Show HN: From an idea to the Valley in less than a month

I find these 'sharing' apps (like FourSquare and this) fascinating because they are the complete opposite of what I want. I have no desire to tell people where I am or what I am doing.<p>For example, I feel that a sharing app that let's people know "Ah. John's not answering the phone because he's in the middle of a meeting with Mr F Barbaz" is the wrong way to deal with others. There's no need for people to have that information, and there's no need for me to explain to people why I am not answering. I am simply not available.<p>I wrote, somewhat tangentially, about the need for a new 'not available' social norm in a piece about long haul flights: <a href="http://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/archive-of-my-newstilt-stories.html#nt8" rel="nofollow">http://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/archive-of-my-newstilt-stories.h...</a><p>To me these sharing status apps are a sign of an unhealthy idea that people are always available unless they come up with some good reason not to be. The only people who might actually need to know where I am because of some emergency are few in number (my parents, my spouse, my boss) and they can always SMS me a '911' text message.<p>PS None of that should be seen as a criticism of this person's app or work. There may be a large market for this which simply excludes me.<p>PPS It's worth thinking through what are the 'acceptable' reasons for not answering a call. In a meeting? On the toilet? Thinking? Writing code? Staring out the window letting your mind wander? And who makes that judgement. To me the simplest solution is to not answer when I don't want to and not be accountable to others for why I did not answer.

Why do you need investors if you have finished your app? Shouldn't you focus on trying to generate profit instead?

I have no idea what this time line is trying to tell me and I have no idea what this app is about ... just me?

So the landing page is a timeline of what happened to this project and no link to try/download etc..?

If this is an investor pitch, it's missing one critical piece of info - namely, how will it make money? Or am I just old-fashioned in thinking a business should make money?

How will this app make a single cent?

Moving on to the Android app seems like a mistake.

And you need investors' money for... ?

I think this is an interesting concept. I have a few questions, though, which I suspect could be commonly asked:<p>- What's the incentive for me to use this? Why not simply switch my phone off? It seems as though the core benefit is to answer the question, "Why isn't X answering their call?", but there's no clear incentive for X to share this. In fact, if X is busy, it's unlikely they will have the time to update their status.<p>- How do you explain to a non-technical user how this differs from Twitter or Facebook or Foursquare? How do you respond to a user telling you "I don't have time for another social network"?<p>- Have you thought about how to prevent "feature creep"? I see simplicity as the core selling point of this app, but I can also see strong pressure from investors to build this out until it turns into a generic social network.<p>Anyway, it looks visually stunning and I'm excited to see where you take it.

That last screenshot is really confusing, you might want to clean that concept up a bit.<p>Outside of that, here's my dilemma; even if I was crazy social, Facebook/FourSquare/Gowalla know where I am and offer me more incentives to post my locations and activities through them. What does this offer me? The problems you list that motivated you to create this app are easily solved by ignoring your phone or sending texts. If I'm busy, I'm too busy to update an app my friends probably won't even check. If I'm relaxing, I don't want people to know where I am and what I'm doing because I'm trying to relax. Ignoring them, which is the current method for handling these problems, is easier to do than what you are proposing.<p>I think you need to find a better reason for people to use something like this, which I think would be more relevant to families and possibly remote co-workers, and go from there.

It's pretty, looks well designed.<p>Why not validate it first? I think you should look for investors when you have first experience growing your first user base, see how the adoption amongst users will be etc. This is a difficult model to grow.

This is a one of a kind landing page; simply explains the problem and solution but does so in an incredibly novel, succinct and eye-catching way with a perfect call to action button targeted at investors.<p>Extremely well done!

Good idea. Its so simple that it might work. People want to know what you are doing (proof: social networks), and with this they would know if you are available to do <i>something</i>. I get it. Cool. It has good potential. I wish I had an app that would tell people when I was unavailable becuase I'm in a meeting or just coding. I know voicemail and SMS can do this, but those two options require that they contact me. I dont want any type of contact to be made from their part. They see the status and just leave me the fuck alone.<p>Good luck.

Another social-contacts-statuses-sharing thing, is this really needed?

I like this product - and could see myself using it.<p>I'm curious if you are using native region monitoring for iOS?<p>I'm do Product &#38; Business Development for Gimbal (<a href="http://www.gimbal.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.gimbal.com</a>) - and think I have a solution that you can use to help you on the geo-fencing side.<p>Feel free to email me and I can give you some use-case examples and intro you to one of my engineers that can help you integrate/test out our SDK.

So you are building an app to provide the convenience of skype stati (available, away, busy, invisible, offline) to people who use phones to call people?<p>Nothing wrong with that but I don't see me updating another app while the information is in most cases available somewhere else. For the app to be useful I would need to give it even more information than I do with all other platforms while the benefit is that people aren't annoyed because I don't take their calls.

HOW WILL THIS MAKE MONEY

I like this a lot, but just to ask, how do you plan on solving the critical mass problem?<p>Why should I use your service if none of my friends are?

Will it be another closed-garden communication app, or will it follow established standards? (eg. this XMPP extension that allows for location/activity statuses <a href="http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0163.html" rel="nofollow">http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0163.html</a>)

I find it kind-of interesting how common features on IM services can be rebranded into a startup.