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HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

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Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#51

Post by dvt »

Hi Michael and Aaron,

I built Game:ref (www.gameref.io) last year. It's a hardware anti-cheat device meant to be used in local and online eSports competitions to make sure that sponsors aren't being swindled out of huge prize pots. Cheating is a multi-million dollar problem[2] and I thought I would do something to fix it.

Even though I was featured in PC Gamer, Polygon, Vice Magazine, Tom's Hardware, and a few others, I failed to get any traction. Since, I've gotten a comfortable and well-paying "real" job, but I still work on the project in my free time. I heard that funding hardware is notoriously difficult. Is this true? If so, is it worth it? What would be the best way to move forward, if any?

Thanks!

PS: If you're interested in the technical details of how it works, you can check out this[2] blog post.

[1] http://www.pcgamer.com/hacks-an-investigation-into-aimbot-de...

[2] http://dvt.name/2015/finishing-what-intel-started-building-t...

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#52

Post by mwseibel »

tyre wrote: post #42

Our team is building SaaS software for local governments (CRM + constituent service ticketing). We have users who love us in major cities across the country, all of whom are paying us. When we start talking with VCs and angels, everyone sounds good on paper. Innovative, risk-taking, focused on building long term companies, visionaries, mission-driven, etc. So we start a dialogue and answer all of their questions (we…

The fundraising process of often about creating leverage over investors. Companies need to think about raising VC rounds (and large angel rounds) as a reward for creating a growing product in a multi-billion dollar market. Also many companies screw up fundraising by running the process in serial vs in parallel.

Here is a mini guide for a 2 minute pitch - why don't you fill it out so I can see where you are (each answer should be 1-2 sentences at most): 1) what does your company do? 2) How big is the market? 3) Describe your month over month grow? 4) What do you understand about this market that others do not? 5) How do you make money? 6) Why is your team the best team to tackle this problem 7) How much are you raising?

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#53

Post by localcrisis »

userium wrote: post #37
akharris wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have a great problem. One of the funny things about building products is that you often don't know who your users are going to be until you actually release. This is why we tell companies to launch as fast as possible, and not spend too much time thinking about what might happen before they have any information about how users interact with what they've built. In your case, your company's goal is to h…

Thanks Aaron, yes our goal is to 1) help people get jobs and 2) help companies to increase diversity of their workforce. Another issue is how to retain users. Once a user finds a new job, and is not looking for a new one for a while, how do we keep them coming back to the website? I guess with great career content? Do you have any other ideas on how to keep users coming back?

This sounds similar to dating sites. A happy user is one who doesn't need you anymore!

The thing is, dating sites solve a known problem that a lot of people have, but by no means does it end there. Relationships are hard and take work, where are the apps that help build strong 1-1 connections?

Same thing for you. Increasing workplace diversity is awesome, but hiring is only a tiny part of that. I'm sure that many of your users face similar challenges being a minority in their work environment. How can you bring them together to solve those problems once they have their job?

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#54

Post by localcrisis »

userium wrote: post #37
akharris wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have a great problem. One of the funny things about building products is that you often don't know who your users are going to be until you actually release. This is why we tell companies to launch as fast as possible, and not spend too much time thinking about what might happen before they have any information about how users interact with what they've built. In your case, your company's goal is to h…

Thanks Aaron, yes our goal is to 1) help people get jobs and 2) help companies to increase diversity of their workforce. Another issue is how to retain users. Once a user finds a new job, and is not looking for a new one for a while, how do we keep them coming back to the website? I guess with great career content? Do you have any other ideas on how to keep users coming back?

This sounds similar to dating sites. A happy user is one who doesn't need you anymore!

The thing is, dating sites solve a known problem that a lot of people have, but by no means does it end there. Relationships are hard and take work, where are the apps that help build strong 1-1 connections?

Same thing for you. Increasing workplace diversity is awesome, but hiring is only a tiny part of that. I'm sure that many of your users face similar challenges being a minority in their work environment. How can you bring them together to solve those problems once they have their job?

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#55

Post by mwseibel »

eckho28 wrote: post #47
mwseibel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are angels that are willing to invest - https://getmeadow.com/ is a YC company and they were able to raise an angel round - I think its helpful to look like a typical tech startup with strong engineering on the product team and a launched product before you start to fundraise.

Ah yes, I should have mentioned, the main thing that differentiates us from Meadow is that we actually handle the marijuana product in-house as opposed to being purely a tech platform. If we were a pure tech play, then I think it wouldn't be an issue, but what is your perspective on an actual marijuana company like us in the tech space. (As far as engineering goes- I, with the help of an ex-PayPal engineer, built the…

hmm - yes that is much much harder - why do you want to handle the product in house?

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#56

Post by akharris »

dvt wrote: post #51

Hi Michael and Aaron, I built Game:ref (www.gameref.io) last year. It's a hardware anti-cheat device meant to be used in local and online eSports competitions to make sure that sponsors aren't being swindled out of huge prize pots. Cheating is a multi-million dollar problem[2] and I thought I would do something to fix it. Even though I was featured in PC Gamer, Polygon, Vice Magazine, Tom's Hardware, and a few others…

Hi - funding for hardware is certainly difficult, but there are quite a few investors who do it, and it is easier than it was even six months ago.

If I were you, I probably wouldn't determine whether or not I wanted to focus on the company based on the perceived ease/difficulty of raising money, but on whether or not I thought I were solving a big problem with big potential. I don't know enough about the market you are describing. If you 100% fixed it, how much money would you save esports sponsors?

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#57

Post by reiderrider »

akharris wrote: post #29
reiderrider wrote: post #6

We are building Stripe for life insurance http://back9ins.com:5000# FYI we have applied twice to YC. We have early demand from customers and know it's a big opportunity. Our engineering team is only 2 people and we want to raise money to grow that and execute the plan with enterprise level websites. How do we take the next steps?

I'm not sure I understand what you're building. Is it a white label life insurance api to allow financial institutions to sell life insurance?

It allows any website with traffic (ideal targets are banks and financial institutions) to sell life insurance on their website using our JavaScript web app. A BOFA user cannot currently buy life insurance on Bofa.com, but can by going into the bank. A bank could offer life insurance online via our white labeled modal and take their users from getting a quote to e signing the policy. We handle the entire process with the user on the BOFA website.

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#58

Post by dynofuz »

Building a product search engine (https://percht.com) Percht has a few goals:

1) give you the lowest price for any product online 2) develop an assistant that’ll buy you whatever at x price automatically 3) build an unbiased gameified community around shopping

What do you think are the biggest issues with the approach many other shopping search engines have taken that have prevented them from beating entrenched monopolies like amzn and goog which dont have complete results or 100% consumer alignment.

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#59

Post by mwseibel »

MCProMatt wrote: post #46

Hey Michael, Aaron! We're working on a streaming platform that lets viewers interact with the games streamers are playing in realtime, think TwitchPlaysPokemon but built for any game, a visual control set and sub-second stream delay. It's a bit of a foreign concept for a lot of folks that don't know about collaborative gameplay, and I'm curious what direction we should go about our landing page. Show streams? Talk ab…

I went to your site and I am watching this stream: https://beam.pro/Noplix - how do I participate in the game play?

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#60

Post by akharris »

chejazi wrote: post #50

Hi YC partners, Founder of https://credhot.com here. We're a link shortener that uses interstitial advertising to make money. We rev-share with people who share content using our shortener, so they get paid based on their traffic. People know about us in the Bitcoin community because we pay our users in Bitcoin. Bitcoin has benefits when it comes to microtransactions, so it's not just a marketing strategy. We think t…

I think it's hard to say without knowing more. On the one hand, paying in btc probably restricts the number of people willing to use your product by virtue of there being not that many people who have btc accounts. On the other hand, it might make you more popular with a small group of people.

Most great products start with a core of really happy users, and then expand over time. Do you have users that love you and use your product every day? Many times a day?

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