[emmett]

Can you explain, in one sentence, what it is that you're building that's different from existing movie ratings sites?

Try this template: "it's like Rotten Tomatoes, except ..."

It's like Rotten Tomatoes, except you rate on 3 axes instead of just 1.

It's like Rotten Tomatoes, except you rate the movie by answering questions about what parts you liked.

It's like Rotten Tomatoes, except your ratings are automatically posted to Facebook.

What are you building? If you can't say in one sentence, I would suggest the problem is with your pitch rather than with the listeners.

[flipside]

It's certain that the problem is me, and my poor communication skills, I never blame the audience.

Describing what we're doing and illustrating the pain points aren't the same thing.

How about this: Tinj is a rating system that lets people externalize opinions about movies in context so they can receive comprehensive recommendations.

See? Told you I still suck at this.

Here's a problem we're solving: Given that opinions are complex, how do you figure out what other people think about a movie?

Read reviews? That's biased to critics and writers (less than 1% of the population).

Look at star ratings? What does 4-stars even mean?

Check out social media? How many tweets and blogs would you have to read?

Ask your friends? Which ones actually share your tastes and have seen the movie?

Unfortunately, complicated problems tend to have complicated answers.

[gfodor]

The goal of reading movie reviews is not to see what other people think about a movie. It's to decide what movie to see. Why not just say:

"Quickly and easily decide which movie to see."

Simple, to the point, and yes, it's still an unsolved problem.

[flipside]

Thanks, I'll give it a shot. I don't believe I've tried that particular wording yet.

[precisioncoder]

One thing I would suggest is when you mention it, have a link ready with an email signup so people like me who are intrigued can easily sign up to get a mail when the beta releases. The name seems fairly popular at least a google search for "Tinj" or "Tinj movie reviews" didn't work. (Although the hacker news thread came up with the second search)

[flipside]

I'll definitely need to take a day to improve our SEO before we launch. In the mean time, you can sign up at http://tinj.co

[stevanl]

One minor point I'd raise with the .co is a while ago I read (on HN I think) that one a particular startup had a lot of feedback from users saying "you're missing an 'm' in your logo/url". It might confuse some people that aren't familiar with how ccTLD/gTLD's work.

If you've come across this before, forgive the pestering, I just thought it was fair to point out before you've launched.

[brc]

Err - take a day to improve your SEO?

You should be putting those blocks in place now. Good SEO takes time, and day-before-launch is not the time.

Seriously, start executing your strategy now.

[abbasmehdi]

I feel your pain. It's hard to find the balance between saying what problem you're solving vs how you're solving it.

This is what I suggest you do. It might cost you ~$50 or so. Go to a coffee shop like Starbucks and offer someone to buy them their coffee in exchange for some feedback on the "new website you're building". Try to find normals (not super technical folks, unless that's your target audience). Explain to them what you're building, let them play with the site (hey this is also a nice UX test), take your notes whatever but in the end, ask them to explain to you what your site does. Maybe if you do this with 10 or so people you might see a pattern emerging (bonus: get pretty good feedback on product too).

I am not saying this will work, but this will not be a waste if the people you talk to are anything close to your target audience.

P.S. What Emmett is saying above is to give him a one sentence description that brings him as close as possible to cloning your site. Also, do you really need "externalize opinions"?

[flipside]

Different pitches for different people/situations. The problem is, people don't all have the same pain. It gets worse. Some people have gone numb from the pain and aren't conscious of it any more. The irony is that our rating system would be perfect for matching the right pitch to each person.

I've more or less mastered the 1-minute demo, hard not to since I've done it a thousand times (and a thousand different ways too). Trust me, I used to suck a lot more.

As for the "externalize opinions" line, just trying something new.

[lobotryas]

Hey man. I read your one sentence pitch and it left mr really confused. Writing this post to show you what confused me in case it's helpful in your fine tuning your pitch.

>How about this: Tinj is a rating system that lets people externalize opinions about movies in context so they can receive comprehensive recommendations.

What does "externalize opinions" mean? As someone who has never seen your service, I know what an opinion is, but "externalize" is a complex word with multiple nuanced meanings. As a prospective user I assume you mean "voice".

What does "in context" mean? Again, as a prospect I have zero idea what you mean by that, so I will assume you mean "on my site".

What does "receive comprehensive recommendations" mean? I guess it can be my FB friends (if I give another service access to mytriends list) or strangers or (worse) friends I have to make on your site before it brcomes useful. I'll assume "strangers or FB friends".

Put it together, and the pitch becomes (to me, a prospective user who had zero context about your srvice beyond this sentence and who you are trying to convince to visit your site): "Tinj is a rating system that lets people voice opinions about movies on the Tinj website so they can receive recommendations from strangers or FB friends.". This may be totally wrong, but it's the picture I got. To which as a user I say: "Big deal. I don't need this site when I have FB and RottenTomatoes."

I hope hearing some feedback from a stranger will help you refine your pitch.

[ams6110]

...externalize opinions about movies in context...

I'm not even sure what that means. Target your pitch to an 8th grade reading level. Yours sounds like the abstract for a research paper. And these days, your core value proposition should be able to be expressed in a tweet.

[precisioncoder]

That was a good pitch actually, convinced me to take a look at your site. My wife and I always have a very hard time deciding for movies, often because rating sites are worse than useless if you don't have mainstream tastes.

[flipside]

Awesome! The beta should start in the next few weeks.

[krichman]

I also thought that was a good pitch. Please make a post or something when you have the beta open, I'd like to try it.

[emmett]

Right, I understand that pain points and solutions are not the same thing. I didn't ask for you to describe the pain points. I really am asking what you're building. In a concrete way, what does it actually do?

[icebraining]

I use Criticker. It matches me with people with similar tastes and estimates how much I would grade a movie based on their grades.