Hi all, /*cross-posted to Ruby Or Rails Oceania*/ For two months I have been working full-time on a startup called Testivate (http://testivate.com), which is in the website benchmarking business.
Website benchmarking is typically an expensive, highly tailored consulting process sold through lengthy face-to-face interactions, but I'm disrupting the sector with an online product that you just click to buy. The secret sauce is a mixture of crowdsourcing and clever management of the underlying benchmarking criteria. I've built what we have so far using Rails. I'm looking for a cofounder who can lead on the technical side, but I hope we'd both be involved to an extent in every part of the business. The details: PROGRESS SO FAR Using a lean/customer development approach, I've conducted a first round of customer interviews, changed many of my assumptions, and begun a second round of customer interviews to test my new views. Details here: http://www.powerretail.com.au/insights/lean-start-up-theory-online-retail/ I've built a sales site using Heroku/Rails/HAML/SASS/Compass/Susy (see http://testivate.com) but I haven't had time to start testing messages etc yet via AdWords and Google Analytics as I plan to do. I've built a basic Rails app to manage the benchmarking criteria more efficiently. It passes all my Cucumber tests but to be honest, in terms of the fail/pass/refactor BDD development cycle, I haven't done as much refactoring as I should have along the way, so the code definitely needs a tidy up. I'm currently writing benchmarking criteria for our first product -- a Retail Website Search Function benchmark -- and I'm using the basic Rails app to manage and store these testing criteria as I create them. NEXT STEPS Apply for StartMate. Start split-testing the messaging on the sales site. Complete the second round of customer interviews. Finishing writing the benchmarking criteria for the first product -- the Retail Website Search Function benchmark. OPPORTUNITIES TO GEEK OUT So far the tools I have been using are: Rails, Cucumber, Heroku, SASS/HAML, Compass, Susy. There are so many opportunities to geek out as we push this further. Some ideas: # Use of the http://houdiniapp.com to distribute questions to testers (I'm in discussion with the founder) # Use of whatever you like to build dynamic charts based on the answers (e.g. Raphael.js or something else) # Use of Nokogiri to build reports in HTML format based on the answers # Use of print style sheets etc to turn these HTML reports into PDF format reports # Use of http://pin.net.au for payments (I have a beta key) # Opportunity to work across the entire stack, addressing anything from performance issues to analytics to user experience including the creation of rich media LOCATION Anywhere really, thanks to Skype etc. But for face-to-face meetings: I'm currently living in the lovely surfing and dairy farming town of Gerringong, which is on the Illawarra train line, and about two hours drive south of Sydney. We have a spare single bed in the home office that I'm using to build the startup. I try to get to Sydney as much as I can. At the end of 2014 I'll be moving to Wollongong, which is about half way between Gerringong and Sydney, and which has a fast-growing startup scene including a Fishburners-style space called StartPad. Wollongong to Sydney CBD is 90 minutes on the train. Wollongong to southern Sydney is obviously a shorter journey. WORKING ARRANGEMENTS I'm a full-time self-funded founder with 18+ years of digital business experience spanning media, marketing, research, consulting and startups. In particular, I understand the website benchmarking process and why it is ripe for disruption. More about me: http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevennoble I'd consider working with full-time or part-time cofounders. The main thing would be that we felt we could commit to the project and each other. How does this sound? Feel free to forward this to anyone who may be interested. Thanks all, Steven. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Vist http://siliconbeachaustralia.org for more Forum rules 1) No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself. 2) No jobs postings. You can use http://siliconbeachaustralia.org/jobs To post to this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
