ABrandt

An MVP by definition is the very base point that you can convince people to buy your wares. Whatever form that takes will depend on you and your market. The point is to get whatever you have up there in your head and put it out into the world; who cares what that looks like. Landing pages are so popular because it's the path of least resistance in getting your idea in front of a sizable audience. Going straight to a working prototype for your MVP without hitting the landing page or comparable stage first sort of misses the mark on what an MVP is all about.

Instead of thinking of an MVP as a single _thing_, we just made things easy and called everything we did our "MVP" until we started doing recurring sales.

Have you seen cakehealth.com? Haven't tried it myself but like on par with what you describe, even integrates with your insurance directly.

What kind of budget are you working with? I've had success getting through customer discovery and validating demand with adwords. Basically just drove ~$100-200 to a basic landing page and decided a 20% conversion rate was worth pursuing further.

Thanks for the clarification. I'd be lying if I said I didn't deliberately use government in the title--rather than AHCJ or CMS--to garner more attention. For those unaware, CMS administers Medicare and for all intents and purposes sets the rules in US healthcare. Them enabling the publishing of these reports online is a strong show of support for the push for quality outcomes ("value over volume").

I think you're on the right track with Google wanting to increase their ad footprint. I tend to view every move that Google makes as an attempt to increase their ability to collect ad revenue. Even the self-driving car frees people up from staring at the boring road and offers an opportunity to look at ads.

Android can be explained in the same manner. Google saw the traffic potential the mobile web had, and they wanted to make sure they were the search engine of choice. The best way to do this is to control the software people use to access that mobile web.

I also like the idea and look, but have you thought about a different launch approach? When your content needs to be geographically dense to be useful, makes sense to limit your launch. For a non-FB example, you can look at companies like Uber, or even today's YourMechanic launch. Yes those are both service based, but it seems like you require a lot of users in one location to be truly useful just like them.

On a similar note, I put in Madison, selected car repair, and my search didn't return any results. Just kept on loading--not sure if this is due to traffic or just no results available.

Keep it up though! I can see real potential in this, I think you just need to keep tweaking to get there. I have faith :)

Although everything you say is true, there is a very clear benefit of genetic testing that exists today. Many drug interactions have a strong genetic link. Take the common blood thinning drug warfarin for example. It's considered a medical best practice to prescribe this drug to patient's with a variety of heart problems (irregular heartbeat, history of heart attack, etc). A single dosage has wildly different effects on different patients however. The same dosage can cause fatal bleeding in one patient, while in another patient have no effect at all. Without genetics, the proper dosage is a crap shoot. With genetics, it's an exact science (as it should be).

And this is just one single example. Research is revealing more genetic-drug links all the time with relatively small sample sizes. Genetic sequencing may not cure every disease like we were promised ~10 years ago, but it is saving lives and is essential to the advancement of medicine.

They could monetize as an enterprise, web-based GoToMeeting/WebEx competitor. Both are awful to use.

I'm as big of a proponent of the magic that is supply and demand as anyone, but uber's pricing was not exactly transparent. Last night was the first time that I used the service. My first ride from my hotel in Chicago to my party destination at 9pm was $15, awesome. Not only was I thrilled by the quality of service, but I saw the message that fees would be higher that night and was expecting a higher price tag. Fast forward four hours later and I was ready to head back to the hotel. Same route, except this time the price was $54. Ouch.

The thing about market forces is that the buyer needs to be aware of the price in order to make a rational decision that affects demand and alleviates the strain on existing supply. Uber's app indicated I would be informed of the additional charge prior to my ride, but that certainly never happened. In that regard, I feel slighted and my feelings toward the company have been damaged as a result.

The OP does draw a comparison between his ideas and Moore's Crossing the Chasm. I agree there's a lot of buzz-like words thrown around, but there is substance here. There's an actionable suggestion for finding the monitizable pain (or any other term you want to give it). His plan instructs you to call a specific person, to convey a specific message, and measure for a specific success rate. I'd say this is useful and fresh advice in that regard.

I've read HN about every day for over 3 years now. It's very much a different bunch commenting these days. I like to think that the older group has gotten so busy applying everything they learned here that they no longer have the time or need to be as active. Perhaps an overly optimistic view, but it beats worrying about HN becoming reddit.

I only took a quick look at your site, but it seems ripe for some cool promotional event to kick things off. Use your app to chalk up your city with all sorts of hints that lead to a prize. Kind of like a virtual scavenger hunt. Then write about it everywhere you possibly can (local blogs, craigslist, social networks etc.). Could lead to some real publicity as well. Good luck!