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Splitterbug (YC S11) private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone

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Re: Splitterbug (YC S11) private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone

#21

Post by Hisoka »

marciovm123 wrote: post #15
charliepark wrote: post #3

I wish you all the best, but I'm skeptical that this could become a viable business. Is this a problem that people struggle with enough that they'd pay for a service to help them with it? What would differentiate Splitterbug from, say, BillMonk? Or just an e-mail? What are you planning on for revenue? One-off App Store purchases, or something more?

Using mobile devices to facilitate a shared buying experience with friends is huge. This app is a first step into this wide open and potentially massively profitable space. Discounting the future of the business from a landing page describing its very first private beta is not only mean-spirited but also shortsighted.

It's not mean-spirited. What else is he judging on when you're just showing a landing page?

I also don't feel the need for this... This is a very micro, very niche product. Not a business idea.

Re: Splitterbug (YC S11) private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone

#22

Post by vtail »

marciovm123 wrote: post #15
charliepark wrote: post #3

I wish you all the best, but I'm skeptical that this could become a viable business. Is this a problem that people struggle with enough that they'd pay for a service to help them with it? What would differentiate Splitterbug from, say, BillMonk? Or just an e-mail? What are you planning on for revenue? One-off App Store purchases, or something more?

Using mobile devices to facilitate a shared buying experience with friends is huge. This app is a first step into this wide open and potentially massively profitable space. Discounting the future of the business from a landing page describing its very first private beta is not only mean-spirited but also shortsighted.

While I almost agree with your first paragraph, the second made my eyebrows raise (and that's why I downvoted). "mean-spirited" and "shortsighted" are very strong words for a valid question - the grand-parent was quite polite, so no need to be defensive.

Re: Splitterbug (YC S11) private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone

#23

Post by delackner »

This could enable a group of friends to build up fairly long-running tabs with no effort, then pay whenever the tab hits a convenient amount. Less friction, more fun. I hope you guys succeed.

Currently, even in a group of friends where we basically always split everything down the middle to keep it simple, not even having to do a split at all until a later, convenient time would be fantastic.

Re: Splitterbug (YC S11) private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone

#24

Post by edanm »

sean_lynch wrote: post #5
avree wrote: post #2

Are you guys iPhone only, or do you have an Android client?

We have both iPhone and Android clients and we're looking for beta testers for both.

I'm also happy to beta test the iPhone app.

I currently use something called Share-a-Bill quite heavily, but it has some shortcomings. I've also just moved into an apartment with 2 friends, so we're looking for a better application for sharing bills.

Email: edanm@btlms.com

Re: Splitterbug (YC S11) private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone

#25

Post by eneveu »

d0m wrote: post #14

I guess any entrepreneur already thought about building that application once in their life. I myself thought of it a lot of time.. but always dismissed it thinking that it wasn't a monetizable business and only a fun hack project over a weedkend. However, these guys seemed to have proved me wrong as they're in YC while my "serious business ideas" were rejected. Or, maybe YC decided to invest mainly for the team (Bot…

Same here. They seem to solve a problem I personally have.

Currently, I use emails (sent from my phone) to "remember" what I owe people and what they owe me, but it's kind of annoying. I also thought about building an Android app, but I think I'll just use this instead.

Re: Splitterbug (YC S11) private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone

#27

Post by nodata »

delackner wrote: post #23

This could enable a group of friends to build up fairly long-running tabs with no effort, then pay whenever the tab hits a convenient amount. Less friction, more fun. I hope you guys succeed. Currently, even in a group of friends where we basically always split everything down the middle to keep it simple, not even having to do a split at all until a later, convenient time would be fantastic.

Idea! Take a photo of the receipt, each friend sees it, can mark each item as his own.

Re: Splitterbug (YC S11) private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone

#28

Post by delackner »

nodata wrote: post #27
delackner wrote: post #23

This could enable a group of friends to build up fairly long-running tabs with no effort, then pay whenever the tab hits a convenient amount. Less friction, more fun. I hope you guys succeed. Currently, even in a group of friends where we basically always split everything down the middle to keep it simple, not even having to do a split at all until a later, convenient time would be fantastic.

Idea! Take a photo of the receipt, each friend sees it, can mark each item as his own.

Maybe this would be good in some circles, but for my friends overkill. Just need X/N, with a simple option to pre-assign a portion of the bill to the one guy at the table who drinks 2x everyone else.

Re: Splitterbug (YC S11) private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone

#29

Post by [deleted] »

sean_lynch wrote: post #16
charliepark wrote: post #3

I wish you all the best, but I'm skeptical that this could become a viable business. Is this a problem that people struggle with enough that they'd pay for a service to help them with it? What would differentiate Splitterbug from, say, BillMonk? Or just an e-mail? What are you planning on for revenue? One-off App Store purchases, or something more?

We're both very big Billmonk fans, but unfortunately the application hasn't seen very much improvement since it was acquired a few years ago. Splitterbug helps you solve the same problem using some very cool tech that Billmonk didn't have access to (native iPhone apps/Android/Facebook graph/etc). Our primary focus right now is building an app solves the problem of splitting bills and tracking debts. We've got a few i…

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