Any developers interested in a platform?
My startup , thestreamintra.com , is basically a video platform for developers. thoughts? comments? concerns? lol yeah, any feedback is welcome. I've posted an article on Linkedin with 60+ views with my network being exclusively software engineers but I didn't even get a single sign up. Granted people will more likely engage with post that already have traction but that's a little demotivating.
Edit: So guys just thought about something, what about pivoting to something like peer coding? Live videos and people can come to watch and ask about your coding design etc. maybe do some leetcode problems together and you could still upload your project with the ide. Thoughts?
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After 19,314 lines of code, i'm shutting down my project
Need feedback for my product.
We are live on Product Hunt
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You have one main hurdle that you need to overcome before anything else, credibility. Someone will make an assumption about the credibility of your app within 5 seconds of landing on it. I did, and it wasn't a good out-come. Cultivating a design that instills credibility is something that actually takes a good amount of effort. I would start with 2 things:
1.) Color Theory: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/01/underestimated-
power-color-mobile-app-design/
2.) Material Design: https://material.io/design
I am pretty new to indiehackers, so I am not sure if there is a way to DM but I would be glad to answer any questions you have. I have been a full stack developer for the past 9 years. I have worked on several customer facing applications for Fortune 500 companies. Most of my knowledge is from my personal experience and from working closely with top-notch UI designers and UX researchers. Hopefully this will get you pointed in the right direction and help to regain your confidence back.
Whatever you do, don't give up. You'll never hit a home run on the first swing. Good software takes many iterations.
Hello, thank you design isn't my forte seems like my landing page is turning away a lot of people I haven't had time to add a new one but I'll probably use one with a modern UI. Thank you by the way, this project is getting hammered down but criticism is good so I can improve on the product!
Hi,
You seem like a very knowledgeable person.
I would highly appreciate it, if you could give me your opinion on my product TellTrail.
https://www.indiehackers.com/product/telltrail/telltrail-introduction--M7M1wPx7zuSXqEFiV35
It is actually kinda of funny. 3 years ago, I worked on a product that is a supercharged version of your product. The premise was that it attached to an exchange server and ingested every incoming and outgoing email. It then used a very complex ML engine that could both predict and retro-actively assess if a employee was involved in malfeasance. This is there site: https://www.nexlp.com/
My personal opinion is that you have a solid starting point. There is quite a bit of things that are cause of UX friction. One general rule do not use animations for the sake of using animations. For example, the logo animation is unnecessary. You should look at using some complimentary or split complimentary colors. You need some more meat (content). The about section should be a page. The z-index relation of the header and play-button on the video is not correct. The pricing cells should be more uniform. Some of the font-sizing is too small. You need more feature-benefit statements to build value. Also, you call to action needs to be more compelling. Finally, the button copy should be less abrasive. Use investigate or discover, or try instead of "install".
This is just a cursory overview. I hope it helps. Just keep on trucking. Its all about iterations!
Thank you very much for the review.
I have a demo account with which you can try the App, you just have to click Live Demo, below the video.
Also, tommorow I will definitely research Nexlp, but the only company that I found which was analyzing slack messages with NLP was Vibe.
They are unfortunately shutdown and their old members are not replying on linkedin.
So I am definitely interested in your opinion and in Nexlp.
Please add me on twitter @tell_trail
or give me a way to connect with you.
I don't see you as a customer, but as a valuable person, who has experience in the industry.
Hey you look like you are new to IndieHackers, just like me.
But I have to be honest with you.
"Websites such as Stack Exchange and medium exist for developers to write content for other developers, but there is a lack of developer-first based video streaming platforms"
I took this from your website.
In my opinion there is a reason for Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow to be more popular around developers than video sharing products like youtube, TikTok, etc.
And the reason is not, because there is not a specific platform for them.
I think the reason is that to become a developer you have to change the way you think and learn.
Learning is faster by reading and not by watching videos, also I think people who engage in making videos are not coders, most of the time.
But my opinion is not important, if you did your user base validation and you have found that there is an interest in your product, then there might be a need for it.
One last thing.
I think most people in 2020 are used to a different type of web design nowadays, I think you might have better chances with user interaction if you use one of the thousands of free landing page builders out there. Just pick one.
Hey, yeah I do understand your point because personally, I would skim through an article or stack overflow answer to find what I'm looking instead of watching a video. I actually do consider your opinion important since It's technically the only feedback I got, but I guess I'm trying to market more towards the "entertainment" side of things and I want it to go more of the way of something people would just watch in their off time or something like that, but I'll need more feedback. Thank you for replying!
I am starting to understand now.
Well there are websites like 9gag for example, which entertains a big number of people right now with memes and stuff.
And there are various groups for developers in the different social networks, like Facebook.
What is your strategy for customer acquisition?
Would you be posting only developer memes, like the social network groups... etc.
Are you planning to have a feature which will be unique to your website/application.
Commenting on you not getting feedback, even with website visitors.
I think that people are taking a look at the website design and they are deciding to not even express an opinion, because it looks like that not much work has been invested into the website.
As I said people are lazy and are used to good design, especially for a product which needs to entertain them.
Yeah, I'm swapping it out with a more modern fluid-ui looking one as we speak. Your right on that design aspect, I'm more of a backend/mobile guy. I was going to do strictly videos but I think I want to diversify a little bit more and work in blogs and memes etc. Right now I think I should find some other developers to talk to and find what they would like/ What content they consume the most, I'm still very early in validating the idea, if I find most people aren't really interested in something like this I'll have to pivot to a new idea.
You can try to post it on teamblind.com
But not directly. There is a community of developers there that can give you their opinion on the idea at least.
In addition to what others said about the landing page style, here's some off-the-cuff thoughts:
It seems you are essentially building a 2-sided marketplace (content producers + content consumers), this brings with it a lot of issues such as the chicken-and-egg problem of getting both these groups to sign up.
Video files are large and bandwidth is not free, who is going to pay for this? Advertising is difficult until you have a large user base which suggests either subscription or transaction based fees.
Programming is very text-based, video is not (one reason SO does so well is the copy-and-paste-able content, plus search engines can find it). I could imagine a programmer-focused version of online learning could work (think udemy but for programmers), if the interface were tailored specifically for programming (i.e. side-by-side copy-and-pastable code and video, or even better an in-browser code editor/executor), where consumers pay per-course to view the videos and producers receive some % of that revenue. You're landing page as-is does not indicate why I would choose this over YouTube (which already has an audience + monetization built in).
Lastly: "Any videos are allowed as long as it pertains to software development." I would scrap this from the copy as it is almost certainly untrue (or would quickly become untrue). Content would probably be moderated by either yourself or the community (SO-style). As a trivial but extreme example I could post a video showing how to create a "hate speech" site using "only HTML + CSS", or an R18 site using javascript, etc, etc.
1.) I was thinking of doing the reddit approach with seeding my own content as well as some of my dev friends who would be on board but that is a long winded process which we'll have to keep working at.
2.) I don't intend the platform to get so big that will be a problem so early but I plan on adding a subscription model for private channels or maybe just to support the developers like the twitch model. This along with advertisers could be able to get it up to speed.
3.) I did have something like this in mind with the ide right next to the video. I haven't figured out an exact segement to target which is why it isn't so specific I think I need to do more user interviews to figure out what they would like.
I do understand your last point, I'll also modify that, thank you for your advice.
Looking at your site it is unclear to me what a "A platform for tech enthusiasts and
software engineers to share and learn" actually is. And since as a developer I am always busy I don't have time to figure something out if it does not seem immediately compelling, because there are thousands of compelling things out there I already don't have time to research.
Also, is this something you created to scratch your own itch, or did you do this after interviewing a lot of developers w/a non-leading interview process and discovered this addressed a pain point or need they had? If the former you probably need to do research to find out what developers think is missing that your solution could be modified to address and pivot to target that need instead.
#jmtcw
Yes this mainly started as one of my coding projects for fun on something I thought would be interesting to make. I have a couple swe contacts on linkedin that I could talk to, thank you for your advice.