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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

#201

Post by S4M »

JOfferijns wrote: post #134

Hi Michael, Aaron, I'm a co-founder of an educational games platform based in the Netherlands. At the moment, games on the market that are targeted at K-6 students are not that much fun, they are not thoroughly aligned to school curriculums (just to CCSS goals in the US), and they're not connected in terms of content + analytics. We've built 4 games, generate content for math questions (and soon starting work on lite…

Hey!

Also working on math education. I am targeting middle schoolers, and my approach is to build a system based on symbolic math and AI to help the students. I have things that could be used in primary schools as well, maybe we could partner somehow?

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#202

Post by Eridrus »

MichaelFan wrote: post #87
akharris wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What have you done to increase your user base? How have you measured your experiments? What do your users say when you talk to them?

1) Initially, we sold "pastries for catering" to very small size start ups in our area. With the money we generated from the sales, we built the first prototypes that we used to deliver the pastries we promised. And when we delivered to these small companies, we explained to the employees (who really liked the pastries they had) how they can do it at home. We closed our first (3) sales like that. 2) Then, we spent a…

I went to your website before reading this, because I like things like Blue Apron, and I like desert, and I had the exact same reaction as all of your other customers: it's just too expensive.

I feel like I would be your target market: in theory, I enjoy cooking and baking, but I never do much.

Have you considered repackaging your product as a "mail order pastry course"? I feel like I would be more likely to pay more if this is framed as "learn a new skill" than "here's a kit that makes delicious pastries".

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#203

Post by pimdewitte »

pramodliv1 wrote: post #102
pimdewitte wrote: post #13

Thanks 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)

I tried signing up on the web using my email and password (I don't trust Facebook) and it did not work. So I refreshed the page, by which time I'd forgotten my username. It would help if you have other social logins. Why require the user to signup in the first place? I was reminded of a talk by Neil Patel, "It's like asking, Will you marry me as soon as you see someone". ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRnsuzcfHr0…

Hey!

Thanks so much for the feedback. We'll be sure to take it in and I'll personally let you know when the bugs are fixed. We'll also definitely think about your suggestions.

All the best, Pim

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#204

Post by srunni »

danieltillett wrote: post #179
tlawal87 wrote: post #82

Hi Aaron & Michael, There is a 20-year-backlog of life-saving therapies that are left sitting in university laboratories untested and 30 million Americans suffering from untreatable rare diseases who have no idea these potential cures exist. My best friend and I are developing a medical research discovery platform. We allow people passionate about a condition to discover, promote, and eventually fund cutting-edge res…

It sounds like you are trying to build a kickstarter version of the NIH. The way to get this going is to offer real money to both the academics and the administrators - once you do this then they will come running to you with open arms. Can I suggest that you spend the next month reading Derek Lowe’s blog “In the Pipeline” [1] (especially all the comments). You will learn why so much never makes it out of the lab. 1.…

Another excellent resource is the LifeSciVC blog:

https://lifescivc.com/

https://lifescivc.com/category/from-the-trenches/ (the posts here aren't included on the main page)

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#205

Post by srunni »

tlawal87 wrote: post #164
mwseibel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need to work with university administrators at all?

The majority of research conducted in the US is at academic centers. Scientists employed by these institutions have been given strict rules by administrators on how/whether they can solicit input or disclose IP generated at their workplaces.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#206

Post by srunni »

tlawal87 wrote: post #82

Hi Aaron & Michael, There is a 20-year-backlog of life-saving therapies that are left sitting in university laboratories untested and 30 million Americans suffering from untreatable rare diseases who have no idea these potential cures exist. My best friend and I are developing a medical research discovery platform. We allow people passionate about a condition to discover, promote, and eventually fund cutting-edge res…

I've been interested in this space for a long time and would love to chat with you - my email address is in my profile.

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#207

Post by buzzdenver »

joannakaufman wrote: post #83

We've built a bug reporting tool that captures a screencast along with the network traffic, which leverages WebRTC and a browser extension, capturing bugs in real time. ( http://www.bugreplay.com ). 1) We have a good number of qualified leads that are interested in beta testing our product. Does it make more sense roll out our beta in small batches at a time, to get more feedback from a smaller number of vocal qualif…

Really cool app, I signed up for a demo. Some sort of continuous recording move would also be nice, where you could go back say 1 minute and document transient bugs.

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#208

Post by sixQuarks »

mwseibel wrote: post #106
kuisch wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far the FB CPC hovers around $0.70. We need >200 users per flight booking. A hotel booking has not been made through our platform yet. Not much data has been collected though, seeing as we've only been live for 2 weeks. It might be important to note that, at this point, we're not so much interested in how much we make from the actual booking as much as we're interested in the conversion rate itself. We use the Exp…

Taking a look at the product here are a couple thoughts 1) You push me onto a landing page instead of right into the product - why? 2) The initial form you ask me to fill out is a bit intimidating - perhaps it can be broken up a bit 3) On the results page - its unclear at first what I'm supposed to click on - and you dont tell me anything about the flight or the hotel you've chosen for me 4) Results page loads slowly…

I agree, you're wasting potential leads by having that landing page. Just let them see and use the service right away.

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#209

Post by kartikkumar »

samstave wrote: post #195
kartikkumar wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly :) Well not entirely exactly, since it turns out that we're quite different because we're in a low-volume, high-value market. So deals are not really done (yet) by purchasing straight off an e-commerce site. What I'd love to do is make systems engineering, procurement and market analysis in the small-satellite sector a lot more transparent.

Dont forget to leverage what they released then... including: http://apievangelist.com/2014/08/25/ocotoparts-open-source-g...

Yep GSheet plugin is in the pipeline :) Thanks!

Re: HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris

#210

Post by levlandau »

zbruhnke wrote: post #73
akharris wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the capital requirements are painful, as is the entire process behind getting a charter. How are you figuring out what people actually want? What have you built and how have you started getting it into the hands of customers?

The way we've figured out so far is really learning from a failed past experience. We built a product in the past which was a kind of Yodlee or Plaid competitor ( http://spout.co ) and learned alot of what consumers cared about along the way while never hitting an actual nerve with clients who were willing to pay us money. I think we started like most people would here, by partnering with existing banks. So we have a…

I don't think you need to partner with a bank to start making progress here.
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