My startup Saikono helps you compare and choose the best software

[george benjamin]

Hello folks,

As some of you might know, I have my own startup (full-time) trying to help people choose better software. I love software and people have always come to me for software suggestions, so I thought this is a good area for me to tackle. It also frustrates me when people choose the wrong software for the job.

So here it is, http://saikono.com/.

What do you think?

I am only doing a soft launch now in the hopes of getting more feedback and engaging the communities. So far I have only been iterating on feedback given on here and others.

For most people here, I think they would be most interested in invoicing applications and website builders:

http://saikono.com/invoicing-applications.html
http://saikono.com/compare-website-builders.html

I posted the invoices one before on here when it was REALLY ugly. Now I have iterated on the feedback and I have cleaned them up much more.

Also I asked some people on here what they would like compared and I received suggestions for Point of Sale, Video/Photo editing, ERP software, Design software, and Database software.

Right now I am only creating comparisons for software that I am intimately familiar with. Creating one of those tables actually takes several days.

Anyways, enough talking from me. Let me know what your thoughts are!

[flafson]

I really like your home page, looks real clean and professional.

[slavka012]

The web site looks nice, invoicing page is missing off-line s/w, why? I really hate to have the accounting info "in the cloud", and monthly subscription also does not make it anymore attractive.

But most of all, I don't see any revenues for you. Mind lifting the veil?

[george benjamin]

Hi and thank you.

Here's why I didn't include offline yet. It turns out, a lot of the desktop software sucks. That's right, I said it. The usability, ease of use, and simplicity of desktop software is no where near that of web products in the same category. Why is that? Because it turns out, the best designers and usability experts are not exactly flocking to companies that produce legacy desktop software. This is from my experience when I was checking out invoicing software for law firms. It took me 2-3 times longer to learn desktop software than it did for web, it took my 2 times longer sometimes to just find out the price, support was not as responsive or was not free, documentation or help articles were terrible.

I might revisit desktop solutions later on, we will see. If you have a Mac, I can suggest http://www.marketcircle.com/billings/.

I make revenue using affiliate links. For some applications, if you click on the link from Saikono and you sign-up to the service, I get paid.

If you tell me a.) How many users you will have on this invoicing software b.) how many invoices you send a month c.) how many customers do you send invoices to per month, I can tell you the invoicing application with the best price.

The web site looks nice, invoicing page is missing off-line s/w, why? I really hate to have the accounting info "in the cloud", and monthly subscription also does not make it anymore attractive.

But most of all, I don't see any revenues for you. Mind lifting the veil?

[mgronqui]

I like it's simplicity and flowcharts. I hope you keep it neutral.

[matdwyer]

It looks nice, but it also appears to be just a nice looking affiliate / review site.

I say that in a nice way - it looks good, I'm sure it will be valuable to people that find it, but I don't know if I'd go as far as calling it a startup. Perhaps you could pivot that somehow, but I'm not sure how. To me this really, really doesn't seem like something you'd do full time, but all the power to you if you can. Perhaps the pivot could be to build a platform that allows crowdsourcing the top rankings and moving into other spaces (cars, restaurants, electronics, etc). Personally I think it's missing the most important factor to me - price.

Good luck regardless

[george benjamin]

Thanks for the input. This is my full-time job.

What you see is just the beginning. It will be a decision making platform around software. Going into other verticals is not something I am interested in doing now. This is what you get when you go into everything: http://www.findthebest.com/. Low quality comparison and data tools for everything. Software is a big enough industry and choosing software is a big enough problem that I'm deciding to tackle.

Pricing is something I plan to implement. I actually had it there before but I took it off as I wasn't happy with the quality of the presentation and it clearly seemed like something glued together at the time. You are correct, pricing is critical. It is also very hard because different SaaS applications have different pricing structures. One invoicing app can price based on number of users, while another prices based on number of invoices sent, while another prices based on number of customers invoiced per month. So ya, it gets difficult. This is different from desktop software which usually has one price for the entire package, regardless of volume.

What kind of software were you looking for?

It looks nice, but it also appears to be just a nice looking affiliate / review site.

I say that in a nice way - it looks good, I'm sure it will be valuable to people that find it, but I don't know if I'd go as far as calling it a startup. Perhaps you could pivot that somehow, but I'm not sure how. To me this really, really doesn't seem like something you'd do full time, but all the power to you if you can. Perhaps the pivot could be to build a platform that allows crowdsourcing the top rankings and moving into other spaces (cars, restaurants, electronics, etc). Personally I think it's missing the most important factor to me - price.

Good luck regardless

[flafson]

Those that give you % from the clients you send should have a link on your site and those that don't should get a call from you asking for affiliate program saying if they don't you won't link them in the future. Shopbot works on a similar concept.

[Icedawn]

A similar company (that I think is likely a startup as well) that I actually give revenue to is Capterra. You may want to take a look as they can both a) provide you with some ideas on how to generate revenue and b) give you a point of comparison since they have feature lists as well.

They also enlist the companies themselves to help refine their feature lists, might be a useful idea.