I guess the counterargument is that if you had launched a really polished site, you may have gotten positive press from the get-go and a much larger userbase.
That is definitely a fair argument. The part I left out was in the last 11 months, I taught myself how to code and this was my biggest launch to date- so it was a bit of trial by fire. Had I known what I know now, many of these bugs would have definitely been corrected prior to the HN post. Riffing off an old Rumsfeld quote, "You launch with the skills you have..."
You should look into buying "housefeed.com" and perhaps renaming your site to that.
That's what I thought I saw as your name upon first glance. My brain unconsciously filled in the details: "Oh, feeding people at a house, 'housefeed.com', makes sense".
Also, you get the benefit of the "feed" connotation: a feed of pictures of people's meals at their houses.
It's like throwing a dinner party and inviting the guests to come see how you've neatly arranged the pots and pans on the floor, in the fashion of a stove. "It's fantastic," they'll say, "Perhaps you should include some carrots." "This is wonderful feedback!", you'll think, as you as begin to slice carrots for your floor-bound pots.
A witty quip, but probably wrong. The author's conclusion was important:
> Launch your [site] before you core functionality is done. You’ll fix the bugs you don’t know you have.
Some places can't afford to do that - things where lives are at stake (medical, engineering, etc) or companies who don't get a chance at do-overs at all.
But for most small ventures, you're in for a much bigger risk of abandoning the project by delaying endlessly than you are of having a huge rush of potential users, not being able to serve them, being unable to fix that, and having a reputation for that stick.
And most people building medical devices, engineering, or rolling something out for a huge corporation with a lot of buzz know who they are. The post is good advice for the rest of everyone else.
There's an enormous difference between launching before a site is polished, and launching before the site is actually functional. You launch with a minimum viable product. If your car doesn't have wheels or an engine, it's not a viable product.
Show it to people early and often, get as much feedback as possible. Launch when it works.
I second that. Please change the background to FFFFFF, it looks much more professional.
rokhayakebe, are you a designer? Would you be willing to have a look at my site - grepfiles.com? If you do get a chance, please email me any feedback at grepfiles@gmail.com
Thanks! Question on the #fff- would you keep the border around the photos white too? It seems like too much white to me. What does everyone else think?
I am not sure about the border, I just clicked off the background color through Chrome developer tool, and liked it better. You have a good concept, btw.
I've heard a few different pitches for this idea...booking meals in other people's homes...the one thing I rarely hear being brought up though is the legality of this. Aren't there pretty strict laws about cooking prepared food for others? I thought restaurants and even those street vendors are supposed to be checked out...
Just wondering if you have checked this potential issue out...or maybe I'm misunderstanding the idea.
It's serving the food that's illegal, not making a website saying someone is willing to serve you food that's illegal. It's similar to AirBNB. Probably illegal to rent out your apartment for a few days. Your landlord doesn't want you to do it, your local hotel lobby doesn't want you to do it... and people do it anyway. Making a list of people willing to break the law isn't illegal. Same goes for Ubercab. Highly illegal or whatever, but still a great (and disruptive) business idea.
The Internet is allowing people to break the law in harmless ways more than we've ever been able to. And that's a good thing, because it means protectionism is going away. Businesses will have to compete based on the quality of their product, not based on how many lawmakers are in their pocket. The Internet is finally returning the power to the people.
