prospect interview

gittip-Noah_feedback.md

I've been introducing the concept of Gittip/Gratipay to one of my friends throughout the day. Note this guy is a full-time college student, and probably not the "target market". Still, I thought it would be worth investigating how broad of an appeal the concept has.

Later, I asked for more specific feedback:

Could you ever see yourself using this sort of thing? To receive money?

He asked more questions to clarify. He finally said "Yeah, it's cool." But didn't really seem all that interested.

Why wouldn't everyone use it? (we made this list together)

• Do they know about it?
• You have to put in your credit card.
  • Most people don't ever want to type their credit card in online.
    • ! Allow 1-time credits to Gittip to fill wallet: Card, Paypal, Bitcoin
• Not understand what it is.
• Not know if it's secure.
• Is it difficult?

I offered to help him set up an account:

"Right now?"
"Yeah, it takes 30 seconds."
"Ok...."
But then he showed no follow-up interest, & I dropped the initative because it felt too forced.

When I told him signing up gives you your own donations page:

He asked, "What's on your donation page?". Seems like a lot of work could be added here.

• ! Let user attach text updates. Video links. Blog/Tumblr/Twitter feed.
  • ! What about something like Instagram? Pull in their feed? You can get an RSS feed of their photos.
    • Now invites a very simple conversion page: "Monetize your instagram." / "Monetize your tumblr." / "Monetize your twitter."

Then I asked him more questions about it to better under his perspective:

Why would you give money to someone?
To support someone.

Why would you want to support them?
If the were helping stuff, or if what they were doing was really good.

Would you do it for a celebrity?
I guess not. They would already be getting paid somewhere else.

Would you do it for family members?
Yeah, probably.

Would you do it for older family members? It doesn't really seem right for a generation above you.
Yeah.

Maybe like a cousin?
Yeah. I could see that probably.

Would you ever do it for a stranger?
That I knew nothing about?

Yeah. This is the first time you're reading about them.
I don't know. I guess not. It's hard to say.
If I didn't know them at all, then more likely not. Than if I knew them personally.

Overall, my impression was that this was not a very helpful interview session. He didn't exactly seem to be part of the right market: he couldn't really name anyone he would give to, and he didn't see why anyone would give to him.