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by TooCreative 2010 days ago
After clicking around your site a bit, I am left with a somewhat "cold" feeling of an anonymous service.

As a potential customer and business partner, I would leave the site for good if I had not seen your post here on HN.

For me to engage with a service, I need to know who is behind it. See their face. Their Twitter account, their Github.

I would not put my data into an anonymous machine.

2 comments

I appreciate that feedback however I would say 'each to their own'. I'm pretty sure the majority of businesses don't have people's faces on display and info about their personal life.

HOWEVER... I take it onboard.

Would it help if I made more a big deal about the "why I built it" article?

I think you’re just missing an about or company page that tells the user about Songbox and Division77. No need for faces and personal Twitter accounts unless you individually are the “brand” driving the revenue.

    the majority of businesses don't have
    people's faces on display
Not on display. But most successfull startups I remember started with the founder in the open. You could find them on Twitter etc. Creating a startup as an anonymous page for some reason seems to be an indicator of failure.
Or about page would be fine. As a client I would like to know the person behind the company.
I'm going to work on an about page. This is great feedback. Thanks.

Can I ask... does the "why I built SongBox" page not serve this purpose?

For me, yes and no. It does serve its purpose to an extent, but knowing a bit about the founder (nothing too personal, maybe your name, a small paragraph and your twitter handle) gives me confidence there is a real human behind, I feel safer knowing there are people not afraid to hide and potentially available to solve any problems I have.

Great story and really inspirational btw. Keep it up! Love the product.

When you're working part-time at another company (hence "side" project), isn't it fair to not expose your identity? I'm genuinely curious. Because I heard companies can fire you or worse even snatch your "side" project from you if it's making money for you.

Do all founders leave their companies before doing side project startups?