Hey! Since we're all waiting for the emails why don't we do something productive? Like maybe sharing our ideas so that we could give each other feedback?.. Oh and guys if I may give you an advice : "Plan for the worst and hope for the best!"
That being said, my team and I are trying to fix mental healthcare:
Apply HN: Synaptitude – Remote Mental Health Monitoring and Treatment
I imagine a lot of people looking would think be confused.
Also it would be great if there is a little more information on the website before I have to sign up. But I think you are in early stage and working on that :)
The website is just kind of there, we haven't updated it in a year. We have over 50 people willing to participate and pay to be in a trial. We just need an initial, relatively small investment to purchase a few EEGs, hence we applied to YC.
This is an awesome effort. Just wondering how this compares with something like Joyable?
Our therapy is called neurofeedback[1], which is a quantitive form of therapy. Essentially, we do the same thing as Joyable, but with the addition of hardware and algorithms which teach the techniques in a partially automated way.
Users place an EEG on their head, and sit in front of a computer so we can track their face. With both of those we can accurately determine focus, stress, anxiety, etc. Then we teach the user techniques to help reduce those feelings and we can determine if it's working or not. Enabling a quicker feedback loop to both the user, but also doctors.
So we are trying to bring financial education to the masses in an interactive fun way. With hoards of apps available to invest and save now we think that financial education will go a long way in helping people out.
We made a quick ( and dirty, frankly a little embarrassing prototype) at : www.thefinac.tk . Do check it out :) We apologise for the bugs that you may encounter.
Also if you want to look at the standings of all the Apply HN startups you can do so at www.thefinac.tk/applyhn . Another quick hack we made.
Would love to give some feedback on other ideas as well so start posting :)
We want to make Finance as cool as programming. I think you pointed out the chief advantage yourself, books sometimes do get boring ( we love books but not everybody has the time or the inclination) . By making this platform we can have access to a much larger user base and just add a little bit of fun to sometimes not too exciting (but very essential) concepts of finance.
We have also thought about adding financial advisors ( WAY into the future), partnering with schools to bring this to teenagers who are about to leave for universities and guiding the audience to tools ( partnering with other companies that provide such tools ) or providing them with same tools.
But in the starting we want to stay focussed on just making educational content.The paradigm is shifting to learning stuff online and we hope to take advantage of that.
1. After we have built community trust, and become the go to place for financial education, we can bring in mentors who can offer personal financial advice on a 1 on 1 basis. 2. We can enter into partnerships with other applications that act as financial instruments but are not offering the financial know-how. 3. We can provide financial tools ( platform for investing n such) to people in the future. 4. We can license customized courses for school students and university students. 5. Freemium model where interesting and challenging projects are offered, which advanced students, would pay to do - and get mentoring on. 6. After we have built an audience we can also make money off digital advertising and sponsorship.
We know these are very broad and vague but this what we have so far. That is why in the starting we want to be laser focussed on building up the content. Would love to know your thoughts about it.
2. With Investopedia maybe ? They have tons of great articles but they lack the fun and living part (which you can compensate!)
3. Like you said, you want to be laser focused on one thing and one thing only : teaching. Maybe you can partner with RobinHood ? Just don't do it yourself.
4. This. I would definitely pay for it.
5. Nope nope nope, as a young platform you want to get people come see you so I suggest maybe organizing some kind of competition where participants have to pay a fee, you take your % and you give the winner(s) the rest.
6. Sponsorship = good. Advertising = bad.
3. Robinhood yea we would love to partner with them ( sounds like counting the chickens before they hatch but anyhow ). And yea our priority is and should be teaching.
4. Awesome!
5. That is a good idea. and yea the part of projects was way into the future and borrowed from Udacity, apparently a lot of people are paying for their Nanodegrees.
6. Yes and yes.
Good luck!
Good luck!
:-)
1. Would you be interested in an approach to learn which includes text and videos ( like Udacity.com) or something which is mostly interactive ( like Codecademy.com / what we planned to convey via prototype )?
2. Are there any particular topics in Finance that you would be interested to know about? (Stocks, mutual funds, investing in general, taxes, etc. )
2. Mutual funds and SIP. People hear a lot about them but never grasp the concept. I personally was introduced to these terms a month ago.
We agree that incorporating real world examples would really make learning finance a lot more relatable and easier to understand.
Regarding the second point, we ourselves got heavily into Finance over a year ago and the on boarding process was very time consuming for someone who hasn't had a formal education in finance. We were really frustrated that despite financial education being so essential, a lot of it is very convoluted.
I honestly wouldn't worry about it.
Anecdotally, I'd say >50% of our batch applied more than once. The one thing we all had in common was traction/progress between applications. This is probably the single best thing you can do to increase your prospects of getting in, as it shows YC that you are 1)serious about working on this, and 2) capable of doing what you say you're going to do (which is to say, make something people want).
Happy to also provide advice that's tailored specifically to what you're building. You can reach me at (firstname @ lawnlove.com)
Go get 'em!
If someone's interested in getting involved drop me an email 0707tim at gmail. I'm in London now and may be in LA/SF shortly. One of my problems applying to YC is I'm solo presently.
check us out at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11462402
Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback.