I knew very quickly that Feynman Nano was an in for me. I read through the comments, and when they mentioned they could coat grout, it became a definite in.
While it is really obvious to coat medical implants, iv leads, ect - I know that pending material review, I'd be happy to buy a cutting board coated with the stuff for chicken and meat.
I even think they would be smart to figure out how to coat woods, granite/stone, synthetic stones, formica, steel, and iron. ( anything that could be used as a kitchen surface) If you can also figure out how to wash them in a dishwasher, more power to you. You'd be the only seller on the market for truly anti-infectious kitchens, and people would go crazy for it.
I occasionally make my own preserves and pickles, and then water bath can them. Before I do so, I bleach my counters, in order to decrease my risk of introducing pathogens in the food I put up. Getting countertops coated with your stuff means I can switch to a light cleaning, because they would ALREADY be low risk, and I won't have to expose myself to chlorine gas.
You'd basically own every high end kitchen of parents in the US. Parents freak out about pathogens, and chlorine gas, and this sort of stuff, and have no time to clean, ect.
And that would be on top of medical devices as a business.
______
I actually wanted to take a close look at WedWell. I'm in the target market (female, engaged though no date yet, actually from the NYC metro area ironically, sometimes bemused by how wedding planning works). While I haven't started wedding planning yet, the one thing I have done is started to collect budgets and tips(note 1) from friends/acquaintances who have gotten married in the past 5 years(ish) nationwide. One of the striking things about these budgets is there are priority lists of items and ideas inside the budgets, and various ways to negotiate within those priority lists.
Because of this, the idea of a "Vendor bidding service" seems a little off. It is less bidding than "dating." Furthermore, I also suspect that much like there are coalitions of doctors as collegues referring each other, which causes improvement of service between all of them as they work semi-togther, this might be true for vendors as well. It might be more effective to think of yourself as a semi-day of coordinator with swap-in/swap-out vendors depending on the "mood"/vendor group. I also think you'll be more likely to get vendor buy in with that sort of model if only because they are not going for "lowest common denominator"/dilution of their brand.
That said, without testing all of this I really don't know, and weddings are super competitive as an area to advertise to.
I consider this an uphill battle that needs more testing and then a big marketing budget, and I honestly don't know if YC is the right fit. I can see it growing big, but it may actually do better in a group that isn't YC and that is more tailored to your market.
There were thre others that really also called my name to think about
Eat My Dust
Utiliz
and Tiz.com
Eat My Dust on closer inspection seems to be in a very competitive area. It is also one ripe for disruption, but I am not sure the idea as it stands is different enough from its competitors. I almost want to know what it would be like if you did a lab on a chip and stuck it into a vacuum instead, and charged saas prices to always analyze
Utiliz and Tiz were very close. Both make markets more efficient. In the end, my vote went with Tiz. My only concern with Utiliz is while it has more potential to earn a lot of money, it also has the potential to lose it too, thanks to oil price fluctuations. I'm not sure scale alone will help. I think the founders are the right type to solve that issue by background - still, it weighs on my mind that they could go from billions to insolvency in order to make it work, leaving an otherwise great business and important need for customers of sorts out of luck.
note 1: the reason is the only type of wedding I've ever been to have been Orthodox Jewish weddings, which in a lot of ways are atypical from what appears to be standard American weddings for people my age. I wanted an idea of a baseline.
RE WedWell: Thanks for the comment. Funny enough we're moving slightly from "WedWell: Vendors bid for your wedding" more towards "WedWell: A more efficient way to plan your wedding".
(Dang- Depending on how long the voting is going, we'd love to change our title!)
It's really less about cost savings (which may happen anyway with scale/competition among vendors), but more about efficiencies in the process. Less face to face meetings, less paper checks, more collaboration among vendors before the day of the event. So, as a potential client, I think you're hitting it on the head. It is more like vendor dating than anything else. Love for you to give the platform a go, and give us some feedback.
I'm not sure efficiency is what you are looking for either - very cold word for describing a personal, life changing event.
Beyond we're not ready to set a date yet for a bunch of complicated reasons that have nothing to do with you as a startup or HN, in practice I'm far from the ideal/typical customer for extraneous reasons once there would be wedding planning (mixture of volunteers for tons of services from friends/family across the country including potential locations, food, music depending on where we host the wedding in the US, issues with my family being unhappy, I have orthodox jewish friends which makes catering questions interesting if they show, he has frail grandparents who are very important to him, ect, ect).
Still, I have some definite thoughts, including vendors you NEED!!!!! to add, how to get there, and some differences/similarities I've seen across the country (because budget), and maybe, if you are lucky, how to sidestep parts of the saturation of people throwing stuff at engaged people.
Best way to talk to you before I start playing around?
Shanacarp, Tom from Utiliz here, thanks for the feedback. To clarify we have zero exposure to energy fluctuations. We don’t hold any credit, counterparty or price hedging risk as the contract is still ultimately between the supplier and the consumer. We are operating as an authorized agent of the consumer. If a given supplier mis-hedges and goes insolvent, their customers’ incumbent will step in as the supplier of last resort. Those who are also our customers will continue to benefit from switching at the next good opportunity. Given this we only leave the upside in your feedback of driving market efficiency and revenue at scale. Happy to discuss further. Tom
First, it is just Shana. (first a is hard, second a is soft) Carp is my last name.
I would love to discuss this further. what is the best way to get in touch with you?
The reason I stated what I did is in the previous apartment my fiance and I were living in, there were these guys who would come by every so often to offer the ability to switch electrical suppliers while also locking in the price paid per kilowatt hour in advance (This is in NYC, btw) - Con Ed I think had fluctuating prices instead based on both demand and not specified but also obvious if you looked at it, the oil market and coal market. So this contract I was being offered effectively was a form of a forward. At the time, I was trying to convince the sales guy that I should be able to reset the contract every month because oil still hadn't hit rock bottom (he was very confused by this idea), and I was thinking that electric prices per Kilowatt hour was going to drop further in response.
In that sense, I would be the type crazy enough to switch hourly if that was doable, as well as bet on the fact that I know my schedule better than my electric company(s), who only see me in aggregate.
I also think my fiance would not allow me to run that bet and determine it too risky :D (I have a measurably higher risk tolerance than he does, it is good he says things like that)
I still have to wonder if you hold liquidity risk, as well as how my risk as an end buyer is handled (and yes, I do understand that most of your users are not going to be like me)
While it is really obvious to coat medical implants, iv leads, ect - I know that pending material review, I'd be happy to buy a cutting board coated with the stuff for chicken and meat.
I even think they would be smart to figure out how to coat woods, granite/stone, synthetic stones, formica, steel, and iron. ( anything that could be used as a kitchen surface) If you can also figure out how to wash them in a dishwasher, more power to you. You'd be the only seller on the market for truly anti-infectious kitchens, and people would go crazy for it.
I occasionally make my own preserves and pickles, and then water bath can them. Before I do so, I bleach my counters, in order to decrease my risk of introducing pathogens in the food I put up. Getting countertops coated with your stuff means I can switch to a light cleaning, because they would ALREADY be low risk, and I won't have to expose myself to chlorine gas.
You'd basically own every high end kitchen of parents in the US. Parents freak out about pathogens, and chlorine gas, and this sort of stuff, and have no time to clean, ect.
And that would be on top of medical devices as a business.
______
I actually wanted to take a close look at WedWell. I'm in the target market (female, engaged though no date yet, actually from the NYC metro area ironically, sometimes bemused by how wedding planning works). While I haven't started wedding planning yet, the one thing I have done is started to collect budgets and tips(note 1) from friends/acquaintances who have gotten married in the past 5 years(ish) nationwide. One of the striking things about these budgets is there are priority lists of items and ideas inside the budgets, and various ways to negotiate within those priority lists.
Because of this, the idea of a "Vendor bidding service" seems a little off. It is less bidding than "dating." Furthermore, I also suspect that much like there are coalitions of doctors as collegues referring each other, which causes improvement of service between all of them as they work semi-togther, this might be true for vendors as well. It might be more effective to think of yourself as a semi-day of coordinator with swap-in/swap-out vendors depending on the "mood"/vendor group. I also think you'll be more likely to get vendor buy in with that sort of model if only because they are not going for "lowest common denominator"/dilution of their brand.
That said, without testing all of this I really don't know, and weddings are super competitive as an area to advertise to.
I consider this an uphill battle that needs more testing and then a big marketing budget, and I honestly don't know if YC is the right fit. I can see it growing big, but it may actually do better in a group that isn't YC and that is more tailored to your market.
There were thre others that really also called my name to think about
Eat My Dust
Utiliz
and Tiz.com
Eat My Dust on closer inspection seems to be in a very competitive area. It is also one ripe for disruption, but I am not sure the idea as it stands is different enough from its competitors. I almost want to know what it would be like if you did a lab on a chip and stuck it into a vacuum instead, and charged saas prices to always analyze
Utiliz and Tiz were very close. Both make markets more efficient. In the end, my vote went with Tiz. My only concern with Utiliz is while it has more potential to earn a lot of money, it also has the potential to lose it too, thanks to oil price fluctuations. I'm not sure scale alone will help. I think the founders are the right type to solve that issue by background - still, it weighs on my mind that they could go from billions to insolvency in order to make it work, leaving an otherwise great business and important need for customers of sorts out of luck.
note 1: the reason is the only type of wedding I've ever been to have been Orthodox Jewish weddings, which in a lot of ways are atypical from what appears to be standard American weddings for people my age. I wanted an idea of a baseline.