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Congratulations on your announcement, I’ve been following you and Buy Me A Coffee for a while. If I remember correctly, you got accepted to YC with a different

Congratulations on your announcement, I’ve been following you and Buy Me A Coffee for a while. If I remember correctly, you got accepted to YC with a different idea — some sort of podcast app. Can you explain why you decided to pivot back to Buy Me A Coffee?

ignoramous 7y ago
> If I remember correctly, you got accepted to YC with a different idea That'd be Brew [0]: https://brew.com https://brew.com As for the pivot, I'm not sure it qualifies as a pivot since buymeacoffee.com predates brew.com. Separate businesses, and it seems to me they're simply re-announcing buymeacoffee again [1] and possibly shifting focus to make it the main product. Another YC company https://kyte.ai https://kyte.ai (AI for SMS inboxes) did that recently and pivoted to https://khatabook.com https://khatabook.com (Credit/Debit Book Keeping app for Indian SMBs) [2]. Of course, https://brex.com https://brex.com famously did the same, too (not launch with the idea they applied / did YC with) [3]. [0] https://www.ycdb.co/company/brew-com https://www.ycdb.co/company/brew-com [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16484040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16484040 [2] https://www.ycdb.co/company/khatabook https://www.ycdb.co/company/khatabook [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17418813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17418813
- liamcardenas 7y ago
  Yes, which is why I said “pivot back”. It doesn’t seem like Brew is still a focus — and I’m curious /why/. Is it simply because BMAC already had adoption and a new podcast app is a hard sell? Is Brew still in development?
huangc10 7y ago
Agreed. This is a little weird. I wonder if they got YC's "OK" to use the Launch HN tag with (YC W19) for a product that was not actually within the batch. It's a little deceiving.
- liamcardenas 7y ago
  I’m not trying to imply anything nefarious is going on. I am genuinely interested in the story.
- jijosunny 7y ago
  We are the same company/team, and our goal is to help creators get paid for their work. With Brew, we focused on audio creators. Everything we built so far revolved around this vision :) I don't want to speak for YC, but the partners want you to iterate and succeed. Many of the successful YC companies (Reddit, Brex) got accepted for a completely different idea.
jijosunny 7y ago
Thank you! Our insight after getting into the audio space was that podcasters are relatively happy with monetization. This is obviously not a popular opinion, but that's what we saw first hand. Ad rates are pretty good, and unlike other content types, listeners enjoy host-read ads. Meanwhile, Buy Me A Coffee started getting a decent amount of traction even among podcasters, so we wanted to go all in and build it out :)

ignoramous 7y ago

> If I remember correctly, you got accepted to YC with a different idea That'd be Brew [0]: https://brew.com https://brew.com As for the pivot, I'm not sure it qualifies as a pivot since buymeacoffee.com predates brew.com. Separate businesses, and it seems to me they're simply re-announcing buymeacoffee again [1] and possibly shifting focus to make it the main product. Another YC company https://kyte.ai https://kyte.ai (AI for SMS inboxes) did that recently and pivoted to https://khatabook.com https://khatabook.com (Credit/Debit Book Keeping app for Indian SMBs) [2]. Of course, https://brex.com https://brex.com famously did the same, too (not launch with the idea they applied / did YC with) [3]. [0] https://www.ycdb.co/company/brew-com https://www.ycdb.co/company/brew-com [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16484040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16484040 [2] https://www.ycdb.co/company/khatabook https://www.ycdb.co/company/khatabook [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17418813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17418813

liamcardenas 7y ago
Yes, which is why I said “pivot back”. It doesn’t seem like Brew is still a focus — and I’m curious /why/. Is it simply because BMAC already had adoption and a new podcast app is a hard sell? Is Brew still in development?

huangc10 7y ago

Agreed. This is a little weird. I wonder if they got YC's "OK" to use the Launch HN tag with (YC W19) for a product that was not actually within the batch. It's a little deceiving.

liamcardenas 7y ago
I’m not trying to imply anything nefarious is going on. I am genuinely interested in the story.
jijosunny 7y ago
We are the same company/team, and our goal is to help creators get paid for their work. With Brew, we focused on audio creators. Everything we built so far revolved around this vision :) I don't want to speak for YC, but the partners want you to iterate and succeed. Many of the successful YC companies (Reddit, Brex) got accepted for a completely different idea.

jijosunny 7y ago

Thank you! Our insight after getting into the audio space was that podcasters are relatively happy with monetization. This is obviously not a popular opinion, but that's what we saw first hand. Ad rates are pretty good, and unlike other content types, listeners enjoy host-read ads. Meanwhile, Buy Me A Coffee started getting a decent amount of traction even among podcasters, so we wanted to go all in and build it out :)