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Looking for a technical co-founder

Hey Guys! I am looking for a technical co-founder who can help me make my thesis project a business.


Introduction:
I am a UX Designer with over 10 years experience. I quit my job to pursue my Master's in Interaction Design in Switzerland. I'm at my final leg of my master's and am currently doing my thesis paper. After 2 months of working on my thesis, I realized that my thesis project has a lot of real-world potential. I have worked on the pitch, wireframes, concept generation and my business plan. I want to setup a business surrounding this idea and I am looking for someone who can help me develop this idea from a technical standpoint.


The Pitch:
Tech giants like eBay and Amazon have made e-commerce extremely efficient. Products can be purchased online with ease and deliveries are typically fulfilled within 3 days from purchase. However, with the coming generations (the TikTok generation), I feel that this efficiency will not be the only driving factor in e-commerce sales. Sites like Amazon are streamlined to give the best possible checkout experience. However, the pre-purchase experience is boring and fails to grab the attention of the users. That's where we come in.

Introducing Shoutup:
Shoutup is a social network where users can tag products in their Shouts (read as Posts). Once a product is tagged, it will receive all product information from sites like Amazon and ebay and will become a part of other Shouts with the same product. Next time a user searches for the product, it will show all user generated content on the product with links to purchase the product, related products that have been used by other users to create different ensembles and automatically add coupons and discounts to your checkout.

What this solves:

  1. Consumers today, want to experience a product before purchase. This has historically not been possible. However, with the advent of product review channels on YouTube and influencers on instagram this is now the main norm when making purchase decisions. Consumers do not go to a store to try out a product before they buy, they watch videos of the product on Youtube or subscribe to influencers who post product content that they find interesting.

  2. There is an obvious shift in user behavior over the last century. User generated content has become the forefront of the internet. Apps like TikTok and Instagram allows consumers & brands alike to reach millions of users with the tap of a button. However, e-commerce is still heavily regulated by brands and not by the users.

  3. By becoming the advertisers, Users can influence purchase decisions of their friends. We no longer have to sell our private data for ad companies to target ads. This also opens up the possibility of brands focusing on giving us a good product experience and not relying on advertisements to push market focus. If we like a product, we will shout about it and they get free advertising. No more targeted ads.

The Plan:

Best case scneario for me is to find a technical cofounder who will be able to make and release a lean MVP of the product by September.

Once the product is released, I am hoping to gain some traction which will be monitored closely by me till the end of the year.

Hopefully, by January 2021, the app shows some significant traction. Once there is some significant metric we can go by, we will be applying to startup accelerators and investors for series A funding. All seed funding will be borne by me.

The Co-founder:

I wan to find a person who can help me bring this project to life. Heres what I am looking for:

  1. Full stack engineer with some experience releasing an app on an app store.
  2. Some knowledge in AI could prove useful. There are lot of areas where AI could provide a significant boost to the user experience.
  3. Play well with others =)

If you are interested just post here and we can start discussing the idea further.

Cheers ^^

posted to Icon for group Looking to Partner Up
Looking to Partner Up
on June 3, 2020
  1. 1

    Hey, I have had the same idea before and have some more additions to this idea. We can connect over twitter, my handle is @1DumbMachine if you want to discuss more.

  2. 1

    Hi,
    this idea really speaks to me as I had a similar idea two years ago. After some research I stopped pursuing it, because I found that rocket internet had a similar product that they discontinued, also instagram started a feature at that time that covered my idea. I thought it is useless to compete against them because they already had an established userbase and are owned by Facebook. However fastforward to today, I still don't see a wide adaption of this feature. And I think there is still some potential for this idea as B2B -business I'd love to chat with you about this topic.

    I'm a mathematician who is currently studying machine learning and AI. I also have a some experience in web dev and software engineering although not specifically mobile development. I am based in Munich, Germany so am close to Switzerland. Since I don't use twitter I'd prefer to connect over zoom/skype or e-mail.

    1. 1

      Hi kingglouki. I’ll send you an email as soon as possible :)

  3. 1

    Does it make sense to have a whole new social media platform, or could you aggregate reviews across posts in all of social media instead?

    1. 1

      This was one of the questions I had to answer to my jury. The first point to note is that this app will not function as an aggregator as it is not meant to do so. It works more as a referral system where you can refer your favourite products to your friends. Secondly, there is something to be said about changing user behaviour and this is very evident today. 5 years ago, not everyone wanted to post content. Content creation was done by a select few. Today with the rise of tiktok, Instagram and Twitter our behaviour has changed and everyone creates and curated content.

  4. 1

    Hey, it's Gökay :) I'm a full-stack software developer and pretty much interested in the offer. HMU 😄

    1. 1

      Hi Gökay can we connect over Twitter? My Handle is @sidharthrajah

      1. 1

        Hey, I do not use twitter how about email?

        1. 1

          Hi Gokay. Sorry for the late reply. I’ll send you an email as soon as possible :)

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