?


Thanks for taking time to write such a detailed feedback. Some of the errors happened because we were updating in real-time with the feedback from HN :| The Elite 100 program was taken down yesterday due to low interest, I've briefed about it in another comment above. Thanks again! :)


This is valuable feedback.


Others have addressed the sign-up flow; I didn't get that far before bailing out.

TL;DR: you don't make a case for why your offering has any value.

Most of the information about what you offer is buried in a really uncompelling video, which seems tailored to make it as difficult as possible for potential customers to see what they're paying for. Three and a half minutes of muttering while slowly filling fake information into a long form -- with zero indication of what the form is for, or what value it offers. This is followed by about thirty seconds of scrolling absurdly quickly through a page which contains all the information you just typed in. For some reason.

The glimpse of the sole feature that is any more elaborate than "fill in a form then see what you just filled in" is comically brief: "You can have a conversation with your support agent at any time" -- you pop it open for literally less than half a second and then log out. Who's this support agent? Is it a person or a chatbot? Is is supporting the freelancer or their clients? What information can it provide? I have no idea. This is followed by an equally brief glimpse of the "client dashboard", which provides zero information about why it exists or what either the client or freelancer would use it for.

So far I'm left with the impression that I could get more or less the same value by purchasing a 99-cent notepad and just writing this stuff down.

The feature checklist is equally problematic:

* Personal website: which is practically a commodity by this point, and which your potential customers can't see before buying.

* Client onboarding: presumably the long form being filled in in the video. No case is made for why this has any value.

* Client NDA: the thing here is, you have this completely backwards. NDA always comes from the client, not the freelancer. No client who requires an NDA is going to trust one drawn up by the freelancer. That you tout this as a major feature makes me question your understanding of your target audience's needs.

* Personal assistant: this sounds like it could be a real, potentially useful feature! Too bad you provide no information on how it works. Except oh look: you're using it too -- and your potential customers can easily see that it's a third-party product with a free tier, and just go sign up for it directly, if they find it of value.

* Call scheduling: so I can schedule a call and have it automatically added to my calendar. Or... I could just put it in my calendar. No apparent value add here.

* "Complete client process", a recap of the other five bullet points, because five items don't lay out well.

Based on your copy ("Become a PROFESSIONAL!") and very limited feature set, I have to assume you're targeting amateurs and wannabes -- any freelancer with more than a client or two under their belt will already have their own website, contracts, calendar, etc. Instead you're aiming at the people trying to take the next step up from, like, fiverr gigs. This is fine -- that's a valid market -- but your price point is way too high for that audience. (Incidentally: your pricing page lists $29/month, with copy stating "Start earning more with every deal at 10$/month." That doesn't exactly inspire trust.)


Will work on most feedbacks, some of them are messed up because we tried to incorporate feedback from HN in real-time. For example, the video was added to give a quick gist of what the platform looks like after we received feedback here about the lack of clarity. Will consider the rest of feedback in detail :)


Good idea. Too expensive. Try $9/month see if that works


I tried to freelance before. The number one concern for a freelancer is how do I get clients.

Nothing on your site provides a solution for my problem.




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