Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

> Festival-goers can just pay for their food direct as well?

In a word? Data. Festivals normally charge vendors a percentage of sales to be at the festival and they need a way to track sales. "Trust me bro" doesn't quite work since restaurants/vendors will lie or shave their sales numbers so they pay out less. One festival told me about a time they had a vendor steal another vendor's tickets they had collected and try to turn them in as their own. I don't think all or even most vendors are dishonest but the ones who are mess it up for everyone. So instead the festival requires all payment to go through their festival currency (1 to 1 with USD). This gives them realtime data of all vendors and they use that data to decide which vendors to invite back and how much to pay out at the end.

> I see you combine payments, but I'm struggling to see the real-terms benefit over a tap-payment (card, watch or phone)? For a food stand, it would seem, not taking the money directly is a relatively large potential liability. Is the point to enforce a contract between vendors and the festival?

Yes, the point is to enforce the contract between the two. For a lot of festivals the food price is low (think $3-5) since it's meant to be a way to sample a lot of things. The $0.30/transaction (that Stripe charges) eats into total percentage quickly at lower price points. Also this lets all vendors take payment without needing any special equipment (other than their smartphone). Yes, some/most of them have their own POS but this lets the festival and festival-goers keep all their transactions in one place. Also the vendors have access to reports as well.

> How's your liability insurance? Or do the festivals underwrite you for when Amazon/wifi is down and no-one can pay for their meals? (I did see you tout live updates, so transactions must be networked)

All our contracts state that we cannot be held liable for internet issues, we operate completely on LTE/5G and do not provide WiFi at the events (that's a huge PITA if you've ever looked into it) and very often there isn't even an ISP we could work with to provide the internet service so if we are going to rely on LTE anyways might as well have each iPad talk directly to the towers instead of through extra infrastructure we need to manage. So far this has no been an issue but we do a cellular survey of the area when we take on a new festival to check how good the signal is.

> Does the festival pay the food stands [something] up front?

No, in fact often the vendors pay a small amount to reserve the space (mostly to make them have some skin in the game and show up, the number of no-shows always surprises me a bit). Vendors in general are very hard to wrangle. You can send them all the info ahead of time multiple times, in multiple forms, etc and at least 20%+ will show up and have no idea what's going on. Thankfully we can train someone on the system in well under 5min and they rarely need follow-up help.

> Sounds easy to abuse (show someone else's code?), have you had much fraud?

This was a huge concern of mine up front but in practice it's been non-existent or at least non-reported (and trust me, I've dealt with every other type of support ticket), In fact couples/families will often just load 1 account and share the QR between them. We also offer in-system transfers which isn't used as much as I would have expected but people do it that way as well.

> You're in USA? Did you need a banking license?

Yes, thankfully no license needed. I've worked/founded startups that needed Money Transmitter Licenses and I wouldn't touch those businesses with a 10ft pole (so much insurance and each state is done differently, no thanks). No, the money never touches my accounts, I use Stripe Connect so I help the festival get their own account setup and all the money dumps directly into their Stripe account (and then their bank account). I don't handle payouts to vendors because every festival has a different formula so it's easier to just give them all the money, give them the reports, and let them sort it out.

> Small festivals in UK would be 4-8000 people, say; average food spend is probably £20+ per day -- are you carrying a debt to food providers for £500,000+ over a long weekend (consolidating payments)?

I can't share exact numbers but 4-8K customers is the range we see as well but our numbers are low because people share accounts. The average spend is about $30-40 depending on the festival. My answer to the previous question probably answered this for you but no, I don't carry the debt or deal with that, the festival does.

> Do you do non-food transactions too - souvenir stands, onsite shops, [festival] activities? Like some festivals include a number of tokens and you can buy activities with them at the festival.

Sometimes. We have special support for bars (to track stock) and you can put anyone on the system if you want. We have done entry ticketing, event ticketing (bourbon tasting for extra at the festival), and one festival ran all their T-shirts/stickers through the system as well. We support multiple ticket types so you can create a ticket type for anything you want. One festival didn't use the "festival currency" at all and instead wanted everyone to get 15 tasting tickets (we support packages/bundles as well) who bought the "Tasting package" and they redeemed those at the vendors.

I hope that answers some of your questions!

Do you pay for ads, or just make for sale posts? How often do you need to manage the posts? I know there are a ton of people who message sellers and then just waste their time. How do you handle customer support?

Feel free to shoot me a message at jack at minardi dot org