Launch HN: Laylo (YC S20) – Fan reminders for content, merchandise, and events
To give some backstory, over the last year we were building a data startup to help musicians understand who their biggest fans are online. We partnered with Sony Music and have over 600,000 artists accessing their fan data through our API. One thing we constantly noticed was that artists were posting on Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, etc. about their upcoming releases. The problem was that since their releases weren’t out yet, they didn’t have any destination to send fans.
Posts like “new merch dropping next Tuesday at 3 PST” assumes that fans will actually remember. It also uses up valuable social media real estate and doesn’t give the artist any usable data.
That’s why we built Laylo Drops. Drops lets you create a landing page for your upcoming releases, captures your fan data (emails and phone numbers), and automatically reminds them at the time of the drop.
Drops links are sharable anywhere that you can put a link: IG Stories, Twitter, etc. Fans don’t even need to create an account to RSVP. We also provide social media templates, custom messaging tools and more to make the marketing simple.
We set our sights on the music industry (because that’s where we started) but ultimately our goal is to help creators of all kinds connect directly with their audience and make announcements with ease.
We would love to hear your feedback and your experiences as creators or working with creators. We’re very excited to be sharing this with HN, and we’ll be here to answer any and all questions you want to throw our way!
Thanks,
Alec
24 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 70.0 ms ] thread> Drops lets you create a landing page for your upcoming releases
Why should they(content creators) not just use their existing website to capture data and send every time they drop something new?
After talking to a ton of creators, we found that most of them don’t have or maintain a website so they wanted a simple solution. We’ve also built in the notification, marketing and messaging tools so that there’s very little work on the creator side.
We do have some requests for an embedable widget which is definitely on our list for upcoming features.
at streamlabs we built and shut down many products for creators and we'd frequently hit that issue
My one big worry for this is that you might have built a company around something that might as well be a single feature for someone else with an existing foothold in the industry.
For example, most larger labels use Linkfire to manage smart links, pre saves, bio links, etc. There are other companies with similar offerings. This seems like an obvious addition to a suite like that. Have you considered the defensibility of your product if your one feature is incorporated into a tool that many potential users are already familiar with and use daily?
Your intention to be industry-agnostic does partially mitigate this. Also I imagine you'd build your own suite with additional features if you get a foothold with this one.
Disclosure: I work at Linkfire, so don't reply with anything you wouldn't want a potential competitor to know.
Edit: I just realized that this actually is just one feature of a larger offering. Looks great!
We hope that by building for a wide array of creators and continuing to expand the toolset we can differentiate ourselves from some of the established products.