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?
Our primary focus right now is building an app solves the problem of splitting bills and tracking debts. We've got a few ideas about monetization, but if we can't build a useful app first, that discussion is moot.
Again, good luck with it. I look forward to seeing where you take it.
Discounting the future of the business from a landing page describing its very first private beta is not only mean-spirited but also shortsighted.
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
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 (Both founder were "Product manager at Google") ? Still, I'll follow their path and I hope they'll be successful :)
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.
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.
And if you're already done testing, then I'll download the app anyways!
Other than that, I certainly remember keeping tabs on my roommate debts and loans during college, but it was never much of a chore and didn't bother writing it down. I guess some people may need this more than others, for example people with lots of outstanding buddy debt, but I can't see it being a huge number.
What are your plans for expanding this? Simply keeping it as is and doing one thing well? It may serve to function better if it helped those key users manage their debt, using burn down charts for a game effect, or something. Maybe tying it into a mint account (is there an API?) so it can show up on top of their personal finances? Maybe just adding a tip calculator/bill splitter typical app functionality, so people can get rid of their old one and encourage them to download this?
I'm not sure what the answer is, but at a glance it seems far too niche and not much room to grow.
Love the concept for the app, as a college student I can see how it would be really helpful.
Criticisms: Wish you could use phone contacts along with the facebook connect. That way you aren't dependent on internet and the app doesn't look like it is made for facebook. Also when you go to the people tab it just shows a white screen, which is discouraging and makes me think that there is nothing there. It would be much better if you could populate the list and make it searchable in the same way the facebook app does.
