Introducing LunchTree - Lunch networking for the startup community | Hacker News Reader

Introducing LunchTree - Lunch networking for the startup community

lunchtree.com

35 pointsjspaulding28 comments

Happy to test this in the SF community -- looking forward to meeting at least one of you next LunchTree :)

Everything about the signup seems very fluid, up to the final sms confirmation. If you could, keep us updated on stats for number of signups, geo distribution, feedback after the first couple lunches, etc. Good luck!

Great glad to have you on. Once there is some interesting or meaningful data I'll be sure to make a blog post. Thanks

Any chance of Canadian locations? You only allow zip codes to be put in for future locations.

Yeah.. sorry for the zip code only thing. I'm certainly interested in expanding as much as possible. For now my focus is on establishing some traction in one place and finding a business/marketing co-founder.

I'm the founder. If anyone has feedback or questions let me know! thanks

Two questions after looking over your service:

* How do you plan to make money off of this? From your FAQ you appear self funded, and it doesn't look like there are any sort of fees attached.

* Since you're just starting out, there's a good chance that someone could sign up and not have anyone to do lunch with because everyone else is too far away. How will you handle this to further expansion?

Regarding making money - I'm not sure yet. There would be a few options - including either charging members per lunch or charging restaurants. However, I'm planning to wait and see how the service evolves before I start thinking about that too much.

The problem of signing up for lunch and not having anyone to match with is definitely something I'm trying to avoid. A couple ideas (not implemented yet) - warn people that there are very few people signed up in their area. Allow matches with 3 or 4 people (so there is not an odd man out type situation)

Have a look at startupflyer[1] which is a similar idea in hungary. They make money by simply charging the members at the meetups. You choose 5 people based on have/need infos. If someone is choosen he will get notified that he should go.

[1] http://startupflyer.com/en

Thanks for the link. I will indeed have a look over this site. cheers.

Just wanted to point out that gay users of your service might take slight offense at the heteronormative answer you gave in your FAQ:

Is this a dating site? Nope, not really. But you may meet someone of the opposite gender! ( Unless you don't want to. )

Gender is the correct word, actually. It refers both to sex and to sexual identity. Why would they take offence?

It's not the word gender that I'm referring to. It is the implication that in order to date, it would have to be with someone of the opposite sex.

cool idea - similar to something i'd planned last year, but your execution beats mine (meaning, you actually executed!) :)

Thanks. Did you get anywhere at all with the project? I know of someone else who is working on a similar idea. Not sure how far along they are.

not much further than some sketches and honing the process flow with a couple friends. my target audience was going to be different - that's the main diff I can see so far.

well done :)

Why only SF? How about London? I'd sign up.

Also, why only 2 people? You could have lunch networking with 4 or even 6 or 8 people... Try it and see how it goes. Small businesses have done networking lunches/breakfasts for a long time, and often there are about 20 people around the table.

The reason that its bay area only is that I want to make sure things are working smoothly before I expand. I really want to avoid a situation where people are signing up and then not getting matched for lunch or having a bad experience. A secondary point is that I need a good source of free restaurant data. A lot of the APIs out there are pretty restrictive and I'm not sure of the best solution yet.

I definitely like the idea of lunch with 3 or 4 people. I'm not sure about 6 or 8 but open to the possibility. 2 is just for simplicities sake - as this gets started.

Reminds me of OkCupid's blind date: http://www.crazyblinddate.com/, they're redoing it but the concept was very similar, but for dates.

Overall, great concept!

Minor note: On the "Connect with friends & colleagues" screen, you might want to explain why I should give your site access to my linkedin/facebook/twitter accounts.

Awesome! I was thinking of something like this last year but on a bit of a 'I want to meet somebody right now' scale. I'd use this if I didn't end up moving away form the bay area. Good luck!

Great Idea, may need a little bit of fine tuning

Thank you! Which parts do you think need fine tuning?

Congratulations to Jesse for relaunching.

And thanks for helping build awareness for everyone in that space :-)

thanks Alain

This is really cool. Props. I live in the city but work in Burlingame, otherwise would love to try it.

Well theoretically it should work in Burlingame.. but realistically you'll probably have to wait till more people hear about this.

Would like to see this for other communities, but what community matches SF in number of startups?

Great idea! Congratulations on the launch.

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