5 ms·

Curebit (YC W11) productizes the Dropbox referral system

76 points by allangrant 16y ago

spking 16y ago
This is beautiful. No more meetings about how many IT resources we'll need to corral to build a homegrown referral or rewards system.
onwardly 16y ago
I love this idea. The problem I have with Groupon-like sites, at least in terms of sharing, is that I don't want to blast everyone I know with offers. Most of the people i know aren't even in the same area. But- usually I know a few people that would be interested in whatever deal or product I'm buying. Being able to target them specifically, and get rewarded for it, is brilliant.
- asdf333 16y ago
  Thats a good point...thanks for the feedback! Do you already know those friends' email addresses in these cases? If not, would you want us to get them from gmail/facebook so you can have autocomplete? Thanks again for the observation.
  - onwardly 16y ago
    Yea- I'd want auto-complete usually!
klochner 16y ago
Surprised the article didn't mention zferral or extole (or more recently - spreadable from the chargify guys). Actually quora does a better job: http://www.quora.com/Marketing/What-third-party-services-can-I-use-to-set-up-and-manage-programs-to-incentivize-my-customers-to-tweet-or-share-information-about-my-company-on-Facebook http://www.quora.com/Marketing/What-third-party-services-can...
JCB_K 16y ago
Love it, but I see 1 problem: when I see something on Facebook like: "I just bought Product X and unlocked a 10% discount for YOU", I presume it's spam. Copywriting is going to be very, very important to this.
- il 16y ago
  Most people on Facebook are not as sensitive to posts from their friends. See the recent LivingSocial Amazon promo on Facebook for an incredibly successful example of this model.
  - ohashi 16y ago
    Seeing these over and over will reduce their efficacy unless the offer really is targeted. Almost everyone buys from Amazon, it's got universal appeal. I can think of very few other companies that have that sort of reach/appeal.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- allangrant 16y ago
  Spot on. Copywriting is KEY. DODOcase does it really well: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=dodocase+curebit http://search.twitter.com/search?q=dodocase+curebit Ultimately this is up to the user, but our goal is to expose our observations about what works to our customers to make it easier.
6ren 16y ago
> something like cash back or a discount. Sounds like plain referral. To me, the key to the Dropbox system is that the referrer is rewarded with more Dropbox. This makes the recommendation more sincere. Another issue is that the Curebit referral seems to occur before customers have received the product, so they can't logically recommend it, in general. Dropbox addresses my ethical concerns about referrals; Curebit doesn't (based on this submission).
- allangrant 16y ago
  Good points. The system is pretty flexible, and what you're talking about is possible. The referral happening is just an action - so a SaaS company using it could easily provide credit, as with Dropbox. You could provide a callback URL for us to notify you when the referral happens, but we handle all the tracking, url generation, analytics, split testing, etc. Check out the custom integration instructions: http://www.curebit.com/integration#custom http://www.curebit.com/integration#custom Some of our stores (mypuppypads.com) delay the offer by a week - giving their customers a chance to first try the product. In other cases, like when Six Orange Grove runs a Charlie's Soap deal (these always go super viral), there's no need to delay the offer. The people that buy & share are die-hard Charlie's Soap fans that stockpile it whenever it goes on sale: http://twitter.com/#!/kakaty/statuses/4377656799793152 http://twitter.com/#!/kakaty/statuses/4377656799793152 http://twitter.com/#!/myfirstkitchen/statuses/4371433010503680 http://twitter.com/#!/myfirstkitchen/statuses/43714330105036...
  - 6ren 16y ago
    I guess my complaint is more to do with the submission title :) However... there is an intriguing idea that you might be more successful by only doing it the dropbox way. It seems counterintuitive to restrict your options, but then you really would be productizing the dropbox approach - you'd be offering not only the implementation of it, but also a guide to it, an explanation for why it works etc. Not technology, but valuable business guidance. It would also be simpler and more convenient, by being less customizable to use; and more definite and concrete in your marketing materials, making it easier to understand and pass on, and be stickier. But developers hate artificially limiting their technology; and I'm far from able to guarantee it would sell better (or, indeed, at all). I guess you could simulate it, by having a form/wizard, that guides the user through the issues of a dropbox-style referral - sort of like "referral model advice" - but one that ideally would also create the system on the spot! I'm thinking that many people have much less idea of referral programs than you do (and value their ignorance); making the choices simpler is a big plus for these folk. Of course, I don't know if referral systems are well-understood enough yet to be reduced to simple rules that always work (or work reasonably reliably, well enough for a first iteration for the client).
kineticac 16y ago
Great product! You've basically built something every company tries to build when first launching a product. Ever think about a badging system to go along with this? I mention this because this is similar to what we built to use on Fanvibe for awarding users virtual goods and real life deals on tickets etc.
- allangrant 16y ago
  Sounds like an interesting idea. Would love to check out how you guys do it on Fanvibe and ask you more about it. :)
  - kineticac 16y ago
    great to bump into you at yc office hours today. let's chat more at some point, send me an email: art at fanvibe.com
callmeed 16y ago
I love this and just signed-up ... please let me in! :)
brackin 16y ago
I'm bias as i'm in competition with these guys although we're trying to make something more social with a proper backend for earning badges, no referrals, twitter support and other cool things. But this sounds worse for the Merchant and user. User: Has to sort out a rebate for something they already paid for, has to refer friends and get them to buy to earn. Merchant: The user has no inventive to return as you're giving them money off. If a user actually likes a product and if worth the merchants time and money giving them a reward like a coupon (25% off or a free item when they buy something else would be far more powerful) In my opinion at least. I've been working on this since mid last year and am happy with our implementation but this shows what a big market this is going to be, the best of luck to them, although we are doing similar things I don't think we're close to the same. Let's be honest it's going to be rare that anyone will earn a rebate so giving them a code to return would mean they earn something and the merchant has the hook.
- brackin 16y ago
  I should have mentioned http://reward.io http://reward.io is my site, we're going to be getting off launchrock very soon fyi heh.
biot 16y ago
Am I parsing the name wrong? I saw this a few hours ago and I still can't help but get the impression this is somehow medical related (the "cure" part).
- unwind 16y ago
  I think you're meant to associate to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curator.

76 points by allangrant 16y ago

This is beautiful. No more meetings about how many IT resources we'll need to corral to build a homegrown referral or rewards system.

onwardly 16y ago

I love this idea. The problem I have with Groupon-like sites, at least in terms of sharing, is that I don't want to blast everyone I know with offers. Most of the people i know aren't even in the same area. But- usually I know a few people that would be interested in whatever deal or product I'm buying. Being able to target them specifically, and get rewarded for it, is brilliant.

asdf333 16y ago
Thats a good point...thanks for the feedback! Do you already know those friends' email addresses in these cases? If not, would you want us to get them from gmail/facebook so you can have autocomplete? Thanks again for the observation.
- onwardly 16y ago
  Yea- I'd want auto-complete usually!

klochner 16y ago

Surprised the article didn't mention zferral or extole (or more recently - spreadable from the chargify guys). Actually quora does a better job: http://www.quora.com/Marketing/What-third-party-services-can-I-use-to-set-up-and-manage-programs-to-incentivize-my-customers-to-tweet-or-share-information-about-my-company-on-Facebook http://www.quora.com/Marketing/What-third-party-services-can...

JCB_K 16y ago

Love it, but I see 1 problem: when I see something on Facebook like: "I just bought Product X and unlocked a 10% discount for YOU", I presume it's spam. Copywriting is going to be very, very important to this.

il 16y ago
Most people on Facebook are not as sensitive to posts from their friends. See the recent LivingSocial Amazon promo on Facebook for an incredibly successful example of this model.
- ohashi 16y ago
  Seeing these over and over will reduce their efficacy unless the offer really is targeted. Almost everyone buys from Amazon, it's got universal appeal. I can think of very few other companies that have that sort of reach/appeal.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
allangrant 16y ago
Spot on. Copywriting is KEY. DODOcase does it really well: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=dodocase+curebit http://search.twitter.com/search?q=dodocase+curebit Ultimately this is up to the user, but our goal is to expose our observations about what works to our customers to make it easier.

6ren 16y ago

> something like cash back or a discount. Sounds like plain referral. To me, the key to the Dropbox system is that the referrer is rewarded with more Dropbox. This makes the recommendation more sincere. Another issue is that the Curebit referral seems to occur before customers have received the product, so they can't logically recommend it, in general. Dropbox addresses my ethical concerns about referrals; Curebit doesn't (based on this submission).

allangrant 16y ago
Good points. The system is pretty flexible, and what you're talking about is possible. The referral happening is just an action - so a SaaS company using it could easily provide credit, as with Dropbox. You could provide a callback URL for us to notify you when the referral happens, but we handle all the tracking, url generation, analytics, split testing, etc. Check out the custom integration instructions: http://www.curebit.com/integration#custom http://www.curebit.com/integration#custom Some of our stores (mypuppypads.com) delay the offer by a week - giving their customers a chance to first try the product. In other cases, like when Six Orange Grove runs a Charlie's Soap deal (these always go super viral), there's no need to delay the offer. The people that buy & share are die-hard Charlie's Soap fans that stockpile it whenever it goes on sale: http://twitter.com/#!/kakaty/statuses/4377656799793152 http://twitter.com/#!/kakaty/statuses/4377656799793152 http://twitter.com/#!/myfirstkitchen/statuses/4371433010503680 http://twitter.com/#!/myfirstkitchen/statuses/43714330105036...
- 6ren 16y ago
  I guess my complaint is more to do with the submission title :) However... there is an intriguing idea that you might be more successful by only doing it the dropbox way. It seems counterintuitive to restrict your options, but then you really would be productizing the dropbox approach - you'd be offering not only the implementation of it, but also a guide to it, an explanation for why it works etc. Not technology, but valuable business guidance. It would also be simpler and more convenient, by being less customizable to use; and more definite and concrete in your marketing materials, making it easier to understand and pass on, and be stickier. But developers hate artificially limiting their technology; and I'm far from able to guarantee it would sell better (or, indeed, at all). I guess you could simulate it, by having a form/wizard, that guides the user through the issues of a dropbox-style referral - sort of like "referral model advice" - but one that ideally would also create the system on the spot! I'm thinking that many people have much less idea of referral programs than you do (and value their ignorance); making the choices simpler is a big plus for these folk. Of course, I don't know if referral systems are well-understood enough yet to be reduced to simple rules that always work (or work reasonably reliably, well enough for a first iteration for the client).

kineticac 16y ago

Great product! You've basically built something every company tries to build when first launching a product. Ever think about a badging system to go along with this? I mention this because this is similar to what we built to use on Fanvibe for awarding users virtual goods and real life deals on tickets etc.

allangrant 16y ago
Sounds like an interesting idea. Would love to check out how you guys do it on Fanvibe and ask you more about it. :)
- kineticac 16y ago
  great to bump into you at yc office hours today. let's chat more at some point, send me an email: art at fanvibe.com

callmeed 16y ago

I love this and just signed-up ... please let me in! :)

brackin 16y ago

I'm bias as i'm in competition with these guys although we're trying to make something more social with a proper backend for earning badges, no referrals, twitter support and other cool things. But this sounds worse for the Merchant and user. User: Has to sort out a rebate for something they already paid for, has to refer friends and get them to buy to earn. Merchant: The user has no inventive to return as you're giving them money off. If a user actually likes a product and if worth the merchants time and money giving them a reward like a coupon (25% off or a free item when they buy something else would be far more powerful) In my opinion at least. I've been working on this since mid last year and am happy with our implementation but this shows what a big market this is going to be, the best of luck to them, although we are doing similar things I don't think we're close to the same. Let's be honest it's going to be rare that anyone will earn a rebate so giving them a code to return would mean they earn something and the merchant has the hook.

brackin 16y ago
I should have mentioned http://reward.io http://reward.io is my site, we're going to be getting off launchrock very soon fyi heh.

biot 16y ago

Am I parsing the name wrong? I saw this a few hours ago and I still can't help but get the impression this is somehow medical related (the "cure" part).

unwind 16y ago
I think you're meant to associate to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curator.