Here are my thoughts from someone who has been in the market research industry for 10 years:
1. First off, congrats on quitting and going full-steam ahead on something you're clearly passionate about. That's a huge accomplishment on its own. The "having no regrets" part of it is especially important.
2. The charity element is a differentiator, but you're going to have to work hard to beat some existing initiatives in the industry (Op4g - www.op4g.com - is the one that comes to mind first). The MR industry has a bit of an "old boys club" feel to it, and there is a flood of DIY survey tools coming out each day that make it harder and harder to break through the noise.
3. I would spend some time on your site explaining why compelling people to participate through charities is better than direct cash incentives. There is a ton of great research on intrinsic motivation out there that supports this idea, with the book "Drive" by Dan Pink being one of the best summaries of why this concept works. However, your potential customers are not going to understand why that works to generate higher quality responses (as evidenced by some of the comments here on HN).
4. If you're truly in this for the long-haul, I would try hard to build your own panel of respondents underneath this. That is going to take you a lot of time to do, but it's going to be the only thing that separates you in the long-term from all the other DIY survey tools. Plus, if you ever try to sell the business the value of it will be substantially higher to a potential acquirer.
That's exactly what I mean... If you can have the tools you have already built sitting on top of a large panel of people who are willing to participate in these surveys for charity then you have the recipe for longer-term success in the industry, as well as a competitive differentiator over the next guy who comes along and builds a low-cost survey tool. Check out SurveyBuilder (www.surveybuilder.com) for an example of what I'm talking about.
tchock23: I am working on something tangential to the MR industry, and would love to hear some thoughts from you on what I am building. How do I contact you?
Comments
Here are my thoughts from someone who has been in the market research industry for 10 years:
1. First off, congrats on quitting and going full-steam ahead on something you're clearly passionate about. That's a huge accomplishment on its own. The "having no regrets" part of it is especially important.
2. The charity element is a differentiator, but you're going to have to work hard to beat some existing initiatives in the industry (Op4g - www.op4g.com - is the one that comes to mind first). The MR industry has a bit of an "old boys club" feel to it, and there is a flood of DIY survey tools coming out each day that make it harder and harder to break through the noise.
3. I would spend some time on your site explaining why compelling people to participate through charities is better than direct cash incentives. There is a ton of great research on intrinsic motivation out there that supports this idea, with the book "Drive" by Dan Pink being one of the best summaries of why this concept works. However, your potential customers are not going to understand why that works to generate higher quality responses (as evidenced by some of the comments here on HN).
4. If you're truly in this for the long-haul, I would try hard to build your own panel of respondents underneath this. That is going to take you a lot of time to do, but it's going to be the only thing that separates you in the long-term from all the other DIY survey tools. Plus, if you ever try to sell the business the value of it will be substantially higher to a potential acquirer.
Just my two cents... You're off to a great start!
Thanks so much for the feedback. I appreciate it a lot.
3. I will do that. Maybe a feature comparison page. Good suggestion.
4. What do you mean by a "panel of respondents" ? Do you mean that I would have people of different demographic areas taking public surveys?
That's exactly what I mean... If you can have the tools you have already built sitting on top of a large panel of people who are willing to participate in these surveys for charity then you have the recipe for longer-term success in the industry, as well as a competitive differentiator over the next guy who comes along and builds a low-cost survey tool. Check out SurveyBuilder (www.surveybuilder.com) for an example of what I'm talking about.
tchock23: I am working on something tangential to the MR industry, and would love to hear some thoughts from you on what I am building. How do I contact you?
Happy to help... My email address is in my HN profile (it's just my HN username @gmail.com)
flaviu@eval.me I definitely would love to give you some feedback.