marlonmisra

Hi HN! I'm one of the founders of Portal. We're excited (and nervous) to see what HN thinks about a product we've been working on for about a year. Portal lets you setup a client portal, so that your clients can login on your own website and have a unified place to send messages, share files, make payments, and more.

Before starting Portal we ran an agency. We couldn't find a great solution that streamlines the experience for our clients so we decided to build our own customer portal. After launching, the idea immediately resonated with other agencies so we quickly rebuilt the product so that anyone could quickly set up their own portal. The idea of providing your clients a streamlined portal struck a nerve outside of agencies as well; so we now serve many really interesting companies - chemistry labs, insurance startups, bookkeeping businesses, etc.

Each portal comes with support for messaging, file-sharing, eSignatures, payments, and forms. Most features we built from scratch so that we could prioritize UX and do things like (1) unify notifications, (2) be fully white label, and (3) make it easier to setup automations across features. You can also embed products you already use. For example, many connect Airtable charts to share project progress with clients and others connect Google Data Studio dashboards so that clients have real-time access to analytics. Every portal is customizable so you can set your theme, design your login screen, upload your logos, and connect a custom domain. After you setup a portal, people usually add a "Client portal" button on their marketing website navbar, so that existing clients have a clear sign in path.

If you're curious to learn more, our website is here(https://www.joinportal.com) and our self-serve onboarding flow is here (https://start.joinportal.com/onboarding).

Any feedback or questions welcome! :)

You could but the downsides are: 1/ It doesn't have the ideal sensors (stereo cameras, or other depth sensor), so you'd have limited functionality 2/ Most people wouldn't want to run their iPhone consistently day after day.

I taught myself programming a few years ago and did the ML nanodegree before. My cofounder Neil studied software at Waterloo and was an engineer at Pinterest.

Thanks. I think in a few years we'll see devices that can do everything locally, and cost a reasonable amount. For now, like others have said, some of the models for pose are too complex.

The demo video on our website was done with 2D pose. We’re in the middle of transitioning to 3D.

Our first prototype ran locally end-to-end. To make that work we used a Jetson TX2 ($600 computer), but the performance was abysmal. In a few years, it might be possible to do what we're doing locally and at a reasonable price.

We do some preprocessing on-device and run our more complex models in the cloud. It’s similar to Alexa which always listens for the trigger word, but only streams to servers for the few seconds afterwords. While some image data is processed in the cloud, it’s never stored.

It's accurate enough to pick up number of fingers from a fairly long distance (~5m), and it works well in most lighting conditions, including complete darkness.

Yes, OpenPose gave us a lot of inspiration. DensePose is similarly impressive and came out recently.

We did the course together but met many years before, in high school in Canada in '07.

We've been using Slite for ~3 weeks. I highly recommend it - much better organization, useful templates, and by far the best UI in the space.

Hi Peter, What are your thoughts on going directly from TN to Green Card via EB1/2/3, without going to H1B first?

Hi Peter, If you're on H1B and quit your job to do a startup (using O1 or E2 or another visa), and the startup doesn't work out, do you need to pass the lottery again if you need another H1B for a new employer? Any way to skip the lottery the second time?

What's the success rate of founders getting E-2's if they get funding from YC?

Hi Peter,

Any downside of doing the Green Card diversity lottery if one is already on a visa?

Hi Peter,

What paths should a Canadian TN visa holder explore to start a company?

Hi Peter,

The International Entrepreneur Rule is expected to go into effect July 17th 2017. Do you recommend pursuing that path if you can meet the requirements?

Do you plan to release more details about common visa/immigration issues and how Y Combinator helps with them?