What a long, strange trip it's been

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#1

About 3 years ago I was in sales and had an idea for a web app but no coding skills. I spoke to 50+ customers a day in my sales job and knew the product had a market.

I looked high and low to find someone technical to help me build it and eventually was able to get a programmer on board.

The programmer was top notch (no idea how I managed to convince him) but when the product stalled to gain traction once we launched (first 2 months) he got antsy and bailed. I barely had a chance to really market the thing.

At that point I was broke (including about $7K in credit card debt) and had to get a job even though I knew deep down I had to get this idea out there. I spent the next two years learning how to code on the side of my day job. Finally, after a lot of struggle I’ve been able to build the product myself and re-launch.

It’s still in beta, but I’m proud to introduce, http://www.movebuddha.com

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#2

Whoa that’s pretty epic. Congrats man!!! Yes agree that this is a great website idea. Wish I would have had it a few months back when moving.

Nice work man.

#3

It’s still a work in progress for sure but just happy to at least have it live for my own sanity. Now to make it good!

Based on your recent move, anything specific you think I could add, change, adjust to make it more helpful. I’m trying to prioritize what to do next.

Thanks for your feedback!

#4

Ya so I think you’ve nailed the initial experience of “I want to ballpark what moving will cost me”. That was exactly what I was wanting to do but it’s basically impossible. Because all these other sites out there take forever to actually give you pricing.

So I was really delighted by the simplicity with which you accomplished that.

But it feels like a relatively light feature set right now. I’m not sure what your plans are and what stage you’re at right now. If you’re able to get enough leads and pick up some kind of referral commission off of this, then I think you might be ready to go ahead and begin focusing on the marketing side of things.

If you could show up #1 for “how much will it cost to move” or “moving from X to Y” - which you kind of should given that you answer that question way better than other sites out there - then you really might not need much else in terms of feature set to begin to get some serious traction here.

In terms of my own moving experience, I’m pretty cheap (probably more so than your ideal user or customer), so I ended up planning to do the moving all myself and have a buddy of mine help. This time around I think I’m going to hire someone to help load and hire someone else to help unload and then get the truck myself.

Wish the pods were cheaper - no idea why they’re so expensive.

Best of luck!

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