So you've made ko-fi.com
But with VC funding!
Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you
41–50 of 182 posts
Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's pretty funny. :)
as a creator myself I would be interested in a buymeamacbook.com platform
lol ok i should add this to feature requests - https://building.buymeacoffee.com/feature-requests
Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you
#43Congratulations on your announcement, I’ve been following you and Buy Me A Coffee for a while. If I remember correctly, you got accepted to YC with a different idea — some sort of podcast app. Can you explain why you decided to pivot back to Buy Me A Coffee?
> If I remember correctly, you got accepted to YC with a different idea
That'd be Brew [0]: https://brew.com
As for the pivot, I'm not sure it qualifies as a pivot since buymeacoffee.com predates brew.com. Separate businesses, and it seems to me they're simply re-announcing buymeacoffee again [1] and possibly shifting focus to make it the main product.
Another YC company https://kyte.ai (AI for SMS inboxes) did that recently and pivoted to https://khatabook.com (Credit/Debit Book Keeping app for Indian SMBs) [2].
Of course, https://brex.com famously did the same, too (not launch with the idea they applied / did YC with) [3].
[0] https://www.ycdb.co/company/brew-com
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16484040
Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
sorry for the confusion. It was there until we recently redesigned our homepage to focus more on our creators and less on the features. We're planning to add an FAQ section on the homepage.
>we recently improved our homepage to focus more on our creators and less on our features. I would reconsider that move imho. I doubt many contributors are going to browse the homepage and try to contribute. They will most likely only visit the subdomain of the contribution page they are trying to donate to. New registrants on the other hand, who are interested in your service and it's features, will most likely visi…
>I doubt many contributors are going to browse the homepage and try to contribute.
I agree. Our goal was to showcase the most common use-cases and types of creators who use us, and not for discoverability.
Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you
#45I’ve been following Buy Me A Coffee since it publicly launched (not today) and it’s great to see that a side project can get support from YC. It’s not an easy space. I work winters as a snowboard instructor. Over a typical winter I’d teach literally hundreds of people. Every once in a while I’d get a gift card, if guest is American, I might even get a cash tip, but generally, it’s Snow School pay. So, I thought somet…
cool idea. I always thought it would be awesome to figure out IRL non-cash tipping
edit: and somehow make it not awkward, cumbersome, or time-consuming
Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you
#46If Patreon were to add a feature to do one-time, no sign-up required contributions to any of the orgs currently using it, would this be survivable for you?
Do you have ideas of ways to increase value to make using your service over others more worthwhile or is the one-time, no sign-up required contribution process the primary feature right now?
Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you
#47Being in YC, I assume your plan is to be headquartered in the US, or at the very least, do business with US customers/entities. I notice your team doesn't involve any compliance people. As you probably already know, you are a MSB in the US, do you have plans to expand your required compliance policies? Does your team already file on any potential BSA/AML concerns? Or is this like a "when we get to that bridge we will…
I’m sure they use a third-party payment processor who handles AML for them.
Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you
#48Being in YC, I assume your plan is to be headquartered in the US, or at the very least, do business with US customers/entities. I notice your team doesn't involve any compliance people. As you probably already know, you are a MSB in the US, do you have plans to expand your required compliance policies? Does your team already file on any potential BSA/AML concerns? Or is this like a "when we get to that bridge we will…
I’m sure they use a third-party payment processor who handles AML for them.
yeah good point. especially since they don't have a sign-up, makes me think they're more non-custodial in concept, which eases their AML requirements
Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you
#49Being in YC, I assume your plan is to be headquartered in the US, or at the very least, do business with US customers/entities. I notice your team doesn't involve any compliance people. As you probably already know, you are a MSB in the US, do you have plans to expand your required compliance policies? Does your team already file on any potential BSA/AML concerns? Or is this like a "when we get to that bridge we will…
first off, thank you for the kind words!
Payment fraud and AML - we're a PayPal and Stripe Partner and do not hold the money that we process. We use their marketplace products to handle payments, fraud and compliance so that we can focus on the product.
Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you
#50Holy shit, you folks have gotten a lot of negativity out of HN today. I don’t have anything negative to say. Congratulations on making it into YC and getting to launch! You’ve got a great story.
I’m about to launch something that could use this. I’ll sign up in a few days.
Best of luck and congratulations on your launch!!