Review My (Common Lisp backed) Startup
gruseom: Your About page has waaaay too much text on it. Pare it down to less than half that. It's hard, but you'll be forced to clarify. (Also, typo: "good dead" => "good deed".)If I were you, I'd be thinking a lot about how to take advantage of game dynamics. If Foursquare can do that about going places, surely you can do it about finding great deals, which is inherently competitive to begin with. I'm not fond of shopping, but even I will boast about great deals when I find them. If you can get that right... wow.How do you prevent people from posting fake deals? Is there a way for others to validate? Would it be useful for people to post not just new deals, but confirmation of deals they benefited from? That would have two advantages: 1. you'd get people participating both ways; 2. you'd get validating information about what the really good deals are. If I post something lots of people benefit from, that should earn me status.You need to have a blog. Tell stories. True stories about deals users have found would be good. Also, a personal touch can be a big deal: consider taking the "Team" thing off the bottom of the About page and put it in its own place where you introduce yourselves. As a user, if I feel a personal connection to the people behind a site, I'm automatically more sympathetic.The Community page doesn't draw me in. It looks like a database report right now. That page is a chance to get people to participate, so you want it to be warm and inviting. Also, it's hard to react positively to something one doesn't understand, so getting the key information across in the first 10 seconds is critical.Don't bother putting up messages like "nothing in your location, redirecting to New York". It's obvious that you're redirecting me to NYC anyway, and a message box just irritates the pig. (Maybe put this information in some text on the actual page?) Also, when I load the page in FF I'm getting a status box overlay that says "Detecting your location" that takes a long time to go away and blocks my use of the site (plus is ugly). Drop that. You don't want any barrier to entry at that moment. People can bail on you in less than a second.If I were you I would pay super-close attention to the psychology of how people are using the site. If you find a dynamic that works, this could be killer. It's not obvious that appealing to people's altruism ("good deed", "karma", etc.) is the right approach. Competitive shopping can be vicious! Think about that question, "What's your deadly sin?" It may not be so much greed (saving money) as vanity (winning status).I'm afraid I don't like the name. First, it reminds me of Cinnabon. Second, American names with French roots are good for a fancy, specialty vibe (e.g. gourmet, luxury), or conveying effete sophistication, but that may not be what you want.Summary: you guys could be on to something. Best of luck and keep us all posted about how it goes!