Using technology to solve a personal pain point. Not a huge problem, but a problem nonetheless, and now your life is a little bit better. I like it. It's stuff like this that really makes me appreciate the power of coding.
Very cool thing. I would include a summary on the use case on the questionsthree website or a short paragraph describing what exactly it is. The only reason I had some idea of what it was, is due to the blog post that directed me there.
Just some information (also, pricing) to provide before asking for people to give away their emails.
If the best alternative to using your app is a free Google Voice number in your area code (and not $20/month to Time Warner), I don't think $10/month is something I would pay. I'd either find a way to make the pricing work, or (as suggested above) find a way to sell to apartment complexes at large.
So this isn't a problem where I live, they actually let you use any number, (my cell, landline, etc) and it does the dial and press 9 thing.
However, I am renting out my apartment to people and they would sometimes forget the gate key or whatever, and I'd get a call literally once or twice a day all to just press 9. I could see this being useful.
This is great! I have the exact same problem with my apartment building needing not just a local number but one with the same area code as the building (so an area code in a neighboring city 10 mins away wouldn't work).
I ended up getting a google voice number to solve the issue which then simultaneously rings both me and my wife. However, I love your PIN idea and the "automatically let anyone in during a set time period" approach.
You shouldn't be marketing this towards consumers. If you and your friend had this problem with the apartment gate then I'm sure more people at your apartment have to deal with it also. Why don't you talk to your apartment complex and see if they'd be interested to use it as a service for their tenants?
You should be marketing this towards apartment complex properties, not consumers living in apartment complexes.
I thought about that as a next step, but I really don't know where to start. Talk to the manager of my leasing office? Try to find an in to the company who owns this property (and probably several others)?
It's usually easier to sell to someone who's experiencing a pain than it is to an upstream provider. In other words, if it was a big enough issue that you built something to fix it, and your apartment complex hasn't fixed it themselves, you probably aren't going to suddenly convince them to buy in (since they don't see the pain, or don't care).
It's more work, but you can convince the upstream provider that their customer's pain is actually causing them pain.
I would try to find a larger complex to use as a case study. Set everything up for free for them, and check their retention rate before and after the install. 1 month less of an empty apartment probably pays for your product, and if you're anything over that it's a no-brainer from the complex owner's perspective.
Management/owners have no motivation on their own to install this. They have already satisfied their insurance company by having a locked gate, any kind of locked gate. It's a plus that they can put in their consumer ads. And that's it. They have no pain.
Individuals have the pain.
Total guess, if you can get enough individuals to like it for free or cheap, then the hue and cry may motivate a manager somewhere to subscribe for $WORTHWHILE.
That's strange, of all the places in the world I wouldn't suspect that US have a higher price for calling non-local cells/phones (and even has such thing as a long-distance call). Here were I live the long/short distance have the same price for about 15 years now). I know that Poland is small in comparison to the US, but I don't see a point in charging more for longer distance (one could just average the price).
I don't know if it is a price thing (except phone companies long ago charged for long distance, and hate giving up that fee).
I think the real problem is that these gate systems at apartment complexes setup to only handle 7 digits. It was install in the 70s or 80s when our state when our part of the state had only 1 area code (leading 3 digits). Now, we have several. When we dropped our land line, we found that the door buzzer system could only call the 763 area code, but our cell phones use 651.
Most landlines, of which a significant number are VOIP do not charge per call or per minute to any number in the US. There is a flat monthly fee for unlimited calling. Mobile phones charge the same per minute regardless of the number dialed.
Yes, this is oversimplified and there are billing options which do strange things, but it's unlikely that the reason for the local number policy is the cost of the call.
It seems fairly likely to me. The phone lines that charge extra for long distance are exactly those cheap, low-functionality lines that a system like this is probably hooked up to.
Market this to the management of every apartment complex with a gate. Have them spread your app to their individual resident base.
Your marketing copy has to change a little because you are now targeting management to be your distribution channel. You could say something like our app reduces the line in front of the gate because it makes it easier for trusted outsiders to enter the community.
Or if you think it's easier to go after your end-users, then you could:
- try and cross-market with other startups targeting apartment residents
- try to get access to different apartment community/common rooms and drop some flyers or quickly talk to some folks (this is kind of creepy and risky, but you might be able to hack the process by asking for a tour of the apartment from management)
- try dropping your message on apartment forums or review sites
sell this to apartment owners directly, starting with your own. Tell them it's a selling point they can put in their listings "Includes QuestionsThree easy-access system" or something along those lines.
Billing landlords is a better way to price it, after-all you said you hated getting a $20 bill every month just to access your apartment by phone, so residents wouldn't be much happier if they were billed by this system.
I agree this is the best way to market this, if apartment complexes offer it as an included benefit to tenants. Have you considered the larger possibility of selling this to the alarm/gate companies to give them the capability of not requiring a local number?
I've seen (and built) similar things on top of Twilio before. Even set it up to have multiple passcodes for different friends, then it will text me "John just let himself in."
Some people don't get the pain point, but it's definitely nice!
I love the fact that you solved a specific pain point and can potentially help others, but I'm not sure this is something that would be worth $10/month for most people. This is also a pretty trivial app to build with the twilio/tropo APIs, so it's not an earth shattering product.
Can you set it up to use the same number, but validate accounts with access numbers? That way you only pay for 1 number and could possibly ask for donations on the site for hosting costs (sounds like you could still get away with the free heroku account for your building).
It's not the fact that it's trivial that makes it not worth $10/month, it's that it's not that much better than having to tromp downstairs to let someone in. I wouldn't pay $120/year for that, I'd make the landlord provide something that worked (if I lived high off the ground) or just walk downstairs (if I was just on the 2nd floor or so).
You've done the easy bit.
The hard bit is how to make money. Selling to the apartment owning/building/management industry will be very difficult. The product needs to be a lot more refined. The marketing materials just so. The team selling experienced in the industry. And so on.
Some fights are worth having. If you can find a sidekick who relishes the sales battle then sobeit.
Else consider open sourcing what you've done and move to the next problem.
Is it necessary to sell to landlords? Although B2B is often said to be easier, in this case you're solving a problem that only the residents have, so I would have said B2C is the way to go.
I'd suggest manually taking on the first few dozen customers by word of mouth, as many as possible, then using that as evidence of a quantifiable need - after that point, contacting letting agents who may be able to use it as a neat selling point?
Check out how Lockitron is marketing their product - yours can deliver similar value, except to residents of apartment complexes. https://lockitron.com/preorder
I would first figure out the size of the market, then pick a price point (informed by the size of the market + the pain solved by your solution), then a marketing strategy (target either building management or individuals).
While most people on HN are telling you to market to the apartment complexes, I think you might want to market towards individuals, since they are the ones who feel the pain that you alleviate. You can target apartment complexes if you alleviate some pain that they have (maybe having your system is something they can include in marketing materials, which will get them more occupants/better occupancy).
The best thing about targeting individuals is that you may be able to get them to market for you (see dropbox), and that they will cross pollinate your solution to new apartment complexes when they move.
Why wouldn't you just (1) get a local google voice number, (2) forward it to your cell, (3) ask who it is (yay security!), (4) press 9 (or not). I'm honestly not getting the value here.
I'm also totally not getting how the security aspect of this is being glossed over. To the suggestion that apartment owners/managers would be interested, why would they put up a security gate then install a system that allows it to be bypassed by anyone with your phone number?? I actually bet if you told your apartment manager he would demand you immediately disable it, not pay you to give it to your neighbors.
My problem: I have a google voice number I am attached to. I moved into an apartment where I need to provide a local phone number for the door system. However, I cannot have multiple google voice accounts attached to my cell phone - therefore I can't forward those incoming calls from the new number to my cell.
If you set your phone type as "Home" in your Google Voice settings instead of "Mobile", you can attach it to another Google Voice number. I currently do this with my front door callbox, and it works like a charm. I think the limit may be two Google Voice numbers to "Home" real-world phone number, though.
One caveat: Text messages will only be sent to phones listed as "Mobile". But I just get my text messages via the Google Voice app anyway, so this is actually a benefit to me (no duplicated texts).
103 comments
[ 8.8 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadJust some information (also, pricing) to provide before asking for people to give away their emails.
Cool thing, though!
For the longest time, the homepage was Rails' index.html. It was so hard for me to bang out those few paragraphs.
Nice thing about that is I've let the UPS guy in while I was in Rome, and didn't have to pay long distance.
However, I am renting out my apartment to people and they would sometimes forget the gate key or whatever, and I'd get a call literally once or twice a day all to just press 9. I could see this being useful.
I ended up getting a google voice number to solve the issue which then simultaneously rings both me and my wife. However, I love your PIN idea and the "automatically let anyone in during a set time period" approach.
You should be marketing this towards apartment complex properties, not consumers living in apartment complexes.
- What's your price point? - How quick can you install it? - Can this be demo'd elsewhere?
Sell pain killers to people in pain.
I would try to find a larger complex to use as a case study. Set everything up for free for them, and check their retention rate before and after the install. 1 month less of an empty apartment probably pays for your product, and if you're anything over that it's a no-brainer from the complex owner's perspective.
Individuals have the pain.
Total guess, if you can get enough individuals to like it for free or cheap, then the hue and cry may motivate a manager somewhere to subscribe for $WORTHWHILE.
Or you might sell it to the lock companies.
I think the real problem is that these gate systems at apartment complexes setup to only handle 7 digits. It was install in the 70s or 80s when our state when our part of the state had only 1 area code (leading 3 digits). Now, we have several. When we dropped our land line, we found that the door buzzer system could only call the 763 area code, but our cell phones use 651.
Yes, this is oversimplified and there are billing options which do strange things, but it's unlikely that the reason for the local number policy is the cost of the call.
Your marketing copy has to change a little because you are now targeting management to be your distribution channel. You could say something like our app reduces the line in front of the gate because it makes it easier for trusted outsiders to enter the community.
Or if you think it's easier to go after your end-users, then you could:
- try and cross-market with other startups targeting apartment residents
- try to get access to different apartment community/common rooms and drop some flyers or quickly talk to some folks (this is kind of creepy and risky, but you might be able to hack the process by asking for a tour of the apartment from management)
- try dropping your message on apartment forums or review sites
Billing landlords is a better way to price it, after-all you said you hated getting a $20 bill every month just to access your apartment by phone, so residents wouldn't be much happier if they were billed by this system.
Some people don't get the pain point, but it's definitely nice!
Can you set it up to use the same number, but validate accounts with access numbers? That way you only pay for 1 number and could possibly ask for donations on the site for hosting costs (sounds like you could still get away with the free heroku account for your building).
There would be people who might pay for not having to bother to write the code (and maintain it, and maybe innovate on it) for this. You never know.
"it's trivial to write" does not mean people won't pay for it. Things are more complex than that.
Now think about the problem an solution in terms of Product and market
Is the market who you think it is ? (I.E. who will buy this ? people, buzzer system makers or building owners ?)
Then think about what would be the product that would allow your market to solve the problem. Might not be the one you built exactly.
A product is only successful if it solves a problem for a market. Both problem and market are mandatory.
Some fights are worth having. If you can find a sidekick who relishes the sales battle then sobeit.
Else consider open sourcing what you've done and move to the next problem.
I would first figure out the size of the market, then pick a price point (informed by the size of the market + the pain solved by your solution), then a marketing strategy (target either building management or individuals).
While most people on HN are telling you to market to the apartment complexes, I think you might want to market towards individuals, since they are the ones who feel the pain that you alleviate. You can target apartment complexes if you alleviate some pain that they have (maybe having your system is something they can include in marketing materials, which will get them more occupants/better occupancy).
The best thing about targeting individuals is that you may be able to get them to market for you (see dropbox), and that they will cross pollinate your solution to new apartment complexes when they move.
I'm also totally not getting how the security aspect of this is being glossed over. To the suggestion that apartment owners/managers would be interested, why would they put up a security gate then install a system that allows it to be bypassed by anyone with your phone number?? I actually bet if you told your apartment manager he would demand you immediately disable it, not pay you to give it to your neighbors.
One caveat: Text messages will only be sent to phones listed as "Mobile". But I just get my text messages via the Google Voice app anyway, so this is actually a benefit to me (no duplicated texts).