I'm interested in your approach for the pricing of the service. I have to agree with joel_feather that 12$/gb/month seems a little too low for a niche market. Do you have any estimates about the average storage needed by your targeted users?
I won't go into all the detail of the lengthy, lengthy conversations we had about pricing over the course of a year before finally implementing it, but you're right that the price is low. However, that's intentional.
There are already products serving really big projects (the ones with costs in the hundreds of millions), but those tools are all far too expensive (and complex, slow, cumbersome, etc) to be used by smaller projects. We chose to make Woobius affordable to smaller projects too.
With respect to average size of projects, many of the tinier projects (e.g. a small house) will probably just about get away with the free version (but if they need a bit more storage, £10/m - or equivalent in other currencies - won't break the bank). Small-ish commercial developments will probably use around 1-3 gigabytes. Very large or very active projects are probably looking at 5-10 gigabytes.
Not really an option. I am from Germany and this is a US based startup. Furthermore, there are many things I don't like about their execution and how they realized the whole concept. I wouldn't be too happy joining them.
Thanks for all the great feedback so far. I really appreciate the valuable advice of you guys. I think I'll go for it. However, it showed me one thing: I need to get things done right now. I will keep you up-to-date. Thanks HN!
Yes, I also thought about XING (http://www.xing.com) here in Germany. Many people say it's just a copycat of LinkedIn, but in my opinion they have created a much better business network than LinkedIn. And: they're profitable. Their business model ("Freemium") worked out and they've sucessfully expanded in other European countries and China.
I may be working on a similar business network here in the US (as a contract Rails coder), but with features tailored to a specific market. Even though I'm just doing this as a contract gig (no equity), I genuinely think they will succeed. They are tightly focused on a market that is willing to spend money, can get some good initial traction through personal contacts, and the market they are going after needs features not present in 'generic' sites like LinkedIn or Facebook.
I was not sure whether to post it or not. I am still not sure. It's not because I am afraid other people will be interested in this idea (ok, maybe a little bit), but maybe it will bring some bias in the conversation. But I agree that knowing my idea and knowing the competitor would help to assess the situation.
If the idea is so exciting that people might jump on it even if there are 1 or 2 competitors ahead of them, then you'd better be confident in your ability to execute. Because as soon as you launch more competitors will come.
On the other hand, I implemented a blindingly obvious idea for photo sharing that is so clearly the right way of doing things, I thought for sure tons of other sites would be doing the same thing in no time. Four and a half years later it's still unique.
Yes, I think so. Like I said, it is not exactly executed like I would've done it. However, I am worried about the edge they already have in terms of being in the market already. Since it is a market with strong network effects (like many web apps) it will be hard to convince existing users to change services.
There are many ways for a market leader to lose ground to a competitor - I am witnessing one of those at the moment, with one of the services I use. You can compete on features, you can compete on aesthetics, you can compete on customer service, you can carve up the niche... the list goes on.
What you can't do is expect other people not to have the same idea - whether you get first to market or not. If that was your only plan, it wouldn't have worked out anyway.
The advice already given here is good - if you believe you can be a 'google' the their 'altavista' then your new competitor is an important validation & valuable testlab for your idea - go for it.
BUT as others have noted, that depends on your market etc. Good luck.
The problem is that in most of the cases you can't tell whether a service/website is worth this one-time $5 fee. I myself have to use a service for a while to decide whether I want to pay for it or not.
I'm interested in your approach for the pricing of the service. I have to agree with joel_feather that 12$/gb/month seems a little too low for a niche market. Do you have any estimates about the average storage needed by your targeted users?