Show HN: Strongarm – An Incident Response Platform

by stephendicatoon 6/19/2015, 5:48:30 PM with 2 comments
  • by kevinon 6/19/2015, 9:00:02 PM

    I felt like it took me too long to figure out what exactly this is and who is the ideal audience this is for. pg writes about matter of fact answers here really well:

    http://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/#matteroffact

      “One test of whether you’re explaining your idea effectively 
  is to ask how close the reader is to reproducing it. After 
  reading that sentence I’m no closer than I was before, so its 
  content is effectively zero.”
    One thing I personally try to find when I go to a site’s page is the one sentence I could easily memorize and repeat to someone else and feel like the most interesting person at the dinner table. That sentence is usually the foundation for any word of mouth growth.

    When I read the three paragraphs you’ve laid out for me, the STRONGARM all-caps branding on jargon is overwhelming. So intense. It’s like you’re…strong-arming me with your brand. Sorry.

    I did find it weird that your homepage sign up form is basically a way to prefill out the real sign up form.

    This—>

    http://cl.ly/image/0K411O3Z3E3K

    Goes to this->

    http://cl.ly/image/2z2Q0t2S0F1A

    Did it create the account between steps or did you think asking for a third thing on the page was going to be the actual dealbreaker for conversion? I just can’t follow the logic. Just let me in! There’s not enough stuff on the site information-wise and I finally say, “Okay, sure…I’ll give this a try.” And then you make me jump through more hoops…like this:

    http://cl.ly/image/1z3R0m1E0E1j

    And then you give me more text to read:

    http://cl.ly/image/3b3P451p1I3k

    And then FINALLY…I see how this works:

    http://cl.ly/image/1J2p0o0s2H0o

    It’s the first time I understand that this uses DNS to do its magic. When I go back to your homepage, I see that you did mention DNS once, but it’s lost in all that text and jargon that I skipped.

    http://cl.ly/image/2n0d3A1a0M1o

    For your setup instructions…just show me the text. Don’t make me click to expand them. As I read through it, I realized that the first step is just getting my DNS setup. If that’s the case, make that easy to find…hell, maybe you don’t need me to create an account at first. Can you protect me now and have me claim it later for notifications and dashboard access?

    More importantly, show me this stuff way earlier:

    http://cl.ly/image/40090t07442k

    That stuff is the meat of what you ACTUALLY offer to me. Don’t make me go through all that above just to get to here. I only made it because I’m reviewing this on purpose.

    Here’s a quick suggestion: on your site go through an example or two of threats Strongarm protects against. A How it Works page would be great. Considering your audience, they’re going to want to know the basic mechanics before they start routing traffic through there. The content you have on your site isn’t enough to make anyone feel confident doing what you want. To make them feel confident, show them the future explicitly.

  • by stephendicatoon 6/19/2015, 5:49:29 PM

    I'm a co-founder at Percipient Networks and we are extremely excited to get feedback from HN!

    I wrote a short post about the vision for STRONGARM on our blog. It should give a little more context.

    https://percipientnetworks.com/blog/strongarm-incident-respo...

    If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. Thanks!