[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Foster (YC W21) - Improve your writing wi...
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Launch HN: Foster (YC W21) - Improve your writing with on-demand
editing
Hi HN, Stew and Dan here from Foster (https://foster.co). Foster
connects you with professional editors who can improve your
writing. We've built a button in Google Docs that you can tap and
get collaborative support on your document within 24 hours. Most
online writing today is produced in a broken way. Writers are
commonly told to publish a lot, see how readers respond, and
adjust. But most internet readers don't comment or respond. They
just get whatever they can and move on. They bail on an article the
minute it fails to hold their attention, and you don't get a second
chance. Thus the most common response to writing online is silence.
Silence is a terrible teacher! What writers need is feedback
_before_ they hit publish, so that readers receive the best-
expressed version of their ideas. But it's hard to get quality
feedback on a draft. Asking friends tends to be unsustainable--you
burn an ask each time--and hiring an editor is complicated and
expensive. That's the problem we're solving with Foster. I
published a personal blog for ~2 years that basically nobody read.
One day, I decided to start asking friends for feedback on my
writing. I was pretty surprised to discover how much my writing
sucked. The first post I published after an extensive round of peer
edits became my most popular piece. At the time, I was working on
another startup and blogging for fun on the side but the experience
was so profound that I wondered if this might be something I could
help more people experience one day. A year later, I reconnected
with my friend (and now co-founder) Dan and we realized neither of
us were passionate about our startups at the time. We started to
talk about our mutual love of writing and realized this might be
our chance to build something we really cared about. We launched
Foster as a Slack group that writers could join to swap feedback on
each others' drafts. But over time we learned that 'writer' and
'editor' really aren't the same thing. Most of our members
primarily loved to write, and while editing other people's work
could be helpful and interesting, they ultimately wanted to just
get the best possible feedback on their own work. We started to
redesign the experience so that writers didn't have to join a full-
on community and could instead share and track their drafts using a
simple web app. On the other side, we recruited professional
editors to specialize in improving drafts. Eventually, we realized
we should just bring the entire experience to the draft itself
since that's where the writer lives, so we built a Chrome extension
that works with Google Docs. Writers see a Foster button directly
in their doc that they can tap to submit the work to Foster.
Editing help then comes directly to their document without them
ever leaving. Unlike hiring an editor via marketplaces like
Upwork, you don't need to do any job-posting or back-and-forth. You
hit a button in Google Docs and high-quality collaborators jump in
to help. (The majority of the writers we spoke with early on use
Google Docs, but we plan to expand to other writing platforms in
the future.) We've built a collective of editors, writers, and
experts who enjoy jumping into first drafts and helping to improve
them. Foster contributors do more than spot a missing comma--they
give you suggestions on how to make a story funnier or how to make
your argument air-tight. People tend to underestimate how much
better their writing can be. We've found it's hardest to get
somebody to post a first draft in Foster, because often they don't
think they need an editor. But once they do, more than half post
another draft. A few of our early users are Hacker News regulars
who have used Foster to improve their work before submitting it
here. These were both sent through Foster prior to being submitted
to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31327219,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29304667 (this post landed the
author a job). And while it's exciting to see individual pieces
improve, many writers tell us that using Foster has elevated their
writing skills generally
(https://twitter.com/tomcritchlow/status/1535404631123173376) and
motivated them to write more
(https://twitter.com/liuxi/status/1511191555796729862). Today,
we're opening up Foster to anybody who writes. You can go to
https://foster.co, pick a plan based on how much you write, and
install our Chrome extension (you can also submit drafts via our
web app). We're giving free trials today, so you should see a promo
code when you go to pick a plan. If you don't see a code and still
want to try Foster, shoot us a note at founders@foster.co. We hope
you'll share your input, questions, and suggestions in this thread.
We're excited to hear what you think!
Author : stewfortier
Score : 55 points
Date : 2022-06-23 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.foster.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.foster.co)
| fudged71 wrote:
| I'm curious if this is being run as a DAO?
| stewfortier wrote:
| For now, I'll just say it's a possibility we find very
| interesting :)
|
| Specifically, we think it'd be cool for contributors (editors)
| to earn more than just money and reputation by editing on
| Foster. It'd be exciting for them to have a direct say in
| things like what types of writing we want to collectively
| support, new ways we might support writers, and how we
| generally build a passionate contributor community. We want to
| do anything to make it rewarding and worthwhile to be a
| contributor and DAOs offer some intriguing new ideas and tools
| for how we might do that.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Interesting. Had looked at doing something like this but embedded
| in to Wordpress, which is where a lot of certain types of people
| do their writing/composing.
| stewfortier wrote:
| Very cool. We plan on working with more writing platforms in
| the future, but at least within our early pool of users Google
| Docs was the most popular text editing / writing platform.
| TimMeade wrote:
| Interesting idea. Seems CRAZY expensive.
| stewfortier wrote:
| Thanks! And we're not the cheapest option, but we have tried to
| make the pricing competitive for the level of quality we strive
| for. A top editor on Upwork costs around $150/hour and
| typically can edit about 1,000 words per hour.
|
| Another thing that might be worth clarifying is that most
| drafts get 2-3 contributors, each of whom has a specific
| skillset or expertise that is relevant for the draft. So, the
| cost per-editor on a draft tends to skew downwards quite a bit.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Of that $55, how much do the editors get? Are they all paid
| the same?
| stewfortier wrote:
| We've experimented a lot here. In our latest iteration, a
| fixed "bounty" gets assigned to a draft. Contributors have
| access to a feed of drafts that fit their skillsets &
| interests. The writer can then indicate how helpful each
| contributor was and the bounty is split pro-rata amongst
| those contributors.
|
| We had originally assumed that editors would not like this
| sort of variability, but two things have ended up
| happening: 1) their per-hour rate ends up being the same on
| Foster given that the work comes directly to them (no
| selling themselves, doing onboarding calls, etc.) and 2)
| they strongly value the freedom to select drafts that
| intrinsically interest them. It also leads to a much better
| experience for the writer since there tends to be more of a
| missionary spirit, rather than a purely mercenary one.
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| While the cost per-editor per-word is probably comparable to
| other professional editor solutions, it's weird to me that
| you're then marketing to people who don't normally pay for an
| editor. The use-case of "I want to get my blog posts on the
| top of HN" is certainly interesting, but doesn't justify the
| cost.
| stewfortier wrote:
| We think this can get really big if we find a way to reach
| people who don't currently work with an editor but would
| benefit immensely if they did. We believe most online
| writers fit into this category.
|
| Can you elaborate more on why you don't think having
| writing that performs better justifies the cost?
|
| Example: you pay for our $99/month plan and over six months
| you write a 1,000-word post each month and submitted it on
| HN. If one of them ended up on the home page, you don't
| think it would generate at least ~$600 in value for the
| author?
| tin7in wrote:
| I was just negotiating with our marketing and copywriting agency
| this week about what we can do in the following weeks/months and
| what the budget would be.
|
| In our team (small SaaS startup) I am the only one writing
| product updates, documentation, blog content, social posts
| content, help sections.
|
| I've heard about Foster before but seeing the landing page now
| made me sign up instantly. I think this is exactly what I was
| looking for! Excited to try it out!
| stewfortier wrote:
| Awesome! We hear this same thing from a lot of small teams.
| We're excited to help in any way we can. If you have any
| questions or requests, you can reach me directly at stew at
| foster dot co.
| autoconfig wrote:
| Congratulations on the launch! I realize this is not the main
| value prop, but as a beginner writer I really like the idea of
| trying this out as a tool to improve my writing skills. I'm
| excited to give it a spin.
| stewfortier wrote:
| We've found a lot of our more experienced writers end up
| finding it useful for that same reason, too:
| https://twitter.com/tomcritchlow/status/1535404631123173376?...
|
| Human feedback loops can adjust nicely to pretty much anyone's
| skill level.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| I'll likely give this a try, as there's a millennial ease to not
| needing to hire a person specifically. Random different editors
| reviewing your work is certainly beneficial to a point. But you
| lose out on the possibility of a relationship forming between
| writer/editor, which limits the overall value prop for both
| parties. Basically, you'd always be selling commodity editing
| services.
|
| Also, the subscription pricing with word limits seems wonky. Why
| not just go with usage pricing and discounts at higher volumes?
| (eg. $0.10 / word.) You'd have a much more likely chance of
| keeping me as a customer if I don't need to cancel when I stop
| using you for a while.
| stewfortier wrote:
| To clarify, the product lets you request collaborators you've
| enjoyed working with in the past to help with future drafts. I
| agree it's rewarding and helpful to form longer-term bonds with
| the right collaborators.
|
| On pricing, that's helpful feedback. We've found that the
| writers who get the most value out of Foster tend to be ones
| that write regularly. The monthly pricing helps us self-select
| for those customers and we've found it created a self-
| fulfilling mechanism for encouraging writers to submit more
| work (and often to write more:
| https://twitter.com/liuxi/status/1511191555796729862).
|
| But it's not perfect and I can imagine a world where we can
| support work on a more one-off basis.
| keerthiko wrote:
| Anecdotal and relevant feedback from someone who really likes
| to write (about specific topics), but doesn't write that
| regularly for one big reason: At this very moment I am very
| much stuck reading and re-reading a hot-button post with a
| lot of strong opinions, and not sure whether I should put it
| live yet or smush words around some more (even if all I will
| receive as feedback is silence).
|
| If I have a good editorial experience I am more likely to
| "ship" my writing, and move on to the next essay/piece/post,
| and keep using the editorial service as a part of my
| "shipping" process (starting from my first draft of the
| post). Still, I would definitely be slower initially as I
| reforge my writing habits around an on-demand editorial
| service, but eventually I expect I would write often.
|
| Any pricing structure that relates more to the amount of
| writing/editorial work I get done rather than to units of
| time would make me far more likely to buy in -- non-expiring
| "credits" I can buy, or per-word pricing, or flat pricing per
| essay/post/doc/<10k words bloc.
| cumshitpiss wrote:
| 500 words/month for $55?
|
| Who is willing to spend that much for proofreading one page a
| month?
| citizenkeen wrote:
| If your editor is just proofreading, you have a bad editor.
| robmerki wrote:
| Truth. I learned this the hard way with my first book.
| neonate wrote:
| Editing is more than proofreading.
| stewfortier wrote:
| Yep, that's the key insight we've built this around. Our
| contributors tend to focus on ideation and developmental
| feedback where the core of an idea or story can be refined
| or, in some cases, re-imagined entirely.
|
| We think Grammarly and other tools will continue to be
| helpful for proofreading and adding some final polish.
| cumshitpiss wrote:
| Ah ok, I misunderstood the product. Sounds neat!
| [deleted]
| zethus wrote:
| Curious if you did any market research into selling these plans
| to a company/organization rather than individuals?
| stewfortier wrote:
| Yep, we had assumed what we're building might be most helpful
| for smaller companies with one content or marketing person, but
| in our conversations with larger companies it turned out that
| almost everyone feels understaffed and that Foster could be
| helpful in at least filling in some gaps.
|
| As we got into the weeds of what it'd take to build for a few
| large customers first, it seemed that we'd have a lot of custom
| functionality and servicing required that wouldn't necessarily
| generalize to other customers.
|
| Our theory is that if we can build a product that works on the
| individual atomic unit of writing (the draft) then we'll be
| able to move upmarket - whereas the inverse may not be as
| likely. On some basic level, a team just produces a higher
| volume of drafts than an individual.
|
| Focusing on individual writers and individual drafts allows us
| to stay much more focused on the atomic experience for now.
| azhenley wrote:
| Finally, someone turned Soylent into a product!
|
| Soylent: A Word Processor with a Crowd Inside
| https://people.csail.mit.edu/msbernst/papers/soylent-uist201...
| stewfortier wrote:
| Whoa, this is cool ;)
| stevenfoster wrote:
| So this is who bought foster.co. Good to see someone made
| something with it!
| stewfortier wrote:
| We were wondering who that other bidder was... ;)
| echelon wrote:
| Unrelated comment: How is it that your comment's timestamp is
| one to two minutes older than the parent comment? (It might
| take a few refreshes to see.)
|
| Is this an HN bug, or is there some strange thread merging
| behavior happening here?
| [deleted]
| melony wrote:
| Can you explain the whole "crypto and DAO" thing?
| stewfortier wrote:
| Sure thing, hopefully this answer above sheds some more light:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31851445
| sbuccini wrote:
| I'm partial to this idea as I prototyped something similar in
| January of 2021 (http://sendittoedit.com).
|
| I think editing is _extremely_ valuable -- a crazy high
| percentage of pieces we edited wound up on the front page of HN.
|
| Ultimately, I dropped the idea because most non-writers think of
| editing as an ex post faco activity. But talk to any editor,
| especially ones who work for major publications, and you'll
| quickly learn they are most effective when they are involved in
| the process from the very beginning: from identifying unique
| stories, crafting narratives, shaping the research process.
| Polishing prose is only the final, and ultimately, most trivial
| step.
|
| I also don't think that this is venture scale. I think there is a
| market for talented editors serving serious professionals who can
| afford a premium product, but scaling this business is very hard.
|
| The Google Docs plugin idea is very clever. I never really
| figured out a good onboarding funnel beyond "do it manually".
|
| Good luck to the team, really hope that someone makes this work!
| zestyping wrote:
| When I've submitted my writing to an editor, they've only
| introduced new grammatical errors into text that I'd already
| carefully proofread to remove such errors. I do keep hearing
| that they are valuable, though my experience makes me
| skeptical.
| stewfortier wrote:
| Ah, sorry to hear that. That sounds like a crappy editor; I
| can see why you'd be skeptical.
| stewfortier wrote:
| Cool! I always find it exciting when other people have
| experienced how transformative great editing is.
|
| I agree that most non-writers tend to think of editing as
| either an afterthought, unnecessary, or only something that
| professionals do. It makes positioning here really tough.
|
| One thing we've experimented with isn't selling editing per se,
| but trying to counter-position ourselves to the publishing into
| the void problem. Like, "hey - you're probably busting your ass
| writing and publishing a bunch, but nothing is happening.
| That's because silence is a crappy teacher. There's a better
| way to write..."
|
| Most of the writers who have used Foster were not working with
| an editor before they joined, but once they submit their first
| draft they often say they can't believe they ever wrote without
| getting feedback first.
|
| I think if we can figure out positioning this in a new way and
| if we deliver a genuinely new editing experience (the input you
| get reliably goes far beyond catching grammar errors), it will
| unlock a ton of latent demand and be big. If not, I agree with
| you that selling editing is hard to scale.
| bluelightning2k wrote:
| Why are there 10,000 startups who got their GPT3 keys and
| immediately decided that they would add some kind of unique value
| by turning a hello-world demo into a startup.
|
| Great - you bring GPT3 DaVinci to Google Docs. Or Chrome. Or
| whatever.
|
| You think this hasn't occurred to Google. Or that your prompt
| engineering is beyond Google? (In reality they're waiting for
| their own model, or trying to negotiate a large-scale deal as
| Microsoft did.)
|
| "Extend a popular application of your choice to support GPT3" is
| likely already on curriculum everywhere for people learning to
| code.
|
| There's no value-add being one of 1,000 people implementing the
| most-obvious use case when an API gets released to the world at
| the exact same time.
|
| And clearly in 2 years time this is wrapped directly by Google &
| provided by OpenAI directly & also will be a very popular
| beginner code tutorial project.
| bluelightning2k wrote:
| Aha... my bad you're a marketplace for human-editors not yet
| another GPT3 wrapper. I just re-read it.
|
| I was overly pattern matching because of the eye-rolling number
| of GPT3 hello-world companies.
|
| I'll leave my comment up for the MANY people who will pattern-
| match the same way.
| stewfortier wrote:
| Yep, you got it. This is one key reason we're focused on a
| human editing / collaboration experience. It seems likely
| that the GPT-3 space will get commoditized fairly quickly and
| the type of support we provide isn't within striking distance
| of the machines... yet ;)
| lukeahn wrote:
| What kind of technologies will help your business in the
| long run if it is currently human editor marketplace? I am
| looking for some technical entry barriers against potential
| competitors.
| stewfortier wrote:
| Long-term, I think our moat has more to do with network
| effects and less to do with technical barriers to entry.
| I think our success hinges more on our ability to create
| incentives that attract & retain the highest-quality
| contributors so that we reliably create an incomparable
| experience for writers.
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