Ask HN: Review my startup -- LuckyCal

[sanj]

Hiya. Rather than just linking directly, I wanted to provide some context. Along with a group of cofounders, I've been hard at work building LuckyCal:

http://www.luckycal.com

This past July, we got lucky (ha!) and won a grant from Facebook as part of their fbFund program (http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=4821).

Here's the rub: in order to capture most of those funds, we need to have a large and active user population in Facebook. That's fine, except that my team isn't talented at competing in the attention economy that Facebook apps typically populate. Instead, we built something we'd want to use: useful, polite and non-annoying.

At the risk of pleading, I'd very much appreciate if you'd give that app a try, especially within Facebook:

http://apps.facebook.com/luckycal

Help keep a fellow entrepreneur out of the cubicles: invite your friends.

[lowkey]

First impressions:

New User Experience: Requires me to give up a lot of personal info without providing me with a compelling reason to do so. Maybe this is typical of Facebook apps but it is still likely to be a significant resistance point for signing up. I wouldn't have if I hadn't heard about it on HN

Marketing Strategy: I think for this to be successful you will need to focus on groups with a vested interest in promoting themselves and their events. Think MySpace and bands or local community event organizers. You are likely to get easier traction if you focus on specific geographies - say New York, San Francisco, or your home town. These people need to get their message out so could become active super-users and draw in users of their own. Think about a local band with an existing fan base and how you could target your app to help them reach and connect with their audience.

The look and feel should be more like a Facebook app. As it stands it looks out of place. Still, nice start. Keep it up and good luck escaping cube-land.

[aston]

Would you mind going into more details about this quid pro quo going on between you guys and Facebook?

[sanj → aston]

Sure. We won the fbFund in July. That round had about ten winners. Each team was given a grant to get started (~$25k) and has access to more funds as users are gained.

Naturally, the money is to be used to do Facebook development.

I'm happy to answer specific questions if you have any.

[unalone]

I'll probably edit this post as I start using this more.

The Facebook application looks VERY gaudy. It stands out. For me, that's a turn-off. The more native it looks, the more likely I am to keep using it.

[sanj → unalone]

This is good advice. There are at least two things at play here:

a. Do we want some amount of branding to our app independent of Facebook?

b. Does it make sense to build an equivalent, more native, set of views for Facebook users? ie, is it worth the development time to have a set of fbml pages rather than building off of existing iframed html?

[unalone → sanj]

I can't answer b: my knowledge of coding for Facebook is very minimal. I've used tons of applications, though, mainly when writing for AF, and I think that the absolute best path to follow is to look at what Facebook does for its own applications. By far, they're the best ones out there, even if Facebook doesn't have to worry about branding.

For a, though: the best applications are the ones that stick at the very least to Facebook's usual designs in regards both to colors and to line thicknesses: in other words, the applications that look native. The reason for this is that you're competing not with other calenders, but with Facebook's native applications. When I'm on Facebook, every app is a click away. And so you're competing with Facebook's apps, all of which are spectacular, and you're competing on their playing field, in which you have no control over the look of the site you're on. While you should definitely brand yourself, don't brand your design. Keep it looking like it belongs to be on Facebook, more or less, because any active difference will be seen as a negative. Furthermore, if you're on Facebook your app has to play by their rules: focus on interaction with friends above everything.

If you want some instances of applications that I found incredibly good, check out Packrat - http://apps.facebook.com/packrat/ - or Projects, even if it broke a bit in the upgrade to the new Facebook - http://apps.facebook.com/divshare_projects

[swivelmaster]

I think it looks okay, but I do agree that it should be reformatted to look more like a facebook app.

There were a lot of steps to sign up! Don't use ugly form buttons and do condense a lot of the instructions and steps together. Make those buttons big and bold and label the buttons more descriptively.

For instance, a big blue Facebook-style button that said "Allow LuckyCal to Access My Account Information When I am Not Logged In" (long button label, I know) would have been fine IMO and I would have clicked it without needing a paragraph of explanation.

Also, the page with the add to profile prompt was completely unnecessary to me. Your metrics will probably disagree with me, but I'd prefer you just leave that button at the top of the main calendar page. The screenshot of somebody else's calendar just confused me.

Also, why are you intercepting my scrollwheel to scroll left and right in the calendar? That's just weird.

All that said, you guys are working towards making a product I wish I had. I just don't like the execution, mostly in terms of the interface. Stop thinking like engineers when you're designing your UI! :)

I would love for the calendar itself to be bigger and pre-filled with events you're suggesting for me. Then I'd click yes/no/maybe to each one... once the event is closer (maybe a week), you could prompt me again to see if I'm interested in solidifying the plans. That would be awesome.

Where are you located?

[hooande]

It took a lot of work to try that out. You should try to focus on value proposition to the user. SHOW them what luckycal can do, don't try to just tell them with text on the home page. You can probably make some assumptions and suggest calendar events to the users. Or just show local events. I'd like to understand what luckycal is and exactly why I should use it within ~5 seconds of seeing it.

My advice about the product itself: I think you should focus on making luckycal very useful for an individual with no friends using it. The idea of finding local events while filtering out noise is something that a lot of people have tried but no one has quite gotten right. If you can make that work for one person alone, then people will naturally tell their friends without being constantly prompted to "invite".

I think this is a good idea, I hope you keep working at it.

[ahupp]

On the first page after adding the app I was confused because there was a page that looks partly cut off, and I couldn't click on it. I finally realized that this was a screenshot and not an actual page I could interact with. It would be far better to just start me on the next page rather than showing the image. Better yet, step me through adding interests right away.

[MikeW]

I've been using Luckycal for about a month - it frequently reminds me it can't find any events for me.

I remember seeing very complicated sentences to describe simple things within the app.

It seems like for it to become useful, all my friends need to install the app. Is that correct? I'm still waiting for luckycal to recommend something to me.

[sanj → MikeW]

I'm probably the one to blame for the complicated sentences. It's a "gift".

It is definitely NOT the case that your friends need to be using the app. As long as you tell it who your friends are and where they are (via your facebook friends, gmail feed or Outlook database), it'll find things for you.

However, for that to work, you'll either need to enter bands/teams/shows your interested in (iTunes, last.fm, Facebook), or have LuckyCal connected to your calendar (Google, Outlook, iCal etc.).

I should also note that much of the data in the system is in the US and Canada.

[MikeW → sanj]

Oh, then that confused me. Does luckycal not already have access to my facebook friends list? I thought when luckycal presented me with my friends list it wanted me to send an app invite to them all?

I still think it's a fundamentally awesome tool and all niggles can be worked out through incremental updates.

[njoubert]

One piece of advice - your tagline "LuckyCal predicts where you'll be to help you decide what to do." seems slightly creepy - you guys are going to tell me where i'll be and what i'll do there? Once I read your description it became much clearer, but I would change the tagline. Just my 2 cents

[stanley]

I think you need to make a stronger pitch as to why this would be useful to people. Turn your index page into a sales page, it's worth putting more time and effort into it.

[sanj → stanley]

The Facebook index page? Or the main one? Probably both.

[jfarmer]

Hey sanj,

I have a lot of experience in this area. Drop me a line at jesse@20bits.com if you want to talk.

[rw]

Could you explain how you spent your $25,000?

[sanj → rw]

Without too many details: existing debts on my credit card for hosting, computers and such, conversion to a c-corp, several trips BOS-SFO, accountants, etc.

No salaries yet.

[peter123]

if you're a fbfund recipient, don't you get advice and promotional help from fb? Is that right or am I mistaken?

[sanj → peter123]

We do, but it tends to be limited by the number of people at Facebook that can work with us. They're spread pretty thin.

And since we're in Boston rather than the Valley, we're tend to be a little removed.

[vaksel]

why are "friends, family and associates" represented with calendars?

[sanj → vaksel]

The idea there was to show that we're mixing in the calendars of your friends, family and associates. Clearly that wasn't obvious!

[alaskamiller]

So in order for them to give you cash, you must help them churn out lots of pageviews?

[sanj → alaskamiller]

Actually, no. They're interested in funneling their funds to the applications that their user use.