But let's start from the beginning...
It all started almost 2 years ago when inflation began to kick in. Prices of everything started to rise, from groceries and bills to rent. At the same time, salaries didn't keep up with inflation, and more and more people started to struggle financially. Many started using food banks to get through the month. Even for working people, it got harder and harder to keep up, especially for single parents. Some people even lost their homes because they couldn't afford to pay their rent anymore.
And that got me thinking: there should be a way for people to raise funds quickly in those dark moments when they need it the most, whether to keep a roof over their heads, pay bills, buy groceries, or cover educational expenses.
At some point, as I'm a developer, I came up with an idea for an app - an app that would enable people to raise funds by offering services to their community. Services like tutoring, babysitting, pet sitting, transportation, home repair, and various other tasks they could carry out after their working hours.
I believed that this could be genuinely helpful to many people so I started working on it. I called the app Taskwer. So, how does it work?
People who want to raise funds are called creators. They start by creating their campaigns, where they set their funding goal, share their story, introduce themselves, explain why they're raising funds, and what kind of services are they offering. Once their campaign is all set, they can launch it and share it with their friends on social media, just like on Kickstarter.
After the campaign is launched, creators can begin receiving orders from their supporters, discuss details, create customized offers, and more. On an agreed-upon date, creators would complete their tasks, the supporter would confirm that the task has been completed, and creators would get paid. They could receive payment in cash from their supporters, or if the service is paid by card, they could withdraw funds from the app. There are no fees on cash payments. And in case of any issues, there is a support system in place.
I knew that I should start looking for potential users as soon as possible, even before I started building the app, to understand what they really want and need. However, there was just one problem; I'm an introvert. I have a small group of friends, I work remotely, and I don't use social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn. As a result, I kept postponing reaching out to people. And there was always a new feature to add, or a bug to fix so that was always a good excuse. I ended up sticking to what I was comfortable with and avoided talking to people for as long as possible.
Now, I have an MVP, and most of the features have been implemented, but I have no users. I don't know if this idea is any good, is it something people would even want to use. I believe it's not a bad idea, but my opinion doesn't matter here; it's the opinion of potential users that matters. The lack of a network and the inability to get users made me feel voiceless, like I'm a complete nobody. Over the past couple of weeks there have been numerous times when I've thought about giving up on this project.
So I came here today to ask for your help. I don't have a marketing budget unfortunately. What would you do in my place? What would be the best way to get my first 10 users, get some unbiased feedback and see if this project is even worth pursuing?
Here's the link: https://www.taskwer.com
How is this different/better than GoFundMe?
gofundme
> an app that would enable people to raise funds by offering services to their community
Taskrabbit?
> creators can begin receiving orders from their supporters, discuss details, create customized offers, and more. On an agreed-upon date, creators would complete their tasks, the supporter would confirm that the task has been completed, and creators would get paid
Kickstarter, except kickstarter fronts the money which is often necessary for completion.
You have built a two-sided market. This is very difficult, because you need to recruit both sides of the market. And you need to convince them that you can handle money.
> I'm an introvert. I have a small group of friends, I work remotely, and I don't use social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Unless you get a co-founder who does, or some sort of marketing lead, your chances of success are zero. Your best hope is to find some sort of community which needs this service and persuade them you can help. I think Kickstarter got started with comics and board games: raising money for printing costs. You will also need to decide what you want to do when the "community" who want to exchange money for "services" is sex workers.
Work out your route to market before writing any code, if you want to make any money.
Couldn't be further from the truth. Sorry.
You've already recognised this so I won't dwell on it too much. What are your options from here: IMO, "guerilla advertising", AKA promoting your work on Reddit and Twitter communities. Don't overdo it. But without cold hard cash for marketing I don't know how far you'll get.
As for the actual idea... eh, I don't get it. At first I thought it's just crowdsourcing but then I read that people offer a service in return. Isn't that just... you know... a job? There was a similar idea that appeared on the UK show Dragon's Den (aka Shark Tank in the US), but it was more for getting a loan from family and friends.
PS: the example campaigns on your site are too obviously fake: way too much production value in those photos!
So it sounds like of like Upwork/Fiverr/etc, but with a story about why the person is trying to raise money, and an end date/amount for their offer? As an end user, what is the advantage to me of using a smaller platform like this (with far less users) compared to one of the established ones that have a much larger number of potential buyers? And if I'm making decent money through your platform, why would I want to stop when I reach the $1000 goal (or whatever I set)?
And as a buyer, what kind of checks and verification do you perform so that I can trust the service I'm buying? If I hire a babysitter or a tutor, have you done background checks? Are you going to be liable (or get sued) when something goes wrong, or the builder I hire does a shoddy job? Can I get a refund if I'm not happy or the service isn't delivered? What happens if I don't pay - is the seller just left out of pocket or will you cover that?
If you're pushing the local angle (which quite a few of the examples you give are), can I easily see all the local services being offered without having to sign up? If you're trying to go down that route, then you might want to think about marketing locally and trying to get a load of people in your own local area involved, before trying to launch to the wider global market.
Lets look at what you could do:
- Start in one local area - ideally one near you or one that you know. Make it work there and then expand.
- See if you can engage any local groups which might engage with the idea - I could see local city/town facebook groups liking this. Or maybe on nextdoor.com.
- Check out the book "The cold start problem" by Andrew Chen. He goes into many examples of lots of companies that had this issue and how they over came the issue and got their first customers - http://andrewchen.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ColdStartPr...
See if you can ask for feedback on forums online (like this one here, but maybe also reddit, you can also ping some accounts on the fediverse).
Explain what you did where people will see it (fb groups, discord servers, plain ol' forums).
Write blog articles on how you did this or that, and post the links here.
Common advice is to synthetically boost at least one side of the marketplace to start the flywheel effect.
2) Your website seems optimized to do sort of a "startup elevator pitch" rather than focusing on the real usage that average people can get from it. Seeing stuff like "Kickstarter is for Projects Taskwer is for people" at the top does nothing for me, but "Raise funds for your education, business venture, emergency, rent, and more" is closer to the right message to focus on IMO.
3) I don't know what normal people would think of your website, but to me it seems glaring that the example stock images you use on this site aren't real users. From a technical/nerd perspective, it feels inauthentic and I'd rather see real phone photos than obvious stock imagery, even if stock photos technically looks nicer.
4) If you're committed to a free service, perhaps a .org domain might work better, though check on the legality and potential issues with that. That really hits home the message that you're not a mega-corporation, and potentially look into seeing if you can figure out non-profit status if that's something that you're genuinely serious about.
5) One glaring omission is the lack of an About page that tells us who you are. You're obviously somebody. Do I trust you with my info with no name attached to it? It would be great to tell the world who you are for the sake of credibility and some measure of assurance that you're not giving private info to a scammer.
6) Besides social media, I'd say to try and approach people on Craigslist begging for stuff to post their stories on your site and help guide them in posting the right way. Hell, you can even offer to write up and polish their content for free. There are also subreddits associated with personal poverty, finance, and other things you might want to see if you're able to reach out to people on.
7) Why are there no social media links on your site? You should consider a Facebook, X, Insta, YouTube, TikTok, Snap, etc to show off some credibility, as well as connect with people looking to raise funds for their projects.
1. It's basically a marketplace of people willing to exchange a service for cash, right? How is that different from Craigslist?
2. Why the whole Kickstarter-like progress bar showing how much of the goal has been achieved? This works on Kickstarter because it generates a pressure on the supporters to support the project before the stipulated time ends. I don't see why that would be relevant here.
3. What would make people come to Taskwer rather than any other classified advertisements platform that have a much larger use base and probably more competitive prices?
So yeah, you niched down to say creators and IRL tasks, tossed in some sense of community activism.
Well, this is an example of how it really is about ideas and not just execution to reach success.
This is a great idea. Who hadn't thought of some utopian altruism in the middle of a global crisis?
But it's not a good idea. Because you don't have the means to get traction because it's a two sided platform play that without critical mass will not lead to further utility. And because it's merely but a singular use case out of multiple for the larger entrenched competitor.
You need more usage to even build your way into success and you don't have usage because... while this is a great idea it's not a good idea.
But now we're here.
You want to know what to do?
1. Highlight user stories.
Find the most interesting one, make content, share. Segment on a morning infotainment news? Blog articles on guest writing platforms? Sappy robot voice TikTok videos? Reddit?
2. Quit and add this to your portfolio.
Your friends and families don't want to be spammed with this. Don't be weird about it.
As others have mentioned your biggest challenge is the two-sided marketplace, it is unfortunately just about the hardest thing to pick for a startup. You won't get creators until there is a large enough volume of supporters for it to be worth it to them (why set up a campaign if no one responds). You won't get supporters until you have enough creators to match services they might want.
Many marketplaces like this start with at least one of two things - they either already control one side of the market via relationships (they have access to a large amount of supply, for example), or they have a lot of capital they can use to fund the concept until it gains traction (by funding creators for example). Ideally you have both.
My advice, given the time you have already invested, is to figure out how you can niche down very narrowly to start. Pick one geographic area, and perhaps one service type, and then grind it out manually to match supply to demand. Maybe you're matching creators who tutor on the side, to students in Seattle (or whatever). You want to be narrow because it's too hard to build supply and demand if you're broad, especially by yourself without funding. You'll have to try lots of hacks to see what works to get initial users - it will be manual, you will have to talk to a lot of people, it won't "scale" but that is ok to start. If it works you can grow into other markets later (example: Facebook started only for Harvard, Uber was only black limos in SF).
Also consider looking for a charitable benefactor who will fund creators (even if they don't use the services) to get a bit of energy into the marketplace. If you can find someone, or a company that wants to do this for a bit of good will and press you'll have some capital to fund the initial creators.
Good luck!
On first blush, it seems like this is more in the line of Nextdoor, neighbors helping neighbors, but with some money changing hands. I'd go in that direction.
Reach out to the local service providers individually and tell them about your service. You will get users if they see value in what you're offering. It's not scalable, but you need users to better help you understand the product you need to be offering.
Now, some feedback on the product. Imagining myself as a local service provider, I don't see how the service would help me land gigs or make my life any easier. As a service provider, I would still have to do all the self-promotion. I like that cash payments are accepted.
If I were looking to provide services to the local community, I would get as engaged with the community as much as possible. There are all the free places to advertise online like Facebook, Craigslist, Nextdoor, etc. Locally, there are bulletin boards in community gathering places like churches, community centers, libraries that are intended for this sort of things. Some of these organizations even maintain lists of service providers as well.
Another option would be printing flyers up and just going around your neighborhood leaving them in the door. I hired a handyman this way - one of my neighbors. He was between jobs and he was looking to fill up his schedule until he landed another full time gig. I talked to him for a bit and he said he had gotten a few jobs from his local door-to-door promotion work.
Who do you envision your target audience to be? Someone who is undergoing a rough patch who is too proud to go on gofundme and has time to spare to work odd jobs? Who do you envision your target audience's target to be? People who would otherwise donate to a given person's gofundme? Strangers who would use the app to exploit desperate people in their local area?
All that being said, if the users on your page are real, then you are undoubtedly impacting real lives, comments be damned. If they're not, well that feels a bit unsavory since it is not explicit that these are false. It could also give people the wrong expectations in terms of potential payout from your platform.
Yes, it's hard as an introvert! But once you "break the ice" and turn it into a habit, you will continue to grow.
Is the underlying assumption that creators can charge more on this platform as compared to the usual pay they will get for the same task and in doing so they can raise money faster? If so, I would be highly skeptical of this assumption and validate it rigorously.
1. Try using your platform to fund your marketing yourself. Create a ticket “Help with money for marketing” and issue your HN post as a separate article on different social platforms for indexing by Google and provide a link on social networks to this ticket.
2. Contact VCs and write to investors. This is a direct path to marketing. Do not be afraid :)
With that being said, I think what I would like to see you do is try to use your own platform to raise a marketing budget. What services would you offer to try to raise the budget? Why are you trying to raise the budget?
What I like about the platform is a combination of charity and work, the blend of GoFundMe and TaskRabbit. So what I'd like to see is 1) why are you trying to raise this money, why is it meaningful to you and 2) what range of services can you provide, basically what hustles can you do, to give back to those who give?
Study your competitors.
I would ignore everyone who's repeating the same sort of standard startup advice or saying "blah blah doesn't xyz already do this". A lot of startup advice is bad / actively harmful, your thing is pretty good, and you should just do it if it's fun.
Because you're on HN, you're about to get a good bump. In a few days, that bump will go down, and you might start to feel sad! Ignore this sadness and keep pushing through. The time from when people first hear about a product and when they actually start using it can be like a few weeks to a month. If, in a few days, all the numbers are going down, know that this is how even successful products look after a product launch. (See the trough of sorrow) Keep going!
Keep shamefully posting it in places, consider a hacker news launch, or even putting up posters in high-foot-traffic areas (if you live in or close to a walkable area). I know social-media bad, but it's a pretty good place to reach out to folks on. My guess is making a little tiktok thing is not a bad idea.
If you've got cash to blow, consider ads. Lots of people will tell you ads are bad, because they "don't scale" or some other over-optimized thing. But if you just want people to see your thing, ads are a reasonable way to drive a little traffic and get a beginning user-base to experiment with.
Have fun! The design and explanation of the site is great!
I'm always critical, so take that with a grain of salt.
Your origin story reminded me a lot of Airbnb's. Your motivation is slightly different, but not surprisingly, you're playing in the very, very crowded gig economy app space. Gofundme is pure charity. TaskRabbit is pure transactional odd-jobs. What you're doing is trying to blend the two. I have no idea how to market this.
You have put a lot of time into this project, and it is not going to go anywhere. This is a tough realization. One that you naturally want to argue against. It's easy to be stubborn. But the more time and effort you put into this, the more time and effort you are wasting.
The positives: you have built a foundation and undoubtedly learned some things along the way. Take that knowledge and pivot to something that people want/need. Good luck!
As theoretical advice I would suggest to read the book 'The cold start problem'. It explains how two sided marketplaces work and how you can get them started.
As practical advice I would suggest finding people in proximity to you and asking them if they would like to try it.
The same can be done online, try searching for Reddit threads and other pieces where people who are your target audience might hang out.
Let me tell you a story you might get some value from.
August 2022 - November 2022. Built the application.
November 2022 - January 2023. Tried to plug it on reddit wherever I could. Got maybe 6 users.
February 2023. Gave up, stopped working on it, but maintained it.
August 2023. I see a clone of my app on twitter. The guy making it is publicly broadcasting how much he's making: several thousand dollars per month! First, I was mad, but then got over it. Can't blame the guy - that's just the game. But, it inspired me to get back to work on the product. It's good enough, just wasn't marketing it as well as him, so I stepped it up.
August 2023 to now: - I have been marketing TF out of the product. I have grown to nearly $400 MRR in a matter of weeks. I know 400 MRR seems small, and it is, but if it continues at this, it will be pretty substantial in a few months.
My marketing channels:
1. I monitor subreddits related to my product. I try to give helpful responses. Every other response or so, I'll merely mention the name of the product without a link. (Kinda like I did here). If they're interested, they can find it on Google.
2. My product is very much for people that own websites. A huge niche of website owners is the #buildinpublic community on twitter. So - I've been responding to people on twitter, being heavily involved and sharing any info I know. People click on my profile, they see the link to my site, and click on it because they're curious. Then, the landing page either works or it does't.
- I worked on an idea that was good. Did bad marketing. Somebody did the same thing I made, but did good marketing. They made a ton of money. Don't be like me. Market.
- Plug your product on reddit. Don't be super egregious. Provide value. Don't plug it every single time you comment. Reddit is super unforgiving in this - mods love to ban self promo users.
- Get involved in the relevant community for your niche. I found it on twitter for mine, and it's been working great.
Hope that helps!
edit: formatting
Besides renaming "workers" to "Creators" and "employers" to "Supporters", isn't it like "services offered" on a traditional newspaper classified ad column?
(or nowadays Facebook, Craigslist or similar)
For Taskwer:
> I didn't listen to it
I'd start there, and introspect as to why you ignored the advice of the experts and experienced people. Validating market need before building anything you intend to sustainably sell is always a good idea. This will help you next time around and help you better understand yourself.
> At the same time, salaries didn't keep up with inflation, and more and more people started to struggle financially.
This is ground zero, the starting point, step one, etc. You think you've identified the problem. Who is struggling, exactly? Are you learning about this from a Business Insider or New Yorker article, or do you actually have a line of sight to a real person in your life this macro economic thing is hitting directly? You need to be able to contact at least one, but ideally 10 people to start, who are "struggling" and need to do odd-jobs or service work to make ends meet. Without them, you don't have a need and subsequently you don't have a service or an app that will go anywhere in its current form. You could perform (or purchase) the services yourself for the time being while you figure out who is more important to market to and how to market to them (my favorite lean solution to the cold start problem), then swap in the other participants in that side of the market over time. This can work really well if done correctly. In every two-sided market place there is a favorite child who is more important to the system and needs more attention, like drivers in Uber or homeowners in Airbnb. You should figure this out early on.
> just like on Kickstarter.
You need to have positioning that supports canned responses / dismissals with real incremental value to answer the inevitable comments like: "oh, so like Kickstarter? LOL" or "This sounds exactly like task rabbit". Ultimately I think you'll need to validate whether this incremental value is strong enough to carve out a niche for yourself and win users from the other solutions.
>Now, I have an MVP, and most of the features have been implemented, but I have no users.
Often times the MVP is a fraction of what you think, and you should spend the other X% of your time on GTM strategy and experimenting. The images on the site show payments support, messaging, scheduling, etc. I'll bet you could have prioritized better around a single core need that is unmet, and built the first feature cheaply. In this context, the value is connecting the right people at the right time, and you could deliver this with a cell phone, G-Suite and a great landing page with a form for email/phone number collection.
My impression is this is a grass roots, neighborly / community-driven idea, which is really cool. It has a feel-good, positive slant that pulls on your heart strings, which I think can help with marketing. The next question I'd ask is: "who is the type of person that would buy this over a Taskrabbit or existing expert solution?". Who wants to feel good about paying for services in addition to being happy the job got done?
I would turn to churches and similar groups, community centers, and leverage your own network to find a key partnership that can give you a pipeline of paying customers who want to feel good about using this type of thing rather than the typical service aggregator. In the future, I'd think about hiring or partnering with someone to round out your weaknesses, like an extroverted, people-oriented person with a large network who will shamelessly market the thing and isn't afraid of rejection, difficult conversations, vulnerability, etc.
The site looks great, and congrats on building something and deploying it to the world. That's hard and not many have done this, and is something to be proud of. Worst case, you have a great portfolio project to show off (maybe when pitching yourself as a technical cofounder on the next thing?) Now, if you get one paying customer and see that $ hit your bank account, that's even harder and you're doing what most people only dream and talk about, which is something to be even more proud of. Stay with it!
I think with some ideas, something innovative, you can build it and they will come. This is not that.