An idea and a MVP, is it worth to continue?
Maybe a new project : 📍 "Geolocalized Open Data" - www.thedatapond.net
🧱 Genesis
A few month ago, I was looking for a way to get a list of restaurants in a given city, in a specific area. I needed a list of addresses (and phone numbers if possible). After extensive research, I found nothing satisfactory.
So, I tried to get this information from Google Maps and Foursquare until I read their terms of service. Obviously, data from services such as Google Maps or Foursquare can not be used extracted. For example, the Google Maps Terms of Service (3.2.4) states "Customer will not extract, export, scrape, or cache Google Maps Content for use outside the Services".
Then, I tried OpenStreetMaps and found what I was looking for: a list that could be used without constraints. However, it is quite difficult to define a specific area and to extract these data. That's when I decided to create a tool to automate the process.
At first it was only for me, and after some time and with more free time, I decided to create a website and start a new project: www.thedatapond.net. I'm not sure yet, but people may be interested in this type of service. Tell me what you think in the comments. Good idea, bad idea?
🕹️ How it works ?
If you want to get data from the map, the procedure is pretty simple :
- 🗺️ draw a geographic zone on the map
- 🧩 define your parameters (categories, keywords...)
- 🗃️ and you get a list of names, addresses, websites, telephone numbers... which you can download in CSV format.
The data you get are not as rich as data from services like Google Maps or Foursquare but, at least, it is legal to use them (ODC Open Database License ).
💸 Pricing strategy
To be honest, I wasn't really thinking about a pricing strategy. And I still don't really know what to do. First idea : when someone registers he gets 50 credits (50 locations details). And, if he needs more, he can buy credits (1000, 2000, 5000...). I chose a low price according to what I can see on other services but if you think it's still to much or it won't work like this, I can change it.
For IH, I've created a 100 credits "welcome code" : IH-TDP. You can register here: https://www.thedatapond.net/register
The website is not completely finished, there are still 1000 things to do: design, typo, features, improve lists... but the idea is to continue development based on comments or requests from users.
If the feedback is positive, I'll see if it's a good idea to spend some time on this project and push it to the next level 🚀 : SEO, Product Hunt, Hacker News, Reddit, ads... starting with a new post in the IH forum "Landing Page Feedback" to talk about the design and the MVP.
🙏
After 19,314 lines of code, i'm shutting down my project
Need feedback for my product.
40 open-source gems to replace your SaaS subscriptions 🔥 🚀
We are live on Product Hunt
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Data is gold in the B2B sector. I have seen a ton of people doing manual data collection for their startups as well.
Building a data set really helps. See if you could build an API which you could hand over to businesses which could be used for cold outreach and business purpose.
I really think data is the next big thing. It's not about how much money, it's about how much data you and your business support and what the numbers are.
There might be several other use cases.
Do consider going to my profile and following me and reaching me out. I would love to have an exploratory talk with you about targeting the marketing segment, making the product targeted to a market segment- which is super important.
Lets see if we could make a good value proposition for both of us. See you soon then :)
Love it. My spouse is a geologist and i am constantly pitching to her services like this.
If you open up the ability to add to the db, you can sell to geo analysts and experts for much more
Thanks for your comment. What would you want to add to the db ?
Hello brother. If I was you, the main thing I would focus on at the moment is: who are my customers? What pain of theirs am I solving?
If you don't think about this, you might get lost in building features that don't matter, getting input from techies who won't use your product... If it's just a hobby it's all good, but if you wanna make money, ask yourself - from who?
Honesty unfortunately at the moment I can't really think of a good business use case for this mechanism.
Maybe for example, there are accountants that specialise in restaurants, and can use this app to find places near them and offer their services to them?
If I think of something I'll try to post here. Good luck.
Here are few more ideas:
There are companies which produce conferences, who use yellow pages/D&B general company databases to cold call potential attendees. (For example, calling all printing shops in an area to invite them to a conference about new printer technology). Maybe with your product, such companies could produce a list of these potential invitees. (I know of such a conference producing company in Israel but not in other countries).
Maybe you can even combine such a list with LinkedIn to get a list of specific people and their LinkedIn profile within each company in the area. This way the list might be more specific and effective.
Maybe "meet up" (meetup.com) organisers can use this list to invite people from their area to a meet up they are organizing.
Thank you very much. I will keep in mind your comments and add them on the todo list.
What's the best way to get in touch with those companies ? Cold email, Twitter, LinkedIn ?
Please note that using the Google API to render maps has a limit for its free version.
If you don't want to pay google you should think about using openlayers or leaflet map. I recommend https://leafletjs.com/
The project itself I find interesting. But I don't know if you can monetize well and if people would pay to get that data.
Thanks. We use Google API because we knew how to code it quickly. But, you're right, we need to move to leafletjs and it's already on our todo list.
About monetization, we'll see. Some people seem interested.
Great idea. I can see in the future here: Default to rectangle shape (with changing shape afterwards by dragging corners). Smart suggestions of towns & states (app knows how to precisely draw the rectangle to include a whole town and focus on that). Saving segments (or segment searches). Export to csv - allow people to additionally expand the results with their own, etc...
"suggestions of towns & states", I put that on the TODO list.
Right now you can already :
Really cool, i could see companies that need to get in contact with business in certain locations using it.
Thanks. My problem now is : how to get in touch with them. Any advice, link, contact ?
Looks interesting! I've personally hired a virtual assistant to collect data about book shops in a specific area from google maps. He spent about 40-50 hours scrapping info.
So, "the data pond"might interest people. Looking for bookshop in a specific area can be done in a few minutes. At least for a first bunch of data.
I will therefore continue to work on this project.
Any remark or suggestion about the design, the features, the usability... ?
Yep. A few:
1 After you click on the "delete selected shape" button. You can't just click on the map to start a new area. Your mouse is now looks as a hand and on the click you just scroll the map.
2. Consider changing the button copy from "Search" to "Get Data" or "Extract Data"
3. Consider making one category choosing by default.
4. Got an error "Demo limitation - Your area is too big. You need to reduce its size. Click on the area and modify its shape." but the area doesn't looks big for me.
5. In the results spreadsheet you can't copy the website address. If you try you get smth like "http://win..."
Anyway, it works and get you the sense of the product.
Thanks you very much. Good tips. We will improve that.
Btw, there is a demo here : https://www.thedatapond.net/demo
Hey 🙂 doesn't seem to be working here. After I select a category and draw and compete a shape using double click, nothing seems to happen. Using Android.
Thanks. I'm gonna check.