7 ms·

Coshx Labs is giving away $50k of development. No strings attached.

37 points by btaitelb 12y ago

refrigerator 12y ago
Awesome! Any idea how public the public voting will be? i.e will a large community (4chan) be able to vote for their own idea and win easily?
- owenthethird 12y ago
  Thanks so much for the interest (Owen from Coshx here). The voting will be 100% public for the first round in order to pick the 5 finalists. If an individual or team can get the entire 4chan community behind them, then I call that market validation and more power to them! Official rules will be sent out soon and they state that an individual or team must be behind the concept, but that operating companies are excluded from getting free work. We want to help someone launch and idea, not reduce costs for a profitable company.
  - dangrossman 12y ago
    Being able to get 4chan to vote on something is probably more correlated with meme creation skill than validation of a market for any product. This type of contest often measures the size of participants' networks and their ability to leverage it, not the things being voted on. Lots of them run by large brands end up being won by people like teachers who can convince their boss to ask all the students in the district to vote for their teacher because they know him/her, regardless of the idea submitted.
    - owenthethird 12y ago
      If we help a teacher launch a great idea then I will consider this competition to be a resounding success. I am sure some people will try and 'game' the voting, but this is part of the reason the final winner will be picked by experts. We toyed with picking the winner ourselves, but this is against the spirit of what we are trying to accomplish.
Cassandra108 12y ago
Gotta spread the word on this one!
mpeg 12y ago
US-only ?
- saganus 12y ago
  Same thing I was going to ask. They say the contest rules will be published when the competition starts if I'm not mistaken.
- gkop 12y ago
  Nope, this is not limited geographically.
darkFunction 12y ago
Clever. So they get lots of great app ideas, pick the 4th or 5th best idea as the winner, build it, and then get to work on the actual best idea submitted for themselves.
- wasd 12y ago
  ideas have very little value. what really matters is the execution team.
  - mildtrepidation 12y ago
    People love to say this, but it just isn't true. Ideas can be very valuable, particularly when they come from a well-informed perspective in an untapped niche/market. Of course an idea isn't useful without execution, but without the idea, you have nothing to execute.
    - mixmax 12y ago
      Here's the question I always ask when the idea vs. execution debate comes up: Can you give me one single example of someone having sold an idea for a sizeable amount of money? I haven't heard any good answers yet.
      - arbuge 12y ago
        Actually there are many examples. It's basically what VCs and investors have been doing since the dawn of time, giving out money to entrepreneurs with no revenue yet, just ideas. Personal experience here besides general observation. Nowadays investors are demanding more visible traction before investing in the web space, but that didn't always apply, and still doesn't apply to spaces like semiconductors, biotech, etc.
      - yaddayadda 12y ago
        "Can you give me one single example of someone having sold an idea for a sizeable amount of money?" - No, but... My grandfather had an idea about how to improving HVAC systems (he was in the business). He discussed it with his assistant - someone he considered a friend and protege. The kid went and patented the idea (my grandfather was opposed to patents and thought all knowledge and ideas should be free), started his own company, and became my grandfather's chief competitor in the area. My grandfather died a short time later (a few days after my birth, so I've only heard about this second-hand from my grandmother, who served as the bookkeeper, my mother, and my father, who served as the subsequent assistant). My father worked for a small company that approached a large company (large enough that I can guarantee any American has at least heard of said company) about an idea. NDA's were signed before discussing any details. The big company kept saying that they were trying to get enough details to determine whether to buy out my dad's company or simply pay a flat fee for the idea. For over a year they pumped my dad's company for details, all while working the idea covertly. My dad's company continued to pursue the idea and actually did take their version to market. The way my dad's company found out that big company had stolen the idea was when employees started seeing big company's version of the product on store shelves. 30 years later and I still see the big company's product on a regular basis, my dad's company went out of business (spent too much on development and then were beat to the national market by big company). In both cases, if the idea hadn't been shared, it couldn't have been acted on in bad faith and the actual idea-generators would have had a chance to market or complete their implementations.
Thedavek 12y ago
I'm a developer at Coshx. We'll have full details on the rules and such when the contest starts. Will also see if someone can answer questions here but I don't know the answers to these offhand. Thanks for your patience and interest. :)
saganus 12y ago
I tried sending an email to competition@coshx.com but I got a mail delivery subsytem error: "We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (competition) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group". Maybe there's a misspelling somewhere? has anyone tried to send an email there as wel?
- mintone 12y ago
  It appears not to open until the 15th April according to their timeline.
- btaitelb 12y ago
  Sorry about that, we had the permissions set too strictly. It's fixed now, and I want to thank you for bringing this to our attention before the competition starts.
  - saganus 12y ago
    Great!
manishsharan 12y ago
Why post this on HN ? We are mostly programmers , techies or in tech business and s/w is not difficult for us. Why not advertize/post this on Business magazines or trade publications for Dentists , Doctors , Plumbers and such ?
- AlexMcP 12y ago
  Surely the idea of a one-off crowd sourced mini incubator is at least a little interesting to someone who writes|plans|sells software. Immediate reactions from me include "Should my company get on board with something like this?", "I wonder what the equity split is like", "Could there be a platform for voting up ideas to work on based on customer validation?", "Should I build that platform to bubble up ideas with a verifiable userbase?"
- owenthethird 12y ago
  Why not advertise on both? People at HN have already asked some great questions and even offered helpful insights, and we appreciate that.
  - manishsharan 12y ago
    You are right; my post was not phrased well. What I meant was that Dentists, Doctors and Trades people etc. would appreciate this offer as well or even more. And to publicize this offer to them, you may have to advertize in their publications.The downside is that the cycle would be much longer.
korzun 12y ago
"We can build the technology, that is the easy part. Turning a product into a sustainable business is the challenge." Technology is 'easy' if your portfolio ( http://www.coshx.com/projects http://www.coshx.com/projects) consists of applications such as poll management and event scheduling. In reality if you are going to build something awesome, it's not going to be easy.
- jmathai 12y ago
  > In reality if you are going to build something awesome, it's not going to be easy. Turning a product into something that people like and use is nearly impossible (statistically speaking). Once you solve that then turning it into a sustainable business is easy. Seriously, it's all hard. Only people who haven't tried to do it believe it's easy.
  - korzun 12y ago
    Agreed, I just wanted to point out how silly that line is given the projects their company build. "Let's build a new search engine, easy stuff! We build a to-do application just the other day!'
- btaitelb 12y ago
  You're right, if the winning idea is "build the control software for a self-driving boat that can search for a missing airplane," then the tech certainly will not be easy (and would be pretty awesome). What we were getting at with that line was that there are lots of great business ideas that can be prototyped without solving monumental technical challenges, and having a solid prototype isn't enough for a startup to succeed - it's only the beginning.
dang 12y ago
This sort of contest announcement is not really Hacker News material, even though it is an appeal to the HN demographic. The trouble is that such posts are not themselves intellectually interesting. If something cool gets built as a result, that would be interesting, and well worth posting here.

37 points by btaitelb 12y ago

Awesome! Any idea how public the public voting will be? i.e will a large community (4chan) be able to vote for their own idea and win easily?

owenthethird 12y ago
Thanks so much for the interest (Owen from Coshx here). The voting will be 100% public for the first round in order to pick the 5 finalists. If an individual or team can get the entire 4chan community behind them, then I call that market validation and more power to them! Official rules will be sent out soon and they state that an individual or team must be behind the concept, but that operating companies are excluded from getting free work. We want to help someone launch and idea, not reduce costs for a profitable company.
- dangrossman 12y ago
  Being able to get 4chan to vote on something is probably more correlated with meme creation skill than validation of a market for any product. This type of contest often measures the size of participants' networks and their ability to leverage it, not the things being voted on. Lots of them run by large brands end up being won by people like teachers who can convince their boss to ask all the students in the district to vote for their teacher because they know him/her, regardless of the idea submitted.
  - owenthethird 12y ago
    If we help a teacher launch a great idea then I will consider this competition to be a resounding success. I am sure some people will try and 'game' the voting, but this is part of the reason the final winner will be picked by experts. We toyed with picking the winner ourselves, but this is against the spirit of what we are trying to accomplish.

Cassandra108 12y ago

Gotta spread the word on this one!

mpeg 12y ago

US-only ?

saganus 12y ago
Same thing I was going to ask. They say the contest rules will be published when the competition starts if I'm not mistaken.
gkop 12y ago
Nope, this is not limited geographically.

darkFunction 12y ago

Clever. So they get lots of great app ideas, pick the 4th or 5th best idea as the winner, build it, and then get to work on the actual best idea submitted for themselves.

wasd 12y ago
ideas have very little value. what really matters is the execution team.
- mildtrepidation 12y ago
  People love to say this, but it just isn't true. Ideas can be very valuable, particularly when they come from a well-informed perspective in an untapped niche/market. Of course an idea isn't useful without execution, but without the idea, you have nothing to execute.
  - mixmax 12y ago
    Here's the question I always ask when the idea vs. execution debate comes up: Can you give me one single example of someone having sold an idea for a sizeable amount of money? I haven't heard any good answers yet.
    - arbuge 12y ago
      Actually there are many examples. It's basically what VCs and investors have been doing since the dawn of time, giving out money to entrepreneurs with no revenue yet, just ideas. Personal experience here besides general observation. Nowadays investors are demanding more visible traction before investing in the web space, but that didn't always apply, and still doesn't apply to spaces like semiconductors, biotech, etc.
    - yaddayadda 12y ago
      "Can you give me one single example of someone having sold an idea for a sizeable amount of money?" - No, but... My grandfather had an idea about how to improving HVAC systems (he was in the business). He discussed it with his assistant - someone he considered a friend and protege. The kid went and patented the idea (my grandfather was opposed to patents and thought all knowledge and ideas should be free), started his own company, and became my grandfather's chief competitor in the area. My grandfather died a short time later (a few days after my birth, so I've only heard about this second-hand from my grandmother, who served as the bookkeeper, my mother, and my father, who served as the subsequent assistant). My father worked for a small company that approached a large company (large enough that I can guarantee any American has at least heard of said company) about an idea. NDA's were signed before discussing any details. The big company kept saying that they were trying to get enough details to determine whether to buy out my dad's company or simply pay a flat fee for the idea. For over a year they pumped my dad's company for details, all while working the idea covertly. My dad's company continued to pursue the idea and actually did take their version to market. The way my dad's company found out that big company had stolen the idea was when employees started seeing big company's version of the product on store shelves. 30 years later and I still see the big company's product on a regular basis, my dad's company went out of business (spent too much on development and then were beat to the national market by big company). In both cases, if the idea hadn't been shared, it couldn't have been acted on in bad faith and the actual idea-generators would have had a chance to market or complete their implementations.

Thedavek 12y ago

I'm a developer at Coshx. We'll have full details on the rules and such when the contest starts. Will also see if someone can answer questions here but I don't know the answers to these offhand. Thanks for your patience and interest. :)

saganus 12y ago

I tried sending an email to competition@coshx.com but I got a mail delivery subsytem error: "We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (competition) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group". Maybe there's a misspelling somewhere? has anyone tried to send an email there as wel?

mintone 12y ago
It appears not to open until the 15th April according to their timeline.
btaitelb 12y ago
Sorry about that, we had the permissions set too strictly. It's fixed now, and I want to thank you for bringing this to our attention before the competition starts.
- saganus 12y ago
  Great!

manishsharan 12y ago

Why post this on HN ? We are mostly programmers , techies or in tech business and s/w is not difficult for us. Why not advertize/post this on Business magazines or trade publications for Dentists , Doctors , Plumbers and such ?

AlexMcP 12y ago
Surely the idea of a one-off crowd sourced mini incubator is at least a little interesting to someone who writes|plans|sells software. Immediate reactions from me include "Should my company get on board with something like this?", "I wonder what the equity split is like", "Could there be a platform for voting up ideas to work on based on customer validation?", "Should I build that platform to bubble up ideas with a verifiable userbase?"
owenthethird 12y ago
Why not advertise on both? People at HN have already asked some great questions and even offered helpful insights, and we appreciate that.
- manishsharan 12y ago
  You are right; my post was not phrased well. What I meant was that Dentists, Doctors and Trades people etc. would appreciate this offer as well or even more. And to publicize this offer to them, you may have to advertize in their publications.The downside is that the cycle would be much longer.

korzun 12y ago

"We can build the technology, that is the easy part. Turning a product into a sustainable business is the challenge." Technology is 'easy' if your portfolio ( http://www.coshx.com/projects http://www.coshx.com/projects) consists of applications such as poll management and event scheduling. In reality if you are going to build something awesome, it's not going to be easy.

jmathai 12y ago
> In reality if you are going to build something awesome, it's not going to be easy. Turning a product into something that people like and use is nearly impossible (statistically speaking). Once you solve that then turning it into a sustainable business is easy. Seriously, it's all hard. Only people who haven't tried to do it believe it's easy.
- korzun 12y ago
  Agreed, I just wanted to point out how silly that line is given the projects their company build. "Let's build a new search engine, easy stuff! We build a to-do application just the other day!'
btaitelb 12y ago
You're right, if the winning idea is "build the control software for a self-driving boat that can search for a missing airplane," then the tech certainly will not be easy (and would be pretty awesome). What we were getting at with that line was that there are lots of great business ideas that can be prototyped without solving monumental technical challenges, and having a solid prototype isn't enough for a startup to succeed - it's only the beginning.

dang 12y ago

This sort of contest announcement is not really Hacker News material, even though it is an appeal to the HN demographic. The trouble is that such posts are not themselves intellectually interesting. If something cool gets built as a result, that would be interesting, and well worth posting here.