My startups's new service for parents - A Story Before Bed

I think some people are missing the point: this is a service designed for parents/grandparents/etc. that for one reason or another are unable to be physically PRESENT for bedtime. Everyone knows being there with a book in hand is far superior.<p>Use your brains, please.

If I were a high priced PR firm I'd charge you $30,000 for the following piece of advice: if you give this away to folks with a .mil email address you will be featured in national publications for it.<p>edited to add: And since you apparently already thought of that, here's another one:<p>Currently, you sell books for $7. You should probably also offer some deal like 3 for $20 or 5 for $30, because this will <i>greatly</i> increase your average customer value. (Your median number of books purchased is going to be 1, otherwise. Trust me -- nature of the beast.) After you've convinced folks $7 is the price for a book (too low, but we'll roll with it), and they've committed to spending $7, it is very easy to convince them to spend another $13 to save a buck.<p>Another reason you'll like this: cash flow. You see, many people are going to buy 3/5 book credits and record 1 (or 0) books. This means that you're sitting on their money in the interim. Depending on your local accounting rules, that can probably be booked as revenue (and can almost certainly be spent on expenses) today. Also, since they haven't picked a book off the shelf yet, I'm guessing you don't owe any royalties on the $13 which pays for books that haven't been recorded. (Check your contracts/legal advisors.)<p>(Some folks might be discomfitted by this advice since you may think the business is getting money for nothing. That isn't correct: they're just getting money <i>in advance of</i> doing something of value for the customer, <i>in consideration of</i> giving the customer a break on the ultimate price.<p>This is similar to how a shareware business sells you a license today which includes technical support six months down the road, rather than selling you a cheaper license today and charging a high per-incident fee later. We don't think the shareware vendor is being dishonest because the support hasn't been delivered yet, or because it may never be delivered.)

Very nice website.<p>For my kid, the actual story is not such an important part of the bed time routine. The fact that I am in her room, comforting her while she winds down and spending some time before she sleeps, is key. Swapping me with an iPhone will probably not help.

This is VERY well designed. Many congrats on that regard.<p>Rather than critiquing it for not being a suitable replacement for parental story time, why not someone suggest it be used in libraries? Let the librarian record the stories and give the children access to them on the library's computers. For children who can't read, they still get a fun experience and it's more intimate than some tape recording.<p>This also has educational implications, in teaching children to read and maybe using the interface as a 2-way communication device for some sort of tutoring service where children learn to read by practicing with a teacher listening and watching them as they try. What about allowing them to do have real-time drawing capabilities, like you see on NFL games, circling words the child makes a mistake on, or underlining a sentence the teacher wants to emphasize for whatever purpose.<p>These iterations of this service are what make it a beautiful thing. I don't reckon it would be too difficult to add either of them as well. Would also provide it a more viable business model.

The intro text "Chose a story... whenever they want." threw me. How do they play back a story? Then there's some text about recording a book. Huh? The picture of some goofy old guy on what looks like a stamp didn't help. I click a book and that doesn't clear up the confusion either.<p>Of course with a little effort I was able to figure out what this does, but I'd change the wording to "Record yourself reading a book of your choice to...." so it's immediately apparent.

Looks nice. Here's the part I don't get: I read to my 4 year old son. I do so while he is in bed as part of the purpose is to settle him down. I set the lights low, just enough so I can read and he can see the book. I don't see how a web site allows me to do this.

I have to ask whether or not you actually have kids?<p>There is a significant difference in the development of a child's verbal ability when they are read to by a caretaker vs. watching the exact same thing on a screen. One is an active process, one is passive, and it engages them differently.<p>You can even tell by listening to a child talk whether they watch a lot of TV or not. There is a specific accent that they pick up, which basically amounts to a lack of enunciation.<p>Now, all that being said. I think your idea would make money. I thank many parents would love it.<p>But I think if you are not prepared to be abhorred by child development professionals, you should think again.

Before reading the HN comments, I thought this was an online bookstore targeted at bedtime reading for kids.<p>Letting users flip through a book before deciding to buy it is a great idea. It's the biggest thing that I'm missing when shopping at an online store.<p>Perhaps you should also offer the option to buy the book from amazon =) Best of luck!

As a soldier, I would have <i>loved</i> this while I was deployed. This looks to be a great service - I'm spreading the word to all my Army buddies. Such a great idea!

How do you plan to market it? How do you plan to reach this niche you are talking about: Split families. Might be helpful for other folks who want to get the word out to a niche.

my wife just cried when i explained the business idea. it's a good thing.

As a father of four (and a web developer), who has read to his children every night for... 16 years now... (OMG), I have to ask:<p>"Why would I want this?"<p>My kids never really liked those books that came with a tape, and this just seems like a more convenient way of producing something they didn't want anyway. I'm not trying to be mean, you folks have clearly worked hard on this, and I wish you every success, but honestly I don't see the appeal. Bedtime is so much more then just a story.<p>IMHO, the best start-up service for parents (with regards to bedtime) is your local library.

This is great concept! I think you have a winner as far as user desirability goes! Incredible artwork and the layout and workings of the site are top notch.<p>As far as profiting from this site in addition to trying to get grandparents to pay for the online reading of the books it seems like a natural to allow parents to access the books in total to read to the kids themselves for a small 6 month membership fee. Then you expand your target market and your potential income.<p>This is an incredibly well done site. If this were my site, initially I would not try to market it myself, instead I would focus on licensing its use to other sites that already have a large presence in the kids/parents market such as Disney and Barbie. I would focus on selling the larger company as to your sites potential of being a marketing feature for the larger site and I would seek to bill the licensee company for the traffic vs. billing the grandparent or parent directly. You would simply become a feature on their existing site.<p>What a great holiday gift for a child this site would be. I would also come up with a marketing angle to sell access to the site’s books in full in large bookstores like Borders and in Wal-Mart alongside the physical books. I would use some sort of physical packaging that could go in the bookracks alongside the hardcopy books with a little teddy bear attached to grab the buyers attention.<p>Marketed correctly—I believe you have a winner!

Holy shit, the design.

Wow.<p>This is one of the best startup ideas I've seen all year.<p>You guys are going to rock!<p>The market is even bigger than you think. I hate to be morbid, but imagine: grandpa gets sick with cancer and has one year to live. Quickly he spends a couple hundred bucks and leaves all the grandkids with special stories they can cherish the rest of their lives.<p>I think there is real generational network potential here as well, what with families spread out all over the place.<p>Now whatever you do, don't screw it up!

I prefer the model where my kids can get stories read to them by anyone.<p>Also I think you could have a hit with moms if you do an autoplay feature. Moms need 30 mins of time to get something done. Moms dont like it when their kids watch TV. Your app should allow a Mom to click play and then deliver 30 mins of books to the child, uninterrupted. IMHO if it's a high quality experience moms would pay for this.

Hi Hillel,<p>To concur with the masses... great site! I like the idea and I think its more intuitive than some of the comments would suggest.<p>This reminds me of these interactive CD-ROM books that my little sister used growing up (shes 18 now). One thing that I liked at the time was how interactive the books were. Users could click on background imagery to engage little animations, etc.<p>Do you have any plans to make the site more interactive? Something very simple like highlighting the word as its being read (think of Karaoke) would add a lot of educational value and help, at least marginally with reading.<p>I see this service as not only replacing the parent when they're away, but also as a standalone educational platform for kids. You can even incorporate ages to scale the complexity of the interaction. So for younger kids, clicking a carton bunny may just show a bubble with the word "rabbit" while older kids get something more advanced.<p>Are armed services the target group? Have you seen interest from users who aren't away on such extended leaves?<p>I wonder how useful this service is for parents who only make 1-3 day business trips.

The site is absolutely beautiful. Great design.

Great service, I checked the demo and it worked well.<p>My question is this, what is your intended market? The only reason I see myself using this is if I where to die soon, and wanted kids to still have stories read by me, but I don't know if I would do it then. Maybe if I commuted a lot.<p>I'd be very interested to understand who the user is.

Might I suggest a feature?<p>Apparently, a common problem with before-bed-stories if you have more than one children is who gets to sit in the lap during the story. Normally, it is alternating every night, however, you have to remember carefully who got to sit in the lap the previous night, as children aren't quite the most reliable source of information in this case (they tell you anything to sit in the lap) and if you make a mistake, the one who didn't get to sit in the lap will be offended for weeks. This is very hard to keep in mind. So you could add a "who got to sit in the lap" history to help parents. I'm sure many of them would really appreciate it!

I made a site kind of like this... except for songs instead of stories:<p><a href="http://singingmemories.com/" rel="nofollow">http://singingmemories.com/</a><p>Hooked up seesmic so anyone could record themselves singing, since it's hard to learn songs just by reading them.<p>Hope you guys like it!

I really like the awesome bookshelf interface. It is really a brilliant design. I think that your service would make a nice bookstore for children, but I wonder how many parents will actually use it for storytime.

It is interesting to see how popular this idea is for a couple reasons:<p>1. Focus on Design - The software is solid, but the aesthetics are what seem to make the service. It just looks like a professional project even though it is a three person team, working on it part time based on all the other projects they have on their site.<p>2. Kid as Customer - With so many social media/real time projects in the works it is energizing to see bits and pixels used in the service of different customer groups.<p>How many people commenting have invested a lot in the design of their site or are targeting an atypical customer base?

I had the same reaction as others here.<p>Liked the design a lot, browsed through the books, opened one and got confused about what "recording" was supposed to mean. Flipped through the end of the book, and went to the FAQ, got even more confused by the webcam requirement. Then went back to the homepage and noticed the video. Played it and finally understood what the site is for.<p>Your "welcome" message should be changed to clearly state that you here to do a video recording of a bedtime story for a child when you're away.

Awesome design, but I don't like the concept :/ You can't substitute real quality time spent with kids, and that's what this seems to do. Maybe I'm missing the concept, but I don't see why parents or children would rather watch a video than have proper 1on1 storytime.<p>I guess I don't see what problem it solves, and IMHO it could promote lazy parenting. But I'm not convinced a kid would really be willing to use it to listen to a story. I don't think it'd be effective putting kids to bed.

This is very well done.<p>Is there any 'bed friendly' hardware that could run this? Ie a cuddly toy with an Internet connected PC built in? And by 'bed friendly' I mean not just safe to have in bed, but also one that isn't so frustrating to use that it causes a mini-stress just before bedtime. I'm guessing a parent who is away from their kids on a business trip might well shell out $500 guilt dollars for such a device.

Two things I noticed while watching someone use this:<p>When reaching the end of the story, the person wanted to turn back one page, but this is impossible - you can only go back to the start.<p>The hover popup never activated - the person would click on the story, and never see the popup. I would have a click bring up the popup, and make a button from the popup that goes to the record page.

a company at TC50 launched a similar service. <a href="http://storysomething.com/" rel="nofollow">http://storysomething.com/</a> <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-story-something-maximizes-story-time-for-time-starved-parents/" rel="nofollow">http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-story-something-ma...</a>

It may already be a feature in the product, but I'd want the ability to export the story either to youtube and/or be able to download it to my disk.<p>I can see myself using it having my kids read a story as a saved memory. I also can imagine my mother in law going nuts over this thing because she lives so far away from us.<p>It's really a good idea. Awesome job

Looks great, very professional. The only problem I'm seeing is (in Chrome/WinXP) some white letters on the top left hand corner. Debugging messages maybe? Something like "Mem 38.66MB/ ... count: 0" on top of the "Story before bed" logo.<p>This must be one of the few websites where the "starry sky" background image makes sense, BTW.

This would work much better as a desktop application. That way you could have the whole app fade out after a story is done and then shut the computer off 10min after a few stories have been read.<p>Also, if it were a desktop app, it would be much more like the book from that Neal Stephenson novel The Diamond Age ;)

It's never the "story" that's important. It's the various voices, the acting, the spending some quality time before the day is over that's more important, which can't be replaced by an iPhone obviously.<p>Nice service for something like a 16th birthday gift though... "remember the times..." something like that.

Beautiful website. Nice implementation.<p>Using the Justin.tv API you could actually give an option to have the parent talk to his/her kid live as well.<p>Imagine a mom who just went on a business trip to Tokyo. Maybe she could tell the story to her kid live, while they and even flip the pages for the kid.

Two minor bits of critisism:<p>- The small version of the support_open image is hard to read<p>- There are some weird errors in your css (and some that are easily fixed in your html). See <a href="http://vldtr.com/?key=astorybeforebed" rel="nofollow">http://vldtr.com/?key=astorybeforebed</a>

Very well done. At first, I thought, "Oh, this is going to be a web site with some storybooks to read? Why not just use a real book!?" Then, I clicked the link and was presently surprised with this well thought out implementation.

This is very impressive. I can understand people's first-thoughts of "the lazy parent", but I would have loved to have this when I was traveling a lot when my kids were younger.

This is a great idea! My kids have a set of grandparents in Korea, and they can't see each other more than once a year. I'm going to forward the site to them today.

lovely interface. I'd love it if you could post us an update some way along the line mentioning how your experience of using a bookshelf UI has worked out.<p>There was another startup (totally forget who they were) that posted to HN some time ago with something vaguely similar (though not as nice looking). I think they were just providing an alternative UI to buying books on amazon though. I've always wondered what happened to them.

This is awesome. One question: What was your initial process to get permission to use these (copyrighted) books?

Great job! Very clean design and excellent interface. Did you custom build the page turning animations?

This site also seems to be very compelling for traveling with kids. Great for Virgin America.

this is excellent not least of all because it could replace most of the crap tv that kids are told to watch while parents do something else.

Great idea, well-implemented. Ignore the naysayers.

What a simple and well implemented service.

checked it out really quickly and decided that I'll definitely try out your service for my son tonight.

Excellent design, very cool.

Does this use Flex, or straight up flash programming?

So Cool!