skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask YC: Feedback on our startup/application
http://www.onista.com

On October 2nd we (I and two of my friends) released the Alpha version of our dreams, ideas and execution called Onista. We are extremely excited to release it in open alpha with tons of hard-work behind it. I and two of my friends completed this version in part-time (completely moonlighting) and now we feel that it is ready to get feedback from expert folks. So far we have informed only our friends/contacts so we can get feedback and iterate from there.

Onista is an auction-less social marketplace where people can buy and sell products. Onista is an amalgam of eBay, PriceLine, LendingTree, Alibaba.com, and LinkedIn. Onista allows instant price negotiation and enables buying products without searching.

Here is quick summary of Onista Features,

1. Auction-less format
2. Instant Real-time price negotiation resulting in Instant Gratification for consumer
3. Buyers can buy products without searching and hunting for products using Request for Quotes and Price Quotes model like Alibaba.com
4. Free listings for sellers
5. Sellers get open access to qualified sales leads and targeted product placements
6. Support for multiple payment systems (Paypal, Amazon etc..)
7. A Social Network to build trading communities and mitigate the propensity for fraud

Please visit http://www.onista.com and enjoy the Onista Experience.
To understand more about Onista, please do not forget to watch our Demo Video by clicking icon Demo Video on right-bottom corner of Onista index page. Alternatively you can also watch this video at http://www.vimeo.com/1594866

Please provide us feedback about how we should improve Onista. Any feedback is welcome.
To give you an idea on what kind of feedback you can think of, (but again, any feedback will be appreciated)

* What is your first impression of the home page and also other pages?

* What was confusing and what was not in entire site

* What is complicated to understand, and how we can do it better?

* Would you use this site to buy or sell products? if no, why? what can we improve so it appeals to you? If yes, would you invite your friends to join?

* We understand that we have lot more functionality for alpha version. Does it help or it confuses you more?

We also need your much appreciated help in spreading the word. If you find Onista useful, please let your friends know by becoming member and inviting your friends from http://www.onista.com/invite.php

If you still reading this portion (meaning Onista is little bit interesting) then please list some products to sell. Our initial goal is to get many products listed because unless there are products to sell, the site would not be very useful. If you need any help in listing products, Onista team can also help

Thank you very much in advance,
don't forget the new yorker. the best $1 i spend a week. (for reference, the sunday NYT is $6 with home delivery.)
Haha no I'm saying Godin often makes up or magically changes the meaning of all these words/phrases (Purple Cow?!) and then doesn't even follow his own advice. Squidoo isn't awesome, or amazing, or wonderful; it's an abortion.
Hi jmtame.

Media like the "Zeitgeist, the Movie" make me and many others upset. It doesn't follow logic, it is quite simplistic, it is just too lame. It ties very different things into a great conspiracy theory.

What really pisses me off is all is welcomed by the far right conservatives in the western democracies. Anybody against their plans gets dismissed as a lunatic paranoid.

In "What We Say Goes" Noam Chomsky mentions the case of government agencies feeding the media with small bits of John F. Kennedy's assassination.
> It doesn't matter if there's a written contract... if you are working on a venture together with some sort of verbal understanding, in California (I'm assuming in the rest of the USA too) that is just as legally binding as a written contract

That is true, but only if you can prove there was an oral agreement. That is why written agreements are considered better, you have physical proof.

With an oral agreement you'll need to convince a judge or jury that both sides agreed to said contract, otherwise you could be SOL.
Springnet's profile - Bzzster
You're focusing on the exception; I'm focusing on the rule. Sure I believe you but the vast majority (Amway, Cutco, Quixtar, Herbalife, et al) are the ones that are full of slime, false promises & proliferate themselves every where. There's a huge difference between being an MLM and being an affiliate. The former you're forced to sell to friends and family, the latter you are not.
Where do people find the time to do this?
Back in the late 90s, before .NET was released, I used to know a number of groups that would use C++ to create "ASP Generators", since ASP was such a beast. A OO code generator is much better than scripted spaghetti code.

Now, the concept is moot...a good OO web platform is so much more robust.
And more importantly, it's _flexible_ buy & hold meaning he can sell whenever he wants. If you buy & hold with a very firm sell date you're not doing it right.

It's hard to really know whether the stock market is "high" or "low" (if you did, you'd be rich) that's why it's important to invest slowly at all times (dollar cost averaging).
Because people are dumb, ignorant and/or don't understand risk.
> I'm saying it's like bike theft and the New York and San Francisco black market: it's a wholly unpunished crime, and so it is rampant.

I totally agree with you.

Regarding Credit Default Swaps and Interest Swaps, a lot of this is due to the fact that they weren't regulated like insurance, even though that is how they were being used.

I read the other day that some hedge fund had sold CDSs to Lehman to insure against losses on $2 billion of asset backed securities. The hedge fund only capitalized the subsidiary selling the CDSs with $4 million.

There is a reason we regulate insurance companies... to make sure they maintain adequate capital to back up their policies. This creates trust in the market that buying insurance will actually protect you.

So, like you said, the government has a role in enforcing contracts and preventing fraud. In this case they failed to regulate CDS instruments to ensure proper capital ratios.
While I'm also fearful of this, I feel like I missed something.

After all the talk about creating a 'fairer' system, it seemed like he just suggested that Britain create its own version of Paulson's plan. What were his suggestions for making things more 'fair'? Did I miss something?
I wish it was a passing phase. But people love it everywhere. I saw it two years ago on Reddit, and have since seen it flame up into a ridiculous deluge of fringe theories and an absolute death of everything interesting.

People like everything but fair and detailed reporting. News reflects this. Same with culture. People like buying vast amounts of worthless things. It doesn't matter what field it's in. Geeks collect as much as rifle hunters, they just collect different things. That's led to an industry that specializes in creating excess.
Comprehending Large Software Systems
PHP is a good second programming language (but never a first)
Who Wants To Beat Google?
Where's the task management category killer?
>For example the one thread per connection model everywhere or the XML web services throwing away objects

Hence my statement:
> ignoring the way "enterprises" mostly use java (which is just silly)

Of course the thread per connection model is long gone (at least what I have heard, but software tends to not die) and the XML beast is dying... but that it more how people abuse it.

but if its memory you want, you can't do better then using the OS to its full power via C/C++, which is what you are doing when you are using C/C++. Using anything that is a full VM (like jvm, or if you think that is opaque - give erlang a try !) then you kind of tell the OS to "go away" and the VM becomes an OS etc...
Page Rank is the Ultimate Measure of Online Influence
'Unbreakable' quantum cryptography hacked without detection using lasers
If you're running windows have a look at Delphi / C++ builder. There are a number of ways to do this, intraweb components are one, or you can roll your own.

You can write your events in C++ or Delphi or both. (flame on)
Reddit is still a mass producer of sorts, and the score stands in for money - the same dynamic occurs. That which titillates the many out-scores that which fascinates the few. (Reddit has tried with limited success to protect enclaves: subreddits. They have created smaller and more elite lowest-common-denominators. Better than nothing, for now.)

I say it's a passing phase because where tech is headed is: auto-generated completely personal everything. The limit of "the few" is "the one", and the mass production dynamic breaks down at that limit.
would you use clojure again?

Also - how do you deal with mixed source (eg clojure and java or whatever) in one project ?
[Craig Newmark of craigslist] is what business school people call a "bad competitor" because he appears more interested in serving society than making money.

He does make money by charging certain kinds of users, but the bulk of his service is free. He is like Henry Ford who, after introducing the Model T, lowered prices, increased wages and concentrated on market share rather than maximizing profit. When challenged by shareholders unhappy that their dividends weren't higher, he replied that they should view his company as "an instrument of service rather than as a machine for making money."

startup relevance: I've seen growth at the expense of profit painted as megalomaniacal empire-building, and I felt the strain of the selfishness of it, but not recognized it intellectually. Growth can sometimes be justified economically, if it can improve future profitability, so it's not "growth vs. profit" but "future vs. now" (i.e. an investment). There's security in not maximizing immediate profits, too - craigslist isn't going out of business any time soon; and the goodwill generated by "leaving money on the table" is arguably worth something.
... an intelligence service ...

That was the exact phrase that popped into my head after reading the subhead.

Now for one of those nutty, wild-assed guesses: what do you think about Anathem?
Thanks. I'm very aware of Newsvine. Gotta respect what's come before!

My issue with Newsvine, and sites like Newser, Google news and all of the pure Digg-clones, etc is that they're run by hackers, not news people. And no matter what the founders say, they all have the same business model, to make money by commoditizing expensive stuff (journalism) that someone else paid for (newspapers).

The idea with my startup http://www.windycitizen.com (we did 50,000 uniques last week...and now apache crashes every 2 hours :( ) is to bring NEW stuff to the web. I want to fill holes in the internet. 3-4 times a week we publish exclusive original stuff. Last week we scooped the Chicago media so badly that the Tribune ran a copycat version of the story the next day. That was fun. I've never heard of Newsvine breaking a big story.

So yeah, Newsvine's great, but I want to get something going that will support original journalism of the type described in the original link.

Getting it going is rough, of course. I'm bootstrapping based on advice from a few entrepreneurs. I've got an application into the Knight News Challenge, which you can read here: http://garage.newschallenge.org/projects/1-crowd-powered-fro...
Decent talking points, but nothing more. Outside of this one statement:

PHP was created to solve the Web problem. It was and still remains the most popular language to build web applications.

The rest of the post is fluff opinion that really doesn't hold water, and says nothing about the core of the language other than broad talking points. It's a very capable language, and the argument is fierce over choice of libraries when you scour the Internet.
I'll point out this is straight out of "Zeitgeist: Addendum", should someone dig that point of view.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
Sorry, haven't read it! Or any Stephensen, actually.

forfeits in geek card
Knowledge is power. Arm yourself.
I don't see anything different than what ebay/craigslist offers. You mention a "social marketplace" and your front page says "Leverage the power of social networks" but I don't see any features that make your site social, or where I can leverage the power of social networks.

You have a community tab where users can have events. Why would I use your site for events, why not evite, facebook, etc...? You should focus on one thing and do it well, instead of adding tons of features but neglecting your main focus. "Less is more", right?

Bugs:
1. I just did a search for "car" and got no results. Although you clearly have a car for sale on the site.
2. The captcha on the register page doesn't load an image until I click on the "Try another Image" link.
3. In the community -> Questions and Answers, a search for "sell", "selling", and "fees" returned no results (in fact, nothing returned any results).

Overall, I don't see any unique value created for the user. I'd love for you to tell me I'm wrong and point me to some features/aspects that I missed. (Maybe all the social features are still in development?).
Unfortunately, there wasn't a single point in this fellow's article that stands. Frequently the authors of stories criticizing PHP write it from the perspective of a newbie first encountering a language. Maybe its just me, but I don't care about newbies. I've been writing applications with PHP for the better part of 4 years. Its a very strong language, and the parts that are "loose", like weakly typed variables and all of the predefined functions make the process of writing working code much easier. Perhaps its just me, but my definition of a good developer is one that knows what the hell they're doing. I have no problem debugging my code. Other people that read my code have no problem reading/debugging it. Its efficient, OO-style.
Sure, maybe something like Ruby is "easier". One day I'll get some time and try figuring that out. Meanwhile, people keep bashing PHP. Why don't you bash Java instead?

I've worked in 2 different companies that are Java shops. Its scared the crap out of me. I've yet to encounter a "java engineer" that has a freaking clue to good development practices. They almost universally insist on using tag libraries instead of writing code. Java and its adherents have been the only group of people I have ever encountered that insist on wrapping a perfectly valid markup language like HTML into A FREAKING TAG LIBRARY, THAT JUST OUTPUTS HTML?!?!?! Every bad web development practice I've ever encountered is epitomized by ever java engineer I've ever encountered.
"car": No results
"laptop": No results
"sofa": No results

Eh.
Sketching Around Personal Brand Tracking
It cuts both ways. Take a heavily state-controlled market like the entire US system during and after WWII and claim the gains are due to the free market.
I only have time for feedback on the design of the front page.

It's pretty damn good. Way better then most of the stuff I see when I'm at Y combinator. I had thoughts on the right hand column.

Your order is:

sign in, then use onista to... then not a member, join, then invite friends, then demo.

I think the order:

sign in, not a member, join, then use Onista to... makes more sense, with invite your friends only showing up to logged in users. The demo video should show up like youtube vids do, instead of the clip art, and be on the left hand side, maybe where the slogans are.

Also, I think your three slogans should be saved for elevator rides with people you have 30 sec to pitch too, rather then customer facing. "Think outside auctions and classifieds Eliminate listing fees! Leverage the power of social networks" is for industry people, not your customers. The only critique here I am absolutely sure about is that you should never ever ever say "leverage the power of social networks" to your customers.

But, thats nitpicky. Your site design looks pretty damn good. I particularly like your colors. It makes my eyes feel relaxed and happy. Far better then most sites I see linked from here. Usually I'm talking about how much the design sucks and how the designer should find a new job, or there wasn't someone focused on that. You should keep your designer. Sorry I don't have more time to comment in detail. Nice work!
There's no good explanation on the frontpage of why this is better than eBay, outside of no listing fees. You have infinitely less users and infinitely less items for sale.

What's the one sentence explanation of why Onista is better?

"Onista is an auction-less social marketplace where people can buy and sell products." doesn't tell me why I should care.
The approach explained in the article is similar to the one used by Popego, the "interests graph".
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You need to solve the "bootstrapping" problem. That's what locks everybody else out of the auction space. You need a critical mass.

Some ideas:

- Perhaps a partnership with some sort of overstock dealers?

- Focus on one city at first? Hit up every pawn shop in town and offer to send an intern over to index their stuff?

- Some sort of trade system where people could list stuff they want to get rid of and stuff they'd like to get?

- Offer services for eBay / Craigslist with some sort of incentive to move over to your platform?

(Also, please break or remove the long preformatted lines in the article submission. They break the layout.)
FWIW, I've got a pretty large sample of anecdotal evidence that agrees. I had 3 cofounders with MBPs, all purchased within a couple months. Only one has run with no problems. The other 3 (one bought a backup) have been in and out of the Apple store forever, though a lot of the problem was that the "geniuses" just weren't fixing them properly.

And I know a lot of other startups that run primarily on Macs, and it's not an uncommon occurrence at all. In fact, it's so prevalent that a lot of them keep a spare handy just in case.

Again, not a statistically relevant sample, but enough to convince me they're pretty flimsy in the hardware department.
Here's an interesting/free feature idea for an auction site. Maybe it won't work as well for yours, but here you go anyway:

Offer visitors a cut of the selling fee if they correctly predict what price the item will sell for. (Maybe closest without going over?)

This brings people over to a "I'm not looking, but I'll make a guess" site, but also might get you some users, friend invites, etc. In addition, it might also help buyers when they see that "230 people think this item should sell for more than $300" or somesuch.

It's basically a way for getting other people interested in a transaction they have nothing to do with. Which could get people looking, evaluating, and thinking about products even if they're not an immediate buyer.

I think momentum and traction is the key, and if sellers know they'll get exposure just with random auction watchers, that's publicity they may not get via ebay and searching.
"Free markets" are a disaster; without protectionist measures the United States would still be pursuing its comparative advantage against Great Britian--we'd be selling them beaver skins and acorns in exchange for their manufactured goods. All of the protectionist Asian countries have done gangbusters in the last half-decade or so; meanwhile all of the countries that have had "free markets" forced on them (which certainly does NOT include the United States) have in comparison done terrible (think Africa, Latin America).
I dunno about anyone else, but to me it seems like the whole process is actually more complicated than it is with craigslist ebay.

Also if you aren't charging anyone, how do you plan to make money?
Good point, although I think it was disingenuous of the author not to mention that interest rates are higher. I think that is clearly another type of "tightening."
Also just noticed that Trevor from YC is an immigrant (though, admittedly, from Canada) -- so 50% of the YC co-founders immigrated to the US.
Even online, there are many meta-journalist columns that attempt to offer added analysis and investigative reporting. One of the issues online is, of course, finding these sources, which are often more hidden than The Economist (a London magazine founded in 1843). Columbia Journalism Review (http://www.cjr.org/) is a rare institutional effort to do this.

While in-depth (or at least, accurate) analysis should be key to ALL journalism, many newspapers have strayed from, well, their local roots. Offering detailed analysis of local events (aka serving a niche market), as opposed to competing with major online blogs or The Economist, may breathe life into the printing press not to mention the newspaper website.
Great Source for Homes in Jacksonville FL
I was so tired of having every real estate site ask for my name, email & phone number. Then I found this site for Jacksonville FL real estate where I can see everything for sale and not have to give any personal information.
also you shouldn't list the person's address publicly keep that private to be shared between buyer/seller
I'm sad to bring this up.

We looked into creating an innovative auction site some time ago. Unfortunately there are a lot of software patents in this area, and Priceline (and its founders) have some that you need to look into before going too crazy with this site.

Unless you've done some heavy analysis here, I recommend you do so and maybe talk to an attorney. The biggest danger here is that: any auction site has to get pretty big to make decent money and once you get big with a potential patent infringement, it can sink your entire ship if caught by surprise.

We discussed some licensing possibilities on some of these patents, and those groups didn't want to talk to someone who wasn't able to pay some very high initial licensing fees. (I.e. licensing solely via royalties or equity wasn't interesting to them.)

Maybe nothing you are doing is a direct infringement, but this is a heavily patented area. Do your research.
I scanned this, was about to click-onwards, then read -

"Instant Real-time price negotiation resulting in Instant Gratification for consumer"

I think that is the one line gotcha.. it seems an obvious thing to build a new product around.

So, maybe just lead with that ?

Can it be optimized further...
"Realtime price negotiation means Instant Gratification for buyer and seller"

.. keep working it, it'll fly.

gord.
My first impression of the home page was that it's way too busy. The "Use Onista To" type information should be front and center followed by search for products. The social networking stuff is cute, but not the major function (or at least shouldn't be -- I'm not looking to make friends, I just want to buy/sell something).

Agreed with the comments on you need to hit critical mass fast. I may return one more time, but if there's still a bunch of zeros next to all of the categories, I'm not coming back again. Same's true for sellers. I won't bother posting my item for sale here if nobody else is because chances are there's no buyer traffic.

Another idea might be to "lower the bar" for getting started. Yes, you need people to register to buy/sell, but you should take sellers through posting their item before you slap the registration/login form in front of them.

As a minor thing, some of the graphics are poorly executed (the Join Now graphic has a white border around it), and the HTML/coding is a little sloppy (but it was done in Dreamweaver, so that's to be expected). You can probably do better in terms of SEO if you re-structure your pages.
the category killer exists ... it's called "notebook + pen"