Many entrepreneurs struggle with the very beginning of getting their idea off the ground: perfecting the elevator pitch, finding a co-founder, and getting funded, to name a few. So I created a little viral signup form, for when I have time to build it. (I do have some mockups already, if someone is interested in helping me.)

This was one of my first experiments with Ruby on Rails and Heroku.

1. Save your email in the database
2. Assign you a unique url to use to invite to friends (with one-click links for Facebook and Twitter)
3. Each friend that signs up adds to your referral count
4. The people with higher referral counts get invited first.

Thanks to Forkly.com signup process for the idea. And if you’re wondering, I also used an open source URL shortener developed in Ruby to use with my short domain, ptch.in.

Improvements: I need to process the signup in the background so there isn’t a delay when you click “Sign Up”. Either Delayed Jobs or Resque would work great.

Update: Turns out there is a Railscast on Beta Invitations. Railscasts is a great website, by the way, for leaning Rails.

Update 2: The guy who owns Pitchedin.com contacted me to say he was working on something similar. 

Update 3: Another site has a similar idea; There is a good discussion on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2005034

Update 4: In part due to the previous updates, I’ve decided to put this project on hold–unless someone comes along that wants to help. But I can bet you’ll see a viral signup form for my next project.

Update 5: We solve [problem] by providing [advantage], to help [target] accomplish [target’s goal]. We make money by charging [customers] to get [benefit]. More good info from 500 startups blog.