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Hey! Since we're all waiting for the emails why don't we do something productive? Like maybe sharing our ideas so that we could give each other feedback?.. Oh a

• manibatra 10y ago
  I think that is awesome. I will start then. Our idea in a line would be "Codecademy meets Finance". So we are trying to bring financial education to the masses in an interactive fun way. With hoards of apps available to invest and save now we think that financial education will go a long way in helping people out. We made a quick ( and dirty, frankly a little embarrassing prototype) at : www.thefinac.tk . Do check it out :) We apologise for the bugs that you may encounter. Also if you want to look at the standings of all the Apply HN startups you can do so at www.thefinac.tk/applyhn . Another quick hack we made. Would love to give some feedback on other ideas as well so start posting :)
  • tejasn 10y ago
    That's a great idea but the website needs some work. But it's fine considering that it is a prototype :)
    • manibatra 10y ago
      Thank you for taking out the time to check it out. I agree the prototype is subpar but we are working on the second iteration that will surely be a lot better. Would love to ask you a couple of questions if that's ok : 1. Would you be interested in an approach to learn which includes text and videos ( like Udacity.com) or something which is mostly interactive ( like Codecademy.com / what we planned to convey via prototype )? 2. Are there any particular topics in Finance that you would be interested to know about? (Stocks, mutual funds, investing in general, taxes, etc. )
      • tejasn 10y ago
        1. I guess for learning finance stuff I would prefer an interactive website with a lot of simple as well as real world examples. 2. Mutual funds and SIP. People hear a lot about them but never grasp the concept. I personally was introduced to these terms a month ago.
        • hellomaggiema1 10y ago
          Hey I'm the other founder of Finac :) I love your suggestions! We agree that incorporating real world examples would really make learning finance a lot more relatable and easier to understand. Regarding the second point, we ourselves got heavily into Finance over a year ago and the on boarding process was very time consuming for someone who hasn't had a formal education in finance. We were really frustrated that despite financial education being so essential, a lot of it is very convoluted.
  • karimdag 10y ago
    I've tried it and here's what I want to say : - I like that it was developed with mobile-first design. - In my opinion when you develop a prototype always go for minimal design, use as less colors as possible (use the white space to your advantage) - I like the interactive part of it, because it forces me to be engaged (in contrast with dead articles where I might skip whole passages). - Beside the interactivity part, why would I use this platform? What advantages do this platform have over books?
    • manibatra 10y ago
      Thank you for checking it out. We totally agree with you. I think we should have spent more time getting the right market fit. We want to make Finance as cool as programming. I think you pointed out the chief advantage yourself, books sometimes do get boring ( we love books but not everybody has the time or the inclination) . By making this platform we can have access to a much larger user base and just add a little bit of fun to sometimes not too exciting (but very essential) concepts of finance. We have also thought about adding financial advisors ( WAY into the future), partnering with schools to bring this to teenagers who are about to leave for universities and guiding the audience to tools ( partnering with other companies that provide such tools ) or providing them with same tools. But in the starting we want to stay focussed on just making educational content.The paradigm is shifting to learning stuff online and we hope to take advantage of that.
      • karimdag 10y ago
        Got it. Now I have a harder question for you. I was just warming you up so prepare yourself mouhahahahaha (yeah.. That's my evil laugh) : How will you monetize it ? How will you fight the new trend: "Education should be free" ?
        • manibatra 10y ago
          haha love it! the harder the better! :) The things that we have thought about right now are: 1. After we have built community trust, and become the go to place for financial education, we can bring in mentors who can offer personal financial advice on a 1 on 1 basis. 2. We can enter into partnerships with other applications that act as financial instruments but are not offering the financial know-how. 3. We can provide financial tools ( platform for investing n such) to people in the future. 4. We can license customized courses for school students and university students. 5. Freemium model where interesting and challenging projects are offered, which advanced students, would pay to do - and get mentoring on. 6. After we have built an audience we can also make money off digital advertising and sponsorship. We know these are very broad and vague but this what we have so far. That is why in the starting we want to be laser focussed on building up the content. Would love to know your thoughts about it.
  • andy_ppp 10y ago
    Don't be too embarrassed! You actually did something and I quite like it - I've 100% seen (and probably built) a lot worse! Good luck!
    • manibatra 10y ago
      Awesome!! Thanks for your valuable time!! You just motivated us to work a lot lot harder. Do let us know if you have any tips/criticism about the idea too !
      • andy_ppp 10y ago
        Yeah, the one thing I'd say is get rid of the TypeForm questionnaires (or integrate them better)... having said that we recently tried to recreate them at work and they have taken astronomically more time than originally thought! Good luck! :-)
        • manibatra 10y ago
          I know the integration was a little poor. A number of our testers did complain about that. But yea it was the quickest option when it came to building the prototype! Will definitely do a better job in the next iteration.
  • cnnrjcbsn 10y ago
    Why not say your idea in a line is: "We are trying to bring financial education to the masses in an interactive fun way" instead of the "Uber for X" style idiom? Its easier to understand for the lay person that way too.
    • manibatra 10y ago
      Hmm intersting point! The reason we did that was sometime back YC released a list of its graduating startups and each company was described as something like "Uber of dog walking" and that is the reason we stuck with it! Point noted though!
    • mconnolly 10y ago
      Disagree with this. Multiple times YC has written positively on describing yourself as the X of Y where X is a well know existing product.
• S4M 10y ago
  One of the nice features of the "Apply HN" process is that you can get feedback from other HNers (I applied to both).
• tim333 10y ago
  My thing's a bit like airbnb but where you can buy the place if you like it. Fairly confident I'm not getting an interview this time round - no views on my vid. I don't fit the YC pattern very well.
  • manibatra 10y ago
    Would love to know more about it. At the moment is sounds like a platform for selling real estate?
    • tim333 10y ago
      Yeah basically - kind of rent with an option to buy. Still a bit at the early stage - not quite sorted the details. If someone's interested in getting involved drop me an email 0707tim at gmail. I'm in London now and may be in LA/SF shortly. One of my problems applying to YC is I'm solo presently.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • hellomaggiema1 10y ago
    Hey there! Cool concept (kind of like try before you buy)! I think a lot of people who want to sell their houses approach a real estate agent since they're pretty keen to sell quick- how do you plan to acquire those customers? What will be the incentive of using your platform instead of approaching a real estate who does open house inspections etc and can seal the deal quicker? I'd imagine having to sort out rentals and having the possibility of the renter not buying the house would mean the seller might miss out on potential buyers which they could've avoided if they used a real estate site.
  • chresko 10y ago
    Might be more interesting if you did something like 'rent for a year.' Right now the problem with Airbnb is that you're limited to 90 days as the renter. If you tweak your idea to 'I want to live in that home for a year' with the option to buy, that might become more interesting and useful (you now have multiple audiences - long term renters, long term tenants and possible home buyers).
• lettergram 10y ago
  That's why they created the "Apply HN: <Enter Idea>" format! That being said, my team and I are trying to fix mental healthcare: Apply HN: Synaptitude – Remote Mental Health Monitoring and Treatment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11442000
  • manibatra 10y ago
    I dont have to enough domain knowledge to offer much critique but having known a few very close people with mental health issues the though of having at home care and therapy seems like a boon. Also it would be great if there is a little more information on the website before I have to sign up. But I think you are in early stage and working on that :)
    • lettergram 10y ago
      We're at the point we need to run trials to confirm that nothing we are doing is dangerous, and that it shows promise of some kind (Phase I and II trials). The problem is a large scale study using EEGs is rarely, if ever done. The website is just kind of there, we haven't updated it in a year. We have over 50 people willing to participate and pay to be in a trial. We just need an initial, relatively small investment to purchase a few EEGs, hence we applied to YC.
      • manibatra 10y ago
        That sounds really good!! Clearly you have the validation part nailed down!! Good luck going forward :)
  • isuckatcoding 10y ago
    Hi lettergram This is an awesome effort. Just wondering how this compares with something like Joyable?
    • lettergram 10y ago
      It's somewhat similar in the user flow, but different in the therapy. Joyable uses cognitive behavior therapy, which is essentially talking through issues, learning techniques, etc. All of this is qualitative, and although it supposedly works well, it's hard to judge success. Our therapy is called neurofeedback[1], which is a quantitive form of therapy. Essentially, we do the same thing as Joyable, but with the addition of hardware and algorithms which teach the techniques in a partially automated way. Users place an EEG on their head, and sit in front of a computer so we can track their face. With both of those we can accurately determine focus, stress, anxiety, etc. Then we teach the user techniques to help reduce those feelings and we can determine if it's working or not. Enabling a quicker feedback loop to both the user, but also doctors. [1] http://synaptitude.me/blog/neurofeedback-in-200-words/ http://synaptitude.me/blog/neurofeedback-in-200-words/
• hashvin 10y ago
  At "Let's" we are building a social meetup app for people to meet other awesome people nearby and do fun stuff together! check us out at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11462402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11462402 Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback.