StartupOracle – Helping Startups Succeed Through an Objective Predictive Model

3 thoughts on “StartupOracle – Helping Startups Succeed Through an Objective Predictive Model”

1. 1) Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
   I think the home page is very well done. The photo is great—still in flight, leaping toward the side with the sun.
   There is enough information above the scroll to know there is more available below.
   2) What do you think of the product offering?
   As I view the home page and the rest of the site, I wonder if we are coming from different perspectives or if you are choosing language and positioning of information by what you feel visitors feel is the most important? What do I mean? My thinking process goes more toward how can a business be made viable and investor worthy, rather than on what are the odds it will work.
   Your main point at the top of the home page is: “Don’t Start That Company……Until You Know Your Startup’s Odds – Save Yourself Years Wasted on a Bad Idea.” To me, this is coming from the negative standpoint, rather than a positive one, which might be look like: “Don’t Start That Company……until you have the ingredients for making it a success.”
   3) Are you encouraged to (create a new account, subscribe, sign up for a free trial, etc.)? Can you tell us why (or why not)?
   Not yet. I am in the process of the very earliest stages of starting a new business and have access to a huge amount of expert assistance in putting the pieces together. What I could foresee is using your services after all the planning is done and the initial team in place. Then coming to you to make certain that we have taken into account all the factors for making it viable and investor worthy before seeking capital. Then, taking the results back to the team for review.
   4) Go to search engine of your choice and find one other company that offers a similar service. Compare the two companies. Which on do you prefer? Why?
   In looking through the first couple of pages of Google, I am not seeing any other sites in the US with the primary focus of evaluating a business idea. For several, it is one aspect of the site. The one that I’m looking at is https://www.nebs.com that has a page for business preparation and evaluation: https://www.nebs.com/nebsEcat/business_tools/todo/index.jsp. This page contains six free questionnaires on various aspects of business preparation: idea, marketing and advertising, legal issues, permits and insurance, banking and records, taxes and employees. As you can tell even from my brief description, it does not go into the depth of analysis that your program does, nor does it evaluate the viability of a business.
   It would appear you have find yourself a much needed niche.
   5) Do you see any grammatical or spelling errors?
   I don’t.

2. 1) Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
   Upon entering the website I noticed its lively colors and a picture that seemed inspirational, which is quite adequate for a small business or an idea that has potential but could use that extra push that this site will provide. The site laid out its purpose and details on what it provides pretty clearly just on that first page without seeming flashy or clustered.  
   2) What do you think of the product offering?
   The product it offers can be something useful for someone who needs opinions on their idea or product to find ways of perfecting it before investing all that money into it, its a fall safe and it felt like that. The testimonials and the tools offered to help such as the free consultation really do exemplify to me that this company cares for our individual success.  
   3) Are you encouraged to (create a new account, subscribe, sign up for a free trial, etc.)? Can you tell us why (or why not)?
   I was encouraged through the free consultation button and getting a free report but that’s a given, what really hit home to me was the statistics offered of the company’s success and testimonials of satisfied customers.  
   4) Go to search engine of your choice and find one other company that offers a similar service. Compare the two companies. Which on do you prefer? Why?
   I saw another site that seemed geared more towards businesses that have already started but weren’t doing too well although start up was still part of their platform. The site was a little confusing, it tried to ram more information in one page but without the use of scrolling which was a benefit to your site. I usually don’t like pages which I have to do a lot of scrolling down but your site kept that interesting.  
   5) Do you see any grammatical or spelling errors?
   I did not see any grammatical error or spelling errors as I browsed through the site.  

3. 1. My first impression is that the home page seems too long and wordy. The intro text is a big block of copy, so right off the bat, I feel a little overwhelmed. And although I like the main image, the text fades into near unreadability against the bright white background of the sun and clouds. As I scroll down and the read the rest, I think that most of this info should be on the “How and Why It Works” page.
    
   2. It intrigues me very much. I’ve never heard of a service like this, and I think it could be extremely helpful. Who wouldn’t want to save themselves the time and money invested in a failed start-up?
    
   3. Unfortunately, no. I was excited about this until I realized it would cost $4,000-5,000. For someone starting a web-based business from home, that’s not in the budget.
    
   4. I searched on “predict business success,” “predict start-up success,” “start-up consultation,” and “start-up business evaluation” and was unable to find a site exactly like yours. There were a lot of DIY articles and some consulting services that offered business evaluation as part of the package, but in the first two pages of search results, I didn’t see any sites touting a one-size-fits-all formula to predict start-up success. Looks like you have a corner on the market.
    
   5. I see a few on the “Prediction Challenge” page. Most of the copy is otherwise clean but tends toward wordiness and passive construction. I find myself zoning out while I read.
    
   I usually go through a site and briefly review each of its main pages:
    
   Home Page – Love the blue sky background and the main image, but the text is hard to read against the backdrop. Further, the page is too long. Condense the intro text and follow that up with a few short, punchy selling points. You can leave the testimonials at the bottom, but move the rest to “How and Why It Works.”
    
   About Us – Does its job. No problems.
    
   Accuracy of Predictions – Nice use of graphs. However, I’m a little concerned when you tell me that chance of success is directly proportional to company size, with more successful businesses likely to be larger. Well, I guess if I’m a small business, I might as well just throw in the towel now, huh? How exactly do you measure “success” anyway?
    
   How and Why It Works – On this page, you spend more time proving the value of mechanical models than proving the value of your model specifically. I know you don’t want to reveal your trade secrets, but I would have preferred to see more focus on your methods specifically. I actually think you could replace much of what you have here with your home page copy and have a much more effective page.
    
   Prediction Services – You mention an advanced package for $1,000 more but don’t tell me what I’d get with that. Otherwise, this page is pretty straightforward.

   Prediction Challenge – You may want to proofread this one for a few errors.
    
   Overall, layout of the site is attractive with nice use of color and illustrations and a fair amount of white space, although the text can get wordy.
    
   I find it puzzling that you don’t have a dedicated FAQ page. I worry that most people will overlook the FAQ questions on the bottom right corner of every page.
    
   The service you offer seems unique and potentially extremely helpful to start-ups. However, you ask for quite a chunk of change for this service while keeping a lot of your methodology under wraps. Since you’re asking for a substantial cash commitment and state upfront that bigger businesses have a greater chance for success, I suspect that you want to appeal to mid-size and larger companies rather than small businesses, yet most start-ups are small, which may be a bit of a quandary for you. Also, I can only assume that big businesses with big funding behind them are more likely to succeed as a rule of thumb. That may confound your model’s predictive ability.
    
   Anyway, I wish you good luck! This might be very useful for companies that have the resources to invest in it.
    
    
    
    

Comments are closed.