Just getting started on my first web app/startup, would love feedback

Introductions
#1

Hey Guys,

My name is Jamie and I’ve just begun the build and market of an idea myself and my business partner have had for a while. Both of us have been graphic design, web development, and creative freelancers for a few years and constantly had trouble sourcing new jobs. We’ve been tossing around the idea of a community/web app that helps creative freelancers create profile and portfolio, learn about how to freelance, post content, and source gigs.

It’s been a bit of a pipe dream for a while, but my business partner and I just got an opportunity to attend a local coding school and for our class project we plan on building this creative freelance community, known as Galactic Collective. If everything goes right, we’d love to launch it as a business concept.

Here’s a website we’ve put together that will give you a rough idea of what we’re shooting for:

galacticcollective dot com

I’ll be making another post soon where I explain the design in depth (and where I’d love feedback, critiques, and ideas) but for now just want to touch base and introduce myself.

Look forward to chatting with you guys!

Jamie

#2

I’ve looked a bit at your site, but I still don’t understand exactly what you want to do. Is it something like https://pickcrew.com/ ?

1 Like
#4

*deleted my last post since I’ve got something better to write.

Today my team did some work and put together a “how it works” page. Does this help to answer any of your questions about the site?

#5

http://galacticcollective.com/how-it-works/

#6

Yep, it’s much clear now. Btw, I was thinking about a similar project but for startups searching for qualified employees.

#7

That’s definitely a great idea and it’s something we considered. We decided to target creatives first since it’s a good niche market. I’ve seen a few competitors in that market, but no one that’s truly killing it.

Did you build out Bubeat yourself? I’m just about to get my first taste of coding bigtime in JS and node.

#8

Yeah, I’ve built it (still building it actually) myself. However it’s not my first big project and I do have a firm grasp of the tech I’m using (asp.net). Personally, I avoid js as much as possible, so I’m keeping it client side only.

#9

Hi Jamie, I had a look at your site and what I read first is “With The Most Exceptional Creatives Nearby” and I think “huh, what?” and then there is the line above that “– Connecting Brands & Agencies –”. You should rearrange the headline so that it’s readable in one go, I think the hyphen style is not used for something like that. At least you could do it like “- For Brands & Agencies - We connect you with the most exceptional creatives nearby”.

#10

Good feedback and I totally agree. I’ve been going back and forth on that with a teammate and you are the second or third person to say that.

#11

Completely switched up the splash page wording and copied DoLike’s format of jumbotron followed by a smaller text elaboration.

Is that clearer to you from a customer perspective?

http://galacticcollective.com/

#12

Jamie, 2 sided market places are notoriously difficult businesses for bootstrappers to pull off, because you have to market to both the creatives and the agencies, I tried to do something like this in my industry a few years ago, failed miserably. To succeed I guess you have to work out who has the greatest pain the creative or the agency, and then work out if they would be willing to pay for your solution.

#13

That’s been an ongoing discussion with my team since we came up with this idea. The only way we see it working is if it’s entirely free for creatives to join. We plan to keep it invite-only to make sure random people can’t sign up.

The pain is really on the business/agency side, since they are constantly having to find new talent to work on projects, especially since creatives are becoming more and more in demand by general businesses and as agency competition increases. For right now we see Galactic working out as a subscription platform for businesses, but will keep our eyes open for a pivot if it’s available.

What was the 2 sided business you were working on?

#14

It was for structural engineers and their clients, managed to find this old video http://www.screenr.com/pL17 - definitely my most expensive mistake

#15

Is there any particular cause that made things difficult for you (like the pricing)? I’m interested since we’re only a few months away from launching.

#16

I was going to charge structural engineers £100/year to use the site, but all the engineers were busy and didn’t need to pay to win work, all the clients were consumers who don’t like paying for anything. You have get both the clients and engineers to signup, it was real nightmare.

#17

The value of a network/market is proportional to the square of the number of nodes/people in it. So it has very little value until you reach a certain a certain threshhold. Typically people get over this threshhold because:
a) They already have a big audience (e.g. Joel and Jeff with stackoverflow.com).
b) They spend a bundle of money on advertising, usually courtesy of VC (e.g. Groupon)

It is even worse with a ‘2 sided’ market because you need the right mix of buyers and sellers.