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Introducing LunchTree - Lunch networking for the startup community
- jspaulding 16y agoI'm the founder. If anyone has feedback or questions let me know! thanks
- onteria 16y agoTwo 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?
- jspaulding 16y agoRegarding 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)
- daralthus 16y agoHave 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 http://startupflyer.com/en
- jspaulding 16y agoThanks for the link. I will indeed have a look over this site. cheers.
- dotBen 16y agoJust 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. )
- mgkimsal 16y agocool idea - similar to something i'd planned last year, but your execution beats mine (meaning, you actually executed!) :)
- jspaulding 16y agoThanks. 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.
- mgkimsal 16y agonot 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 :)
- alain94040 16y agoCongratulations to Jesse for relaunching. And thanks for helping build awareness for everyone in that space :-)
- jspaulding 16y agothanks Alain
- geekinthecorner 16y agoThis reminds me a lot of http://noonhat.com/ http://noonhat.com/
- rdamico 16y agoOverall, 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.
- scrollbar 16y agoHappy 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!
- jspaulding 16y agoGreat glad to have you on. Once there is some interesting or meaningful data I'll be sure to make a blog post. Thanks
- jonathanmarcus 16y agoGreat idea! Congratulations on the launch.
- madmaze 16y agoGreat Idea, may need a little bit of fine tuning
- jspaulding 16y agoThank you! Which parts do you think need fine tuning?
- peregrine 16y agoWould like to see this for other communities, but what community matches SF in number of startups?
- simonk 16y agoAny chance of Canadian locations? You only allow zip codes to be put in for future locations.
- jspaulding 16y agoYeah.. 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.
- swombat 16y agoWhy 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.
- jspaulding 16y agoThe 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.
- asnyder 16y agoReminds me of OkCupid's blind date: http://www.crazyblinddate.com/ http://www.crazyblinddate.com/, they're redoing it but the concept was very similar, but for dates.
- jasonshen 16y agoThis is really cool. Props. I live in the city but work in Burlingame, otherwise would love to try it.
- jspaulding 16y agoWell theoretically it should work in Burlingame.. but realistically you'll probably have to wait till more people hear about this.
- mcgraw 16y agoAwesome! 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!