You know whats getting really annoying? When some new startup comes out of beta and you signup, only to find it’s fledgling community is full of other startup people.
It was annoying at Quora but if you get below the startup topsoil you can get some interesting questions answered. But that is only IF you stick around long enough. If you are in Silicon Valley and your startup solves Silicon Valley problems then by all means, launch to your target demo. But If your demo is “normals” or middle America, why are you laying down a foundation of startups and techies?
Case in point is Kohort. I signed up for beta many months ago and this was video pitch to potential users.
So from this video they are targeting moms, bikers, and aliens. Basically everyone , but particularly moms and women. Tagline, “Kohort, connect your community”.
So when I got the “we are live” email from them today I was excited. There is a lot of work to be done around groups and location. If there were a biker moms group near me, I’d want to be a part of it… if I was a biker mom.
So I signup and then start to explore the most active groups…
Gah!… more startups and venture capital! Don’t I already have enough communities for this? Where are the biker moms, the aliens, the normals? Apparently there are 21 members in the Kohort Ambassarors group so either they haven’t really started yet or have tunnel vision.
Either way, Kohort is much less interesting to me now. So please, future Startups, when you launch with a fledgling community, show me whats possible outside of Silicon Valley where 99.9% of the America lives. And if you are in NYC, like Kohort is, there is really no excuse to serve up exclusively Venture Capital related groups to new users. I’ll check back in with Kohort in 6 months to see if it has gone beyond the startup-circlejerk phase of user acquisition.