jjalan

Is there a platform that can help connect with right folks and setup a meeting with them? For example, I want to reach out to procurement managers in companies to conduct a research study around a problem. Going via LinkedIn/Known network takes a month to meet like 10-15 folks. I remember we had similar issue in my previous startup where we wanted to reach out to technicians.

At Price Bureau, for past 5 months, we have been helping individual and businesses to get best price for any product. We have served 1300+ requests along with handling procurement for 5+ businesses.

Currently, we physically go and negotiate with local sellers and research online to get the best price. We are now considering a pivot to scale it. At the core of this pivot, we realized that people are already negotiating before they buy today. If we can incentivize them to share this knowledge (at what price and from where they are buying), probabilistically we will get the best price in our system in long run.

Here is how we are planning to execute it: we are now introducing an app which will be top up with virtual currency (say 3 coins). User can still ask for best price for any product (it will cost them - say 1 coin). Once they run out of coins, we will ask them to upload a receipt of any recent purchase they made - say iPhone 6. We will extract the price and seller information from the receipts. Later on, if other user is looking for best price for iPhone 6, we can surface all the information from the crowd who has submitted receipts for iPhone 6, ofcourse anonymously. In long run, system should grow by itself and we should get out of business (or maybe doing it for free) of getting the best price.

(1) What are your thoughts on this model? (2) What are some of the leanest way you can think to test this experiment?

Looking forward to some constructive thoughts.