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Show HN: Boot ‘strapped’ in Detroit

27 points by BallinBige ↗ HN
My partner and I have been working hard on HealPay.

After researching other billing applications, like FreshBooks, we think Invoicing should be free. We are excited to launch additional features pending Hacker News feedback :]

View the app at http://www.healpay.com

27 comments

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jeffepp
I am typically against free web apps. It lowers the bar for everyone.

People get what they pay for, I would be worried you are not in business to make money...

Must be another strategy behind this.

BallinBige
Interesting. I think the larger debate is around Freemium business models. In the words of Fred Wilson, “free gets you to a place where you can ask to get paid... if you don't start with free on the Internet, most companies will never get paid.”

HealPay is designed to help businesses collect money. Invoicing is just one means to an end. The transaction/conversion is where we see real opportunity/innovation.

jeffepp
Free to acquire users down the line is very different that free to gather feedback.

People who will pay you are typically very different than those who will use your product for free.

Feedback from people who won't pay is feedback you want to weed out.

BallinBige
^ all feedback is good ^
jeffepp
Okay, talk to me after getting feedback for a few months :)

Sounds like your mind is made up.

BallinBige
i meant = your feedback was good! *noted
Ragnarokr
I think that having the other revenue sources transparent to the users would help both problems. People do want to know that a service that their business depends on (even a little bit) is going to stick around, and they don't want surprises when you ask for money from something other than subscriptions.

If the revenue is coming from transaction fees, present that as a feature. I could really see a transparent transaction-based model with free accounts working.

When you say "invoicing should be free", that sounds like a nice revolutionary pitch, but I wonder if BallinBige could clarify what features would be paid?

BallinBige
this is good/ well said!!! As we roll out new features, and identify possible revenue streams, (i.e. processing, additional delivery methods), we will clarify the paid features. we are evolving :]
bschram
I think that the value lies in reaching the consumers in the most straightforward way possible. Allowing users to try the service and learn the features and advantages it will provide them, is more valuable than making money from the start and turning down possible consumers. If the free service can live up to its expectations and truly provide innovative invoicing methods, it will be much easier to get the consumer to return, eventually willing to pay for specific features or products because they are familiar with the platform and now trust it.
BallinBige
yes, I think if you level w/ the user and work with them to make the product/service better...both parties #win
BallinBige
For anyone using online billing/invoicing, what features do you feel are missing? For instance, billing analytics are generally ignored. thoughts?
rubyskills
Also, what are the biggest pain points that you've experienced with other solutions and billing in general?
steelydaniel
FreshBooks' top service is $40/month--not a huge distance from free already. But, it's not like I would just give away $40 if I didn't need to.
rubyskills
Did you try out HealPay? I'm assuming you're paying for Freshbooks now. Curious if HealPay could be a replacement for your hard earned $40/mo. :)
byllc
Its seems to be a promising solution. The experience I have had with it while they've been starting up has been positive.
SabrinaDent
This is a detail but both of your testimonials are from people in the same state. That's better than none but the fact they are both from the same place makes me suspect one is your wife and the other is your accountant. Solicit real user feedback you can use to build your testimonials - bribe people with an iPad contest or whatever if you have to!
[deleted]
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rubyskills
The bulk of our initial user base has been local so most of our feedback has come from MI based users. I can certainly see how these testimonials might look like someone's wife or accountant, but I can assure you that is not the case.
reduxredacted
I noticed on your About Us page that your company is located in Ann Arbor, which piqued my interested even more.

For identification purposes, I've found that many people (in the US at least) know of Ann Arbor. It's the home of the University of Michigan. It's not a small town. It's got an activist base not dissimilar to San Francisco. And it's got a reputation (perhaps skewed by my own local sense) of being a place with a lot of bright, interesting young minds and otherwise successful and wealthy folks.

Detroit, on the other hand, is generally written about as though it's a city in a war torn third-world country.

Before I ask my question, I really don't this comment to be taken rudely (and I'm having a tough time phrasing it in a way that doesn't sound like I'm pointing a finger: "You're not really in THE D!!!") That's not my intention, please give me the benefit of the doubt on that.

Are the founders actually from Detroit or the Metro area and the company and their current location just happens to be located in Ann Arbor, or was it a marketing decision? If it was marketing, it worked for me. I believe you would get more clicks here, more traffic to your site, and ultimately more feedback by using Detroit over Ann Arbor in the name.

I'm not judging your motivations negatively either way, I'm just curious. I do not live in Detroit, but grew up in the metro area and have a very personal relationship with the good and the bad parts of the city. Most of us from the place I grew up, when asked, respond with "I'm grew up in Detroit". It's a small talk "out". It avoids the whole "where exactly is that" in the conversation (which, when you're from The Mitten State, requires pulling out your right hand to point at where you actually live). The "I grew up in Detroit" has changed the last 5-10 years to include the important a suburb (or even a distant suburb) of Detroit because it's no longer an "out" to say I'm from Detroit. The questions that follow can fill 30 minutes.

rubyskills
This is def. good and interesting feedback. Since one of our founders lives in "the D" and one of us lives in Ann Arbor, we often switch between where we're based when it's most convenient. ;)

Which do you think is better to claim we're from?

allspiritseve
To be honest, I would trust HealPay more if you charged a fee. As others have mentioned, the fact that you don't charge makes me question where you will make money and how you will survive. If I'm going to trust your site with my invoicing, I want to be sure you will stick around.

Invoicing is an interesting domain because your users are receiving money as a result of your service-- thus charging a fee only means slightly less money coming in (so cognitively it's treated as a smaller gain than an actual loss).

My suggestion would be to offer a free account that gives a taste of your service but leaves your users wanting more. FreshBooks is a good example-- you can only have three clients before you need to pay. Other options might be only paying if an invoice is above a certain amount.

Finally, a huge reason I use FreshBooks over email or my previous company's proprietary system is because I can give my clients a clean, professional interface where they can log in, view their invoice, and pay it online. So integration with Authorize.net, Google Checkout, (and I suppose PayPal, though I dislike them) are key. One thing you can do right away that is a step above FreshBooks is to allow authenticating against an external url using a REST API. This would allow me to give my clients ONE password to use on their sites as well as for billing.

Hope that helps.