It's an excellent deck from a Google UX Engineer that describes the scenario you are talking about with sharing with "everyone except for parents".
The problem that the deck illustrates is that the breakdown isn't just Parents and Everyone else. Each person has 4-6 different groups, each with its own level of appropriate or relevant content. The trick is designing to account for each.
I think the trick is to leave a path open for a person to discover that their personal social Venn diagrams are this complex. There should be several stages. At each stage, a user discovers some pain (I wish I could leave my parents out of this) and then discovers an easy solution. (Ah ha! I can use this "parent" tag and then it prompts me so I can choose to not let my parents see this.) The user is pleased, until they discover their next pain. (I don't always want all of my friends to know about...) The end result is that you've solved the user's pain several times over, and so they love your product.
I can't find any reference to the word "deckware" other than this competition. I'm assuming it refers to creating an app that actually works, and not just something you can click through for the demo.
It's great to see a third party provide engagement metrics on an emerging space. This is a welcomed move from meaningless speculation based on Compete numbers. Thanks for the analysis Jon.
It's interesting to see how FourSquare continues to dominate Gowalla.
not sure i would read the numbers that way @jschwa --- not sure that is what jon's analysis (which is really cool) shows -- and there are a few wildcards with many many more zeros in their wake yet to be cast
I see that you are located on the West Coast. Not charging to apply is the prevailing sentiment there. The East Coast does not share that same view. Many serious Angle groups charge a fee as a bozo filter. $250 isn't going to break the bank for a serious entrepreneur, but it will make a less-serious one think twice. You are right, in the ideal world the entreprenuer is doing the investor a favor. The fact of the matter is, that most of the deal flow that comes through is not quality. Check out the stats here: http://angelsoft.net/industry Only 24% of deals are even making it to the screening process. If groups did not charge a a fee, that % would plummet.
Scott,
Angelsoft is not a matching service, it is a software solution that investment groups use to manage their deal flow. The Group Finder is just a list of groups that use the Angelsoft platform, and therefore accept the common Angelsoft application.
Bruce, I think you're on to something, but I wanted to provide some insight.
I work at Angelsoft and we have found that Angels do NOT read business plans until much later in the funding process. However, they are extremely interested in a company’s one-page summary, and will usually make their decision on whether to purse further talks based on that. If you want to build a site around refining something, I would recommend focusing on the one-page summary. It is a less onerous thing to read and comment on for your community, and it is what investors really care about.
If you want a good template for a one-pager, goto http://OPEN-deals.com and register. Fill out all the questions and click Preview at the top of the page to generate a one page PDF summary. You can do that for free, you don't need to pay the $250 fee to submit to OPEN-deals to get it. Hope that helps.
I work at Angelsoft which also runs Open-Deals.com
If you are looking for funding your first stop should be your local Angel group. There is no substitution for that. Our CEO, David S. Rose, Chairman of the New York Angels, would give you the same advice.
After 4 years in the Angel Investment industry, we have consolidated most of the worlds groups onto a single platform called Angelsoft. Go to most any Angel group website and click apply, you will be brought to an application page powered by Angelsoft.
We received hundreds of emails from entrepreneurs asking us how they can apply to all of the groups using our system. In response, we created open-deals.com which allows you to do just that. It is an open directory built into Angelsoft that allows Angels to browse through deals, and refer ones that interest them into their own group for further review. You can see what open-deals.com looks like from an Angel prospective here: http://blog.angelsoft.net/2008/04/17/sneak-peek-what-does-op...
The challenge came in protecting the Angels that use our system from an avalanche of poor quality deals. Angel groups told us that one of the ways they filter out poor quality deals is by charging a submission fee. The theory is that if you are serious enough to pay $250, you are more likely to be a serious entrepreneur.
I hope that clears up some confusion. Feel free to ask questions, I will be monitoring this discussion,
