L. Condoms (YC S15) Provides Safe Sex, On-Demand | Hacker News Reader

L. Condoms (YC S15) Provides Safe Sex, On-Demand

techcrunch.com

32 pointspw50 comments

A bit of (hopefully constructive) criticism:

> L. condoms are made with non-toxic, vegan-friendly natural latex

This sentence right here puts me off the whole thing (if I lived in an area where they are sold, of course), and it might be useful to share why.

The thing is: as a guy, I'm terrified of condoms already (of course, I still use them). They may break, they may slip off, they have to be applied following a certain, almost clinical procedure. And now you have "vegan-friendly" as a selling point. I have no idea why should a condom be vegan, and as a non-vegan myself all the contact I have with vegan things is through the vegan menu at my cafeteria.

But the vegan menu sucks. So does replacing regular milk with coconut milk to make cookies vegan (I've tried). If a "vegan-friendly condom" is to condoms what the vegan menu is to the regular menu, I am now certain that the chance of breaking will be higher, or that it will feel weird, and that the only reason the thing is around is because "that's the only vegan alternative we have" (pretty much like the vegan menu).

Maybe things are different enough in San Francisco to make a difference, and people protest loudly to have a vegan condom. Or maybe one of the founders is vegan. The rational part of my brain says that they are perfectly safe and probably indistinguishable from a regular condom. Unfortunately, I shop mostly with my irrational side.

The cynical part of me says that it's pure marketing fluff - like labelling a Turkey as "gluten free" or a bottle of fruit juice as "fat free".

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/641/. I wonder if someone literally did that.

The same way PU (imitation) leather is now marketed as "vegan leather" [1].

[1] http://inhabitat.com/natalie-portman-vegan-shoes/

So in the near future, instead of "no animals were harmed during production of this video" we'll have vegan movies? :).

In a way, maybe it's good that we have one word for the concept.

Haven't people already called digital vegetarian because it doesn't use gelatin film?

Is human milk vegan? Maybe we can make things with it?

This was a vegan comment.

Human milk is vegan if extracted consensualy...for some definition of consent that is left as an exercise to the reader.

Someone tried a few years ago http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12569011

(Certainly not the first, but the first "big" news story that came to mind)

So it looks like TC made a bigger deal about that than L. does in its own materials. It's not on the home page for example, which is mainly about "feel the difference" and testimonials and the donation aspect.

The other distracting part of "non-toxic [...] natural latex" is that it ignores the people who are allergic to latex.

By default, condoms are vegan-friendly, being made from trees. Non-vegan condoms are the special-needs version (i.e. for latex allergy sufferers), that are not as good.

Are you including the lubricants?

Some condoms contain casein, a by-product of milk which by definition makes it non-vegan friendly.

This is a good point that I hadn't realised. It seems that both latex condoms and gloves can contain casein.

Apparently, this has messed up tests for latex allergy:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674999...

The traditional, non-vegan alternative would be lamb's intestines.

Yep, as you acknowledge, your reasoning is irrational. Replacing regular milk with coconut milk is more environmentally friendly, medium-chain fatty acids are better for the liver and heart.

Still, veganism is much more than just a diet and this meaning is what was meant by the vegan-friendly natural latex.

I do assume that people who have never googled "veganism" might have negative opinion of these condoms, but I guess they also won't be aware of the struggles of third world countries and won't care about the goal of this company.

Not that I don't find the fact that veganism had to be mention entertaining.

> Replacing regular milk with coconut milk is more environmentally friendly, medium-chain fatty acids are better for the liver and heart.

Except it doesn't taste as good, which is 90% of the whole point.

At the very least, it doesn't taste the same which is probably most of where the complaint comes from. 'Good' is entirely relative.

Except that milk is not just empty fat. The CLA in grass-fed milk, the vitamin D, and many other vitamins in milk are not present in coconut milk. Best is to put coconut oil in your warm milk!

But the vegan menu sucks. ... If a "vegan-friendly condom" is to condoms what the vegan menu is to the regular menu, ...

If indeed. I think I can understand why you are reasoning this way, but in the end it is just nothing more than a pretty wild (and incorrect) overgeneralization? I don't like most vegan food, tastewise, but that doesn't influence me in choosing vegan/animal-friendly alternatives over other products which are not food related.

Brainstorm from a while back: Vegans exercising bikes to power bitcoin mining.. vegan bitcoins.. sell for more $

Vegan-friendly simply means it is plant-based and doesn't use animal products. I would have preferred plant-based but does it really matter? This company is saving lives! It's diverting money from consumers of the on-demand economy and using it to save lives in Africa. That's pretty great.

> I would have preferred plant-based but does it really matter?

I struggled about my comment because I don't like being negative for the sake of it, but here's why I think this issue might actually matter.

Let's say you really care about selling this condoms as a mean of helping, and you have two alternatives: BoringCondom©, which is pretty much just a condom, and the AlternativeCondom©. If AlternativeCondom is provable better than BoringCondom and people buy more of those, then by all means sell it and everyone will be happier. But what if AlternativeCondom is actually putting people off your product? Wouldn't your help more people by doing it the boring way?

Based on votes number here, my complaint seems to have resonated slightly. If we take those numbers to be The Absolute Truth, then "vegan condom" may actually be hurting their statement, which is why I pointed it out.

Because there are many condoms made with animal intestines ("sheepskin") on the market, and they wanted to reinforce that they're not those. Of course, they could have just said "latex" and left it at that.

However, there are certainly non-vegan condoms.

I am trying to picture in my head how a romantic evening with this product might develop, and I don't see a way of it not being the most awkward experience for everybody involved.

— Sorry, I was not prepared for this date, we'll have to wait for one hour until the bike messenger arrives with our vegan condoms.

— A guy on a bike will bring condoms here???

— Yes, it is this brilliant new service where they send a condom to Africa every time we have sex.

Exactly my thoughts :-)

I'm not entirely sure who the market for this product is. People who are desperate to have sex but aren't desperate enough to either walk to a convenience store or forgo protection?

I'm willing to bet that they diversify into other stuff pretty swiftly when their core product fails to get market... penetration.

I think the 1-for-1 charitable side to this covers for the business equation because, I agree, it seems like a small market when you look only at the delivery aspect.

"It feels like you're stalling for time. Who's that at the door?" "Oh, err, someone looking for a different address, don't worry about it."

Unless maybe you ordered discretely via app/text and it was delivered to your letterbox by the time you got home from a date or night out.

Where I live all the local takeaways use the same website to sell online. You could easily see consolidation of delivery to a single company that then offers extras to the order. It could make takeaway more like room service in a hotel.

This is such a non-product. Look at those publicity shots, everything about this company screams, look at me, we're a startup! The donations to Africa, in hour delivery, the model-level attractive female founder. This is a bad idea. It doesn't seem like it was tested at all.

Even if I'm wrong and they take off, condom delivery as a service isn't much of a service in itself. Anyone of the multiple alcohol delivery services would just add this as an item. How do people like this make it into Y-Combinator? Are the VCs trying to get laid? Or is this one of those uncomfortable risks that they keep talking about? Either way, I expect this to run out of runway soon or pivot to something completely different. The founder is a photo-journalist so I don't expect much.

Hey, I've known highly attractive women who were also really smart and fantastic at execution, so I wouldn't include that part in your list. It is a possibility that she is being used as a showpiece, but that would make for a pretty dysfunctional team and isn't the sort of thing you'd presume.

Your other critique about them not having a moat to defend against alcohol delivery services is true though, at least if they don't have some actual materials science behind their product.

I am very very very interested to know what the guys in YC saw in this!

We hear Paul and Sam saying that the hardest part of their job is saying No to great ideas that just weren't that great and then we come across this? Seriously?

I will be honest on this, but the vegan friendly part kind of annoys me, since as far as I know latex comes from trees so smells like marketing BS, also what is the advantage, honestly 1h seems way too long to wait I would rather go to the nearest store and buy them. Other issue I have and this is not with the product itself its the picture on the article looks way too obvious that they are posing, are they the founders or just models for the photo?

Some condoms contain casein, which isn't vegan.

> vegan-friendly natural latex, potentially reducing allergies associated with condom use for those with a latex allergy

Wait how does the former imply the latter? If a person is allergic to some compound in latex and the condoms are made of latex that has not been processed to remove that compound, how would that prevent the allergy?

Are latex allergies actually allergies to a chemical commonly used to process latex sap?

And they say we're not in a tech bubble.

In what world is this a viable company? It's not, you can get condoms everywhere, and it'll be fsater than this, and cheaper.

But because it has an app, millions of dollars will be thrown at it to keep it afloat, but in the end it will sink and the money will be wasted.

What's next, an app for getting 2 slices in under an hour for when you want a sandwich?

Well, we already have grilled cheese delivery services: http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2015/01/06/postmates-grilled-c...

So you have to wait for a buff bike messenger to arrive so as to remind your date that there are way hotter people out there.

I sincerely hope they've done their Dr. Whoopee research, e.g.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61RSODG4DbL._SY344_BO1...

https://www.worldcat.org/title/calling-dr-whoopee-a-doonesbu...

Know your elders!

The "buy 1 give 1" model of charity is problematic and other businesses like TOMS shoes have taken a lot of flack for it. It's often more about making the consumer feel good rather than actually doing good, e.g. http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679628/the-broken-buy-one-give-o...

If only Y Condomnator would fund a startup trying to get custom-sized ones approved in the US.

Here I thought I was going to read about a genius new type of condom or something different. There's local delivery service here that will bring you beer or cigarettes from the corner store already. They could just bring me some condoms if I was that lazy or unprepared and I can't imagine having to tell person your with to just wait an hour if that's the case.

Might as well apply for a startup to provide the morning after pill.

> Here I thought I was going to read about a genius new type of condom or something different.

Same. For anyone else who's feeling slighted, if you haven't heard of the Origami condom you could read about that instead. It promises a better experience for all participants. Last I checked it should be entering clinical trials this year.

I don't understand why would anyone choose to have STD's testing performed while having sex... If they really invented an affordable STD testing kit, why not simply sell it as-is? I don't get it.

There is only one thing I care about: will they be producing condoms bigger than the FDA currently allows? Some guys have this problem. ahem

Great, now we have an "Uber for condoms".

>comfortable, paraben and glycerin free prophylactics

Are any latex condoms actually "comfortable"?

No. Pretty much. In my experience.

Going just by the title, is this an escort service?

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