+ When describing the potential size of your user base, why do you only include people who are already on eHarmony or okCupid? What about all the single who aren't on either?
1) I feel like including in your limited app space/pitch "finding people of your class" is a poor indicator of your ability to market the product. While there is some way to spin the whole "find people with similar intellectual interests/career aspirations/etc.), referring to "class" specifically seems elitist, and would be poor marketing IMO.
2) In the "impressive things," Nishant wrote "getting scholarship" though it should've said "getting a scholarship."
3) The tone of the app seems childish at points (references to "fat little boy," "I want to spread love"). While it's good to not take yourself too seriously, it might've been a little too much perhaps?
4) I don't think you explained/framed very well what exactly is the problem that people are facing that you are solving. If you can draw upon some references to people really preferring to date others with similar educational/professional background or something, that would've probably helped.
Just wanted to give some constructive (but conjectural) feedback. Good luck guys! :)
Thanks for the feedback, I guess this is going on our next one.
Much like an English teacher reading through 30 essays.
>Much like an English teacher reading through 30 essays.
An English teacher gets it worse as s/he forced to actually read and comment through "meh" content (i pity ones who read my essays back then in Russian and here in English)
For this application I read only first couple phrases until "3 matches every 3 days", and just being an HN reader for 4 years, i see that this startup isn't YC-material (that isn't saying that they aren't A+/brilliant grade material in general as i didn't read further)
Please elaborate on this so we can circle back on our marketing pitch.
1. You are hugely changing the world
2. You can completely disrupt an existing industry
3. You can be a billion dollar company
Good apps do fulfill all the three, however I think yours wouldn't be able to fulfill one of these unfortunately.
Let look at the points:
1. It looks like you have a cool app, but it's not much different to other dating sites. You will probably be a good dating website, but not "change the world"
2. You are not specifically in an industry like taxis, golf or cars. You are in the dating industry, which has 1000s of established competitors
3. I'm confident you probably can be a $50M company, but not "billion-dollar" company. There are 1000s of established competitors already in the market and it will be very hard to be 10x better than everyone else. It's also hard, because dating websites were competitive 10 years ago. Nowadays you might get a market share in the super competitive Dating-space as a viral mobile app like Tinder, however as a website it is just impossible.
Didn't want to shoot you guys down, but hope I could give you useful feedback so that you know what is important to focus on.
I think you can monetize pretty early with your model, so once you rake a few thousand dollars in per month and show that it will be in the ten thousands in three months, you can easily get Angel investment.
Once you have decent traction, nobody cares about the "billion-dollar" startup anymore and everybody invests ;)
2) I hope you have a rockstar marketing/leadgen guru.
I like how you wrote the application answers. You come across as smart (but not cocky), engaged, and enthusiastic.
BC is not far from Seattle, should be there by end of this year :)
It is nitpicking, but when you're in ultra-intense competition with lots of other good applications, I'm sure these things matter at least on a subconscious level. If I were to apply, I'd proof-read my application until it was perfect.
Oh, and is it just me, or was this one very long? If this is the hundredth application you're reading, you might look at this and be scared off by its length. Not saying anything about the quality of the applicants -- I'm sure they're talented and motivated -- but this little text they're submitting is what gets them either in or out. It's important.
The team sounds smart and accomplished, and objectively interesting. You guys have done a lot of data driven user research as well, which shows maturity when compared to a lot of the other startups out there.
I wish you guys the best of luck, don't give up and keep working on that :)
Guy and Girl both pay for a date
Site matches Guy, Girl selects 1 activity and 1 dinner a driver and autopays for everything. The two people just show up and enjoy there date.
