Michael, we are disrupting the real estate rental market with http://www.gromia.com, a platform that replaces realtors. We have good traction and first revenues in Europe and would consider to test in SF. We aim to be the Airbnb (I know you scouted them in 2009) for mid-long term residential rentals. Would you consider us for an acceleration at YC?
HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris
11–20 of 215 posts
Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris
#12Michael, we are disrupting the real estate rental market with www.gromia.com, a platform that replaces realtors. We have good traction and first revenues in Europe and would consider to test in SF. We aim to be the Airbnb (I know you scouted them in 2009) for mid-long term residential rentals. Would you consider us for an acceleration at YC?
Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris
#13Thanks so much for this. We built Upfit (https://upfit.co), an on-demand fitness streaming app for at home workouts, ran by video creators. We launched on Android & iOS with Upfit and are currently tackling other industries with the same platform. Think about it like a social Netflix for X. We would love to chat!
- Pim from Whitespell (Pim at Whitespell dot com)
Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris
#14Our current focus is mass market, ad-based apps for Android, mostly based around a spreadsheet-like framework. The company is called Unwrapped Apps ( http://www.unwrappedapps.com ) and our latest Android app was launched yesterday ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.unwrappeda... ).
The main thing we'd like to talk about is our prioritization and focus - are we spending our time the best way we can?
Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris
#15I'm a co-founder of a website for Australian high school students. It's a forum-based community where students help each other, share resources, and make friends by bonding over the high school experience—especially for students in their final year as they study for our equivalent of the SAT.
For the past couple of years, we’ve averaged more than 350k users, 500k sessions, and 1.5mil page views per month (Google Analytics). Traffic peaks every year during the final exam period and after the final results are released, when the average session duration sometimes exceeds 8 minutes.
It’s a thriving community. Can it be a thriving business? Some of the big obstacles to using traditional business models are:
(a) students don’t have much money;
(b) students really dislike ads; and
(c) advertisers apparently see better results from programmatic advertising platforms than from direct campaigns with us.
We’ve experimented with things like selling premium notes and resources; partnering with tutoring agencies; and running seminars, all of which appealed to students, but small margins meant that revenue was very modest.
What other ways might there be to tap into the value that is inherent in a community like this without detracting from the user experience? What else should we be thinking about?
Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris
#16Hi. My name is Stephen, and I built CleverTree - an on-demand medical marijuana delivery service based in Sacramento.
I'm curious about your thoughts on fundraising in the marijuana space. I haven't really tried (except applying to YC and 500 Startups last year), because it seems like most big Angels/VCs are still too risk-adverse to the industry. So far we've been running for a years and have built revenues up to around 45-50k a month. I feel like with any other bootstrapped startup this may attract investor interest, but because of the industry in this situation, it would still be very difficult. What are you thoughts of the investor climate with regards to marijuana?
Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris
#17We're building a new kind of bank - Yes, an actual real bank. We're starting with a small acquisition and re-building the underlying tech from the ground up. The ultimate goal is creating a bank consumers would actually love to use. Think of paying your bills via "push" vs "pull" so instead of simply paying someone on autopay and authorizing them to debit your account at their will we'd actually say something like "h…
I think there's a huge need for an actual new bank that is built on technology. It's one of those obvious big need problem.
One of the big problems founders usually run into when doing this, though, is dealing with the mass of regulatory requirements involved. How are you thinking about this? Which of the many different services offered by a bank will you target first? Is it going to be that payments piece you are describing?
Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris
#18Hi Micheal and Aaron
Our startup is called Streamly and is a live video platform for artists to share their live shows with fans round the world. We're in the early stages with a few users.
My question is based around traction channels for my startup. And another question if you have time based around co founders
Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris
#19Michael, we are disrupting the real estate rental market with http://www.gromia.com , a platform that replaces realtors. We have good traction and first revenues in Europe and would consider to test in SF. We aim to be the Airbnb (I know you scouted them in 2009) for mid-long term residential rentals. Would you consider us for an acceleration at YC?
Thanks for the note - can you tell me more about the business? How much traction - which cities in Europe do you support? What is the ideal usecase for your product?
Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris
#20Hi Micheal and Aaron Our startup is called Streamly and is a live video platform for artists to share their live shows with fans round the world. We're in the early stages with a few users. My question is based around traction channels for my startup. And another question if you have time based around co founders
Feel free to ask your questions :)