[jareklupinski]

> We have just completed step 1. Step 2 is daunting as hell. I have grown a business but I have never grown a website.

I've seen incredibly successful 'website' backends that were nothing more than a Google Sheet behind a few white-label HTML forms that feed into the spreadsheet; the backend almost never makes the product 'viral'

the 'magic' comes from successfully answering the question that's on everyone's mind: "why should I give you the one precious resource I have (time), and how/why will you make the rest of the limited time I have (before I die) any better?"

or, "what is the ROI on my invested time?" for example, Sam Altman has been giving away 50 bucks as the answer, and some people are lining up

as an exercise, pretend you are a stranger hearing about your own product for the first time (or better, pay someone $100 to pitch your own idea to you), and ask yourself the big question: "why should _I_ (the consumer, not the creator) care about spending time here?"

also, check with a few PR companies about the name "Population Project"...

[antoine_b]

Thank your for taking the time (!) to articulate your thoughts. We think there will be many angles to look up our site: - Do other people share my name, n my country and in the word? - How rare is my first or last name? - How old is that person I met? What's their birthday? - Percentage of a population accounted for as proxy of a country's digital footprint. You will find these answers super quickly, without a great investment. That being said, we're also looking for volunteers: people who find lists or create dozens of records. As I'm sure you know, Wikipedia runs on 300,000 volunteers - that's 1 volunteer for 10,000 visitors! Wikipedia volunteers do it for the love of knowledge. I think we can find similar-minded people, probably among those currently active in genealogy. One last note about our name, we're a proper 501(c)(3) and our name is trademarked so I see little risk there. Thank you again for your constructive remarks.

[jareklupinski]

i get those angles; growing up in a country where no one can even pronounce my name, it felt healthy to know that there was a world full of jareks haha

it's not about trademark risk - you should sit down with someone and say the name "The Population Project" out loud, without saying anything else about the project, and ask them what they _think_ it means

Shakespeare was being ironic: _everything_ is in a name

[antoine_b]

Got it. Do you think The Population Project is a bad name? I usually get pretty good feedback about it.

[jareklupinski]

i think to the uninitiated it might sound like you're proposing a plan to do something about the population, which has never been well-received :)

once you're married to a name, it's biologically impossible to see it the same way from the inside, that's why you need to look into an outsider's eyes IRL while you say the name

try something fun, like "The Name Game" haha