Coffee Chat https://www.coffeechat.app | Full Stack Engineer (React Native, NodeJS, React), Founding Team Member | Berlin, Germany
Coffee Chat – Trade your expertise:
Our knowledge is readily available to us, and extremely valuable for some others – now you can trade it. Any time you share yours, you earn the right that we organize a 15 minute call for you to learn from anyone you want, at any time.
Join Coffee Chat as a founding team member and help build a behavior-changing product that changes how we learn from each other and interact with the people we don't yet, but should. Read your fellow HN readers' comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18240755
You make a profit by getting other people's advice in return. Our business model is not going to be to sell your data. But of course, despite it's not the focus right now, we'll have a fair and sustainable one in the long run so that everyone is happy.
Agree with 1. The thinking is that your knowledge is now readily available for you and you can use it to get other people's hard-won knowledge in exchange.
It doesn't. We will not sell data. Right now we are really focused on the best product and we will find a fair and sustainable business model when it's ready.
Right, so free means you are bootstrapped or VC-funded and later on... your users are the product ?
I can understand not wanting to communicate on a business model that isn't ready but could you maybe point out some leads other than the usual ads or data-selling business ?
Or if you don't want to be specific maybe you can point out that you are definitely against selling user data later on even if it means saving the company ?
I was happy to find a "How does Coffee Chat make money?" section but it's content isn't very helpfull if you're a user fearing data collection and adds.
Sorry, haven't seen this question :-O We will not sell data and we will create a business model without it. Also, we firmly believe that the GDPR is a great step forward for humanity and that privacy should be a fundamental human right. We will build a business model that accounts for that.
I've participated in a number of schemes aiming at sharing expertise in the past and would be glad to share and get some on your platform but, as others have stated, I think that to see traction, you'll need to specify a business model else everyone will be inclined to "if it's free, you're product" mentality.
I'm not distrusting your current statement of "no data sharing" and, if I may, "won't do evil" mentality but in this day and age, customers will need a clearer statement right on the product page for it to be trusted.
A quick and easy alternative would be "Currently in beta and free for all until December 31, 2018" would probably assuage some fears, with expectation of a coming bizmo, whatever that would be.
It’s an investment trade off around commitment (in person is better for connecting and relationship building but is more expensive as a time investment). If it’s more transactional a phone call is better (eg, quick question or advice about something specific). If it’s something more potentially meaningful, in person Coffee makes more sense (eg, if I’m looking to network with someone or trying to hire them / get them to hire me).
The defaults you set could make a big difference in the user experience. Maybe every first touch is chat/phone, then move to real world? Dunno if there’s a right answer but feels like something to be thoughtful about.
