Ask HN: Review my Startup: GroupTabs | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review my Startup: GroupTabs

3 pointsjsm38611 comments

GroupTabs offers location based group deals. As soon as enough people check-in, the deal unlocks, and everyone gets the deal.

www.GroupTabs.com

We launched last week. Our first two deals have already gone down, and our third deal is set for tomorrow night.

We combine the popularity of discounted group deals with location based services. Our goal is to incentivize the many people with smartphones who have never heard of foursquare/Gowalla/etc (at least until last week's Facebook Places announcement) to try out checking in. We are hooked up to Twitter/4sq API already. Gowalla is next. Facebook Places we will do as soon as they unlock Write access.

We went non-native via gtb.me to hit as many phones as possible on launch. Android/BBerry apps are almost ready for public beta. iPhone works based non-natively, ironically, so it comes last.

...And, to address what is probably the first question, our deals our small, so they are designed to 'tip' rather quickly. And we require that participating merchants have some special going on until our deal unlocks, so you are rewarded just for showing up, even in the event the deal doesn't tip.

Advice that we can offer from our launch: This has been said a lot of times, but it should be said again. Read http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-from-balsamiq-studios/ We read it adozen or so times. If you are launching a startup you need to read it. Pledi's advice is invaluable. We were covered by VentureBeat (http://bit.ly/a8s2Ad), Mashable (http://bit.ly/9alqKF) and ReadWriteWeb (http://bit.ly/9UmAjH) among others before we even launched.

Pretty neat idea, and I commend you guys for going up against Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Twitter who are sure to provide the exact same functionality at some point.

A few things I noticed right away:

1. I can't tell what city you're servicing right away, I had to search for the tiny address at the bottom of your homepage (NY I take it). You should make it very obvious where you're targeting right now. Maybe put the address in the hero section where you have the other event details, and perhaps provide an embedded google map too.

2. This is a minor design issue, but your main logo pushes your hero section down almost 200px. I would tighten things up a bit, but that's just me.

3. Design again: get a good designer to help you with your typography. If you're DIYing your design, look into grid systems, your alignments are headache inducing.

Where is your revenue coming from? Are the venues paying a fee for the potential of foot traffic?

Also, what would stop me from creating a similar service which simply queried Foursqure, Twitter, Facebook, Gowalla, etc. for location info and providing deals based on how many people checked in? It would essentially just be a deals site that functions on check-in services: you advertise a deal, you negotiate with the venue, and all people need to do is show that they checked in with one of those services.

Good work so far, though!

1. Thanks...we are getting people from all over the country (and world) registering...so we should make that clearer.

2/3. Design is a work in progress and yes it is done by ourselves. We have a new release of the index coming soon. Well aware of grid concept so will see what we can do about that.

Revenue is from venues for verified check-ins (GPS).

As to a similar service, nothing stops you or anyone else. The notion of culling check-ins goes against what we are selling the business on, which is bring in new people, not people who are going already and checking in. It would essentially just be a deals site that functions on check-in services That really is what we are. We are platform agnostic...just started with checking you into foursquare if you like automatically because it is most popular in NYC. We

Sounds great! Good luck, guys!

May want to change the name. GroupTabs sounds like everyone is paying together (are they?).

If we are just unlocking deals by having enough people show up - its certainly a chicken or egg problem determining if the people go. What happens if not enough people show up? They get screwed out of the deal that they went to a specific place solely for. The appeal for business owners is to get people to come, right? This means that the ones you are attracting are by virtue not customers otherwise. This is tricky and may require pre-organization from the users to make sure enough people show up to unlock the deal.

Thanks for the feedback. The service is actually free to users, so know paying together. For example, tomorrow night's deal: You get a free glass of wine, sangria Or beer with every tapas you purchase at a restaurant, Sala, on the Bowery in NYC.

Whether a deal tips or not is our biggest issue...which is why we are setting low thresholds. To address it, one of the first changes we've made is posting our deals earlier than we initially planned to...instead of that morning, we are looking at anywhere from 1 to 3 days ahead. Also rolling out an update homepage with a feed of upcoming deals to build up interest.

This is similar to groupon, with a twist. Also try looking into issues they've had. I recall business owners complaining and pulling out of Groupon due to network effect negative impacts on their businesses - along the lines of "now they only come when I have coupons and I can't afford to do that"

Clickables:

http://www.GroupTabs.com

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-ad...

http://bit.ly/a8s2Ad

http://bit.ly/9alqKF

http://bit.ly/9UmAjH

Yeah, "GroupTabs" doesn't imply anything related to what you do IMO. I agree that a name change is a priority.

Also, how is it different from Groupon?

Thinking about the name...

As to Groupon, two big differences: 1) You are not paying for anything up front. You simple get percent off/something free/etc if enough people show up. 2) Groupon deals 'tip' if enough people commit to buy. We 'tip' if enough people show up.

Okay. I just read your response to someone asking for your revenue model. Can you explain how check-in is going to work? I think your reply was incomplete.

Check-ins are GPS verified. We are not doing a hardware solution like Shopkick, but we also aren't allowing SMS checkins like foursquare. We've gone for a middle ground. No GPS coordinates that fit in the lat/long we've set as acceptable around the venue then no check-in.

Merchants are charged based on check-ins.

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