tsestrich

What you described actually sounds really useful, but probably not for the hobbyist. For people with just hobby projects, yeah, it's probably overkill.

I definitely agree, though. My intent is to monitor for if/when we get close to entering a new billing tier, see any obvious abnormalities in usage, etc. Thanks for the recommendations, I'll check them out!

That's a fair point, but it's so far down the road that for the foreseeable future it won't be a problem (at least for us). We're not under VC-backed pressure to grow at some unsustainable pace, so we can choose to bring on service providers at a pace that allows us to maintain quality. This definitely is a problem for the large on-demand companies out there, but that itself is part of a bigger problem where every startup thinks they need to be a billion dollar company (for many reasons)

As the co-founder of an on-demand service company [1], I have to agree partly with the core argument about trust, but disagree with its conclusion about the model's viability. It is definitely hard to ensure trust and satisfaction among customers without owning the entire process end-to-end. At our (currently small) scale, we manage this by offering fanatical customer service and communicating aggressively with our service providers. However, only time will tell if this will scale. I think there is a middle ground between a company shrugging it's shoulders and forcing the responsibility of vetting onto its customers, and completely guaranteeing quality. For instance, we add a layer of reviews that otherwise can be hard to find for tax preparers, stringently vet service providers, and also add a layer of customer protection by not charging them until they are satisfied. The article makes it seem as if the on-demand model implies no responsibility for quality by the company.

It seems that the real issue is that on-demand companies that charge a premium to "traditional" alternatives have a hard time justifying that premium if all they provide is a thin tech layer on top of said services. Uber is not only more convenient, but also now cheaper in many cases than taxis. I still think (albeit with strong bias) that if you can offer convenience AND cost savings, there is a legitimate value for the on-demand model.

[1] Taxaroo, https://www.taxaroo.com

Hey, HN! Long-time fan, infrequent contributor here. I posted this a while back, but since I didn't get much traction I believe it's fair game to re-post.

My co-founder and I are excited to share with you our startup - Taxaroo. At the risk of sounding cheesy, think of Taxaroo as "Uber", but for tax preparation. Taxaroo is a marketplace that matches tax filers with professional tax preparers entirely online. We offer up-front, fixed-price quotes based on clients' unique tax situation, and match them with experienced tax preparers that are able to handle that specific scenario. Clients pay no additional fees to us - we only charge tax preparers a referral fee.

Beyond simply a marketplace, Taxaroo is also a convenient (and secure) platform for you, as a client, to exchange documents and basic personal information with your preparer (rather than emails, lugging stuff to someone's office, or [shudder] faxing docs). We also enable you to pay with a credit card and only be charged once you've approved your final tax return(s).

Though we've been working on this for nearly a year, we only recently opened up the platform for tax preparers and have already received a strong response and lots of enthusiasm. We have signed up professionals from across the U.S. with an average experience of over 17 years preparing taxes. We rigorously validate several levels of identification and credentials, and verify these with the IRS.

We'd love for you to check it out and let us know what you all think! If you're getting ready for tax season, we want to offer HN a 10% discount for the first 25 people using this promo link: https://taxaroo.com/getstarted/LOVE4HN.

Thanks,

Tim (Co-founder and CTO, Taxaroo)

Thanks so much for your well thought-out response!

I think your perspective is one that many people share, though fortunately for us, not everyone does! My co-founder is a CPA with his own tax firm, and they handle ~1000 clients/year without meeting anyone in person. The demand there is what ultimately led us to giving this model a try in the first place.

As you described, it all comes down to trust, and we're working on building that up right now. I think our messaging, as it stands today, doesn't do enough to build trust. So far we've gotten a fair number of early users that will hopefully help build up credibility in the process, and we'll do a better job explaining how we vet our preparers.

Looking specifically at H&R Block, our value proposition is actually more than just convenience. They typically will hire people each year off the street with little to no tax prep experience, and give them a crash course in just a few hours. Compare that to our CPAs and EAs that average over 15 years of experience, and I think we have a strong value proposition in terms of expertise as well. We're not a true "Uber" model either, where the assignment of work is a black box. We let clients select their preparer from a set of compatible tax pros, and they are free to research which one makes them most comfortable. We encourage preparers to write about their experience, and to provide LinkedIn profile URLs to make it a little easier to find their background.

Obviously we're not in a position to convince someone with an existing relationship with their accountant to switch to using us, but we're targeting someone who otherwise would walk into a big-box tax store to get their taxes done.

As for target market, we're still struggling a bit to narrow it down. It's a little more complicated than just picking one at random, but we're testing hypotheses. We're looking in two directions right now - either on-demand economy workers who are working as independent contractors, and/or early career business travelers. Independent contractors because they are comfortable with the "gig economy" model and may have complicated tax situations, and business travelers because I know that world and know that they are busy and can have complex tax situations as well.

Hopefully some day in the future we can convince you to give us a try!

Link for ease of access: https://www.taxaroo.com

Yeah, they actually rebranded it as TurboTax Personal Pro before they discontinued it. It just shut down before this current tax season. We're picking up where they left off, with our company Taxaroo[1].

My understanding from the research we've been able to do is that there were a few issues:

- The branding was weird. TurboTax is supposed to be about DIY, so having a tax pro service under that was confusing. I spoke to several former preparers with Personal Pro who said they would get clients asking for technical support with TurboTax

- It started as "intrapreneurship" within Intuit, so it was a small team trying to grow it (not a top-down initiative). I suspect they had certain (large) targets they couldn't meet that were gates along the development process.

- I suspect ultimately, similar to above, it never became large enough to be interesting to Intuit, and it was likely cannibalizing some of their existing customers as it was.

[1] - https://www.taxaroo.com

That's awesome! We're excited to have you giving it a try.

Thanks for the feedback. I absolutely agree regarding the ranking/rating system. We've really just recently launched, so right now we just don't have many reviews. We do have the system in place, though, and we'll be building up those reviews.

Regarding the preparer locations - we plan to add the ability to sort/filter preparers, but we do only show you those that have specifically indicated that they can handle the type of returns required based on your quote. So, if you said you worked in NY and lived in NJ, the listed preparers will be able to handle both states. Same goes for rental property, capital gains, etc.

If you have any feedback or issues as you go, feel free to reach out to me directly at tim@taxaroo.com

I've used TurboTax the past few years, and completely echo the sentiment expressed by others regarding the hidden charges that get tacked on when starting with a "free" return. Turned out that losing money on the stock market also cost me extra on preparation fees as well...

Partly because of the negative experiences with TurboTax, my co-founder and I just launched a company [1] in this space. We're actually "replacing" a TurboTax product that was recently discontinued called "Personal Pro". We're something of an "Uber" for tax preparation, acting as an online marketplace and platform for clients to get their taxes done by professionals. TurboTax had tried this for a few years but it appears they're betting on a continuing shift to DIY.

Has anyone had any experience here as a client of Personal Pro? Would love to hear how it went!

[1] - https://www.taxaroo.com

I'm sorry to come in with a blatant promo, but we've just done exactly what you described! https://www.taxaroo.com.

We can match you with a preparer from anywhere in the country, we quote you a hard up-front price, and you interact with your preparer entirely online.

My co-founder (a CPA) and I just launched it this year, and we've received extremely strong interest from professional tax preparers. We actually did a Show HN a little bit ago, but didn't get much traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074466

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Hey, thanks for the suggestion! Unfortunately, since we're U.S. based we weren't comfortable branching outside the U.S. just yet (since we aren't sure of the laws in other countries in this area). I hope we can support other countries in the future!

Hey! We do based on state. When you receive a quote, it includes all states you've lived or work. We then match you with preparers who indicate that they can handle returns for those states. By agreeing to do these states, they are in turn agreeing to handle local returns as needed. However, if you end up having any specific concerns you can freely discuss with your preparer (or us) and we can address them.

Hey, HN! Long-time fan, infrequent contributor here.

My co-founder and I are excited to share with you our startup - Taxaroo. At the risk of sounding cheesy, think of Taxaroo as "Uber", but for tax preparation. Taxaroo is a marketplace that matches tax filers with professional tax preparers entirely online. We offer up-front, fixed-price quotes based on clients' unique tax situation, and match them with experienced tax preparers that are able to handle that specific scenario. Clients pay no additional fees to us - we only charge tax preparers a referral fee.

Beyond simply a marketplace, Taxaroo is also a convenient (and secure) platform for you, as a client, to exchange documents and basic personal information with your preparer (rather than emails, lugging stuff to someone's office, or [shudder] faxing docs). We also enable you to pay with a credit card and only be charged once you've approved your final tax return(s).

Though we've been working on this for nearly a year, we only recently opened up the platform for tax preparers and have already received a strong response and lots of enthusiasm. We have signed up professionals from across the U.S. with an average experience of over 17 years preparing taxes. We rigorously validate several levels of identification and credentials, and verify these with the IRS.

We'd love for you to check it out and let us know what you all think! If you're getting ready for tax season, we want to offer HN a 10% discount for the first 25 people using this promo link: https://taxaroo.com/getstarted/LOVE4HN.

Thanks,

Tim (Co-founder and CTO, Taxaroo)

I completely agree, and I'm 22. The fact that I check HN several times a day should speak to my interest in technology. I would say this has nothing to do with age, just a certain sense of what's valuable.

While time has shown that the average person can find a use for Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, I still find it very difficult to see how "another" social app... and a photo-sharing one at that... is going to draw the kind of crowd that would make this extremely high valuation reasonable.

I would agree that, based on numerous comments across the web, the only reason for such a high valuation is because of possible acquisition. But this article specifically mentions that the company is not interested in being acquired, so I guess I just don't "get it".

During the dot-com bubble, "eyeballs" were becoming as important a metric for companies as "revenue" or "profit". It seems to me (and others here) that we're seeing some of the same sentiment all over again.

The fact that Color will give me a 'dynamic social graph based on who I interact with frequently' does not make me want to sign up. Then again, I might not be their target market. I currently don't have much interest in sharing photos on the internet with strangers just because they are nearby.

I found that this article could easily have been written about my University, from which I graduated about a year ago. I wanted to do a startup-esque project for my Senior Design capstone project, and I had no end of complications in getting the project approved. It seemed every other student was doing some sort of "academic" endeavor working under a professor (with students all in the same major of course).

I would guess that a majority of Universities are somewhat narrow in their focus and what their definition of success for their students is.

Would be interesting, but "not available in [my] territory" (USA)

I wouldn't necessarily say that. I find it interesting that some segment of the internet finds this site useful, or it wouldn't have existed for as long as it has. Perhaps a small rural town finds this the easiest way to quickly browse their town's happenings?

Of course, I agree that it's about as readable as minified Javascript, and the first thing I thought of when I saw it was the "million dollar website". But you'd have to think that the guy that put it together had used SOME other part of the internet (at least Google) and still decided that this was acceptable for his community.

Also note that Google can do beard-second and donkeypower conversion:

http://www.google.com/search?q=beardsecond

http://www.google.com/search?q=donkeypower

This is a fantastic idea. Maybe not something I'd use personally, but the idea of trying to bring some element of game mechanics into something so menial as washing your dishes is pretty creative thinking. Also +1 for the video, it was pretty entertaining and explained how exactly it worked in a pretty concise fashion.

Simply awesome. I must have used every single domain name search app there is and this is by far the best

This seems to be the same, but at Lowes. Correct me if I'm wrong: http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&prod...

Not able to find that on the Home Depot website. Do you have a link by any chance?

Interesting article, particularly in regards to the tax credit for office spaces (I happen to be in Pittsburgh, might be useful knowledge for the future).

I guess I don't agree with everyone else here, but I think it all came together well and I actually enjoy the color choices

I found some documentation online about several policies surrounding this: http://www.pitt.edu/~offres/policyu.html

It's not really an easy read, but it seems that, by default, the University wants in on anything you do in their facilities. They make this condition for students, though:

"Students are exempt from this policy for cases in which University facilities are not used and where the invention or discovery is not made in the course of the students studies at the University."

So since it's sort of "in the course of the student's studies", I might have to go after the following conditions in the policy:

" If, however, the inventor or another institution believes that the circumstances surrounding the invention, including such factors as support provided by other than the University, place where discovery was made, or lack of relevance to the regular work of the member of the faculty or staff, warrant another distribution, the inventor or the institution may request the Office of Technology Management, in consultation with the Technology Transfer Committee, to review the circumstances. After review, and upon consultation with the Office of General Counsel and the Senior Vice Chancellors, the Office of Technology Management will make recommendations to the Chancellor on the distribution of proceeds.

      The University, as determined by the Technology Transfer Committee and the Office of Technology Management, may choose to waive all rights to file a patent on a particular invention or to pursue licensing of such invention, electing instead to grant the inventor permission to proceed on his or her own in whatever manner the inventor deemsappropriate."

Most of the language seems really targeted towards faculty and staff, however, so I think I can work around it. I'll try the person you suggested once I hear back from my department head.

Any tips then if I wanted to get around this? In my case I won't be using anything from the University for the project. To be honest, I might do work on it in the library from time to time or something, but I could even avoid this if absolutely necessary. I'd literally just be doing coding on my laptop and using my own hosting.

I'd just like to see the language behind the agreement I signed I guess.

Yeah, agreed. I've found the contact information for the person in charge of our tech transfer office (called the Office of Technology Management... I assume they're basically the same thing). I'll wait to hear back from my department head and probably contact someone in OTM (whoever is appropriate) afterward.

This might be history in the making, as I potentially might have to pitch why my idea is NOT viable enough for them to care (inverse VC pitch, lol).

My schools actually listed in my profile for the curious. But no, I haven't signed any kind of agreement saying that I won't use their property. The only agreement that would be standing currently is if I agreed in my acceptance letter to let them keep any IP I create as part of classwork, etc. That's something I need to look into... very soon.

I have no code written currently, and have only met with my adviser to have him sign off on his agreement to oversee the project. I'll probably go the route of getting the school to sign off on something saying, basically "I won't use your stuff, you don't have to do anything for me, just don't sue me later".

If they won't do that, I might have to change my project to use another web app-type idea that I consider less viable as a business but could teach me a lot about web development. I hope that's not the case, as currently I'd be earning 3 credits to build my dream project and if I can retain all IP I'd be golden.

That's helpful information. I'll have to dig up what I signed when I agreed to go to school here and find out what it said about research.

For those curious, the response from my department head (who I worked with to set up the independent study):

" This is a complicated question.

Effectively, the University owns everything (all IP) that we do while we are here, faculty, staff, and students alike. However, they have very limited capability to effectively copyright, patent, and market everything that is created. If you were to go through the process of doing this through the University, they would return a portion of any income that they acquire. In return, they cover the legal, patent, and marketing costs to get the product to market, or to find some company that would want to market it. Given the number of things that are created in a university, the process of selecting which items to pursue is long and involved.

My suggestion is that you proceed on your own. If you are hugely successful, then you would deal with the university at that time. "

So it seems like most people here are right on. If I can't easily get any more information, I'll probably just go for it. I was just trying to see where I stand so I don't get myself in a ridiculous situation later where I say "Why didn't I think of this earlier?".