Show HN: Beagle, our app for students | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Beagle, our app for students

getbeagle.com

31 pointsadeelk28 comments

Am I missing something or is this just a http://www.taskrabbit.com/ copycat?

Did you take a minute to actually read into it? It is for the college demographic only - targeted towards users on college campuses.

So you're saying it's taskrabbit, but for college students? I'm curious as to why you picked this demographic to target. From my own personal experience, college students seem to have less money but more time than your average person. They could be a good fit for this ecosystem as those who complete tasks, but it seems like it would be much more difficult to get them to post.

I'm not affiliated with these guys, was just basing it off their 'about' page that they are for college students.

I'm a cofounder, my name is Julian. I definitely understand your point and it has been a topic of debate with us for quite some time. However, we think that college campuses are perfect for something like this because of the pre-existing communities, and the security (albeit mild) that they provide. There are obviously a lot of students scrounging for cash, but we think that with professors (anyone with a .edu email) there will be a good amount of people posting as well. Beagle is also ideal for quick and easy tasks, so they probably won't be very expensive.

They may be trying to target a different demographic of users initially but I see no actual differentiator between the two? College campuses are not remote islands so why would I go with beagle - a marketplace with a smaller user base - when taskrabbit exists?

Its an honest question, I'm just wondering whats their angle.

This seems like a really nifty idea. I'm one of the laziest people around so I'll try it out since it's on my campus. I really like the website too, but it's a little ambiguous. I wish it was a bit more explicit on the service.

Also, I can imagine location services being useful when tied with Beagle. For instance, say I'm at my room working on a project with some people and the deadline is in a few hours. We're really craving food from a place on campus that's far but doesn't deliver. I can attach the location where my task would need to get done (the restaurant/store), and someone with Beagle location services on would be notified that there's a task nearby when they go close to that store. So if someone was already there buying something, they could grab something else and help someone out.

Thanks! That's exactly what we're thinking and hoping.

Cool app, I think this will do well with the college scene. I just recently graduated and I know this would have come in use many times. Quick question, how are the payments handled so that the user who completes the task definitely gets paid? I could easily toss a task up there saying get me lunch and I'll pay you $50, but when they show up with my lunch I could say sorry I only have $5 to offer.

Great idea! As a fellow Cambridge HN'er, I'll be watching closely. With local app launches, it's a good idea to go old school around campus and hang flyers.

Thanks! We'll be in town soon and certainly get to it. Can we have your email to get in touch with you when we're in Boston?

How do you guys differ from Zaarly?

Tutoring is huge. I'm guessing that a college-orientation will help with adoption and retention (which could probably be counteracted by a college-oriented marketing campaign by Zaarly); the only problem that might arise is the general poverty of college students :P

I'm Philippe, CEO of Beagle. We are more focused on tasks than items. We think that requiring student emails improves security and quality of service, and that college students have more obvious uses for a service like this service than the general population, at least for now.

I was about to ask this same question. Zaarly does have quite a broad consensus of things and doesn't target specific demographics except for where you live.

I could see this being useful like all the examples above have mentioned. Not all college students are broke, and so you have a divide. It's definitely not a bad idea, but it may not be a "huge" idea. We will have to see.

Will this eventually run on Android, or will it always support Darwin exclusively?

Yep, we're working on an Android version as we speak.

The activation link isn't working for me. It takes me to a beagle page with header and footer but the body is blank and I haven't been verified yet.

Thanks for letting us know, we’ll get back to you in a couple minutes.

Okay, it should be working now. Thanks again.

All working, thanks. You guys should think about asking students on campuses to post flyers for you on Beagle (or some other promotion). Verifications could be sent by photo. This could be a cheap way to seed some tasks and get people to use the service.

Smart, thanks!

Why target students? I don't see anything about students on the site -- only in the link above.

We think that college students are more motivated to run around doing tasks for each other, a little more desperate for quick cash, and there's already an existing community at every campus. Eventually we'll spread beyond colleges, but for now it should be a good way to spread.

How are joke tasks ("Need a full body massage, pronto") filtered out? Is there a cost-upfront to posting a task?

There's no cost to post or download, but we are currently building a system to filter out inappropriate tasks. For now, we're monitoring manually.

Seems like a fantastic platform for finding prostitutes.

Let's hope not.

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