Some observations:<p>Firstly congratulations on getting the idea from zero to launch in one month. Even if the thing fails you have invested only 1+ resources building. I tried this yesterday, registered and had a play around. Impressions:<p>- name: 2 words, elephant that never forgets but why spicy? longer to type<p>- registration: faultless<p>- no favicon: with tabbed browsers favicons make it easy to find<p>- demo: no video demonstration OR quick visual demonstration from front page to show canned demo how app is better<p>- clean urls: yes, but where is clean url on say popular? ~ <a href="http://spicyelephant.com/decks?direction=ASC&order=popular" rel="nofollow">http://spicyelephant.com/decks?direction=ASC&order=popul...</a><p>- feedback: google group (good) no twitter, blog. Would have thought a twitter account and blog was a good idea for features and latest new decks?<p>- loading: no check for javascript block<p>- layout: readability reduced by lots of text. cull text.<p>- New deck: there is no easy way to create new deck once registed (ie: need a big easy to find button for people with really big thumbs so they do not have to hunt for it). Link to create deck should be off front page. When user is logged in "Make new deck" should be at the front page not just <a href="http://spicyelephant.com/profile" rel="nofollow">http://spicyelephant.com/profile</a><p>Now most of these are pretty trivial. The app works. What about marketing and getting feedback from users to improve? The only real things I'd suggest would be:<p>- add "make new deck" to front page easier to find<p>- add a demo walk through with story with pictures and text showing how the app is better<p>- add blog and twitter support (more feedback & data push).<p>One feature request I'd really like to see is a widget I could add to a third party site linking back which allows other companies to create information, test and show users results.
Great stuff!<p>I think you need a clear <i>pitch</i> of what you're offering users. Something that can leverage word of mouth: short, easy to grasp, exciting. (Of course, maybe through following supermemo's seeding the geek market, you don't need it for us)<p>The offer is to "help them to learn stuff, by ... ", how? The first part is clear (cute: elephant=memory), but "how" it helps is not clear.<p><i>"2. We intelligently organize when to study"</i><p>That doesn't give me a sense of it (sounds like "in the morning"?, "after exercise"?, "at night"?) It's cute having your info as the first scheduled training, but maybe more effective to also have that info available <i>before</i> trial. :-) It's probably just me, but (though cute), I found scheduling that a bit pushy.<p>I'd also feel more comfortable having a clearer sense of when training will occur: what's the scheduling for <i>this</i> deck? I don't think it's needed for the learning task; but it would make the user <i>feel</i> more informed and in control; and not at the whim of a machine (users don't like that).<p>But I think you could have something really successful going there.
IMO you should offer free subscriptions to people for creating decks - this free content will attract more people to the site and make you stand out and differentiate yourself from competitors like Supermemo or Mnemosyne.<p>The "content is king" meme exists for a reason.
I love the idea of building a team and then coming up with different products. Your project mayhem is almost as cool as the one in fight club.<p>I think the idea behind Spicy Elephant might be a bit abstract for most consumers, but the site came out well. The name doesn't help people to understand what it is...but I like it any way =)<p>I wish you guys the best of luck with your future projects and I can't wait to see what you come up with next.
Congrats on the project! It does seem a little obscure but as I understand it, it has a lot of academic interest.<p>The only thing that made me wince was when you put your source repository on your server. Probably a bad idea, as you found out. You really want your production server configured and streamlined to do one thing -- make money. (Or provide value to users, to be more precise) Think of it as a big cash register. Try to keep it as clean as possible.
Just a quick observation: Compare the comments on Hacker News to that on Reddit.
<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6uo66/my_experiences_on_a_one_month_startup/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6uo66/my_experi...</a><p>You'd think everyone on Reddit created their own million dollar tech startup based on those comments.
Load the next card in the background so I don't have to wait for the next card to appear when I continue. (I know that the next cards depend on what you achieved in the past, but you could still calculate the next card on the past achievements without considering the last answer).
I've written a similar system specifically tailored to learning foreign languages, so I'm definitely interested in taking a closer look at what you've produced.
paying for hosted SVN is a pain...
I found a godsend when in a similar situation- www.assembla.com - free project management, svn, git, trac- just name it.