Show HN: FoundersKit – $6k of discounts for the best startup tools for only $39
founderskit.co
founderskit.co
Dylan, Mike and I have been working on this project for a few months and are super excited to finally release it into the wild!
FoundersKit is a bundle of the best tools & services to help founders launch and build startups. The bundle consists of 68 deals which are valued at $6,268. We've kept the bar really high, only including tools & services we really recommend.
We'll be adding deals to the site as we go (with lots already in the pipeline) to keep the bundle slowly growing. The membership is valid for one years access to all the discounts.
Let us know if you have any questions or feedback. We’ll be around all day!
For us we had a few options when looking at creating FoundersKit. There are a few really important factors in our decision.
1) We didn't want to be just another deals site that has any company offering a deal. We wanted to keep a really high level of curation so our members can know that the tools listed are high quality. Deal sites that include any company offering a discount end up causing work for the user to try and dissect which tools & services are any good. 2) By charging a small fee for a years access to all the deals (including those added after becoming a member) we can get a much better deal from our partners that other open deal sites cannot get. Companies aren't willing to give out lifetime discounts in the public but quite a few of our partners have offered discounts like this and lots of others have offered discounts above and beyond those circulated elsewhere. Literally 15 minutes ago I just got confirmation of another great tool (one I intend to use myself soon) that will be joining FoundersKit and offering a 25% off lifetime discount. These are the sort of deals we're looking for. 3) This method means our partners know that the customers using the discount codes are high quality and not just looking for a free ride. At the very least it shows that they're willing to pay when they see something they want (which not all customers are).
Ultimately our vision is to make a Founders life easier. To collect all the best tools & services in one place, with great discounts & savings to try them out. Forgetting the unique discounts we offer, we think the time & effort this bundle saves Founders is worth the money.
Really appreciate your feedback on this though, if you have any other thoughts please don't hesitate to let me know!
Every deal on FoundersKit is a unique partnership between us and the specific company. It took us about 4 months to establish all of the existing relationships. We are even still working on more partnerships to add more value to the bundle (as Fred mentioned).
A lot of the companies on our bundle do have an affiliate program but our coupons are not associated with that, and offer a higher discount (or longer trial).
Great example would be Grasshopper - $125 credits are not handed out to affiliates. Affiliates get $100 kick back, we do not take any kick back.
Please do comment back if you have an example from our site where our discounts offer the same value as an affiliate program. We would love to address it.
Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback :)
Best, Dylan
Assuming that is the case, I've seen this in a few industries with mega deal bundles. The deal company charges for the bundle with the hope that companies will offer them competitive deals for free (and potentially cut them in on a % of total deal sales if they co-promote it).
TBH, I haven't seen much success from testing these sorts of things myself (not yours necessarily, just generally speaking). The issue is always that they don't get enough volume to be really worth it for brands of a certain scale.
There's also the concern that people are buying discounts, not product, so I imagine there are a bunch of people that buy this for discounts off of a couple products, and ignore the rest. Depending on what a given brand would need to contribute to get listed in this, that directly determines whether it is worth it or not to get you all the assets, help with co-promotion, etc.
Some of them, like crazyegg, hand out the same discount to everyone without paying for it - see https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acrazyegg.com+"Egg+is+...
Platejoy, another on your list, offers coupon code TRYPJ (I used this a while ago) for the same discount without paying for it, publicly.
There's a lot more, but those are the two that stood out because I recently used the trial/coupons. For quite a large number of your offers in the bundle, you can get the same offer at no cost just by googling sitename + coupon. Maybe not offered by the copmany directly, but still freely claimable via another deal site.
Personally, I don't mean any offense, but I would likely pass on this.
I would be more interested in say, a $99 bundle that provided services for a bunch of these SaaS for a year or longer, not "first month free" or "$10 off first purchase" or anything like that. A lot of your discounts aren't lifetime, but a small amount off the first month - which is really just not very "deal like" to me.