Hello everyone! I would really love to hear any and all feedback. As a bit of context, a few months ago, I made a really difficult decision---turning down a faculty job at an Ivy League CS school after my phd---to work on a startup with a few great guys. Meritful is the first iteration, and I will be grateful for your time and feedback.
"If you are a student, Meritful helps you build a professional network, and an online resume to impress colleges and employers. If you are a teacher or mentor, Meritful helps you run projects and engage with students"
I believe LinkedIn works because for one if it's main use cases, there are two matching parts in the graph:
1. If you are looking for the next step in your career, we'll help you find it through search & recommendations
2. If you are trying to find the right candidate for your position, we'll help you find it through search & recommendations
Your use cases for students and teachers aren't like LinkedIn's - they aren't two sides of the same coin. How do the teachers make the Meritful better for the students like recruiters do for employees on LinkedIn?
University admissions counselors make the Meritful better for students, and we are talking to those people. But teachers have a lot of face time with students, and can be a vehicle for students to learn about Meritful. If a teacher has a class project, it would make a great entry on the portfolio, and a nice way to share with the rest of the class...so, we were looking at the distribution channel. Your comment on two sides of the graph spot on.
Take a look at Rypple too, they're a social performance tool Salesforce bought with a lot of ideas that were neat. You might be able to go pretty far with badging and achievements here. I'd think trying to "replace" a report card might work well.
Also - what do your monetization plans look like? I don't think this is something to take lightly. You'll never be able to charge teachers much for the service. Maybe enough for a lifestyle business though, if that's what you're interested in.
Edit: Perhaps college recruiters? Generally they'll pay a lot to convince students to apply. They recoup it in application fees though :) You may also be able to charge parents of graduating seniors some kind of college search tools.
This will always be free for schools and students.
College admissions (especially the not top-50 colleges) spend a lot of money convincing students to come to their school. We hope to give them a very targeted avenue to reach out and recruit students. You're right...this is a really important issue.
The main reason we wanted to do this is that LinkedIn is designed to highlight one key currency...work experience. In contrast, this is not necessarily the most important experience in high school.
So the idea was to create a platform where students can document and share their projects and activities in a rich way, while getting feedback from their peers and mentors---along the way building a professional network.
This sounds like a niche that is waiting to be filled, and it is kind of exciting. But you should take this with a grain of salt. The audience on HN is probably quite skewed in your favor, geeks and hustlers who are predisposed to using something like this. I remember LinkedIn for a long time was primarily used in the tech industry.
That said, I like the simple design of the page, and I think it has a fine balance of seriousness and youth. I am going to look at your internal pages, and will give you some more feedback.
Meta: I bet a decision like that took a lot of guts. Congrats, you are no longer at step 0.
Thank you for your feedback...I think they can use it...but a lot of the experiences that high school students are not work experiences...instead projects and activities...which can be better described using visual ways a la a portfolio...while building a professional network at the same time...
I can see this working out once this goes beyond the "initial critical mass of users" hump. Some high-level comments:
* There are several organizations, agencies and committees with similar goals _inside_ each institution (university / high school). Given that your goals are aligned, it would be nice to see a way to onboard entire organizations (i.e. groups of students / mentors) -- even if it is not from the general frontpage. That way, you can think of Meritful as a SaaS provider for each of these orgs, and it also solves your critical mass problem.
* Student orgs (High Schools, etc) come in with well-articulated reasons as to _why_ I (a potential mentor) should work with them. This helps me make a decision along the lines of "I am looking for a group of 10 students at grade level 8 who are interested in astronomy and are free on Thursday evenings for all of Fall 2012. Can your group match that?" Note how this is different from scouting talent -- mentors just have more constraints.
SaaS is a very good way to go about it, and we have got inquiries for 'mass signups' from a couple schools we talked to. We were hesitant because we thought it would result in a bunch of phantom accounts, but like you say, I think many organizations already try to achieve something similar.
You're spot on the mentor/recruiter difference...and on the road map is support for groups and orgs. Thank you so much for your feedback.
* Put pictures on the "About" page. It looks unprofessional and awkward without them.
* A network geared toward high schoolers, yet the landing page I just see a bunch of business professionals -- not 1 photo of a person from high school (till I scroll down). Who is your target? The students or the mentors?
Thank you...coming soon. An artist friend is making really nice sketches for us.
The girl in the middle was supposed to be the one. One theory we are testing is that initial distribution will primarily come from adults/teachers/parents who learn about it...and trying to optimize for that audience too....do you have any thoughts?
Unless you have data that suggests otherwise, I wouldn't rely on an additional layer to get to your target demo (the HS students). Adults/teachers/parents have lives, and in HS anything they tell their kids to do isn't "cool".
Somehow you need to emphasize more that a Meriftul account is respected and credible at institutions. Then the kids will be motivated themselves to create these accounts. They need to discover it themselves.
My suggestions on a presentation perspective:
* You should push the "college logos" to the top of the design and immediately emphasize that selling point. Think the mind of a student. They immediately see ivy colleges and will feel inspired it will give them edge. Currently it is just a wall of text and buzz words.
* You should make TWO separate landing pages. One for students and one for mentors. Make the student page 100% student oriented and designed differently -- more fun. Add a button "Are you a mentor? Click Here". The mentor page will be the more professional one.
* That girl can easily pass as a college student/working professional. HS'ers are very groupy and very fun oriented. You should put a group photo up there or something. Example (www.andover.edu). See how much more fun it immediately feels?
I think this is an awesome idea. Just a question though, do you have any issues with creating an API to link up to LinkedIn, so in the future they can migrate all of their contacts and some information about what they've done in high school?
I think this is an awesome idea though, congratulations.
You're welcome. This is seriously an awesome idea. I wish I had something like this in high school, because I did so much work outside of school with jobs and collaborations I did with other people, but schools weren't interested in this information, but employers were.
If there was an easy way for those people writing scholarships were able to filter through candidates based on their merits and their connections, it would be an easy way to show the students dedication to their field, and the fact that they have done so much to move forward their goals.
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On another note, I really don't think it's necessary to highlight 'ful' in your logo. I understand the site is trying to be similar to LinkedIn, but it almost makes it look like it's part of the LinkedIn family when it's really not.
Look at the favicon, or app icon for LinkedIn. They only say 'in' distinctively, I believe that it's the focus is because you're 'in a network, in a circle, in with people'. On your site, you're highlighting 'ful', but your favicon is the 'M' for Merit. There is no branding in the 'M', it's very generic.
I suggest thinking of a simple avatar, or icon to use as a symbol and have that be highlighted. Some sort of representation of what your site is. That way, that can be highlighted, and that can be your favicon, app icon, etc. That will distinctively be your branding.
Just so you know I'm not talking out of my ass, I work in the web development section for a huge clothing retailer. I've learned more about branding on the web and how people perceive things than I'd think I would in a front-end web development gig.
I disagree with who says that it is no different than linkedin.
It hits a completely different niche with a different goal. Linkedin exists mainly to highlight work experience and academic background, with the goal to connect job seekers to employers (and the opposite).
This seeks to connect high schoolers with mentors.
I think it is a pretty good idea and I also really like the design.
The question I have is: Is part of your goal also to connect college admission officers with students? Or students to advertise college admissions their achievements via your website?
The goal is to eventually give college admissions counselors a very targeted way to reach out to and recruit high school students. All along, students can use their Meritful profile as part of the package they present to colleges. Since students spend so much time on projects and extracurriculars, we hope it would be nice to have more than a paragraph about it. Thank you so much for you feedback again.
Interesting Idea. I would suggest focusing on getting university professors to join your network. Their participation will attract high school students.
Seems like your biggest competition will be students using LinkedIn (network) + Tumblr (portfolio information). For example, on LinkedIn, a search of my Alma Mater professors returned over a thousand results.
And don't forget, LinkedIn also has Groups. For example, a search for 'bioinformatics' returned over 250 groups.
