Office Hours with Kevin Hale and Qasar Younis at Startup School SV 2016

Dramatic entrance that was easy, easily pleased crowd. Uh, H we have a favor to ask of all of you guys out there. Um, how many people follow Justin on Snapchat? All right, great. So Justin's not here. Oh, but there should be punishment for that. But there should be punishment for that. So just send him a message. If everybody sends him a message right now, it's going to completely mess up his phone. So a few hundred messages to Justin right now would be appreciated. We'll give you 10 seconds to do that. Caser says hi.

Okay, so uh, my name is Caser Eunice. I'm one of the partners here. We don't have a clicker. Okay, clickity click. That's Kevin Hill. He's one of the other partners here at YC. One of the things that we do at YC, or one of the kind of core things we do at YC, is office hours. There are three types of office hours we do in the program. The first is individual office hours, where a partner will sit down with you and talk about a specific problem that the company has and really dive in deeply. And that's what we're going to emulate here on stage today. Most of the partners are using their own experience as being founders and as being engineers or whatever the problem might be to help kind of solve that problem.

One of the things that I say and a lot of the partners say is, when I'm giving advice, I don't tell you or the companies that will be up here what they should do. I can only tell what I would do if I was in your position. Obviously, we're different people. The founders who are running companies are different from us—different context and different experiences. So it just ends up being a blueprint of how to solve from one person to another, a problem.

So anyways, individual office hours is something we do. We also do this thing called group office hours where multiple partners will sit together, and then six or seven startups will sit together. We do them bi-weekly when you're in YC. The third type of office hours we do are external off hours, so we'll bring in Apple. We'll bring in Android to help with the app stores, etc. And so today we're emulating the first type.

Now, a couple of key points here. This is kind of a bad example because we don't do them on stage in front of hundreds or thousands of people. So naturally, this kind of presentation is slightly awkward for that reason. Number two is we tend to be pretty direct in office hours, and obviously doing it in front of a group of people, we're going to kind of temper that a little bit. I also want to just in advance thank the startups who are kind of brave enough out here to talk through the problems that they're having with us. Um, yeah, so thanks and apologies in advance.

One thing to note, 90% of you guys out there volunteered to do office hours on stage with us, so I'm super delighted that you guys gave us the opportunity to look at sort of like all the ideas you're working on. And then the one last point is these are not pitches, so we're actually going to try to avoid going into like what do you do and why is it so great. Much more kind of diving into a problem. We actually are doing a pitch section afterwards, so you'll see how that's different.

That's office hours. Three companies that we picked today, we kind of did on a theme. This is a little bit different from other times that we've done this. All three companies are marketplace companies, and the reason we picked that is because they're a very different kind of startup when you're working with them. Most companies, when you work with it, what you'll notice is that like it tends not to be a zero-sum game. So usually, in any space, there can be multiple winners, but in a marketplace kind of play, it tends to be one kind of company that ends up dominating over everyone else. The thing is, when you can make that happen, that can make you very, very large and very, very lucrative, and investors get very excited about marketplaces. It's a category that we see actually lots of different investment firms and people are very interested in very specifically.

That being said, they work a little bit differently in terms of how you work with them, and it tends to be always kind of a similar approach. You're trying to identify what’s supply, what’s demand, what side you're going to be working on. And so what you're going to see is this kind of thematic thing where all three of them, even though they're very different companies, have very similar approaches in terms of how we ask questions, how we think about their problems, and how we should go from there. That's it. Let's rock and roll!

First company is Traveling Spoon. Let's give them a hand! All right, give them a warm welcome. [Music] Welcome! Thank you. I think the camera guys are now having a... Hi! Oh yeah! I think I see all the markers on the floor explicitly said don’t move the chairs, and the first thing I do is move the chairs. Sorry. So tell us your names and tell us about what Traveling Spoon does.

I'm Steph Lawrence. I'm Ashi Vale. We're the founders of Traveling Spoon. Traveling Spoon is a food and travel marketplace, so we connect travelers with local authentic food experiences—from meals to cooking classes to market tours—all with local people in their homes around the world.

So I, uh, I'm going to say I’m going to Thailand, and then I would... how would I find out about your website? How would I find that you exist as just me going to Thailand?

Welcome to our first challenge question! Uh, so a lot of our travelers hear about it through word of mouth right now, and finding the right channels is one of our challenges that we're excited to talk to you about. Um, but right now most of our travelers find out about us either through word of mouth, through press, or also through some of our partners. So we work with partners who are distributing supply, like our travel experiences.

So the first questions I usually ask about a marketplace I’m asking about is sort of like what are the conditions of the two sides that you’re trying to grow and then how well are they being connected. So like what do you guys consider supply? What do you guys sort of consider demand? My instinct is the supply is the people who are offering meals inside of their homes, and then the demand is all the travelers that happen on there. What’s the rate of growth for each one of those?

So absolutely right. Our supply side consists of amazing hosts who give market tours, cooking classes, and meals. We have over 225 hosts now in 40 destinations in 20 countries. 50% of that growth has happened through host referrals, and we’ve been growing the supply side of the marketplace 50% in the last 6 months.

On the supply, is there a reason you're in so many countries and so distributed? I mean, if—why, I guess why wouldn’t you have chosen like a country like Cambodia and just said we’re going to get a bunch of hosts there so if we’re going to Cambodia we’re definitely going to get a match?

Yeah, it’s a great question. One of the first questions we got from every single investor we talked about at the beginning was this question of breadth versus depth. For us, where it came down to was that in the travel marketplace specifically, you really need to have some breadth to show relevance. So it was really hard for us to be...

So like how did you come to that conclusion? Travelers said, like I won’t use this website because you don’t have 200 countries covered?

Yeah, no, not that. So a lot of it came from our suppliers, who would say, you know, we’re sending travelers to Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand. Like we want experiences in all of those destinations. So sometimes suppliers, like some of our clients and partners that we’re working with. So we have channel partners. We sell directly through our website, travelingspoon.com, and then we sell through some channel partners as well. So some of it was coming through our partners, some of it was coming from directly from our travelers who said I traveled here and now...

Who are the partners? Tour operators? People who will plan trips from start to finish.

Then how is demand growing? What’s that rate?

Yeah, so demand. So we, as a two-sided marketplace, one of the challenges is you have to kind of pick how fast is it growing. 30% month over month is sort of our traveler side that’s been going through, so that’s healthy.

So just like, ideally for a startup, you guys have been operating for how long?

We launched our site a little less than a year ago. A little less than a year ago. Okay, so like at least 20%, but 30% that sort of growing. But then that’s just people signing up or people actually like booking?

No, that’s revenue and travelers served—so travelers who have booked and then gone on completed experiences. There’s a pie chart of you know where they’re hearing about the product, how much is it these channels, and how much is it word of mouth?

So word of mouth is certainly a big part of direct growth, and we’re also working on advertising right now. And just a percentage—what percentage is that?

60% is direct and 40% is through our partners right now.

So what are you guys most worried about?

Finding the point at which travelers are making those experiences and planning their trips and booking with us.

So how do we get in front of travelers at the point of their decision-making process?

How do you get to travelers at the point of the decision-making process?

So are the partners not good?

I mean, yeah, so we want to find more of the right partners. So we’ve started working with one partner who’s serving almost 25% of our travelers right now, and we’re trying to find more of them.

So who are the right travel distribution partners that are supplying?

How many travelers are we talking about here?

Hundreds? Thousands?

Thousands.

Okay, I guess to me like the direct model doesn’t—correct me if I'm wrong—the direct model doesn’t make sense because number one, like if I’m traveling to Cambodia this year and maybe next year I travel to India, like I have to remember your company and the chance of that actually happening is really slim.

The one way to think about, or at least I think about applications is they fall into two categories: apps that you wake up, or products you wake up every day and use—you open up Gmail, you open up Snapchat without thinking about opening those up—and then there’s a second group of apps which fulfill some mental query that you have. So I’m going to—I need a restaurant, I look up the app. I need a desk, I need a desk addressed. Uh, navigation, so I use Google Maps.

Like so your product falls into the second category, but the problem is you so infrequently have that mental query you’re no one’s going to remember it.

That’s the thing that makes me really nervous. It’s like this is not an activity that I’m doing many, many times, like Uber has the advantage. That’s like might have people even multiple times even within a day. It’s not brushing your teeth, it’s not writing an Uber.

And that’s definitely something that we struggle with in terms of finding the right customers. I mean our vision for the company—so with that context, why not focus on channel partners? Because that’s all they’re doing.

Yeah, so we've drawn a lot of inspiration from Airbnb as an example. Our vision for the company is to be a brand—to be the brand for authentic meaningful...

Your vision for the company is to grow and make tons of money!

Yeah, right, yeah. Yeah, it’s like I created a really great brand.

I’ll push back a little bit. The mission is really important to us. We want to make a ton of money, but the mission is why we started the company, and we want to...

Just to just interject there, I’m not—Kevin isn’t saying is like you just should be like money-hungry capitalists—that's not the takeaway.

That’s what the VCs keep saying.

Yeah, but it’s not, it’s just a proxy for making sure that you’re working on something that people actually want. So it’s important that, you know, I think you can do both.

Yeah, just don’t fool yourself and don’t use that as rationalization for maybe an ineffective strategy.

Yeah, fair enough. So but I guess just to go back one thing that's promising. See, there’s this mix—you have all these partners. The thing is, you have all this word of mouth growth. What’s the percent you said? Like 60% coming from word of mouth? And then what’s the percentage that have re-done a second booking?

We have 10% repeat travel in the last nine months.

10% repeat travel in the last nine months. That’s even higher than I expected, right? The—But so if you take that context of people are not going to remember your product for a while, for like many years, I think to me that just is like you have to work with channel partners because that’s going to be the way that you—

That’s what I would do. I don’t know, you know what you would choose you should do, but for me I’m thinking I got to get that consistent growth word of mouth and having a brand that people recall—it takes a long, long, long time. I mean the kind of benchmark in which that people will automatically remember you, like even Airbnb, even today has that problem and Airbnb is like a lot bigger than your brand.

We have one minute left. Here’s the thing, I feel like we just started. One of the big things that you need to think about is like, where are there like the most power-hungry users on the system? The people—like one, you’re like working with channel partners who do act as salesmen on your behalf because you can’t afford that for the price acquisition.

But the other one is like where do you find people that are addicted to this service, right? People who can to use this over and over and over again because like those were the people that be both going to talk about it. So like are there like power travelers are going back and forth to the same countries over and over again where it’s like every single time this is just going to be part of my experience that happens on there?

And then like does that sort of exist? Because otherwise it’s just going to be slow and steady, and so there are two types of companies that I get excited about because there are two paths to getting very, very huge. There’s one that everyone glorifies, is the startup that like grows very, very quickly and like shoots up and they become like this great success overnight.

There’s another kind where it’s just like you do this solid sort of growth, but you figure out like how do I make a company that’s going to last for 20 years, right? And so the fact that you’re focused on like we care a lot about the mission that’s set up on there, but the thing is like what is the mission? Is the mission is like I’m passionate about feeding other people’s food? It’s like I’m passionate about like helping these other people have some kind of income?

I’m passionate about like having people have an interesting travel experience. There’s like three different things that happen on there. And the real thing is like I think your core idea is just like when you travel and you do it through us, you’re going to have something spectacular, something very different.

It’s the same thing with Airbnb. It’s like yeah, a lot cheaper, but it’s far more interesting as a result. And I think that’s like a similar idea that you need to have on here. Also going back earlier in the conversation about breath versus depth, I’m still not convinced the breath strategy here is the prudent one only because, um, you can find channel partners, you can find local agencies that work just in Thailand, um who can be booking hundreds if not thousands of meals a week.

That’s where the business becomes powerful, and the reason I think that approach—that concentrated approach—is better is once you find those power users like Kevin was talking about, you can figure out okay, this is what worked in Thailand. Let’s figure out what’s going to work in Myanmar and let's figure out what’s going to work in India, etc. And that’s actually exactly what we’re doing now is focusing on Thailand, specifically for that reason.

So good. My wife’s Thai, I’m biased.

All right, just like that time is up. So with all companies, we’re going to talk afterwards because this is just like such a weird thing to do in just 10 minutes. So we’re going to talk to all of them afterwards and just dive into some more stuff. Well, thanks so much for the—thank you!

Thanks! Next company, Human Surge—what a name! Is that like a soft drink? My first question is how did you come up with that name?

So delicious brainstorming on that.

Yeah, okay. Do you want to do a quick introduction of who you are and what the company does?

Absolutely! My name is Luke. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Human Surge. It’s a global emergency roster for humanitarian responders. We’re a marketplace bringing together aid workers around the globe and connecting them with organizations responding to disasters or emergencies in real-time on-demand, to enable them to scale when needed.

So that sounds really lovely. Devy, uh, are you a nonprofit?

No, I’m a for-profit! We like to think social enterprise seeking social impact. But yeah, we founded a company as a for-profit. We actually thought first to launch as a foundation or link up with a non-governmental organization, but actually the sector needs this kind of development of a platform. It needs a reiterative process; we need to go through more like a startup process.

So just to make sure I understand, because you machine-gunned a little bit of the description. So, a disaster happens like a tsunami. I’m a nonprofit. I Google, I need volunteers or helpers, and I land on your website and I basically...

Mhm, order help, and then you send volunteers based on the criteria I put in, is that right?

Uh, partially. Indeed, what happens when there’s a major emergency, organizations respond, and they scale to the operation. But we’re talking not volunteers; we’re talking remunerated professionals that work around the globe in crisis situations.

Uh, so I’m going to stop you there. So can I ask one question?

Yeah!

Yeah, why a marketplace? Why isn’t this just like why don’t you have—if you already have these people, why is this concept of a marketplace?

Uh, they’re struggling actually to scale operation, and I’ve worked over nonprofit organizations and other organizations that responded to these kinds of emergencies. I’ve worked over a decade in the sector and I’ve experienced it firsthand. Either you’re with an incomplete team, there are people missing on the team, or you go for two to three months, and they’re asking you kindly if you want to stay because you didn’t find a replacement for you, right?

So how does the business model work? So you have all these people signing up to volunteer, I take it you charge the nonprofits for accessing that list?

That’s correct! Where the business model now is to get an annual fee—annual subscription—to access the database search, and you can search the platform very much like you would search for a hotel or flight nowadays. So you just say, okay, I need a logistician with more than five years of experience, has been in Africa before, speaks French, uh, what have you, whatever is the criteria that you’re looking for, and you’ll see the top candidates that indeed recently confirmed that they’re available.

I think we should take a look at that now that we’ve asked the questions. We’re going to do a UX review.

Okay.

So I know you’re like, I’m going second, I’m safe. No, you’re not safe. We switched it up.

Okay, so, um, we took a look at your website and, um, what we decided to do was just basically—we’re going to go through like what is the thing you most want to optimize? What’s the thing that drives the core of your sort of business?

Um, your kind of website is very typical for lots of marketplace websites that I look at. It makes it same kinds of mistakes that a lot of them sort of make.

Um, so the first thing is like I’m very always interested in sort of like how do I quickly understand sort of like what this company sort of does? And so like I couldn’t find the simple copy and paste sentence that was like on the regular website. I went to your about page. You have this thing on here—I noticed as I talk to you, you like to use lots of extra words to explain things on there, and to me, I’m just like, yeah, you know, Human Surge—they’re like Mechanical Turk or AWS for like volunteers for nonprofits.

And you’re—no, not volunteers; they’re remunerated professionals set up on. And it’s like I can’t remember that; you’re ruining my word of mouth. It’s important. There’s an important point there; it is hilarious, but it’s also an important point, which is you don’t want to use words like that that are—that we’re putting up on the overhead right now because they’re loaded; they mean a lot of different things to different people. So when you use a word like a single platform, it can be like something that’s like in the water or it can be like infrastructure—a platform can mean many different things.

So you might think as a Founder who’s trying to describe your company, I’m using clear words. You’re not because those words can be interpreted in many different ways. The next thing I noticed is up in the upper left-hand corner you got this like big label here that makes me not want to sign up. I’m just like, I have to deal with a disaster, right?

It should just say, don’t try me!

Right? So the thing is, I see so many companies that do this all the time. They put in beta, and here’s what I thought was the best part about your website: your FAQ, your very first question is like, why are we in beta? Um, which is a good question, but basically what you said in here is just like, hey, this is basically—we’re still working on it, right? And we’re going to be improving stuff, and if something goes wrong, let us know.

So you have a—EDG tags that are showing up on that, so I’m G, let you know that, but the thing is like every company, you’re going to be constantly working on stuff, and then you have issues. You want them to let go; there’s nothing about you being in beta. Like all you’re saying is like, I want insurance for like if I make a mistake, and quite frankly, people are understanding of people, right?

So the more you try to make yourself look like a faceless organization, the harder it’s going to be for someone to be like, oh, whatever happens on there. All you can do is be responsive and make things work like an enterprise. It’s actually one of those things counterintuitive for a lot of people working on Enterprise and B2B companies. They’re just like, what if I make a mistake or things that happen on there—be responsive, fix things really quickly. You’re smart, you’re creative; you’ll figure all that stuff out.

I think it was a way for us to manage expectations a little bit with the organizations and the professionals, right?

I think the thing is like the best thing that could ever possibly happen is that you have so much demand for your stuff on there, and then you figure that out. That’s the problem that you want to have.

Do not ever be afraid of that!

All right, okay. So let’s go and do just a—just a pause on this page if you—before Uh Kevin circled that that call to action, it’s not obvious what the call to action is, and that’s a big deal.

I think if you asked you, you did a quick straw poll of the audience, and you said what am I supposed to click on, they would know. And one way you can do it is you just kind of squint and look at the page and try to figure out where do your eyes go—they go to about four or five blue sections and logos at the bottom. It’s just not obvious what you want me to do.

The thing is like because you’re a marketplace, you said I have two sides, therefore I need a website that does both. The thing is like that’s just never going to work out really well. Even if you go to Airbnb or Uber or lots of different places, they’re always optimized for one side of their marketplace. So what you need to decide is like, what’s the thing I most need to happen and then optimize for the professionals.

Finally, that would be our target main target, right?

So my feeling is like a lot of the self-serve is going to come for the professionals. It should be optimized for signing up the professionals and the volunteers. The organizations that’s what you’re going to be signing up doing B2B—you’re going out there, you’re hitting the pavement to have that. That’s going to be on a separate landing page; you direct them—

There’s actually a second landing page. Indeed, if you go in here, then it would allow you immediately as a professional to register with your emails or trying to direct people to that second page.

So one thing that is good about the land on this landing page, I think folks can take away from that last page is that the imagery is very clear—you don’t actually need to read any of the text to understand generally what this product is about, so you did that well.

All right, I’m just going to go through this real quick because we have a lot to get through. What we’re going to do is go through the process of signing up as an organization—doing the one thing that helps you make money. All right, so I clicked on that button and I get to this page, and this page, this is the top half of the page, it’s a big map. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do on here.

If you scroll down, you see like how many people join, a bunch of drop-downs, and then I see the pricing plans—a big gap. I scroll down, all right, our call to action is down here, so these are the things that you want me to click to make it really hard to get to them.

Yeah, so if you’re talking to somebody who’s never used a product before, you’re just asking a lot. Now they have to find that call to action on the first page and just scroll down to the bottom and read, which most people don't, and then recognize select is the call to action.

Yeah, okay. So let’s go through here now. One thing I noticed is like obviously, before I’m going to pay for a service like this, I kind of want to see how does the directory sort of work? I actually feel like your directory is basically going to be a search. This is not a typical search kind of interface with all these sort of drop-downs. I can eventually figure it out that happened on there, but it’s one of those things like it doesn’t use affordances, and it’s one of those things where I talk to people all the time where they’re like people like I’m going to build an interface that no one has ever seen before because I want to make my mark on the world, and users usually go like I have no idea how the to use this thing because I’ve never seen anything like it.

Like if you want to be an artist, you should be an artist. This is a very different type of design.

Okay, so let’s go through here, and I’m just like I want to go through this as fast as possible. I do my first—I do my first search—I got zero results. This is what you’re relying on.

Need to get to that select button. He’s trying to set those actions, right? And then I scroll down, and you’ve got this button. We have a bunch of Spanish that starts talking to me. We’re in beta—you’re in beta, right?

Right! [Laughter] Okay, all right. So I finally find something. It shows me a result. I go, great. I go through this, and I hit this button.

The problem is this button actually takes you to the signup page for registering as a professional instead of the organization. So this will take you down a really weird rabbit hole where you want to take them to somewhere else, and I didn’t realize I was going to go to that until I read the stuff that’s below the call to action.

All right, so this is a form that you wanted them to go through. I didn’t actually end up going through this when I threw the site on there.

How much? Oh, we have Dom’s gone to kill us.

Okay, really quick on here. There’s a lot of stuff to go through the sign-up on here—like you go through this, there’s this action that happens, there’s this that explains it. I go through on here, there’s all this information you ask me as a professional, and quite frankly, it was one of those things where I’m just like, like how much money have I managed?

I’m just like I want to volunteer and help! Like why won’t you let me help?

Yeah, I get through here. These are like kind of the main questions that you have that you show up on the site. I see this thing on there. I don’t see the word volunteer, which is what I think I am.

No!

Yeah, it’s not for volunteers, and here’s the thing: I would put them into a bucket. I get to here, and it says like tell me at elevator pitch. It would be great if you gave me an example, so I’m like let me just get through this, right? I get to this, and this is technically the ending of this. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do next. I eventually figure out that this is a link actually.

Actually, I want to go back to this—the stuff that I need to know here—the only thing I care about—all that information that you collect on there is actually what information does a nonprofit actually need?

What’s the minimum that they need to be convinced that there’s a professional or volunteer?

The information we collected here after talking with recruiters to capture that core information that they look for when they scout for a professional, indeed, that’s the information that we capture in those first screens.

You took some snapshots, but I think it looks a bit better if you look on the real.

I think I would disagree. I mean, I also—I think the big issue here isn’t—and the point that Kevin’s trying to drive home by showing all these steps is you’re trying to tackle a lot as a very young company, trying to tackle a lot in terms of functionality and features, and I think that’s maybe not the best strategy.

Like you know, Kevin said if I want to—if I want to—not as a volunteer—as I’m a professional—if I just want to submit a little piece of information to get onto the site, there’s so much I have to go over that I probably won’t make it to the end, and that’s a big problem for you because that means a big part of—you don’t have a marketplace; you don’t have actually people who are in the directory.

1,200 people started, 1,200 people completed the profile and confirmed their email, so, and we have over 100 people have been contacted, now by over 12.

Yeah, so it’s work, but indeed, it’s addressing actually an issue that all these organizations are struggling with. Now they’re all managing this on by themselves on an Excel sheet, so we’re saying okay, we’ll just bring it online on a platform.

No, no, no! I totally get it. The whole thing is I’d optimize for as many people. Like, I actually would be like hey, give me your name, give me your email address, and I’ll provide through the follow information.

L harvest names.

The second thing is I want to make it so that like those people are super impressed by the listing—at the top on letter. So I wouldn’t give—take it to chance that someone’s going to search your database which isn’t fully completed or whatever and be like maybe they’re going to result in thing that’s going to happen.

It’d be like look, do you need people like within a month? You need people in this category, we have this many in that category, this many in this, this many in this. If you’re interested in trying, give us contact or call. Just make it feel like I’m already going to win just by looking at the information.

I think we’re now in a stage indeed trying to work with these dozen organizations to get their feedback and see how they want to use this platform. There are more functionalities that, you know, are trying to define together with them to see how we can optimize it for them.

Uh, I guess it’s an ongoing process indeed. I appreciate the feedback.

Just as we’re out of time, they’re like signaling like these maniacal signs in the backstage. Just a couple of quick points before we wrap up. You know, we’re showing, you know, thank you for coming out here and letting us work through your site. This is actually better than a lot of sites that are a year old or six months old, uh, but it’s, use it as an example. A lot of founders are focused on all these things in their companies and they don’t recognize that so many people the first time they see your company is going to be through this.

And so it’s very important to make sure you as founders are showing your product to people who don’t know what the company is. They need to make sure they understand what the landing page is, make sure they can get through that sign-up because that is, you know, for every time that you tell somebody about your company, there’s a thousand other people that are going to be hitting that website and maybe getting an incorrect understanding.

And the stuff we do, it’s not complicated. I just walk through the site. I just try to follow the path, and the thing is I tried to follow the path of like what’s the fastest way that I can get to what I want or what I think you want from on there. And when you notice that like it’s super hard to get to that point to like get to touchdown and win then—

Well, there was the lead! You don’t show it, but there’s the lead homepage where you can just leave your email and say register. Just email and register, and that, that should totally be really obvious.

But why not that be the site period homepage?

Yeah, yeah, there isn’t like this—don’t let like your big companies have all this crud that kind of builds up over time when something isn’t working; dump it and replace it with something! That’s the nice thing about having a small company.

Okay, I think we’re way over top. Thanks so much!

Thank you for coming!

Everybody can register!

Thank you! What happened to mine? I don’t know what happened to yours!

Okay! Last company, Power of you!

Hi! Hi! We’re not doing a UX review. Don’t we—I was listening to the laughter in the comments and I was like, oh god! This is going to happen!

All right, introduce yourself and tell us what your company does.

Yeah, my name is K. Milani. I’m the co-founder of Power View. Uh, we help people take control of their data. I can’t see anybody over there.

Conversation with us, we help people take control of their data, and we’re starting by monetizing this data through market research, so helping brands understand their consumers through actual behavior data rather than the claim behavior data that they currently use.

When you say you, you mean a consumer, correct? And then brands are the supply side?

So I think one of the questions was from a div, and so actually demand becomes our brands, and supply is the data from consumers, so people like you and I and everybody here.

This is like the thing everyone’s worried that Google is doing to all our data.

Well, they are doing it! Uh, not—but they don’t sell like first-person data or anything like that, so they’re not...

I guess that brings us to the first question. Why would I want to do this as a consumer?

So it’s already happening to your point earlier about Google. So it’s not just... I mean, so there’re companies out there, Facebook, Google, and other companies actually all doing this for billions of dollars, they’re helping us—some get something back.

So I use Gmail, I love it, um, and use it for free, and I want that.

So am I just getting money?

Say that again?

Why would I use...

I get Gmail in return. What do I get in return?

Fore, uh, you monetize your—so you do get paid money!

And how much money can I make?

How much can I make?

We are, we’re monetizing at $15 to $65 per data instance.

What is the data instance?

Uh, so anytime your data is used for an insight for a brand, $15 to $65, yes!

How is that? How does that—how does that happen?

That’s—that’s how much— I mean, we’re doing market research, so the average user that signs up to the platform, how much money are they making?

Uh, they would—well, this is... so on average, because it’s not—you only get paid if your data is used, yep, so on—that’s going to be about $35 if your data is used a year a day every time.

So I mean we’re still—we just started monetizing six months ago. So it’s early data points.

What percentage of total users are actually getting paid, and then how much have you paid out in the last six months?

Okay, uh, so percentage wise it’s going to be about—that’s a very small percent—about 8% people have already gotten paid.

Uh, it’s it’s a matter of like consolidation of people, the brands, and all that—you know, combination of things.

Uh, and the amount that we’ve distributed back is about $3,000 already.

So what’s your biggest problem right now?

Our biggest one is actually the sales cycle to brands—that’s our biggest challenge.

So what’s your sales cycle look like?

Uh, it takes—it can take anywhere from 2 months up to 6 months, and sometimes it drops out in that time.

Do you have enough supply to entice the brands?

That is something, yes, we do have enough supply in the areas that we’re targeting heavily, specifically UK and US.

So if I'm—I'm, uh, whatever—a Pepsi and I come to Power View, how much do I—what’s my normal payout? What’s a normal contract look like?

So it’s, uh, normally you come to me... Right, you’re, yeah, so I would love for Pepsi to come to me. There are some people starting to come which is awesome, like because they see the value of data and the whole laws R, regulation stuff.

The amount, the base that we start off with is at $115,000 for a couple three-week project where essentially the project is you would be bringing people on board, and we have the people that you are interested in, 18 to 25-year-olds in San Francisco who watch—

At least I get 15 grand!

How many people do I get? What do I get?

This could be anywhere from 100 to 200 people that would be in this project.

Okay, so you’re worried about trying to build up your pipeline, that happens on there. So like how often are you closing new business?

Uh, so it’s— for—I mean we have three clients right now that we’re working with already and we are—

How often are you trying to bring in new business?

Well, it’s on—it’s an ongoing process because it takes so long to do it.

But then we have these clients also renewing. On average how long does it take?

Um, it’s going to be at least six months.

Great! And then how many people do you have potentially in the pipeline that you’re like...

Uh, we have about eight people in the pipeline right now!

Eight people?

How many people are emailing a day?

We’re not—well probably... I can tell you per week we email at least three people per week.

Wow, that is tiny.

That is three a whole three people!

Because the problem... I mean the problem—the challenge there is you want to because it takes so—you have to get to the right person, and so to find the more specifically you’re identifying three decision-makers.

Exactly, that’s... I’m going to just like—I’m going to...

Yeah, yeah, sorry.

I’m still going to like blow your head like you need to be contacting like a hundred people a day!

This is like the first thing that we start telling B2B companies right away!

It’s one of those things like it takes months, right? And let’s say for example like you’re working on this stuff and you’re trying to hit a certain kind of growth on there. That means like everything that you do right now to get to that point like that helps you like feed into what’s going to happen into the future.

Yes!

And the thing is like a lot of people just like they get stuck on saying like yes I need multiple touch points, but they keep overthinking what that touch point is.

Right!

That means so for example, a lot of them think is like the only touch points I have is like definitely a key decision maker; it has to definitely be a meeting or whatever, but really like the first touch point should be like a simple email to as many people as possible where it’s just like hi, I'm one of the founders of this—we’re doing this—we’re making this valuable, and what you’re trying to find is low-hanging fruit, right?

Those people where it’s just like they just get it, they understand, it clicks, and it happens on there, and the only way you’re going to find low-hanging fruit is that you're doing this like shotgun approach!

Yeah!

In sales like the best lead is the one that hangs up on you because then you know you don’t have to dedicate any more time to it!

Yeah!

So at this phase of your company there isn’t a lot of value in being very precise to find a specific brand and specific DEC decision-maker because you just want to gather information from your customers about do they actually want this both brands and consumers, right?

You want to be promiscuous at this stage!

And the thing is like you don’t—like you’re trying to predict like who I think the key decision-makers are, which kind of company is going to like this, and it really is one of those things it’s like I see this kind of company—they like us.

I’m G to find a thousand other companies that are exactly like that!

Yeah, like what you... Yeah, you might not—in like, like you might find that like hospitals or some random group that you never even considered are actually the people who are most responsive, and before you know, those could be your first, you know, 100, 200.

My task if those was real office hours I’d be like all right, three a day or three a week or whatever; that’s not enough!

What I want you to do is like basically find a list of like top four or 5,000 companies and figure out how to email like everyone that you think is in that position.

There’s also a sub-point there which Kevin is making which is the more companies or you know, potential customers you email, the more you’re going to have to go outside of your preconceived assumptions of what is an ideal customer and just go outside of your line of sight; might actually be the truth.

And I think there’s many, many examples of startups which are very similar to huge companies, but ultimately fail because they just didn’t—they just didn’t get that one iteration that’s a little outside.

So early on, you almost have to be very skeptical about your assumptions about what your brand and these brands and these customers want, and that’s another reason why just doing high volume will, you know, will get you learnings that you’re...

And your task from there then is like a lot of people say I’m B2B, I’m enterprise—like what numbers ship are you tracking because I’m only going to be closing maybe one or two deals over a year or whatever happens on there.

And it says like all the numbers you’re tracking is all the stuff about like how effective you’re being—I’m contacting 100 people a day, this is my response rate, this is my open rate, this is my click-through rate, these L of people ask for a demo, this is how many meetings I’ve signed up.

If you’re going to compete against someone who’s got like a giant Salesforce team, you don’t compete with them by going at one at a time; you have to start think through, and the thing is like there’s tons of technology now available to people doing outbound sales.

Well, they never before—we fund tons of those companies now because we see that that’s the future for how people are jump-starting businesses!

Yep, thank you defin!

So you—I’m professional—you’re—that’s one kind of problem.

Okay, that’s I was going to ask for another problem.

But that’s one type of problem. We’ll do quickly one more. What’s another thing that you’re that goes on the other side of the kind of equation?

Is communicating, um, what we’re offering to consumers to people better so that they don’t freak out or—and they understand what we’re doing—that it’s for...

You’re looking for people who are like I don’t care!

Yeah, right!

So it's just like, I mean I would do a lot of things for $65!

I mean if you can—if you can tell if you can pay me 65 bucks and I would just lead with that—like look—you give this data and you can make between this and this much money! All here—something you don’t have to do anything—just connect all your stuff that happens on there, and it comes passively!

Exactly!

And that’s the only story you need to tell! It’s super simple!

The thing is like when I go to your website, you do not make that simple at all. You’re like look at all these areas of like dimensions and graphs, and people don’t care about the graphs.

$65, got it?

Yeah!

Okay, definitely I think we’re out of time! Thank you so much!

Thank you so much!

Thank you!

Do any takeaways?

Yeah, sure!

Okay, thanks!

Yeah, you’re okay—real quick takeaways!

So marketplaces, identify supply, identify demand, see how the rate of growth is, try to figure out where you’re sort of constrained.

If you’re doing B2B stuff, work in mass!

Yeah! Work aggressively outside of your—and just try not to be too confident in your assumptions.

One thing that you guys can see in these three very different companies—similar with different companies—is Kevin and I are just focused on what are the, as we said at the beginning, what are the bottlenecks to growth and really focusing on those.

As a Founder there’s a limitless amount of problems that you have to deal with—you have to work on. I implore you and we implore you, and the thing that we work on most at YC in the program is focusing on those things which are bottlenecks to growth.

Because it's a—it's a nice true north when you wake up in the morning; you know what you got to work on rather than, oh I have this company and all these different problems that I have to deal with. You can just focus on that one thing.

Uh, but anyways that’s office hours! Thank you! [Applause]