Apply HN: Let's – Meet amazing people, do fun stuff | Hacker News Reader

Apply HN: Let's – Meet amazing people, do fun stuff

11 pointshashvin28 comments

Let's is a mobile app that aims to facilitate people meeting other great people nearby to do fun stuff like grabbing a drink, having a bite, going site-seeing and more!

Unlike other social apps similar to Tinder, Hinge, and more, Let’s takes a focus on activities. On Let’s users create activities for which they would enjoy having company and specify certain preferences regarding the type of partner they would enjoy joining them. Eg.) The partners age, gender, etc.

Users can also choose to seek activities nearby to join in which case they are shown the listed activities and can show interest in joining those users by swiping left or right.

With Let's we believe we can facilitate fun and easy real life meets in short time frames that can result in networking, relationships, social enjoyment and overall fun.

Let's is currently in development and we aim to launch this summer. Ask anything, we enjoy questions, challenges and any constructive feedback. Thanks!

The activities are pointless, they're just marketing gimmicks and it turns out sex is the easiest sale. Down To Lunch came out five months ago and have now taken off so that means people want it. Your biggest challenge isn't the software, it's just matchmaking implemented in gaming for decades, it's marketing and convincing thousands to use it to gain value from a network effect.

I will agree sex sells, but there is a geniune market that wants to make more friends or have a relationship that are not looking to have sex immediately.

I also agree the software is not the biggest challenge, anyone can build applications and it really does not cost as much as people want you to believe.

I agree also that its the marketing and viral effect. * that being said do you have any recommendations and tips regarding marketing strategy?

You mentioned how you're different from a bunch of dating apps -- do you see your app as primarily competing in that space? My first reaction was instead that if successful, your app would do more to disrupt the Meetup.com space than say, Tinder.

I do see Let's bridging between the two platforms of Tinder and Meetup. It is more similar to Meetup for sure and that is the way we want to target the market as I believe it is more broad and approachable.

However as it is focuses on 1-on-1 meets I do see it being somewhere in the middle of the two. We are not trying to be a dating platform, but I do see it possibly being used as such by some users.

You really have to change the name. I couldn't read your pitch without fixating on what would be grammatical errors if "Let's" were not a proper noun.

Haha, I appreciate your feedback and will take it under consideration. The intention was that when you select to do something its always like: Let's ... grab a drink, grab a bite, watch a movie, go running.

but I can see what you mean. Another name we played with was Friendify but seemed needy which is not really true about the audience.

Maybe if you see it as a Logo it might be less annoying: http://postimg.org/image/rbbasbaqr/

This is the current logo, the red is used as the theme of the app is in red.

In the future I will make sure to put it in "Let's" quotes. ;)

I kinda like the name, and the logo as well. Have you thought about making it more of a "name"? Like reddit?

So the name would be "lets" and later on maybe people will go "ahhhh, like 'let's go to blah'!" Some will get it and some won't, but it will still feel more like an actual name than a word.

it is definitely something to consider. When I was trying to come up with a name i kept thinking I wanted something that would stick in peoples mind and reflect the nature of the app but at the same time I kept finding articles on how you should thinking of random things eg.) tinder, reddit, bing I ended up going with my gut.

how about "Letz"..sounds like let's but is not.

I like it. seems simple enough. Im going to think on this . Thanks for the suggestion.

How many people want to do something social, but don't want to do it with their current friends? Have you found anybody who says they need to do this and are frustrated that nothing works right yet?

Hi! I have actually spoken to a number of different people regarding this and a vast majority liked and would use something like this. I do understand where your question is coming from so I am going to add some context to their responses.

1.) Some people said it would be awesome to use when they travel to meet up with people at conventions and or other tourist that are also traveling to go site-seeing or enjoy company together.

2.) Another person said, because she is 'single' and most of her friends are in a relationship it is often bothersome for her to go on third wheel or fifth wheel outings and she doesn't really have any friends that are not in a relationship in her circle.

3.) An answer we heard often was from people that just moved to a new place and/or got a new job they said it would be an great tool for them to get to meet people and or enjoy company during their lunch breaks.

Right now many of them did say that they were using other social apps to meet people mainly Tinder. At the same time they all felt that Tinder was not made for this purpose but they did not know of a better tool.

Perhaps you could initially target one of these groups and try to make Letz (+1 for that version of the name) the best app for their specific use case.

Also, one trick to make sure people in interviews are being honest with you is to get them to commit to a concrete action. It can be as simple as getting their e-mail address and then sending them an e-mail with a fake link just to see if they click on it, or as hardcore as asking 20$ in advance for a "premium access to the finished app". This way you'll see if they REALLY need what you are building.

haha, I like the $20 dollars commitment. we actually started development of a pretty much full blown app, I dont want to call it an MVP because this app is quite complex but I only did so because in order to give a good product/solution I wanted to make sure it could result in conversion/giving the users the desired result of their install. I will be targetting a specific market to start and be running a prelaunch campaign for beta testers in the upcoming week, I will let you know what the result is.

I would be most interested, especially to compare how your experience differs from ours (we also have a B2C app that needs to overcome the ghost town syndrome in order to be successful).

You can reach me at e-mail written in my profile!

IMS cant find your email in your profile not there. "Let's" stay in touch and try to help each other with our growth strategies.

Do you see what I did there? lol

How do you know people want this? Tinder exploded because "lightweight" dating/hookup filled a niche that wasn't served by any of the intense, profile based existing dating sites.

This moves in the direction of more intensity bc you aren't just swiping but, in some sense, agreeing to meet. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - and it may be good because it can absorb some of the Tinder backlash - but I think you need to understand the space and your niche and potential users incredibly deeply.

So, how will you get users?

Before I started on development on this idea I run some surveys in order understand if people would use this. Not to mislead you I surveys about 60 people and the response was say 45 out of 60 responded that they would use this app, the demographic surveyed was 19-30 singles that have used mobile social platforms like Tinder.

User acquisition is always a little daunting and considering this is a user driven app it is always very important.

My game plan is to: 1.) Target the specific market above via Facebook and other advertising means, primarily people that have moved recently. (Targeting as a social app, not dating as Facebook restricts this)

2) Social Validation - I intend on getting bloggers with long reach in the travel, dating and social genres in our launch cities to talk about the app and give their opinion in order to reach their followers. I expect high conversions in a short time frame from this. (This can go both ways I understand that)

3) I plan to start launching city by city in order to acquire users rapidly in a single market. This is to avoid churn from having a location based app in which users are unable to find enough people near them.

4) I would like to take large communities and target them specifically; for example large corporations, universities and the like. I intend to target them because these potential users are usually going to spend a significant amount of time close to one another and will have a level of comfort with each other which can help drive high activity on the app and organic growth.

If you have any suggestions I would appreciate your input as user acquisition will play a key roll in my success and it will be challenging.

In my experience, tactics you mentioned are much easier said than done. You mention launching city by city - what I would suggest is focusing on how exactly you are going to launch in ONE city (the first one). I don't know your financial situation, but I think you are underestimating the costs of organizing even small-scale promotional activities and perhaps overestimating reach of you as an individual and/or willingness of others to share/help (if you have a development team, I can tell you they are mostly not prone of "leaving the building").

See my other comment how to gauge if user interest in interviews is real or hypothetical. Hope this helps!

Thanks, I appreciate the time taken to give this feedback. Honestly, I expect user acquisition to be very challenging, the industry average cost of acquisition is currently at around $2.50 / user and considering I will be running pre-rev for atleast a year will further stress the company. I am working on a concrete plan of action and am quite sure I can get down COA substantially considering I managed to get it down from another startup of mine from $1.00 -> $0.35 but that was in a completely different market and it was an easier sell.

I will check out your other comment, if you have any suggestions on marketing ideas I would appreciate it.

Is this available yet? Also I think letz will be easier for the app search engines. There is a lot of Let's * apps out there.

Not available yet but projected launch this summer. we are currently working on onloading strategy to get users on quickly upon launch.

We saw the same problem you described with alot of Let's we will probably change it. Im on the fence but there are more pros than cons to the change.

Very interesting. I think this is a solid area for rapid development. I do have some basic operational questions though: How extensively have you and the team researched civil and/or criminal liability regarding any undesirable use and outcome of the service? What kind of legal advice has been offered? Are you working with a reputable risk-management / insurance firm to explore coverage options?

I was hoping this question would come up. Not because I have the required answer at this time, but because I wanted others to chime in and give me some thoughts and perspective on this.

We have not done extensive researched on liability the company might face due to an undesirable outcome from use of the service. Likewise we have not looked at any coverage options as of yet.

We will definitely do so before launching but my opinions are as below: For companies like Tinder, Uber, Care.com etc to exist there must me some solution to this, it is a matter of formalizing it for us. We are building the app so that it does not set you up on a meet but rather gives you options and both users initiate and confirm the meet themselves. I feel this can assist in limiting the liability as we are just facilitating users. The last thing we intend to do is have a very straight forward Terms of Service to add some protection and have notifications to the user, that if its your first meet we recommend a public area etc etc.

Have you had had to deal with something along these lines? Is there any recommendations you can give?

i suggest mobile phone fortification before every possible meetup. i don't know in any other country but in mine mobile phone is attached to citizen'S ID.

On this topic we have all accounts tied to Facebook and we are checking for the Verified tag on accounts. I know this is not completely reliable but its a starting point right? Otherwise we need to get into manual verification which would limit scale ability and growth rate.

I would love to hear peoples thoughts on how they would go about getting customers: Client Acquisition. I have put our thoughts down below in one of the comments.

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