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.
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.<p>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.<p>Meta: I bet a decision like that took a lot of guts. Congrats, you are no longer at step 0.
I can see this working out once this goes beyond the "initial critical mass of users" hump. Some high-level comments:<p>* 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.<p>* 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.
* Put pictures on the "About" page. It looks unprofessional and awkward without them.<p>* 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?
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?<p>I think this is an awesome idea though, congratulations.
I disagree with who says that it is no different than linkedin.<p>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.<p>I think it is a pretty good idea and I also really like the design.<p>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?
Interesting Idea. I would suggest focusing on getting university professors to join your network. Their participation will attract high school students.<p>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.<p>And don't forget, LinkedIn also has Groups. For example, a search for 'bioinformatics' returned over 250 groups.