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Comment by drupeek

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Comment by drupeek

I am still searching for the additional insight I am supposed to gleam from your blog post, relative to the comment thread attached to the original.

Despite my best efforts, all I see is a deliberate attempt to be malicious for the purpose of increasing your HN cred.

You've asked 7 rhetorical questions. Assuming your post (and this is a generous assumption) was to ask these questions in earnest, here is my best attempt at answering them:

1. What are you solving?

>> We are trying to create a "better than email" environment for ideas and insights, shared within teams. Email is great at task management, but orders content by recency, which means that important thoughts (that aren't time-sensitive) get lost in archives.

2. What are the tools that are currently being used?

>> Email. Google Docs. And sometimes teams use the writeboard within their project management application.

3. Why are they so horrible?

>> I've explained email above. Google Docs doesn't give you attribution and ownership over your ideas. It's also very poor at allowing you to organize your docs. Finally, it's also incredibly hard to add to a doc quickly from a mobile device.

4. Do people wake agonize over these treacherous solutions, ripping their hair out and wishing there was something better?

>> This doesn't need an answer. You're mostly just interested in hearing yourself speak here.

5. So who actually needs what you’re building?

>> Creative teams (web design/dev shops, agencies, startups), Freelancers (part of many teams), Students & Educators (project groups and classrooms), Networked organizations (like YC who manage a portfolio of companies).

6. Have you talked to potential customers?

>> We're approaching 300 user interviews.

7. Have you reached out and gathered honest opinions?

>> Again. No answer required here.

The interesting thing about this experience (aside from the tremendously helpful feedback provided by some HN users), is that there seems to be this widely held assumption that branding and positioning a product are the "easy" parts.

People look at the fact that we've been at this for a year and a bit, and judge our progress, yet there is an endless amount of literature that's been created about how to do it well. If it was such a simple task, would you expect there to be such a large body of work around it?

Replies drupeek · 2012-07-10
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