0:03
The speakers are on the bottom here. Cool. I think so. Yeah. Hi everyone.
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0:06
Uh my name is Eric Mejicovsky.
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Uh whoops, I just got a gift from Zoom.
0:13
Um My name is Eric Mejicovsky.
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I'm a partner here at Y Combinator and I'm the course facilitator for Startup School.
0:20
Welcome to a new experiment that we're going to try to do.
0:22
We're going to do live office hours with uh as many companies as we can from Startup School in the next hour.
0:28
Um at YC, one of the things that uh that we do with our companies is usually have around 10 to 15 minutes every week or two where we talk through problems that founders are having um and try to apply the kind of common YC wisdom to the specific problem that they may be encountering.
0:46
So, without any further ado, there are a couple people on this uh on this call and we're just going to start doing office hours.
0:53
So, the first person will be uh JC from Boxscore. Let's let him in. Hey, JC. Can you hear me? JC? Hello. Okay. Maybe he's not there.
1:12
Let me figure out how to remove him.
1:23
We will move on to the next person. Next is QuorCare. Nope. Helen. Helen, you're up next. Hi. Helen. Hey, Eric. How are you? It's great to meet you. You too.
1:44
Thank you so much for this time. I appreciate it. Let's dive right in.
1:48
Why don't you start by telling me what you're working on? Um sure. Sure, Eric. And thanks for asking.
1:54
Um well, Jovial actually rescues software developers from pointless sales calls by vetting potential projects and clients.
2:05
Okay, let me try to parse that and make sure I understand.
2:08
So, you offer leads to sales people?
2:15
Yes, we go a little bit deeper than that.
2:16
Um, pretty much at the end of the day, we're providing like their own business development rep.
2:23
You know, our sales development rep, depending on what So, it's like an it's like a contractor outsourced sales person?
2:28
Like, I'm an engineer, I built some software, I don't really want to do the sales myself, so I hire you to to do the sales, or hire your company?
2:37
Um, yes, somewhat like that.
2:37
Um, pretty much um, I help software development consultants.
2:41
So, they're already in the whole business on the chip roll.
2:44
So, they code too, but they want to really um, be more efficient with their time.
2:51
So, they're they use Jovial to kind of like start those conversations with potential companies and projects, um, and just really qualify um, qualify both the the customer and the actual And would you say that would you say that your service is your product a service, or is it software, or like what It's both. It's going to be both.
3:11
So, it will be a a SaaS tool that kind of help them um, streamline their own sales themselves when they don't need us um, okay.
3:22
to be in a conversation, but also it's a service um, as a add-on.
3:24
So, Cool, I think I get it.
3:29
Um, what stage are you what stage are you at right now? We're I'm sorry.
3:33
What what stage is the company at?
3:33
Do you have you launched your product?
3:35
Do you have any customers? Yes, we launched.
3:37
Um, we have we have uh, we have some customers that we actually um, active paying customers in a pilot.
3:42
So, we um, testing out some theories, testing out some processes, selling, but also learning along the way, and improving along the way. so Cool. Yes.
3:53
No one built yet, so I'm just fingers crossed. How can I help? What's on your mind? Sure.
4:01
Um yeah, I I was curious to hear as far as with Purple, I was wondering maybe you could provide any insight and advice on managing and also balancing customer expectations, order fulfillment, and also without skipping a beat, let's say.
4:20
So, I'm trying to do those I really So, it's like how to how to how to how to organize your time, how to how to um plan what you work on next, right?
4:30
Um yes, in a way, but also just really because I'm in a pilot, so I have to manage those customer expectations and and make sure I deliver on the value prop, right, at the end of the day. Absolutely.
4:42
Um but at the same time, I also need to continue sales, you know, I need to nurture those incoming leads.
4:50
So, So, and also just just just delivering on the value prop.
4:53
That's the order fulfillment, you know, so So, my general recommendation, like companies like this is a totally normal problem.
5:00
Like as a founder, are you are you a sole founder or do you have other people at the Yeah, so you're doing everything.
5:04
You're like coding, you're building the site, you're doing the sales, you're helping the customer.
5:10
Um the heuristic that I use generally is to try to get as many sales as possible, to get as many customers who you who are paying money in exchange for using your product or service.
5:23
And then switch into how do I fulfill this?
5:26
Um the the error here usually is to try to build too much process and too much um product before you actually have a customer who's paying to use it.
5:36
And so, if you if you set your first goal to be get a paying customer for something, and then you flip into uh okay, now that I have this customer, how do I make them as happy as possible?
5:50
How do I, you know, build the service How do How do I deliver the service to them so they're happy?
5:53
How do I make sure that they tell their friends?
5:54
So, as long as you're doing that, as long as you're bringing in a paying customer first, you always will be working on the right thing because generally the customer knows what they want.
6:04
You can assume that they're going to lead you in a direction where other customers are as well. Yeah. Okay.
6:12
So, so how how Let me ask you this.
6:14
How are you going to get When are you going to get your first customer? Paying customer.
6:18
I do have my first customer.
6:18
I have paying customers already. Oh, you do?
6:21
Sorry, I misunderstood it. Okay. Yeah.
6:23
So, I do have I have a pilot and they're only they are all paying customers. Okay.
6:29
So, that's where I'm So, how much How much does each customer pay you?
6:32
Is it a per Is it a monthly fee or a per per transaction?
6:36
did a one-time fee just for the pilot. Okay.
6:39
Um so, that way I could work out some kinks and see what's working what doesn't work kind of thing. And um so, yes. Okay.
6:48
So, what are my What are my recommendation One of my recommendations here is to be as transparent as possible with those first customers on what success looks like during the pilot.
7:01
Do you have some metrics that the customer has outlined to say, you know, here's what a really good successful pilot will look like? Okay.
7:11
Um is that a question or is that what you're saying? A question. Yeah, for you.
7:13
Like, have you have you talked about that with your customers?
7:18
Um so, we regarding we had to we we have to find the the metrics of success kind of thing.
7:24
So, it was more of like we made an agreement.
7:28
We defined our our metrics and it was for me to go out and do that, right? Okay.
7:34
So, um but I as I I as I proceed with that, I started seeing that certain expectations they had wasn't really in reality. It wasn't matching up. So, okay.
7:50
So, I would bring that up with the customers soon to make sure that they can that they can expect kind of the reality that's going to happen that you're going to deliver for them.
8:01
Because the next step after that is once you're aligned, once once their expectations and your ability to deliver are aligned, you want to work through that pilot as quickly as possible so that they turn like they're happy like presumably if their expectations are close or exceeded by what you're delivering, they're going to be happy, right?
8:20
And then you say, "You're happy.
8:23
We hit all of these things that you really that you really expected of this pilot.
8:28
Now we got to flip this over into a paid monthly recurring service."
8:32
Because that's your goal, right?
8:34
You don't want to have just a bunch of pilots.
8:36
You want to have like all these customers that just every month they pay you, you know, or they yeah. Cool.
8:47
And and what One of the tricks that that I've seen some companies use is they they actually put that language, the success criterion, in the pilot contract so that it's very clear on both sides what success looks like.
9:01
And then when you hit those metrics, when you dazzle them with, you know, how good your product is, it's a very easy conversation to say like, "Hey, remember, you know, we talked about what success looks like and I blew it away.
9:14
So, it makes sense that we should do this as a full-time like contract."
9:19
And they're like, "Sure, yeah, okay. Like let's do that. Everything's working.
9:22
Like let's let's sign the full contract." Got you. Got you. Okay, yes. I think you're right.
9:28
I definitely needed to communicate a little bit more. Yeah. So, yes. Yes.
9:34
What's your goal for the next 2 weeks?
9:37
Um so the next 2 weeks is um is really to um hopefully for the the the customers I have in my pallet to close or be uh close with those um potential um projects or at least be a little bit farther along in the discussion.
9:59
How many How many people do you want to close in the next 2 weeks?
10:04
Um so if I can um It's it's I have two that I really focus on that I really want them to close. Well, let's get two.
10:15
Okay, in 2 weeks I'll email you or you'll email email me and let's hear let's hear about those two new deals. Okay. All right.
10:24
Helen Helen, thanks thanks very much.
10:25
I'm really glad to get the chance to chat with you. Oh, thank you, Eric.
10:29
You have a beautiful day. You too. Okay.
10:36
Thank you very much, Helen. Um Next up is Cogni. Let's look for Draw.
10:48
Any ideas which one Draw is? Oh, there we go. Hello. Oops.
11:09
I think you've got the YouTube on, Draw.
11:11
Do you mind uh closing that? Oh, yeah. Okay. Cool. Hi. Welcome. how are you?
11:19
It's great to great to meet you. Uh let's jump right in.
11:21
Why don't you tell me what's the name of your company and what is your one-liner? What are you working on?
11:27
Yeah, my company is Cogni.
11:27
We have a tool for cognitive psychology.
11:32
It connects It not connects uh patients with their therapists using a technique called the dysfunctional thought records where the patients record their emotions and their thoughts.
11:45
And then their therapists can understand the pattern of their thoughts and deal with this during the sessions in question. Okay.
11:55
So, that was a that was quite a long long one, Lena.
11:59
I'm going to try my best to kind of repeat back to you the the key things that I heard.
12:05
And it's not meant to be like an evaluation of your company.
12:06
This is just like a good chance for like someone else who just heard the pitch to just kind of repeat back to you what I think I heard.
12:13
So, I heard that it's an app that connects patients to therapists.
12:21
Sounds like it's also got some journaling component or logging that they then may use during their sessions that they have. That's right. Is that it? Okay, cool.
12:30
Um what I was missing from this usually during that kind of explanation is like what is the problem and how do you solve it?
12:41
So, you were very descriptive.
12:43
Like I certainly was able to tell you what the app what the app kind of does.
12:49
But I didn't get a sense like is this for the therapist or is this for the patient? Tell me who it's for. It's for It's for both.
12:58
The thing is that cognitive therapists already use during the beginning of their treatments a technique called the dysfunctional thought records.
13:07
This is done usually in paper.
13:11
We made the tool for digitalize this technique. Okay.
13:14
So, you're taking something that therapists and patients already do and you're making it digital. Okay. Cool.
13:21
What what stage is your company at right now?
13:25
We launched 5 years ago as a side project and we grew organically with a free version up to 150,000 sign-ups.
13:37
And we have around 7,000 new sign-ups every month. Okay.
13:41
So, sign-ups, whenever I hear the word sign-ups, it's not usually a good sign because sign-up like nobody makes money from sign-ups.
13:49
They make money from active users.
13:51
So, how many how many active users do you have on the on the on the app?
13:56
what 2 years ago we launched uh a premium version of a dashboard for the therapist where they can track the thoughts of their patients.
14:06
And we got around 200 subscriptions monthly subscription from therapists and we have 45 active subscribers today. Okay.
14:19
But this What about on the What about on the free app?
14:21
How many like how many DAUs or MAUs do you have on the free app?
14:26
We have about 20% of our user base active in the month. How many people is that? It's about 30,000. Okay. So, that's pretty cool.
14:36
The reason why I wanted to get specific about that is often times like as I'm hearing about as I'm hearing from a new company, I kind of want to get a sense for what stage and what kind of scale they're working with because the advice that I would give will kind of be tuned specifically for where you're at.
14:53
So, it sounds like you've got 30,000 MAUs on this app but then you also have a second app which is the one that you're starting to charge a subscription for. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. Yes.
15:05
There There is one app for the end users and there is one for the therapist.
15:11
And they're charging the therapist. Oh, I get it.
15:12
So, the therapist uses the app and then it talks or it connects to the app that the the patient is using on their phone.
15:21
a dashboard just they can manage their patients in this dashboard. Got it. Cool. I'm on board.
15:26
Uh or how much how much do you charge per month the therapist?
15:31
Well, it's $13 per month. Cool. Currently.
15:35
And we are trying to change the monthly subscription to an annual subscription.
15:41
We started to do this like 2 to 3 weeks ago.
15:45
Okay, for new subscribers or for people who've already subscribed?
15:49
We got one new subscriber annually and we're trying to convert our current users into annual paying users. Okay. How can I help? What's on your mind?
16:01
So, what we did so far was all basically uh this customers we got were all organic.
16:09
Uh we never tried to actively sell anything.
16:11
We just uh we start to focus full-time in the project some months ago.
16:19
And I don't know exactly how all this attention that we have with the app and convert them into paying users.
16:28
So, you you just to make sure I understand, you're trying to think how can I take the large number of free users you have on your plan and start to begin the conversion to paid. Is that Okay.
16:39
So, uh you it's a good problem to have.
16:43
It sounds like, you know, many people would love to have 30,000 MAUs.
16:47
So, congratulations on getting it to the spot that you're in.
16:51
Um I think one of the things Do you have Do you have analytics like Mixpanel or Amplitude set up in your app?
17:01
We have Google Analytics.
17:01
So, but I I never paid attention.
17:06
Yeah, so I would begin to make sure that you've put the correct instrumentation and analytics into the app.
17:11
Uh so, you have an idea of how the users are using the app.
17:17
One of the things that I would look for is how many people, based on the usage that they have, like the number of notes that they take or the pattern, maybe they take notes every week or every 2 weeks, um I would start to begin to see how many of the people already have therapists.
17:34
How many are using it as if they have a therapist already? 20% 20 Sorry?
17:40
30 20% 20% How do you How do you know that?
17:44
We looked into the database.
17:47
Uh we have someone who have a therapist that Uh we ask for the email of the therapist. Uh then we can see Okay.
17:59
How many emails of therapists do you have collec- Have you collected?
18:03
30,000 30,000 These are from patients whose Some from patients and some are therapists that sign up for the app and then we ask them uh if they are end users or therapists or psychiatrists or students of psychology.
18:20
We do We make this segmentation with the sign Got it.
18:24
So, have you begun to start eat Now that you've launched the subscription and you have 200 people or something on the subscription, have you begun to contact the people on that list?
18:34
Yes, but uh before we are not asking them for their uh phone numbers.
18:41
So, we had to contact them through email and ask for their phone numbers Yeah.
18:46
uh to be able to contact them.
18:48
And we have like the phones of maybe half of them.
18:51
How many email How many emails have you sent out?
18:56
So, we tried 2 weeks ago to launch an email marketing campaign.
19:01
Uh we had a really bad conversion rate.
19:04
Yeah, I was going to ask what What's the conversion rate right now?
19:08
We sent like about 7 17,000 emails and maybe 500 only opened daily.
19:14
So, we are thinking that there's something wrong with the configuration or Yes.
19:21
So, are you like I would begin to start trying personal reach outs to these like there There's basically two two two two kind of ways to talk to customers.
19:34
One is talking to them at scale, like talking to 15,000 people at once.
19:38
And then the other way is to talk to them almost by hand.
19:45
And this means like YC's always talks about this thing doing things that don't scale.
19:50
And the reason why we talk about it all so often is it's like a secret advantage that founders that startup founders have that big companies just couldn't have because we're startup founders we're willing to pick up the phone to make a $13 per month sale.
20:07
Now, it doesn't make sense to do that at at scale when you're when you have tens and hundreds of thousands of customers.
20:13
But when you have 20 or 30 or 200 customers, you can pick up the phone and sometimes close a deal in you know, a 10-minute call.
20:20
So, have you begun trying that?
20:23
You have the phone numbers.
20:25
Have you have you started phoning some of these customers? Yeah, we started.
20:29
And what's your conversion rate when you when you talk to someone on the phone?
20:33
Yeah, we we're trying first to convert them into annual subscribers.
20:37
No, I don't mean people who are already subscribers.
20:38
I mean like someone that you just phoned up and The new ones we we didn't try yet. Okay.
20:44
So, that's what my recommendation would be. You have phone numbers.
20:46
I'm sure you have a couple hundred phone numbers.
20:49
I would try to start with the segment of the popula- the segment of therapists that already have clients who are using the app.
20:56
You mentioned that you're collecting the information from some of the clients to say here's what my psychiatrist or or therapist's phone number or emails I would start by contacting those people and I would say, "Hey, we've already seen that there are several of your patients who are using our free app.
21:12
Did you know that they're using it?"
21:15
You can ask them like maybe they didn't know, maybe they didn't.
21:18
Then you could walk them through and explain all of the benefits that that therapist would get if they just paid $13 to kind of aggregate the their their clients that are already using the app. Okay. Sounds like a plan. Yeah.
21:34
I mean, again, a lot of these things are just very like you can you can hopefully do this today.
21:41
Like you can I don't know what time zone you're in, but it looks like there's still light outside. Uh It's 4:30 p. m. in Brazil. Yeah, you got time.
21:47
So, you can make a couple calls and see if like what what I would start doing on these calls is taking notes and saying, "What are the words what are the sentences that I use that actually land that that that that that the other person that that resonate with the person that I'm talking to?"
22:08
And then every call that I do, I improve my pitch because I'm getting feedback kind of in real time.
22:15
Like I can talk to the person, I can ask him like, "Does that make sense?
22:17
Is that a feature that you would use? Is this a benefit?"
22:20
And then you like every call, you just get better and better.
22:22
And by the 10th or 20th or 30th or 100th call, you're like really good because you've done this 100 times.
22:30
And at that point, you can actually use the use the data that you've collected during these one-on-one calls to then improve your emails.
22:39
So, like right now, you don't get any feedback.
22:42
500 people open the email, 17,000 people don't.
22:48
Once you do a couple of these phone calls, you'll get the feedback that you need to actually make the emails better. Mhm. Perfect.
22:57
What's your What's What's your goal for the next 2 weeks?
22:58
What do you want to accomplish in 2 weeks?
23:01
the the goal that I have and that I have in startup school is to have annual subscription ARR.
23:08
How many How many annual subscriptions do you want to sell in the next 2 weeks? Two. We are talking Two? No.
23:14
I think you can sell more than that.
23:17
Yeah, how many do you think?
23:18
You have hundreds of phone numbers. Yeah, maybe four. Four?
23:24
If I have to do one by one How many did you sell in the last 2 weeks? Uh I think it was two. Okay.
23:30
Well, you got to sell more than you did in the last 2 weeks. Let's say 10. Okay. Can you do 10?
23:37
Yeah, in the next two, okay. In the next 2 weeks? Okay. Okay.
23:40
Send me Send me a tweet when you uh when you hit 10. Okay, perfect. Cool. Thanks very much. Good to meet you. Nice to meet you. Okay.
23:53
Next up is Let's look for Philip from Hotspot.
24:03
There's a company named Meme Party. Okay, we'll get to that. Philip. Okay. Philip. Can you hear me?
24:13
Hey, yes, I can hear you. Hi. Great to meet you.
24:15
Let's uh Nice to meet you as well. Let's dive in.
24:20
What's your What's the name of your company and what are you working on?
24:24
Yeah, so we are a Hotspot and we help hotels promote their business by matching them with vetted travel influencers. Okay.
24:34
Match hotels with vetted travel influencers. Yeah. Okay.
24:39
So, so it's a it's go deeper into the explanation? No, no, no. I got it.
24:43
You're an influencer marketplace for travel for like influencers who want to stay at hotels. Okay.
24:52
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, basically. Cool.
24:54
And I think I can visualize that.
24:54
Like hotels go on, they say, "Hey, we're this like beautiful hotel in Portugal.
24:59
Who wants to come stay for like half off or something?" Yeah, indeed.
25:05
Well, there are different types of collaborations.
25:08
You know, it can start with a barter deal, which is a complimentary stay, or it can be indeed a media discount, as you mentioned.
25:16
What some paid collaborations as well, of course, with more with bigger What what stage are you at?
25:23
Yeah, so we have launched in summer of last year.
25:28
And then we started with a a list of hotels and travel influencers that we kind of seeded our MVP.
25:37
The hotels were for free in order to test our product and to, you know, get feedback of what we built.
25:45
And since then, we now have about 2,500 travel influencers on our platform. That's awesome.
25:53
About 200 hotels, and out of them 20 or 25 at the moment are paying customers.
25:59
And how do you make money?
26:01
Yeah, so we make money by selling a monthly or yearly subscription to the hotels to have access to the platform.
26:08
And that's actually the 100% of our revenue comes from that at the moment.
26:12
So you don't you don't you don't take a you don't take a percentage of the deal. No, not at the moment. Not at the moment.
26:18
Because also most of the the collaboration actually that happened are barter deals.
26:21
So there's no payment involved.
26:23
There's not really a lot of opportunities at the moment for us to make money via that channel.
26:28
But I assume down the way as the community grows, there'll be more of those opportunities as well. Okay. How can I help? What's on your mind?
26:40
Yeah, so um my question was actually because we are focused right now on hotels, and there is quite a lot of interest, and we do have some leads as well in other companies in the travel sector such as, you know, airlines, tourism boards.
26:56
Uh it can be also like, you know, travel products or accessories.
27:00
Um And we do have some leads, but the question now is do we start chasing those opportunities already while we don't really have product market fit yet, or do we focus on hotels and try to get that right?
27:15
Well, let me let let's try to see if you have product market fit.
27:18
market fit and then expand So, what what is your growth like what is your primary metric that you're tracking right now? Is it revenue? Yeah. Uh yeah, indeed. Okay.
27:27
How fast is your revenue growing monthly month over month?
27:30
Um it it's kind of a small amount at the moment, so it's varies a lot, but I would say it's about 5 to 10%, which is not Okay. amazing.
27:40
Have you Have you tried making your weekly goal to grow revenue in one specific domain?
27:49
Um you mean in type of hotels or Yeah, type of hotels, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
27:55
We We do see that actually most of the hotels right now that, you know, sign up for our platform and and use it.
28:01
It's also, I think, due to our current sales strategy, which is cold outreach.
28:07
Um It's mostly smaller properties that sign up, and those are also properties that don't necessarily have any access to travel influencers.
28:16
Yeah, because they just And you're talking about like Is this like mid boutique level kind of not Yeah, yeah, yeah.
28:22
It's basically uh you know, owner owns, so it's not like huge organization behind it.
28:27
Um most of the times, you know, even if you email the info@ address, you're going to get the the owner of the place.
28:35
And do you have like do you do you offer them a free trial?
28:37
How do they know that this is going to work for them?
28:40
How do you build trust with them? offer a free trial.
28:41
We offer a free trial, and right now it's a 14-days a free trial with no strings attached, and afterwards, if they find value, if they got some connections and collaboration requests, they can choose to to sign up.
28:54
And do you work Do you work your ass off to make sure that they get one during that 14-day period?
28:59
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
28:59
We of course try to promote it once they join to our community of travel Because you can you can basically make sure that they're happy.
29:09
Like you can you know, you can engineer it, so it's not like random.
29:14
You like poke the influencer until they check out that new hotel, right?
29:20
try, we try, but of course there is also value and not only like, you know, quantity, but the the idea here is also to to have high-quality Well, what if becomes What if What if you So, what I'm thinking of is a segmentation strategy here that honestly, like not all hotels are good for you. Right?
29:41
There's a kind of crappy hotels.
29:44
Like you want to get the right hotel that's going to be a the right match for your influencers.
29:49
And when you find that hotel There's there's a great blog post by the founder of Superhuman.
29:57
Um You might have read it. Yeah, I've read it.
30:00
And it talks a lot about like diving deep into segmentation and understanding that your product is not meant for everybody.
30:06
Not everyone can get, you know, a great benefit.
30:08
So, I would I would think I would think hard about like setting up a strategy to run experiments on a 2-week basis that allow you to say, I think that like maybe a hypothesis you'll test is, I think that Latin American like how we're really doing well in Latin America, and it's really doing well with owner-operated places that are at um beaches that are and less than an hour away from airports, etc. , etc.
30:35
, that have like one-stop flights to to the US, etc.
30:40
And then you And then you say like, "Can I test the hypothesis that conversion rates in my calls will be higher for this group of customers?"
30:49
And then once I close the Once I close the customer to a to the 2-week trial, I actually like I know that this is a good match with influencers as well.
30:57
And then could you like create a list of like influencers that you have on WhatsApp?
31:04
And you're just like, "Hey, this this hot new property came up.
31:06
Like you got to check this out.
31:08
Like it's guaranteed to be a great ride.
31:09
Like they're going to hook you up."
31:11
Um and then you just kind of like send the right people, almost like manually running the marketplace for a while.
31:19
We We do have a bit of an idea of as you mentioned like what is like this kind of ideal segment.
31:23
Uh like for example, we have quite a lot of properties from Indonesia and especially like Bali.
31:29
Or like South Africa is quite to go to Bali. That would be amazing.
31:34
There's also like a decrease in value that the hotel can get as more properties from the same region join.
31:41
So I don't necessarily mean the same region.
31:43
I meant the same like type.
31:46
Because here's what Here's what my next recommendation would be.
31:47
Once you've identified that segment, I would spend 2 weeks going hard.
31:53
And when I mean hard, I mean like how many calls did you make last week? Outbound.
32:01
now the strategy is cold outreach email and once people show interest, we follow up with the email and stuff like that.
32:07
But I would say about five, I think. Okay.
32:10
Every hotel has a phone number.
32:13
That's the beauty of a hotel.
32:14
You could be phoning up people.
32:14
Like the I talked about this just a second on the last on the last office hour I did.
32:20
Uh the beauty of doing a phone call over email is that you get real-time feedback how your words and messaging are landing.
32:28
Now, it's a bit tough in like a foreign language.
32:30
Like you I don't know how good your Indonesian is.
32:32
Um but getting onto the getting onto a call or like you could add them on WhatsApp.
32:38
You could do a video call.
32:40
Like there's a lot of things that you could text them.
32:44
All I'm trying to do is like encourage the amount of outreach like to boost that number.
32:48
Like you did five, I want to see like 100. All right.
32:53
And I think with that you'll like you run the experiment you say my hypothesis is there's this small segment that's going to be really like really good for me.
33:02
And then you create a spreadsheet with like 100 properties.
33:06
And you phone them all up.
33:06
And then you test your hypothesis because maybe you're wrong.
33:11
Maybe maybe like none of these are interested and like you strike out 20 for 20 calls.
33:15
Like people just constantly hang up.
33:18
At least you know the answer.
33:20
Like you will know the answer after 20 calls.
33:22
It's either going to be going really good or you got to find a new market because that's that's the trick. That closes the loop.
33:28
So you have the hypothesis, you test the hypothesis, and then you plug that back into your um into your process and you say, "Okay, next week this went great. I talked to 20 people.
33:39
15 of them signed up for the for the free 22-week period.
33:45
Then I like I I got all these influencers on.
33:46
They're having a great time.
33:48
And then the next week you're like, "Okay, I'm going to do 200 calls."
33:54
And see if the same conversion rate holds. Yeah. All right. Okay.
34:00
What what's what's the hypothesis on which segment you're going to go after?
34:04
So like is it Southeast Asian?
34:07
Um yeah, I think definitely that's a a region of interest.
34:10
As I mentioned South Africa.
34:12
And I I think it is indeed like uh it's mostly smaller properties that don't necessarily also have like the big budgets to to hire like a full-scale PR company that manages that for And you could be their first like their first spend. Yeah, indeed. Indeed.
34:29
Do they spend on Facebook already? Hotels?
34:33
Yeah, the the ones that you're going after.
34:35
Yes, some of them we've seen it but not a lot.
34:38
I think Yeah, but pretty much the biggest channel or sales marketing channel for most of the hotels is just booking. com and or Airbnb.
34:48
You could you could take a lot of spend if you start bringing in in more traffic for them. That's great. Yeah. Cool.
34:54
Well, send me a send me a tweet in like 2 weeks with how many calls you did and how many converted. Sounds good. We'll do it. Great. Thanks very much. Thanks for your time. No worries. Good to meet you. Okay.
35:09
We're going to look for Joan from Clinic Clinic Price Check.
35:18
Joan, hopefully has a phone number. Joan C Rogrid.
35:25
I think I saw that, yeah. JCR JC No. I don't think it's JK. Okay.
35:38
Next up is Diana Dreamlist. Diana? There we go. Hi, Diana. Can you hear me? Uh hi, this is Diana. Hi.
35:54
Hi, this is Diana with Dreamlist. Great to meet you.
35:58
Um let's let's in the feed with the other one. Um let's dive right in.
36:01
Um why don't you tell me what's the name of your company and what are you working on? So, I'm Diana Zink.
36:07
Um Dreamlist is an online wish list and registry for families that lets them add not just any item from the web but also larger things they're pursuing from classes to bigger purchases um to a bigger pursuit.
36:19
And on special occasions, friends and family could put small amounts towards their bigger dreams instead of wondering what trinket to get.
36:28
So, it's like a wedding registry, but for like actually useful things.
36:31
It's more like collaborative shopping, actually. Okay.
36:34
So, it it started at the the beachhead was the wish list and registry, but we're seeing more and more very interesting use cases.
36:41
Um and it was turned into a collaborative app where multiple people can manage a list.
36:45
So, parents can manage a list for a child uh or you could see um we're seeing teams manage shopping lists for entire companies.
36:53
And more importantly, we're seeing foundations who are now shopping uh for special for for um direct giving campaigns for families that have lost their house in a fire or Christmas So, kind of like a a we a YouCaring or a a WeCaring type of No, direct giving.
37:11
So, we're not crowdfunding. No, I understand.
37:14
I was just like the same kind of use case like you need to rebuild.
37:19
Okay, it's more like uh uh there's this a foundation called the Sparkle Foundation that funds uh single moms for buys Christmas for single moms in the Bay Area.
37:27
Um they are nominated by the community.
37:29
So, they nominated 70 families last year. Before that, it was 50. Before that, it was 30.
37:35
Okay, we're getting we're getting a bit bit deep into that one.
37:37
Why don't why don't I ask um what stage what stage are you at with the company? Have you launched?
37:42
Do you have It launched with about 17,000 users. Uh we're making money.
37:48
What's the business model?
37:48
How do how do you make money? That's the fun part.
37:50
So, uh right now we're using affiliate as our revenue model.
37:54
So, the whole purpose behind Gimme List is I'm a parent.
37:56
I created after I became a mom.
37:58
Uh and I did it because um advertising is the main consumer business model of today. Yeah.
38:06
The problem is it's very corrosive and it's really bad uh for for kids.
38:10
Um so, I wanted to build a company that can supplement can replace advertising with a better more aligned with users business model uh that they can by the time they get to that stage, they can use it as online community instead of Okay.
38:24
This is all This is all like really interesting, but it's a lot of information and I'm like I'm I'm just just reacting like I'm trying my best to kind of like put it all together and while like I really appreciate that like it's clear that you thought so much about it, it's a little bit just just telling you kind of frankly it's like it's a bit overwhelming as someone hearing it for the first time.
38:44
Like I'm trying to think is this an app that I should like consider using with me and my friends or is this like something for foundations and I should introduce you to like other people.
38:53
So just just FYI like my my initial reaction is like try to keep it a little bit more focused especially if you're talking to someone who's like never heard about this, you know, at all and I'm just like really quickly trying to come up to speed.
39:09
So let me let me ask you.
39:09
So is is it like a website?
39:12
Could I Could I go to it? Okay. I will. dreamlist. com Okay.
39:22
Meaningful wish list and register achieve achieve your dreams. Okay. Funded dreams.
39:30
Um I don't know if you can see it, but I'm just browsing through your website right now.
39:36
I I don't track my users the way No no, I mean I'm I meant like on on through the Zoom call. I'm sorry.
39:42
I I don't know if you can see it.
39:45
So my initial thought from looking at your web page is that this is for individuals who just want to do it um uh for themselves like for the birthday, Christmas, wedding, baby shower.
40:04
That's the that's the that's the that's our So So you're saying you're getting into like how you make money.
40:09
Do you make money from if I started a wish list?
40:11
How How would you make money?
40:14
So uh we are aligned directly with our users.
40:17
We don't do advertising like every other registry registry. We're not a store.
40:22
So, you take the affiliate fee.
40:23
Anytime you add an item, uh, if the item is added from an affiliated retailer like Amazon or Target or Walmart, Okay.
40:30
whenever someone buys you the item, we make a small affiliate sale uh, from the bigger retailer. Okay.
40:38
We don't dictate which items are bought.
40:40
We don't influence your purchasing choices.
40:41
Uh, we um, have retailers in Cool. So, what's the problem?
40:46
What are you What are you working on?
40:47
What's What's tough So, there's a number different things.
40:51
Uh, first one is consumer startup like ours, um, who want to not do advertising, um, what would you recommend uh, for them?
41:02
Have you, um, uh, seen successful alternative business models?
41:06
Uh, is affiliate Affiliate seems to be kind of a uh, uh, subject of uh, ridicule by some investors.
41:13
Maybe it's not been scalable in the past.
41:16
Honestly, like as an investor, I would say screw investors.
41:23
You should be building your company for, you know, to build a fantastic company.
41:27
Like that's the That's the real goal here. And I love your vision.
41:29
Like I love the mission that you're trying to pursue, um, especially like like the the intention.
41:34
So, I wouldn't like worry about what investors think.
41:38
I would worry, are you building something that your customers want? And I think I I I agree.
41:43
Like there's a great There's a great website called Wirecutter which has a very similar model.
41:47
They make 5% of, you know, the recommendation.
41:49
And I think it's it's true.
41:51
Like it aligns your It aligns your goals very clearly with the user. So, that's great.
41:55
How much How much money are you making?
41:59
Uh, so, it's not a huge amount.
41:59
It's exceptionally uh, varied.
42:01
Um, it's close to $10,000 right now. Okay. Uh, a year. A year. A year. Okay. A year.
42:09
But it's But it varies wildly.
42:11
And it's The first uh it increases every year, obviously.
42:14
So, um do you have a good sense for what a successful Like, for you, success is uh someone comes on, they build a wish list, they get other people to sponsor the wish list, and then they eventually click a link to buy something, right? Mhm. That's a success.
42:32
Have you Have you experimented with like walking backwards through the data to figure out who are the best for you, the people who like who click that link?
42:41
Walking backwards, like can you Can you tell me who are the ones that become perfect users for you and and result in revenue?
42:50
So, uh you you've nailed it on the head. I've dug into the data.
42:53
Uh we obviously have a lot of families.
42:56
Um and our grandparents are actually joining Dreamlist and inviting all of their uh friends and family.
43:02
So, those are our power users.
43:03
And on the Well, well, let me let me let me be very clear.
43:07
So, like what what I'm specifically interested in is not the power users from like just usage.
43:10
I'm talking about like people that produce real revenue for you. Foundations.
43:18
So, of your $10,000, what percentage came from foundations?
43:22
Uh it's uh a little hard to track because we're not getting the money directly from the foundations.
43:26
But, all comes through the affiliate revenue.
43:30
Well, well, can you track backwards?
43:32
Like, you know which You which link was clicked because you get the affiliate Can't you figure out backwards like who which campaign that came from or which which list it came from?
43:40
of it is prob- probably uh a third of it is from foundations.
43:45
So, that's really interesting.
43:45
And like looking at your website, I don't I don't see anything about foundations.
43:51
So, I'm I'm kind of amazed that they're using it.
43:55
finding us entirely organically, too.
43:57
The more interesting question I I I wanted to dig into your specific experience as someone who's manufactured a product and being on the other side of it.
44:04
So, affiliate right now, like you dig into that industry, because of the ad blockers partially, a lot of affiliate networks that are not Amazon have been mis-tracking.
44:12
See, I wish that I get to see who bought what, and I get to see what the affiliate network telling me was bought, and there's a huge discrepancy uh between what Amazon tells me was bought and I get, which is great.
44:23
No, that's that's actually fairly accurate versus any other affiliate network that has a different domain.
44:28
So, cross-domain affiliate does not seem to be working anymore.
44:31
Uh and so, you as a manufacturer of a product, have you used affiliate when you were making a product?
44:38
What margins were you able to give to retailers or to My my Unfortunately, I don't I don't have much personal experience from my companies, but I do have experience from companies that I've worked with.
44:46
Um so, I I see like affiliate as a real business model.
44:53
I think like there have been some companies that have proven to to create like fund uh functional, profitable businesses based off of that.
45:01
But, they really rely on like closing the loop on the data cycle.
45:06
So, understanding um where like eventually like it's kind of like what I was talking about before. Yeah.
45:12
Uh which are the types of lists that result in clickable revenue for you, and then figuring out how do I engineer it so the the front like the front end the the top the top of the funnel is is like more and more of those really profitable projects are coming and starting lists on on Dream List. Yes.
45:31
So, we started to I've actually uh I have a I get an email every single time a user joins, and it shows me their email address.
45:37
And for example, yesterday the YMCA joined, and uh they're trying to do they're going to be doing more.
45:43
So, I reach out directly to the people to the users as soon as I see something interesting uh or in general to to get their input.
45:49
Uh and especially with foundations to get features that they need specifically, and I will build add-ons to those.
45:55
Um I've started to do a lot of SEO on that.
45:58
SEO is kind of our cream of the crop marketing strategy.
46:02
Um but there's a lot of uh the the the the tracking because we're trying to do privacy, we're not sending data to any retailer or we're not sending out data That's okay.
46:13
I mean, but I I would just make sure that you yourself are tracking this because you can't like unfortunately your business cannot be built without data.
46:20
You need to be able to segment and under So, what's interesting is that on your website you don't have a landing page that specifically talks about the benefits for say foundations.
46:31
We We do, but it's at the bottom that I'm Yeah.
46:35
how to run a toy drive Yeah.
46:36
So, I would I would start I see that I see that now and maybe maybe that's like something you're doing for SEO. Um oh cool.
46:43
So, you do have landing pages built here.
46:45
The The The issue that that I see just just pretty briefly is like it's very similar to the other stuff and you have a lot of text here at the bottom of the gift drive page.
46:55
Um Help me visual Like you actually have a lot of text all over your webpage.
47:00
So, I would try to switch to some images or maybe like a flow that says you're a foundation.
47:08
You run a gift drive every fall or every Christmas for kids.
47:12
Here's the three-step process to use Dreamlist to run a to run a gift drive.
47:17
Then I can understand the benefits without having to like read through a pile of text which as a lazy person I will not do always.
47:26
Part of it is Google changed its uh SEO uh It's fine to have the text for SEO, but once I click on it and once I get there, I don't want to read a bunch of text. Does that make sense? Yeah. All right.
47:37
On the inside it's very intuitive.
47:40
Yeah, but but you got to get the person onto the inside. Yeah. Okay. Cool.
47:44
Well, it's great to meet you, Diana.
47:46
Congratulations on the success.
47:47
What's your goal for the next 2 weeks?
47:50
So, we're launching um a bunch of new features.
47:52
Uh better contribution flow, uh a more family connection tools so you can invite What's your What's your revenue goal?
47:59
Or like what's your goal that's closely linked to your revenue?
48:03
So uh baby registry is a very very big category that spends money year round.
48:10
Uh we're going to break into that with SEO and other tactics for revenue.
48:14
your That's how I'm trying to increase the Well, I understand the revenue maybe delayed because it you know once someone So what's your what's your new like how many new baby registries do you want to get in the next 2 weeks?
48:25
Um ideally um What's your goal?
48:29
A bigger a higher percentage of what what what is being created right now.
48:33
I'm looking for a number.
48:33
How many How many registers?
48:36
So I would say uh 10 registers a week. 10 baby registers.
48:40
How many did you get in the last 2 weeks? Um less than that. A lot less? Like zero?
48:46
Well, about two or three. It's really seasonal.
48:47
It very depends, you know.
48:49
Well, babies aren't seasonal, like you said. Exactly. Babies aren't seasonal.
48:51
It's a very competitive space, especially in the baby registry.
48:54
Uh but the problem is the competitors are very commercial and they're usually not in working in the best interest of the of the parents.
48:59
So Yeah, again looking at your website, I don't I don't I don't get that.
49:03
Like I really love your you know your vision and you have this like intense You say this like at the bottom of your webpage it says, "Dreamlist is the first free, privacy-free, ad-free online wish list."
49:15
That's like That's totally cool and it's buried basically in the footer of your website.
49:22
Well, a lot of our visitors are not direct users.
49:24
They're visitors who are visiting wish lists, so they get to see the footer a lot more than they get to see the landing page. I don't believe that.
49:33
The The front page is all about people who sign up, right? Sure.
49:36
And you don't even say your primary feature like above the fold.
49:40
Yeah, I guess we we should put it up.
49:42
I think you should experiment with putting it up there. Yeah. Definitely. I would love more tips.
49:46
Anything 10 10 10 new baby registered in the in the next 2 weeks? Ooh.
49:51
Will you send me a Will you send me a tweet when that, uh, when that comes through? Sure. Okay. You prefer email?
49:57
Tweet, Twitter's a little bit better for this.
49:59
And it keeps you, it keeps you honest.
50:01
Everyone's going to see it. Cool.
50:04
Diana, it's great to meet you. Thanks very much. Thank you very much. Okay. Let's do Burlocks. Burlocks. Bill?
50:22
I think I see you right there. Bill? Can you hear me? Yep. Are you with Burlocks? Yeah. I got the right Bill? Yeah. Cool.
50:34
Well, it's good to meet you. Yeah, me too.
50:37
Do you want to start by telling me, um, what is Burlocks? Yeah. Uh, burlocks.
50:41
com helps you set and hit your goals.
50:44
Uh, we've helped people lose weight, get jobs, and make money to pay rent.
50:49
Wow, that's a lot of different things.
50:52
So, it's like a, a habit, something to help you get better habits? Uh, no, it's not habits.
50:57
It's a framework to help you hit your goals. Okay.
51:03
So, it's a goal-setting website, or is there actually like something that, like I just type my goals in there, or do I, does it help me actually hit them once I type it in? Yeah, sure.
51:12
So, uh, I talk to each user every week to set goals, uh, and, um, make progress.
51:18
And, you know, keep them accountable. It's a big part of it.
51:20
So, it's like a personal trainer to hit the goal. Yeah, yeah.
51:23
Each person works with me to, yeah, set and hit their goals. Yeah. Cool.
51:27
So, that didn't come across completely, like, you spent a lot of the time in your one-liner talking about the types of goals that people can set, when the actual interesting thing is that you're working directly, like, do you, do you just like text them, or message them? I call them. Call them, yeah.
51:43
You're like, you're getting into their life.
51:45
You're helping them change. That's pretty cool.
51:47
What what stage are you at right now?
51:52
Uh so, we have 15 users at 220 MR. Cool. Congratulations.
51:56
That's That's pretty cool.
51:59
And I'm guessing that these users they they're pretty sticky.
52:01
Like, once they Uh yeah, definitely. Yeah.
52:07
Uh they stay So, our product does two things, right?
52:10
I'm one part of the product and our website is another part, but to me they're very sticky to the website.
52:14
They're a little bit less sticky.
52:16
What do you mean by that?
52:19
Uh so, for me they come to the call every week to set goals.
52:21
And I also like text them midweek to check on their progress.
52:26
But, we want to make the website the place where they come to set their goals, track their progress, and you know, do other stuff on the website. Okay.
52:36
To that, they're less sticky. Cool.
52:38
Um So, what what are you working on? What's what's tough?
52:41
What's What can I help with? Yeah.
52:44
So, uh so, for the last 6 months we did things that don't scale.
52:47
So, I would again call each user every week to set goals and make sure that they are accountable to make progress.
52:56
So, again, we we hit 15 users, 220 MR.
53:00
And we figured out we couldn't scale past that, right?
53:01
I couldn't like take on more calls. What do you mean? You don't Did you try?
53:05
Did you take like 16 and it broke?
53:09
Yeah, it was really So, each the average phone call lasts 30 minutes.
53:12
And we set goals we call on Sunday because it's the beginning of the week, new week we set goals for the new week.
53:21
So, that was pretty hectic.
53:23
So, that day Have you tried doing calls on other days besides Sunday?
53:28
Uh yeah, I mean, we've done like Sunday, Monday up to Tuesday.
53:30
By Tuesday, they have to they have to set their goals.
53:34
But, it I mean, we think it should be Sunday because that's like the So, so tell me, like, were you not able to find more customers beyond 15 or when you found the 16th customer, things started to not work.
53:47
Uh I think it was just like for one person for me.
53:48
Uh it was difficult to like manage all of like those calls.
53:53
Have you tried um have you tried hiring someone to help you do the calls?
53:56
Like just a friend to help do calls on the weekend? Yeah. Uh no, we have not.
54:00
Uh but that's one of like that's kind of our question for like how to scale. Yeah.
54:10
Well, the tough part is like thinking about the metric the the economics here.
54:14
You're charging around $20 per month. Yeah.
54:17
And if you do four half hour long calls, that's 2 hours of face time every month.
54:24
And that's if you know, if you pay someone $10 like $10 an hour, that means your company's not making any money. Right. Right.
54:32
So, $10 an hour is not that much.
54:35
So, how are you going to do How are you going to fix this?
54:36
Like this is a pretty major problem. Right.
54:39
So, we uh once we hit that, we tried a few things that didn't work to scale.
54:43
Uh they didn't work, but now we have talked to users.
54:47
We uh got their feedback, and essentially we want to try like two new models.
54:51
Uh one is the coach model, where we would connect the user who has a problem to someone who can help them solve the problem.
54:57
So, someone looking for a job, we would connect them to a job recruiter.
55:01
Uh they would work together, make progress.
55:03
Uh we would take a cut from that.
55:06
Um or two, we would It's called the family and friends model.
55:08
Um so, you know, family and friends are awesome because there is already like a pre-existing Yeah, so you have a network who also want to help you. Right. Right.
55:18
You already know the person.
55:19
You already like uh trust in them.
55:20
Um so, we were thinking we could like leverage that.
55:23
We could like connect them every week, have them talk, uh and then set goals.
55:27
And they come to the website, they enter their goals on the website.
55:31
They track their progress throughout the week.
55:33
They can see each other's progress.
55:34
So, that's a pretty different product.
55:38
It's more like a social goal sharing like keep me accountable, hold me accountable to this.
55:43
Have you launched that yet?
55:45
Uh we're building it out now.
55:47
How long's it going to take to build?
55:50
Well, March 1st we'll launch.
55:52
Okay, that's like Another week. Another week.
55:54
So, are you use like Are you going to market this to the existing customers or are you going to stop doing the manual process and just try to get customers on the new product?
56:05
Yeah, so I will re-engage.
56:05
I'll talk to users again and then we're thinking of running like for a few weeks for 4 weeks and then after that they would So, in that 4 weeks we again would set goals and then after that they would pair with their friend friends and family. Yeah.
56:19
The thing to consider here is that both of those two businesses, the first business which is the manual I'm going to give you a call every week to keep you honest and the software that lets your friends and family participate in your goal setting are very different and I would be wary about like the risk is that if you run both of those businesses uh you may do a bad job at doing both of those.
56:43
Whereas if you just picked one of them and you spent all of your time going crazy hard on just making one of them work, you you might be successful.
56:52
The risk is if you spend half time working on both, it's very hard it's like it's possible that both will not be successful because of that.
57:00
So, you have to make a decision.
57:00
You may have to make a decision pretty pretty soon like do I keep charging people 20 bucks per month and doing the calls on the weekend or do I just say like hey guys now actually it's free or it's like $5 a month but you got to you got to enlist a gang or like a crew that helps you do it. Right. Right.
57:17
We we want to go with the second model with like friends and family. Cool. So, what's the plan?
57:23
How are you going to get a lot of users?
57:25
How are you going to find your first users for this?
57:28
Yeah, so we have users now and then so it's 15 now and then we would pair them.
57:34
They each would find like a friend or a good buddy to do it with.
57:36
Both of them would come in and both of them would be paying, right?
57:39
They pay for the platform. Why would the buddy pay?
57:44
Because they're setting their goals too, right?
57:45
It's a framework for them.
57:46
Oh, that's if they sign up to actually set goals.
57:49
If they're just helping their friend.
57:50
Okay, Right, they both would have to sign up to set goals. Cool.
57:54
Do you have like the first 10 people that you want to send that to? Um yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. Have you talked to them?
58:01
We We Yeah, so we we spent a few these last two weeks like just thinking through the problem just selling the problem down, but yeah, we're building out now and like we are reaching back out to these users.
58:12
But everyone is like it's it's a really like cool product.
58:14
Like it it you know, it it actually like really works well.
58:18
So people are Wait, so you Sorry, you have launched that or you have not launched the the new one?
58:24
months we launched like me and like a couple of my friends were different and then we made a few mistakes and then now we are building up the new product.
58:32
Okay, so you haven't launched it. Okay, cool.
58:33
So what's your goal for the next two weeks?
58:37
Uh we want to launch the new product by March 1st. Cool.
58:41
So and and by launch you mean just like post it on the App Store or actually have users using it?
58:47
Uh no, it just have users using it.
58:49
How many how many users do you want to have?
58:52
Uh so we have uh How many users do we want to have in two weeks? Yes. Let's say like 20 users.
59:01
So it's 15 and then 20 now.
59:05
Yeah, and then But you But are you going to move the old people to the new thing? Like the 15 Yeah, sure. Okay.
59:10
Well, you got to get some new You got to get some new users because now it's much easier to do.
59:13
They don't have to like do the calls.
59:15
They don't have to pay 20 bucks a month.
59:16
Or are they going to pay for it as well?
59:20
I mean so the two people would pay into the platform.
59:25
But they wouldn't Yeah, they wouldn't be talking to me.
59:27
How much are they going to pay?
59:29
We were thinking about seven.
59:29
They were paying for the software. Cool.
59:32
So, you you have 15 customers today.
59:34
You you think you only want to get five new customers? That feels low. Yeah, yeah, sorry.
59:38
So, I mean, ideally it would be 30, right?
59:40
Uh it would totally So, 15 old and 15 new. Okay. Cool.
59:46
Launch the app, 15 new customers. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, awesome. Sounds like a good goal. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, um yeah. Anything else?
59:59
We got a little bit more time, but if there's one last any other questions that I can help with? Yeah, sure.
1:00:04
Um so, the uh the the problem to that it's that it's a little bit like of a high entry to barrier, a high barrier to entry, right?
1:00:13
Where it like we couldn't go to sleep at night and then wake up with like, you know, new users.
1:00:16
Uh someone who has to sign up, they would have to like bring along their friend, and both of them would have to play pay into the platform.
1:00:24
Uh do you have any advice for that?
1:00:26
Like, how to get around that?
1:00:28
How to get So, the biggest thing that you need to consider is like do people will people understand the value that they're getting from from this?
1:00:37
Like, you're only going to you're only going to get people to sign up if they like if they can begin to like think I can visualize myself using this, and I think that uh with my friend's help, I'm going to be able to hit my goal.
1:00:53
The worry that I have is there's a lot of competitors in the space.
1:00:57
Like, this feels like something that I can do using say like social like a a friend group with like 10 people on a Facebook group or a you know, a messenger group.
1:01:07
So, I would I would spend most of my time at the beginning talking directly to people, friends, and family, and people that you know that have problems that they they to hit, and like manually getting them started.
1:01:24
To the point of like driving over to their house, taking their phone out, watching them use the app.
1:01:29
Like I'm talking like literally sitting next to them on the couch.
1:01:32
Like they show you the app, and they're like, "Oh, here's my name." Putting in the thing.
1:01:36
And just like don't don't assume they're going to do it by themselves. Yeah.
1:01:41
Don't assume that people are just going to like you can email them, and they'll magically start using the app.
1:01:44
Like you need to make sure like Makes sense.
1:01:50
You you just because you're just because you're moving to software doesn't mean you can avoid doing things that don't scale.
1:01:55
Like you need to put some of what you learned doing these manual calls every every Sunday to work to kick-start and get the the app kind of going. Right.
1:02:05
So, it would just be like doing things that don't scale, but it's like less.
1:02:09
We just solve like the bottom necks, and then it's like Yeah, like you're going to still need to do things that don't scale to onboard people.
1:02:14
But once they're on the app, that's when it you you know, the design of the app that you made where your friends and family start helping you.
1:02:21
That's when it takes off.
1:02:21
And then eventually, you'll learn how to do the in-person setup.
1:02:25
Maybe you do that over the phone.
1:02:27
And then maybe you have a website that helps people set up automatically, or maybe there's a YouTube video.
1:02:31
But at the beginning, you just got to do it yourself.
1:02:33
There's no way around it. Okay, perfect.
1:02:35
Yeah, everything is so much. Cool.
1:02:38
30 users, launch the app. Yeah, cool. Thanks, man. Good to meet you. Cool.
1:02:51
So, that was a bit of a taste of what it's like to uh to go through office hours, I guess, with a YC partner. Um I hope it was useful.
1:02:58
Um I tried to tried to keep the kind of topic the the the things that I talked about general so that anyone who's in the audience who may have a company that has a similar problem could still take some of that advice and consider applying it to your uh to your startup.
1:03:13
You know, how I kept talking about this 2-week goal thing?
1:03:17
That's because every time we meet with a company that's going through YC, I always ask them, like, "What's your goal for the next 2 weeks?"
1:03:23
So that when I talk to them in 2 weeks, I see did they actually achieve it?
1:03:27
Because even if they didn't achieve it, it's possible it's highly likely that they learned something important about that process, and that for the next 2 weeks, they'll make a new and improved goal. Cool. I hope this worked out.
1:03:39
Uh we could probably do this again next week.
1:03:43
Um I'm sorry I didn't get to every company on the list.
1:03:45
There's also a lot of companies in all of Startup School that might want to do this.
1:03:48
So uh yeah, we'll uh we'll hopefully do this again next week. Thanks very much.