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Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

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121–130 of 182 posts

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#121
I did a similar project for a hackathon several years back, we made a service that let you buy someone a drink (presumably alcoholic) at a bar near where they live. Creators would choose the bars and patrons would sponsor a beer/wine/etc at a particular bar. We would recover payment processing fees from bars which would sell us drinks at a significant discount (so the $5 beer you bought for someone cost us $2 - $3). We incentivized bar owners by pointing out that most people would only be redeeming one or two drinks, after which they would likely pay for additional ones.

Thankfully none of us quit our day jobs to pursue the idea - aside from personally receiving ~$200 of free drinks at an SF bar where we knew the owner (presumably funded by hackathon participants who enjoyed our presentation), we couldn't get bars to sign up - nobody wanted to train their bartenders on how to accept our virtual drink coupons, especially without a guarantee of a large audience. We did sign up a couple content creators, which is how we learned that even a large following doesn't translate to much patronage.

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#122

The community feedback and rewards features are really interesting and remind me a lot of the Twitch model which is wildly successful. How do you plan to bridge the gap between user's eagerness to donate to a twitch streamer versus their historically poor record of donating to a blog via a donate button? I think its definitely possible but the form-factor of the content (video w/validation through a strong emotional…

Twitch partially inspired many of our features. In fact, a big chunk of our active users are YouTubers who don't have a viable alternative to monetize directly ( https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=buymeacoffee.co... ). Same with Instagram influencers and Podcasters. Our goal is to help them connect with their "superfans" through shout-outs, rewards, and exclusive content. To answer your question, we have se…

Appreciate the reply, and I do think this idea has legs if grown thoughtfully and realistically. Hope to be a happy user some day!

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#124
post #87

Reading https://www.buymeacoffee.com/terms These potentially seem like some fairly onerous restrictions, and would potentially exclude nearly all of my favorite youtube channels. What is your definition of "creators who involve with:" - does this only cover content posted on your site, or any content the creator makes across any publicly available service? To what extent can creators discuss these topics if they don'…

>Also, are there any geographic restrictions? Can creators outside the US use your service (in countries which are NOT on the US OFAC sanction list)?

Yes, Buy Me A Coffee is available to creators in almost all countries. Here is a breakdown of all accepted countries: https://help.buymeacoffee.com/en/articles/3314992-countries-...

>How do you define "adult" content? Does this include creators working on LGBTQIA activism? Does this include creators who create instructional content while showing non-nipple cleavage? Does this include creators involved in sex-ed/harm reduction campaigns?

None of these are against the terms AFAIK. We unpublish creators who promote explicit pornography or nudity. Broadly speaking, we abide by the content restrictions of the vendors and payment processors we work with. More on that can be found here: https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't specifically investigated the question of payment processing and adult businesses. I have done some research into this issue wrt marijuana businesses and bank accounts. Marijuana is legal in some US states but still not legal at the federal level (last I checked). They have enormous difficulty getting bank accounts. With marijuana businesses, the issue is that the bank could potentially lose access to the f…

While I haven't dug really deeply, I don't think the situations are directly comparable. Adult businesses aren't banned at the federal level, and as long as there's no state law that bans them, there's nothing that legally prevents them from opening a bank account, processing credit cards, and so on. The problem appears to be specifically with the policies of payment processors. As I understand it, the actual payment…

To be clear, I meant "Stop fussing at people like Patreon and Buy Me A Coffee. The problem appears to be upstream and a real solution would need to somehow address the root cause, which is not these online platforms. Their hands are tied and taking a stand likely means going out of business."

Given that this is a Launch HN, that's all I'm going to say here. This is not really the time and place to hash this detail out.

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#127
post #87

Reading https://www.buymeacoffee.com/terms These potentially seem like some fairly onerous restrictions, and would potentially exclude nearly all of my favorite youtube channels. What is your definition of "creators who involve with:" - does this only cover content posted on your site, or any content the creator makes across any publicly available service? To what extent can creators discuss these topics if they don'…

>Also, are there any geographic restrictions? Can creators outside the US use your service (in countries which are NOT on the US OFAC sanction list)? Yes, Buy Me A Coffee is available to creators in almost all countries. Here is a breakdown of all accepted countries: https://help.buymeacoffee.com/en/articles/3314992-countries-... >How do you define "adult" content? Does this include creators working on LGBTQIA activi…

> None of these are against the terms AFAIK

How can this be AFAIK? Aren't you one of the founders? If you don't know what your site allows, who does?

At the end of the day, someone has to make the final decision over whether to ban an LGBTQ+ activist. Who is the person who will make that decision on BMaC?

I get that you're beholden to your vendors, and to a certain extent there's nothing you can do about that. But I also assume you're not planning to just forward literally every content decision you have to make to Stripe's legal team for their input. So if a vulnerable person starts using your service, they need a better guarantee than "dunno, we'll have to flip a coin and see." You're still one of the people who are going to be enforcing this, you're still one of the people who have the power to decide how this will work.

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#128
post #87

Reading https://www.buymeacoffee.com/terms These potentially seem like some fairly onerous restrictions, and would potentially exclude nearly all of my favorite youtube channels. What is your definition of "creators who involve with:" - does this only cover content posted on your site, or any content the creator makes across any publicly available service? To what extent can creators discuss these topics if they don'…

>Also, are there any geographic restrictions? Can creators outside the US use your service (in countries which are NOT on the US OFAC sanction list)? Yes, Buy Me A Coffee is available to creators in almost all countries. Here is a breakdown of all accepted countries: https://help.buymeacoffee.com/en/articles/3314992-countries-... >How do you define "adult" content? Does this include creators working on LGBTQIA activi…

What is wrong with plants?

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#129

Congratulations 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?

Agreed. This is a little weird. I wonder if they got YC's "OK" to use the Launch HN tag with (YC W19) for a product that was not actually within the batch. It's a little deceiving.

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#130
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also, are there any geographic restrictions? Can creators outside the US use your service (in countries which are NOT on the US OFAC sanction list)? Yes, Buy Me A Coffee is available to creators in almost all countries. Here is a breakdown of all accepted countries: https://help.buymeacoffee.com/en/articles/3314992-countries-... >How do you define "adult" content? Does this include creators working on LGBTQIA activi…

What is wrong with plants?

Natural drugs, maybe? Seems bizarre.
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