Other's have already covered this so for you (OP) this will be redundant, but I do want to chime in regarding the general trend of apps/services everywhere (not just here on HN) focusing too much on the "Sell" of how their mcguffin will improve my life, but not actually saying what the heck their mcguffin actually is/does. To return to the post at hand, as an example, I'd change the byline uptop to say:
> An ethically designed financial management app to be the private and simple way to see your money, finally.
That maintains your pitch while also saying upfront and uptop in the first 6 words what it is/does.
Next, I'm not trying to be negative here, but rather acknowledge a very real problem that others have touched on and that anyone (myself included) launching any product will face in the current era:
Best Intentions != Best Practices. Security is hard. Earning trust is even harder. Especially when it comes to money. It's doubly difficult in early days as building out an app while maintaining security and respecting privacy is no minor task (even if "easy", it's still often tedious and easy to make mistakes), and in the context of finance/banking, there's unfortunately a large target on the app/services's proverbial back and impetus for users to have a far more critical and unforgiving eye given the potential fallout of someone leveraging or publishing an exploit.
There's also the ever looming potential of the original team selling the company/product/service to someone else (eg, Private Equity) who - despite claims to the contrary - rarely share the same ethos or respect for their newly acquired users as the founder/founding team does/did.
As to why people tend to be critical/suspicious: See another recent HN post "Everyone Knows your Location[0]" regarding all the practically systemic and endemic ways that applications/services expose/harvest data, and how difficult it can be to be aware of, mitigate and protect against these things. Exploiting user faith/data is unfortunately the norm now, not the exception, thus people's suspicions.
Wish you luck OP, because the market absolutely could use a privacy/user respecting app in this space.
Thanks for your time and feedback.
- Based on all this feedback, I am going to rework the website content and will focus on writing what it's actually doing.
- You are right, security and trust are ongoing things, and I will keep working on them.
Can you give the web app a try and share some feedback on it?
Other's have already covered this so for you (OP) this will be redundant, but I do want to chime in regarding the general trend of apps/services everywhere (not just here on HN) focusing too much on the "Sell" of how their mcguffin will improve my life, but not actually saying what the heck their mcguffin actually is/does. To return to the post at hand, as an example, I'd change the byline uptop to say:
> An ethically designed financial management app to be the private and simple way to see your money, finally.
That maintains your pitch while also saying upfront and uptop in the first 6 words what it is/does.
Next, I'm not trying to be negative here, but rather acknowledge a very real problem that others have touched on and that anyone (myself included) launching any product will face in the current era:
Best Intentions != Best Practices. Security is hard. Earning trust is even harder. Especially when it comes to money. It's doubly difficult in early days as building out an app while maintaining security and respecting privacy is no minor task (even if "easy", it's still often tedious and easy to make mistakes), and in the context of finance/banking, there's unfortunately a large target on the app/services's proverbial back and impetus for users to have a far more critical and unforgiving eye given the potential fallout of someone leveraging or publishing an exploit.
There's also the ever looming potential of the original team selling the company/product/service to someone else (eg, Private Equity) who - despite claims to the contrary - rarely share the same ethos or respect for their newly acquired users as the founder/founding team does/did.
As to why people tend to be critical/suspicious: See another recent HN post "Everyone Knows your Location[0]" regarding all the practically systemic and endemic ways that applications/services expose/harvest data, and how difficult it can be to be aware of, mitigate and protect against these things. Exploiting user faith/data is unfortunately the norm now, not the exception, thus people's suspicions.
Wish you luck OP, because the market absolutely could use a privacy/user respecting app in this space.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716704