You spent 15 minutes looking at the beta version of a product, and you've made the decision that the creator is wasting their time? Have you considered that, having thought about it for months, they might understand the problem domain significantly better than you?
What if the product actually has tremendous value, but suffers from a marketing problem? That's a pretty easy problem to fix.
Rather than using your severely limited understanding to encourage the creator to throw the baby out with the bathwater, you should focus on tangible, solvable problems, or just keep your mouth shut.
I don't know whether you really are just hedging your bets to karma farm or whether you believe what you say but the author has stood up and asked what people think. What on earth is the point of everyone on here going "oh well it's not up to us to say what we think; he should just start stacking up debt on credit cards and bank loans until it's finished and then the market can dictate!"
That is the logical conclusion of your statement, and that notion is utter bollocks. If in 15 minutes someone is convinced that the product is lacking focus and vision then that is a valuable insight. It might just be that the person reflects on whether his call to action is obvious enough and tweaks his site to make it clear what his proposition is. Or maybe he has been holed up for months by himself in a bubble and has developed something no one wants. Rather sooner he finds that out than later.
This kind of namby-pamby "if you can't say something positive say nothing" mentality that I see in replies does a massive disservice to this community and people in it who risk much more than just a little bruising to their ego (whether it be financial or career).
1. I don't comment often, and when I do, it's not to earn magical internet points.
2. I am certainly not advocating diffuse positivity. If you knew me, you would know positivity is not my strong suit. :)
There's nothing wrong with saying that the product seems unfocused or overly complex, or suggesting that the creator focuses either the execution or its messaging. That's useful, constructive feedback that the creator can do something with.
There's not really even anything wrong with saying "I don't understand why anyone would use this" -- although that's not particularly useful feedback.
Jumping from these reasonable positions to "you're wasting your time" is where I take issue. It's a dangerous leap of judgement that none of us can or should make for someone else -- certainly with the limited understanding that we can gain after a few minutes.
The creator seems to have come here to get feedback on the product, not for an intervention.
Wow, great advice there "just keep your mouth shut".
For anyone who has actually invested a large amount of time in a dead idea, the above poster is right on the money.
I think you should take you own advice and talk only about things you know intimately. Lest your sentimentality gets the better of you, when actually trying to address a problem that could suck OP's life down the proverbial toilet.
> For anyone who has actually invested a large amount of time in a dead idea, the above poster is right on the money.
I think the issue here is that the above poster has probably not done his due diligence to actually verify the premise of this statement (that the idea is a dead one).
I could be wrong on that, but I see almost nothing in the post that refers to anything about his experience actually using the app.
For what it's worth, I'm trying to use it right now but I think the site is getting slammed by HN, so I can't actually use it. Therefore, I'm not going to tell the OP that he just wasted all his time and money.
> I think the issue here is that the above poster has probably not done his due diligence to actually verify the premise of this statement (that the idea is a dead one).
Correct, and further, I don't think a passive bystander can make that judgement. The opinion of any one person is irrelevant. If the idea is bad, the market will reject it.
If I had a dolla' for every similar throwaway comment about my own project, I would not need any funding.
Hey, maybe this can be a new startup funding mechanism. I propose "haterade.io", a betting pool where you can bet that projects will fail by a certain time. If you lose, your bet goes to the project.
Edit: the real problem is the OP's tone. I do agree that the founder of this project has an explanation problem, but the tone was "your project sucks and you're wasting your time."
What if the product actually has tremendous value, but suffers from a marketing problem? That's a pretty easy problem to fix.
Rather than using your severely limited understanding to encourage the creator to throw the baby out with the bathwater, you should focus on tangible, solvable problems, or just keep your mouth shut.