Help Provide Useful Feedback For Startups: Announcing Step2 Startups

from the keep-it-going dept

We've been working to do more with our Step2 discussion platform lately, and today we're announcing Step2 Startups -- in which various startups reach out to the Techdirt community for feedback/thoughts/advice. Step2 has already been set up for people, creators, entrepreneurs and innovators, but now we're starting to specifically highlight interesting startups that are asking for feedback from the community. The first participant is the startup Snackr, "The Pandora for Audio News".

A little over a year ago I was blown away by Paul Ford's brilliant essay entitled The Web Is a Customer Service Medium. It inspired me to write a post about the key idea in the essay: that the killer app for the web is providing the answer to the "Why wasn't I consulted?" question -- simplified to WWIC. Since then I've spoken dozens of times about WWIC in the context of building communities and navigating digital challenges.

The key to building communities really is to focus on the WWIC question -- and that was a big part of our thinking when we set up Step2. The platform was initially focused on business models and ideas for content creators, but the plan has always been to expand it to cover more and more useful concepts. We'd noticed that our community has a lot of opinions and insights into various new online tools and services. Any time we mention anything on Techdirt, people get into pretty detailed and involved discussions, and we thought we should leverage that with Step2. At the same time, we get tons of requests from PR folks or startup entrepreneurs themselves (we definitely prefer to hear from entrepreneurs directly over their hired-gun PR people) hoping to get coverage on Techdirt. Doing straightup "this startup is launching today" stories isn't really our bread and butter -- unless it fits into a larger trend we're looking at, it just didn't seem to be of much value. Plus, there are dozens of blogs doing that kind of thing.

But what we could do is help startups get feedback and insights from our opinionated and thoughtful community. We could help make sure you folks "were consulted" on various interesting new tools and services. Hence Step2 Startups -- where we'll be highlighting various startups that request feedback and thoughts from the community here. Step2 is an open platform, so any company can just post their questions directly and seek feedback, but if you want to be featured on Techdirt as well, like Snackr here, we ask that you hit us up via the feedback form. If it's appropriate, we'll work with you to find an interesting question on which the community is likely to have thoughts.

So head on over to Snackr's request for feedback, check out the company's demo video or get the software itself (for iOS devices only at this point)... and help improve the product.

Filed Under: feedback, innovation, startups, step2, why wasn't i consulted, wwic
Companies: snackr


Reader Comments

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  1. icon
    That Anonymous Coward (profile), 14 Mar 2012 @ 10:17pm

    Sadly I don't have an iThingy or a Facebook, so I've got nuffin to offer.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    Mike Masnick (profile), 14 Mar 2012 @ 11:12pm

    Re:

    Sadly I don't have an iThingy or a Facebook, so I've got nuffin to offer.


    You can provide feedback based on the demo... as I did...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    That Anonymous Coward (profile), 17 Mar 2012 @ 12:54am

    Re: Re:

    My feedback would not be that useful.
    I'm an anomaly in my demographic -
    no Facebook - I think its the devil.
    no smart phone - See above reason.

    My automatic response to the idea was -
    "Great another reason to have to dodge morons."
    I've had people texting walk into me, walls, doors, other people, etc.
    I've had people to into their MP3 player unable to connect with reality around them.
    I see the people everyday unable to disconnect from their smart phone long enough to handle making a transaction with a cashier, instead feeling what they are doing is much more important than everyone around them.

    Its not something I'd use or have any interest in. I don't feel right making suggestions to something I have a negative feeling towards...not the tech itself, it sounds useful for a demographic that commutes via train etc., but the impact that tech will end up having.

    We live in an amazing time in tech, we have the power of the entire internet in our hands... but we can't get people to use basic social skills because they are to busy being "social" on Facebook.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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