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Hugo Montenegro
Hugo Montenegro

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FEEDBACK REQUESTED: We're building a way to understand your internet self

Hey Everyone! I've recently started working on a new project with a good friend of mine, and we're hoping to get some feedback.

The landing page is here: www.montfor.com

The problem we're trying to solve: You browse hundreds of websites daily, every day. And yet if you want to look at your history in a comprehensible way, it's really hard. I learn a ton of stuff online (blogposts, articles, tweets, youtube videos, etc...) and yet I have no overview of what I've learned when/where. I'd love to have that kind of organization, and that's what we're trying to build.

The long term vision: Long-term, we want to not only give you awesome visualizations and ways to organize and review your activity, but also offer a way to help self-learners prove what they learn online. Currently if you learn topics on your own outside of university or the like you get no proof, no certificate, no nothing. We're hoping we can change that, and provide our own certificate that states person X has spent ZZZ active hours on topic Y, and is therefore an expert in it and a top candidate.

The revenue model: We're unsure about this yet, but we have a few ideas. We could either connect our users with companies and offer them interviews, receiving a hiring commission in the process (these are generally really high, but it's a big hassle to act as a hiring agency). We could also provide content recommendations á la youtube homepage or instagram explore (should be good since they're based on your activity) where we sprinkle ads in, or just make the software paid. Suggestions welcome! What we never want to do is sell users data (I'm personally huge advocate against that).

Since we're really early stage, we'd love to have some feedback! Give me your worst :P

Top comments (2)

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scottshipp profile image
scottshipp

I like this idea for personal benefit and I think it could work super well for that. I’m unclear how it could ever be useful for another party though, particularly someone looking to hire you. Personally if I was interviewing me a candidate and they can prove they spent 500 hours consuming content on a topic I will still just nod politely and ask to see their code. Because I have seen two candidates who spent 50 and 500 hours respectively on a topic and the 50 produced better work. Just my two cents: focus on what can help the individual rather than the company.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

This is really interesting.

My initial reaction is that "privacy" should be elevated above the fold in your pitch. I see some information in the FAQ, so I can tell you've thought about it, but I would advise you to bring this into the main pitch, and have a way for people to click to go into more details.

It won't be the thing everyone cares about, but the folks who will care will be loud about it and want details.

All in all, the more I feel a tool is learning about me to benefit me, the more I want it to respect my privacy. And your tool is high on the "learn about me" spectrum if done well.

All in all I get it and it is neat.