11 ms·

Wevorce (YC W13) makes divorce suck less

137 points by sochanger 14y ago

minimaxir 14y ago
So, we have startups that help get people get together, startups that help people marry, and now startups that help through divorce. If I were an entrepreneur, I'd cut out the middle man and vertically integrate all three into one startup.
- codegeek 14y ago
  "integrate all three into one startup." What would be your tagline ? How about "no hassles marriage to divorce in 1 package." Then could price your service as: - Dating only - Marriage only - Dating & Marriage (value package) - Marriage and divorce (value package) - Dating,Marriage,Divorce (super value package)
  - minimaxir 14y ago
    The tagline: "Easy Come, Easy Go"
    - newman314 14y ago
      Or "Gone in 60 Seconds"... =) Sorry. Couldn't resist.
      - iamdave 14y ago
        I'd like to buy your next beer, please.
        newman314 14y ago
        Awesome! If not, feel free to donate the price of a beer to the EFF.
  - lmkg 14y ago
    No, man, you've got it all wrong. The real opportunity isn't in marriage-to-divorce, it's in divorce-to-marriage. "Tired of your marriage? Get a better one in six months or your money back!"
    - trdtaylor 14y ago
      ... I.... YC14
  - rdl 14y ago
    "Never hire someone you'd be unwilling or unable to fire."
- tedunangst 14y ago
  Why somebody got divorced is the kind of info that could be very helpful when trying to set them up with someone new. If you knew the factors that led to the first couple being a match, you could really adjust the algorithm to detect dealbreakers.
- okstr 14y ago
  Challenge Accepted. -- Couple app team W12 :)
- stan_rogers 14y ago
  Why not make it super efficient and simply assign members a person to whom they are legally obligated to pay support? There's too much latency if you actually have to go through all of the steps.
- danilocampos 14y ago
  It would be like online tax prep services, where each phase is easier than the last since you can import all the relevant data.
- Tichy 14y ago
  You mean something like the church?
- Jplenbrook 14y ago
  Genius idea. We can target engaged couples and offer to pay for their divorce and wedding as package deal. We could be profitable charging $1,800 if this service costs $6,000. Here some quick math: 70% of first marriages will end in divorce so we wont have to pay anything. The other 30% will average 8 years before we have to pay. If we invest the float at 10% we can double our money by the time they divorce. Total cost: $900/marriage Best part is, when they come to us to cash in we sell each of them a new wedding/divorce package.
seeingfurther 14y ago
This is ridiculously hard problem to solve and the likelihood of Wevorce succeeding is very low (as in all startups). But man... it's refreshing whenever I see SV funding large hard to solve problems. It's not all me too ideas, bloated valuations, social network XYZ with zero business models as the press might make it seem much of the time.
- evolve2k 14y ago
  Acctually i saw the opposite, a startup drives traction from addressing a pain point and there is a big easy target here, make the process suck less. I would say just by cutting out two opposing lawyers this will instantly be more successful based on just the collaborative start alone.
  - tapatio 14y ago
    Wait until Wevorce gets sued by an unhappy husband or wife.
    - evolve2k 14y ago
      Possibly, and also another reason to bet on these guys as they are founded by a lawyer.
anonymoushn 14y ago
Hopefully this can help people who don't want to deal with "jagin" to ensure that their divorces don't "wind up like their parents one did." Don't worry, "All of our clients our Wevorce clients."
gbelote 14y ago
Divorce is one of the most stressful events that can happen in your life, as a kid or as a spouse. It's great to see companies like Wevorce work towards solving real and important problems.
- mgarfias 14y ago
  Yep. One thing worse: divorce coupled with abuse (physically + sexual), and the authorities refusing to do anything about it.
mnicole 14y ago
This is petty compared to the purpose of the startup, but the typography/use of ligatures on the site is fantastic.
- curiousdannii 14y ago
  I thought the opposite -- the ligatures seem like they're supposed to make the company look fancy, but when combined with the photos of the founders I just felt creeped out.
  - strevat 14y ago
    I actually helped out with this design, would love some further note as to what felt "creepy" about it. Thanks for the feedback!
    - curiousdannii 14y ago
      The ligatures aren't especially creepy, but they're still bad. It is very odd to use the blatant st and ck ligatures and not use f or t ligatures. And maybe it's the fact that you're using slab serifs? I haven't considered this before, but maybe slab serifs and ligatures just don't mix? Your ampersand is nice though! The still from the first video is incredibly off-putting. It's an awkward smile for any website, but for a divorce website, with the caption "They put me on the stand" it seems very inappropriate. I realised seeing the photo later on that it was one of the founders, but from the image and caption alone there'd be no way to know that (people should read the copy text, sure, but many of them will see the image first.) The Founders & Co image is better, but it does make me think that a sparkle will appear on their teeth any moment now...
  - bambax 14y ago
    I also immediately noticed the ligatures and found them disturbing too. I'm not sure I can explain why but I'll try. It may be because the first and most prominent ligature is in the title... and the word "suck" - ligatures are unusual, even in print, let alone on the web => they're distracting (I found myself chasing them on the page to see if they were also in the article -- turns out they're only used in some subtitles, but the rule isn't clear to me) - ligatures are kind of "classy" (?), and the phrase "suck less" is very colloquial => the contrast is unpleasant (like seeing someone in a tuxedo, covered in mud) Finally, the home page of wefunder is completely different, with basic sans used for copy (font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;) and 'ChunkFiveRoman' for titles (?) In short, the typography seems to be a little all over the place (but that's just my opinion).
avolcano 14y ago
"Wevorce is already having success. While living in Idaho, Michelle ran a beta test. She put 104 families through the system and only one went to court." This was the part that was most surprising to me. That's an incredibly good success rate (albiet with a small test) for something that's trying to mediate such a polarized situation. All it takes is either party not being satisfied with what they got to push it to court, so it must be extremely good at helping both sides feel comfortable with the outcome.
- tadfisher 14y ago
  Another point: Wevorce not only has to convince both parties that an amicable divorce is best, but they have to overcome possible influence from friends/family/lovers as well. This is quite an accomplishment.
- Pinatubo 14y ago
  Careful: there's also a self-selection effect here. Only those couples who have a fairly good chance at a somewhat amicable separation would even try a service like this. Wevorce would probably have a much lower success rate with 104 randomly selected families going through divorce.
  - veidr 14y ago
    True, but that is still 'success'; a service like this would seem to be aimed only at relatively amicable divorces. Nobody thinking "I'm gonna take the conniving, lying, cheating-ass bitch/bastard for everything she/he is worth!" would be trying to use this.
  - Jplenbrook 14y ago
    For a scientific study you are absolutely correct, however, this is a business and in business you only deal with the self-selecting group that would use your service. The better question would be what percentage of the market would actually use this service, especially knowing that it has and over 99% success rate. In my experience women often want a fast divorce and men want a cheap one so if she can provide that she has a winning business proposition.
dylangs1030 14y ago
Disclaimer: I'm not in a position to use this startup, but my parents divorced when I was young. I'm going to be that guy. I really don't like this startup, or at least how it's presented. I have never seen a startup's front page focus so exhaustively on a founder's background. After reading about her story I'm not motivated to look elsewhere. Her story garners a lot of sympathy, but how does the company work? That's all I care about when I go to a website's page. And it's not immediately presented. What I'm hit with first is the name, tagline, graphic and founder's story. I get that she went through divorce. The part about the judge is particularly riveting. But I, personally, don't feel it is as professional as it could be. It doesn't need to be cold, but this is trying very hard to be relatable. I'm not trying to be cruel, I'm just being honest. I hope I don't offend the founders.
- davidbalbert 14y ago
  It looks like OP it's just a founder profile. The company's home page[1] is much closer to what you would expect. I was initially thrown off too, though. [1]http://wevorce.com/ http://wevorce.com/
  - dylangs1030 14y ago
    Yes, that makes much more sense. Thanks for the link.
  - Jplenbrook 14y ago
    I still think the homepage leaves out a lot of the value. The explainer video only sets the problem, not the solution. Problem: Divorce is messy and it's the second most stressful event you and your Children will ever go through. The average divorce takes a year with many dragging on for many years,and inculde _________ trips to court with an average cost of $27,000. Solution: Our initial trial of 104 families Wevorced in an average of 89 days with 1 trip to court (That's not per family that out all 104 families) and our service costs a fraction of what is normally paid in court fees. We are able to this using our 6 step process _______ instead of the traditional adversarial __________.
- gbelote 14y ago
thisischris 14y ago
Majority of that page tells me who the founders are, their business plan, and their investors, but not a whole lot about what they're going to do to help me.
andrewcooke 14y ago
i'm a tad confused. is wefunder related to wevorce? if not, it might be worth saying so, because the names are so similar.
te 14y ago
Would like to read about your company, but something on this site is causing my browser to jack my CPU, and I'm unable to continue. FF18.0.2 on Ubuntu.
- gus_massa 14y ago
  Also unusable in IE9 because it crash.
tapatio 14y ago
Here's some advice to the founders: as a man I wouldn't use a site where it shows a graphic of a father being torn away from his wife AND child.
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  unless they've changed it already, it doesn't. http://wevorce.com/ http://wevorce.com/
  - tapatio 14y ago
    I though the original link was to the homepage of wevorce but it wasn't (https://wefunder.com/wevorce https://wefunder.com/wevorce).
josephscott 14y ago
"so she could help make sure other children didn’t have to go through a similar traumatic experience." If her goal is to help other children avoid going through this wouldn't the better problem to tackle be how to lower the number of divorces? Any divorce, no matter how "smooth" the process is is going to be painful for the kids.
- mgarfias 14y ago
  My boy is now having nightmares going on a year later. And the ex and I came to an agreement, handled things ourselves and had no lawyers involved. Not to say it was easy, and there weren't fights, but as far as divorces go it wasn't messy. My son appears to be scared that hes going to be taken from me, or his mom. Not exactly sure, as talking to a 3.5yro just woken from a nightmare isn't exactly easy or informative and I'm having to read between the lines a bunch. I need to find the little guy some counseling or something so we can address his fears and help him work through them.
eksith 14y ago
Really? This is what it's come down to? Parenting and separation via day-planner. No wonder so many of my friends aren't getting married. A common law marriage is likely to last a lot longer these days since, well, it's not common law unless you've been together for a while. Sometimes years. This is also another reason why parents who ignore their children's feelings when getting a divorce are a bunch of inconsiderate bastards. You can argue all you want about how things are just not working out, but unless one of you is abusive or reckless, there are no irreconcilable differences. You just suck at getting along with each other and you should have thought about that more before having kids. Got to therapy, go to counselling, try anything to hold it off until your kids are at least older teenagers. Wanna know what's really destroying the sanctity of marriage? Abuse, Adultery and Divorce.
- DanBC 14y ago
  > A common law marriage is likely to last a lot longer these days since, well, it's not common law unless you've been together for a while. Sometimes years. Just pointing out that in the UK there's no such thing as "common law marriage" even though lots of people think it is a thing. People who are not married (or civil partnered) don't have as many automatic rights when their partner dies.
  - eksith 14y ago
    Ah, I didn't know that. I guess there are bound to be legal complications from no official recognition for being partners so that makes a will of some sort all the more important. Especially when children are involved.
- danilocampos 14y ago
  I'm not sure that this is the best venue for pearl clutching or preaching. What's known is that a substantial number of marriages do end in divorce. These divorces are extremely painful and expensive. The reasons for divorce might be as varied as the number of people getting them, but the procedures involved are rarely unique. So all of that is an obvious recipe for disrupting an existing industry and printing money in the process. Good on them.
anateus 14y ago
Mods, wefunder, whomever: the similarity of your names is making people think this is the home page of Wevorce rather than an article about the founder and company. Either make it clear at the top of the article page, or in the title here.
- gbelote 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback, anateus (and everyone else). I made a few quick tweaks to the page that hopefully makes it feel less like their homepage. Let me know what you think. We want to be careful about making our branding too strong, because this post is about Wevorce, not Wefunder. In the future we'll put more design cycles into separating the Startup of the Week brand from our own, while keeping the featured startup front-and-center.
liber8 14y ago
I enjoyed how her profile danced around Wevorce's raison d'etre, without actually coming out and saying it: acrimonious divorces are fueled (or created entirely) by lawyers. As a lawyer with many colleagues practicing family law, I don't think this is terribly fair. Divorces are acrimonious because the overwhelming majority of divorcees have fundamental issues with their spouse that they can't even verbalize, let alone work out. The underlying feelings that trigger the explosive fights about nothing (think toilet seats or dishes in the sink) are only magnified when blame for failure of the marriage and the dividing of assets/children comes into play. In other words: divorce is acrimonious because people going through divorce literally go crazy. I would bet Wevorce is successful because it integrates counseling/communication into the divorce process, something that is basically prohibited when both sides are represented by counsel. That alone sounds like a substantial improvement.
- id3331k 14y ago
  liber8: you are correct about Wevorce's raison d'etre. If you look more at their website (www.wevorce.com), you will see that the model does clearly integrate counseling/communication/financial aspects into the process. In fact, those features are the basis of the model. This is precisely the reason it has been successful in its beta phase. I should know, I went through the process. The model provides a space for spouses to verbalize their issues in a neutral space, without attorneys getting in the way with sometimes overly zealous advocacy. As an attorney myself for the past 10 years, I have grown weary of the restricted legal system and its outdated modes of advocacy that silently espouse that the only way to deal with conflict is by battling in the courts. Slowly, but surely, mediation, I believe, will gain more traction into the mainstream of the legal system; however, the main hurdles of that happening are the lawyers enjoying success in "battling" for their clients' dollars, rather than seeing the forest for the trees. Here's to the possibility of the legal community embracing, or at least willing to accept, an alternative way to handle divorce without fearing the inevitable change to the legal culture it brings. "If may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad." C.S. Lewis
- 14y ago
dgunn 14y ago
There are going to be some really good mock testimonials created for this service. They'll probably look like an eHarmony commercial but they'll say really funny things about how great their divorce was and how everyone should try Wevorce for their next divorce.
metaphorm 14y ago
it makes me sad that there's a business model for monetizing divorce. for the sake of humanity, I hope this company fails.
- saraid216 14y ago
  You realize that it's actually an industry, right? https://www.google.com/search?q=divorce+lawyer https://www.google.com/search?q=divorce+lawyer
- rdl 14y ago
  I hope doctors go out of business, too (due to everyone being healthy, and/or being able to download into new fresh bodies whenever, from a 24h old backup). That doesn't mean I want to stick to medieval bleedings and such in the interim.
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
Wow, I was thinking two nights ago about how interesting/funny it would be if someone pitched a startup to "disrupt" divorce to PG. I hadn't thought at all what the thing would actually do, just the idea. It sounds like one of those sitcom ideas to me but I'll look it over. Weird coincidence, though.
nostromo 14y ago
Hey HN: (while we're discussing family law) someone please make a startup that improves adoptions and/or surrogacy. The fees are intense. $20k, 50k, 100k gets dropped left and right in this space. (Never underestimate the human drive to reproduce!) Most of that goes to agencies (who do good work, but incredibly inefficiently) and to foreign governments (if international). All to adopt kids that need a good home. Navigating these waters is intense and difficult. There are so many hucksters, scams, multiple government bureaucracies, lawyers, clinics, and way too many options to make sense of things. It's a nightmare. This is my pain point right now; I'll be your first customer! Regardless, congrats to Wevorce for taking on family law.
- callmeed 14y ago
  Its funny you say that, my wife and I recently went to a local adoption seminar and the entire time all I could think of was "Wow, this process seems incredibly broken and in need of some technology-based efficiencies" ... I think it would take a startup comprised of an existing agency + attorney(s) + hackers but I totally agree with you. Sprinkling some crowd-funding could also be possible here.
  - dugmartin 14y ago
    These folks are doing crowd funding for adoptions. I heard about it on the Techzing podcast: http://adopttogether.org/ http://adopttogether.org/
- mrkurt 14y ago
  I heartily recommend becoming a foster parent through your state children/family services agency. It's an oft overlooked route to adoption and, despite a million frustrations of its own, has worked much better for us than private adoption seems to/would have.
  - ajju 14y ago
    I have no experience, so please excuse this if it's insensitive, but isn't the difference between adopting and being a foster parent the fact that as a foster parent you are only a temporary guardian for the child? i.e. they usually have parents they would go back to eventually?
maurits 14y ago
I can't help feel that a lot of the problems mentioned could be substantially mitigated if one had a decent prenuptial agreement. Other than that, I think this idea will work.
zapnap 14y ago
great, but... no one is discussing the moving clouds in the crayon drawn header graphic.
throw_away_acc 14y ago
I don't know, the idea sounds nice, but I doubt that this a venture case and will scale and fits into PG's 'Startup = Growth' strategy since it's just a service which requires tons of manpower (except it pivots into a marketplace/leadgensite for lawyers offering a defined divorce package but we had similar models 10yrs ago and they just do not work). The landing page could be stolen from one of ClickBank's merchants (you know those shady ultra long landing pages which want to sell useless stuff). I understand that YC startups are proud to be part of YC and thus, put the YC label on their site and everywhere else but often (and in particular here) it's the only USP such startups have.
ISL 14y ago
As someone whose parents divorced amicably, I must opine that this is a great idea. The difference between my experience and those of others whose parents fought bitterly is considerable. Done right, this idea can be a force for good.
mhartl 14y ago
This is a cool idea. I'd like to see something like Wevorce on the other side, i.e., a startup that gives couples more flexibility in creating a marriage contract that meets their needs. Does anyone know if that already exists?
bira 14y ago
I would invest in these people in a heartbeat. YC is lucky to have you onboard.
bambax 14y ago
I don't understand how this is a "startup" in YC/PG's sense of "growth machine". From the article, the purpose of wevorce is to offer a new approach to divorce, where just one lawyer works for the whole family (partners + kids), instead of the usual arrangement where each partner fights the other to death. This certainly sounds like a good idea, but isn't it just a kind of counseling business (the Accenture of divorce)? Even if they can speed up the paperwork a little, at least one lawyer will still be needed for every "customer" (couple divorcing), so how does this scale in a startup sense?
- bambax 14y ago
  Replying to my own question like on Stackoverflow, it could be that what wevorce does (from a business perspective) is create a new market (a cheap divorce where there is only 1 lawyer instead of 2, and less paperwork), and providing this market with a software solution that it builds and maintains. Wevorce doesn't employ lawyers directly, it just acts as a marketplace between them and people wanting to get divorced without killing one another, and it takes a cut in the form of software licence. So from this point of view there's no reason it couldn't scale indefinitely.
HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
At least in Minnesota, there is a trend towards attorneys who practice Collaborative Divorce and I'm told it's spreading across the country rapidly. How does Wevorce fit in with this?
- j-reynolds 14y ago
  Great question. I'm Jeff, with Wevorce. Collaborative Divorce actually started to catch on in the '80s and does some great work. The trouble is that it is more expensive and unstructured. Just coordinating schedules of the various professionals can several hours in fees. That's one of the problems our system fixes. These sorts of issues meant it spread rapidly at first, but has struggle gaining new converts lately. Actually, most of our mediators (we call them Divorce Architects) come from a Collaborative Law background.
mikesickler 14y ago
Just got divorced for the 2nd time last week (what can I say? It's a gift), and what I'd really like to see is a web app that does the following: Give parents and extended family tools to better manage their split parenting work, from parenting schedules, to birthday wish lists, to the child’s clothing sizes, favorite foods, etc. - Enable the family on one side to be engaged with the life of the child when the child is with the other parent. - Help the child avoid feeling as if they have “two separate lives”. - Function as an intermediary between both sides, with focus solely on the child, thus allowing them to cooperate with each other without danger of confrontation. Seeing Nana on Dad’s side communicating and cooperating with Mommy benefits the child greatly. - Ideally, this technology-assisted “virtual” cooperation in time will serve as a bridge to real-life cooperation and engagement, healing, forgiveness, and understanding. Features - Each parent and child can post their work/holiday/event/school/sports schedule - Track parenting time - Keep a diary of the child’s activities (food, health, etc) to share with the other parent - Track shopping lists and assign who buys what (Christmas, bday, etc) - Track contact info (school, coaches, etc), clothing sizes, etc. - Share important documents (report cards, etc) - Share videos, pictures, audio messages, text messages with parents and extended family - Q&A and community support for parents - Allow for indirect phone calls between parties who don’t want to share their phone numbers, or chat video the web site. - Allow for translations to be added to videos and messages.
- j-reynolds 14y ago
  Great feedback, mikesickler. I'm one of the founders and I can tell you that your requests are in the planning stages. Our vision is help families build sustainable lives over the long-term (I'm 38 and I still get uncomfortable when my divorced parents are in the same room). The tool you describe will be part of it. I'll share your comment with the rest of the team so we can add some of these to our features list. Thanks!

137 points by sochanger 14y ago

So, we have startups that help get people get together, startups that help people marry, and now startups that help through divorce. If I were an entrepreneur, I'd cut out the middle man and vertically integrate all three into one startup.

codegeek 14y ago
"integrate all three into one startup." What would be your tagline ? How about "no hassles marriage to divorce in 1 package." Then could price your service as: - Dating only - Marriage only - Dating & Marriage (value package) - Marriage and divorce (value package) - Dating,Marriage,Divorce (super value package)
- minimaxir 14y ago
  The tagline: "Easy Come, Easy Go"
  - newman314 14y ago
    Or "Gone in 60 Seconds"... =) Sorry. Couldn't resist.
    - iamdave 14y ago
      I'd like to buy your next beer, please.
      - newman314 14y ago
        Awesome! If not, feel free to donate the price of a beer to the EFF.
- lmkg 14y ago
  No, man, you've got it all wrong. The real opportunity isn't in marriage-to-divorce, it's in divorce-to-marriage. "Tired of your marriage? Get a better one in six months or your money back!"
  - trdtaylor 14y ago
    ... I.... YC14
- rdl 14y ago
  "Never hire someone you'd be unwilling or unable to fire."
tedunangst 14y ago
Why somebody got divorced is the kind of info that could be very helpful when trying to set them up with someone new. If you knew the factors that led to the first couple being a match, you could really adjust the algorithm to detect dealbreakers.
okstr 14y ago
Challenge Accepted. -- Couple app team W12 :)
stan_rogers 14y ago
Why not make it super efficient and simply assign members a person to whom they are legally obligated to pay support? There's too much latency if you actually have to go through all of the steps.
danilocampos 14y ago
It would be like online tax prep services, where each phase is easier than the last since you can import all the relevant data.
Tichy 14y ago
You mean something like the church?
Jplenbrook 14y ago
Genius idea. We can target engaged couples and offer to pay for their divorce and wedding as package deal. We could be profitable charging $1,800 if this service costs $6,000. Here some quick math: 70% of first marriages will end in divorce so we wont have to pay anything. The other 30% will average 8 years before we have to pay. If we invest the float at 10% we can double our money by the time they divorce. Total cost: $900/marriage Best part is, when they come to us to cash in we sell each of them a new wedding/divorce package.

seeingfurther 14y ago

This is ridiculously hard problem to solve and the likelihood of Wevorce succeeding is very low (as in all startups). But man... it's refreshing whenever I see SV funding large hard to solve problems. It's not all me too ideas, bloated valuations, social network XYZ with zero business models as the press might make it seem much of the time.

evolve2k 14y ago
Acctually i saw the opposite, a startup drives traction from addressing a pain point and there is a big easy target here, make the process suck less. I would say just by cutting out two opposing lawyers this will instantly be more successful based on just the collaborative start alone.
- tapatio 14y ago
  Wait until Wevorce gets sued by an unhappy husband or wife.
  - evolve2k 14y ago
    Possibly, and also another reason to bet on these guys as they are founded by a lawyer.

anonymoushn 14y ago

Hopefully this can help people who don't want to deal with "jagin" to ensure that their divorces don't "wind up like their parents one did." Don't worry, "All of our clients our Wevorce clients."

gbelote 14y ago

Divorce is one of the most stressful events that can happen in your life, as a kid or as a spouse. It's great to see companies like Wevorce work towards solving real and important problems.

mgarfias 14y ago
Yep. One thing worse: divorce coupled with abuse (physically + sexual), and the authorities refusing to do anything about it.

mnicole 14y ago

This is petty compared to the purpose of the startup, but the typography/use of ligatures on the site is fantastic.

curiousdannii 14y ago
I thought the opposite -- the ligatures seem like they're supposed to make the company look fancy, but when combined with the photos of the founders I just felt creeped out.
- strevat 14y ago
  I actually helped out with this design, would love some further note as to what felt "creepy" about it. Thanks for the feedback!
  - curiousdannii 14y ago
    The ligatures aren't especially creepy, but they're still bad. It is very odd to use the blatant st and ck ligatures and not use f or t ligatures. And maybe it's the fact that you're using slab serifs? I haven't considered this before, but maybe slab serifs and ligatures just don't mix? Your ampersand is nice though! The still from the first video is incredibly off-putting. It's an awkward smile for any website, but for a divorce website, with the caption "They put me on the stand" it seems very inappropriate. I realised seeing the photo later on that it was one of the founders, but from the image and caption alone there'd be no way to know that (people should read the copy text, sure, but many of them will see the image first.) The Founders & Co image is better, but it does make me think that a sparkle will appear on their teeth any moment now...
- bambax 14y ago
  I also immediately noticed the ligatures and found them disturbing too. I'm not sure I can explain why but I'll try. It may be because the first and most prominent ligature is in the title... and the word "suck" - ligatures are unusual, even in print, let alone on the web => they're distracting (I found myself chasing them on the page to see if they were also in the article -- turns out they're only used in some subtitles, but the rule isn't clear to me) - ligatures are kind of "classy" (?), and the phrase "suck less" is very colloquial => the contrast is unpleasant (like seeing someone in a tuxedo, covered in mud) Finally, the home page of wefunder is completely different, with basic sans used for copy (font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;) and 'ChunkFiveRoman' for titles (?) In short, the typography seems to be a little all over the place (but that's just my opinion).

avolcano 14y ago

"Wevorce is already having success. While living in Idaho, Michelle ran a beta test. She put 104 families through the system and only one went to court." This was the part that was most surprising to me. That's an incredibly good success rate (albiet with a small test) for something that's trying to mediate such a polarized situation. All it takes is either party not being satisfied with what they got to push it to court, so it must be extremely good at helping both sides feel comfortable with the outcome.

tadfisher 14y ago
Another point: Wevorce not only has to convince both parties that an amicable divorce is best, but they have to overcome possible influence from friends/family/lovers as well. This is quite an accomplishment.
Pinatubo 14y ago
Careful: there's also a self-selection effect here. Only those couples who have a fairly good chance at a somewhat amicable separation would even try a service like this. Wevorce would probably have a much lower success rate with 104 randomly selected families going through divorce.
- veidr 14y ago
  True, but that is still 'success'; a service like this would seem to be aimed only at relatively amicable divorces. Nobody thinking "I'm gonna take the conniving, lying, cheating-ass bitch/bastard for everything she/he is worth!" would be trying to use this.
- Jplenbrook 14y ago
  For a scientific study you are absolutely correct, however, this is a business and in business you only deal with the self-selecting group that would use your service. The better question would be what percentage of the market would actually use this service, especially knowing that it has and over 99% success rate. In my experience women often want a fast divorce and men want a cheap one so if she can provide that she has a winning business proposition.

dylangs1030 14y ago

Disclaimer: I'm not in a position to use this startup, but my parents divorced when I was young. I'm going to be that guy. I really don't like this startup, or at least how it's presented. I have never seen a startup's front page focus so exhaustively on a founder's background. After reading about her story I'm not motivated to look elsewhere. Her story garners a lot of sympathy, but how does the company work? That's all I care about when I go to a website's page. And it's not immediately presented. What I'm hit with first is the name, tagline, graphic and founder's story. I get that she went through divorce. The part about the judge is particularly riveting. But I, personally, don't feel it is as professional as it could be. It doesn't need to be cold, but this is trying very hard to be relatable. I'm not trying to be cruel, I'm just being honest. I hope I don't offend the founders.

davidbalbert 14y ago
It looks like OP it's just a founder profile. The company's home page[1] is much closer to what you would expect. I was initially thrown off too, though. [1]http://wevorce.com/ http://wevorce.com/
- dylangs1030 14y ago
  Yes, that makes much more sense. Thanks for the link.
- Jplenbrook 14y ago
  I still think the homepage leaves out a lot of the value. The explainer video only sets the problem, not the solution. Problem: Divorce is messy and it's the second most stressful event you and your Children will ever go through. The average divorce takes a year with many dragging on for many years,and inculde _________ trips to court with an average cost of $27,000. Solution: Our initial trial of 104 families Wevorced in an average of 89 days with 1 trip to court (That's not per family that out all 104 families) and our service costs a fraction of what is normally paid in court fees. We are able to this using our 6 step process _______ instead of the traditional adversarial __________.
gbelote 14y ago

thisischris 14y ago

Majority of that page tells me who the founders are, their business plan, and their investors, but not a whole lot about what they're going to do to help me.

andrewcooke 14y ago

i'm a tad confused. is wefunder related to wevorce? if not, it might be worth saying so, because the names are so similar.

te 14y ago

Would like to read about your company, but something on this site is causing my browser to jack my CPU, and I'm unable to continue. FF18.0.2 on Ubuntu.

gus_massa 14y ago
Also unusable in IE9 because it crash.

tapatio 14y ago

Here's some advice to the founders: as a man I wouldn't use a site where it shows a graphic of a father being torn away from his wife AND child.

andrewcooke 14y ago
unless they've changed it already, it doesn't. http://wevorce.com/ http://wevorce.com/
- tapatio 14y ago
  I though the original link was to the homepage of wevorce but it wasn't (https://wefunder.com/wevorce https://wefunder.com/wevorce).

josephscott 14y ago

"so she could help make sure other children didn’t have to go through a similar traumatic experience." If her goal is to help other children avoid going through this wouldn't the better problem to tackle be how to lower the number of divorces? Any divorce, no matter how "smooth" the process is is going to be painful for the kids.

mgarfias 14y ago
My boy is now having nightmares going on a year later. And the ex and I came to an agreement, handled things ourselves and had no lawyers involved. Not to say it was easy, and there weren't fights, but as far as divorces go it wasn't messy. My son appears to be scared that hes going to be taken from me, or his mom. Not exactly sure, as talking to a 3.5yro just woken from a nightmare isn't exactly easy or informative and I'm having to read between the lines a bunch. I need to find the little guy some counseling or something so we can address his fears and help him work through them.

eksith 14y ago

Really? This is what it's come down to? Parenting and separation via day-planner. No wonder so many of my friends aren't getting married. A common law marriage is likely to last a lot longer these days since, well, it's not common law unless you've been together for a while. Sometimes years. This is also another reason why parents who ignore their children's feelings when getting a divorce are a bunch of inconsiderate bastards. You can argue all you want about how things are just not working out, but unless one of you is abusive or reckless, there are no irreconcilable differences. You just suck at getting along with each other and you should have thought about that more before having kids. Got to therapy, go to counselling, try anything to hold it off until your kids are at least older teenagers. Wanna know what's really destroying the sanctity of marriage? Abuse, Adultery and Divorce.

DanBC 14y ago
> A common law marriage is likely to last a lot longer these days since, well, it's not common law unless you've been together for a while. Sometimes years. Just pointing out that in the UK there's no such thing as "common law marriage" even though lots of people think it is a thing. People who are not married (or civil partnered) don't have as many automatic rights when their partner dies.
- eksith 14y ago
  Ah, I didn't know that. I guess there are bound to be legal complications from no official recognition for being partners so that makes a will of some sort all the more important. Especially when children are involved.
danilocampos 14y ago
I'm not sure that this is the best venue for pearl clutching or preaching. What's known is that a substantial number of marriages do end in divorce. These divorces are extremely painful and expensive. The reasons for divorce might be as varied as the number of people getting them, but the procedures involved are rarely unique. So all of that is an obvious recipe for disrupting an existing industry and printing money in the process. Good on them.

anateus 14y ago

Mods, wefunder, whomever: the similarity of your names is making people think this is the home page of Wevorce rather than an article about the founder and company. Either make it clear at the top of the article page, or in the title here.

gbelote 14y ago
Thanks for the feedback, anateus (and everyone else). I made a few quick tweaks to the page that hopefully makes it feel less like their homepage. Let me know what you think. We want to be careful about making our branding too strong, because this post is about Wevorce, not Wefunder. In the future we'll put more design cycles into separating the Startup of the Week brand from our own, while keeping the featured startup front-and-center.

liber8 14y ago

I enjoyed how her profile danced around Wevorce's raison d'etre, without actually coming out and saying it: acrimonious divorces are fueled (or created entirely) by lawyers. As a lawyer with many colleagues practicing family law, I don't think this is terribly fair. Divorces are acrimonious because the overwhelming majority of divorcees have fundamental issues with their spouse that they can't even verbalize, let alone work out. The underlying feelings that trigger the explosive fights about nothing (think toilet seats or dishes in the sink) are only magnified when blame for failure of the marriage and the dividing of assets/children comes into play. In other words: divorce is acrimonious because people going through divorce literally go crazy. I would bet Wevorce is successful because it integrates counseling/communication into the divorce process, something that is basically prohibited when both sides are represented by counsel. That alone sounds like a substantial improvement.

id3331k 14y ago
liber8: you are correct about Wevorce's raison d'etre. If you look more at their website (www.wevorce.com), you will see that the model does clearly integrate counseling/communication/financial aspects into the process. In fact, those features are the basis of the model. This is precisely the reason it has been successful in its beta phase. I should know, I went through the process. The model provides a space for spouses to verbalize their issues in a neutral space, without attorneys getting in the way with sometimes overly zealous advocacy. As an attorney myself for the past 10 years, I have grown weary of the restricted legal system and its outdated modes of advocacy that silently espouse that the only way to deal with conflict is by battling in the courts. Slowly, but surely, mediation, I believe, will gain more traction into the mainstream of the legal system; however, the main hurdles of that happening are the lawyers enjoying success in "battling" for their clients' dollars, rather than seeing the forest for the trees. Here's to the possibility of the legal community embracing, or at least willing to accept, an alternative way to handle divorce without fearing the inevitable change to the legal culture it brings. "If may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad." C.S. Lewis
14y ago

dgunn 14y ago

There are going to be some really good mock testimonials created for this service. They'll probably look like an eHarmony commercial but they'll say really funny things about how great their divorce was and how everyone should try Wevorce for their next divorce.

metaphorm 14y ago

it makes me sad that there's a business model for monetizing divorce. for the sake of humanity, I hope this company fails.

saraid216 14y ago
You realize that it's actually an industry, right? https://www.google.com/search?q=divorce+lawyer https://www.google.com/search?q=divorce+lawyer
rdl 14y ago
I hope doctors go out of business, too (due to everyone being healthy, and/or being able to download into new fresh bodies whenever, from a 24h old backup). That doesn't mean I want to stick to medieval bleedings and such in the interim.

dinkumthinkum 14y ago

Wow, I was thinking two nights ago about how interesting/funny it would be if someone pitched a startup to "disrupt" divorce to PG. I hadn't thought at all what the thing would actually do, just the idea. It sounds like one of those sitcom ideas to me but I'll look it over. Weird coincidence, though.

nostromo 14y ago

Hey HN: (while we're discussing family law) someone please make a startup that improves adoptions and/or surrogacy. The fees are intense. $20k, 50k, 100k gets dropped left and right in this space. (Never underestimate the human drive to reproduce!) Most of that goes to agencies (who do good work, but incredibly inefficiently) and to foreign governments (if international). All to adopt kids that need a good home. Navigating these waters is intense and difficult. There are so many hucksters, scams, multiple government bureaucracies, lawyers, clinics, and way too many options to make sense of things. It's a nightmare. This is my pain point right now; I'll be your first customer! Regardless, congrats to Wevorce for taking on family law.

callmeed 14y ago
Its funny you say that, my wife and I recently went to a local adoption seminar and the entire time all I could think of was "Wow, this process seems incredibly broken and in need of some technology-based efficiencies" ... I think it would take a startup comprised of an existing agency + attorney(s) + hackers but I totally agree with you. Sprinkling some crowd-funding could also be possible here.
- dugmartin 14y ago
  These folks are doing crowd funding for adoptions. I heard about it on the Techzing podcast: http://adopttogether.org/ http://adopttogether.org/
mrkurt 14y ago
I heartily recommend becoming a foster parent through your state children/family services agency. It's an oft overlooked route to adoption and, despite a million frustrations of its own, has worked much better for us than private adoption seems to/would have.
- ajju 14y ago
  I have no experience, so please excuse this if it's insensitive, but isn't the difference between adopting and being a foster parent the fact that as a foster parent you are only a temporary guardian for the child? i.e. they usually have parents they would go back to eventually?

maurits 14y ago

I can't help feel that a lot of the problems mentioned could be substantially mitigated if one had a decent prenuptial agreement. Other than that, I think this idea will work.

zapnap 14y ago

great, but... no one is discussing the moving clouds in the crayon drawn header graphic.

throw_away_acc 14y ago

I don't know, the idea sounds nice, but I doubt that this a venture case and will scale and fits into PG's 'Startup = Growth' strategy since it's just a service which requires tons of manpower (except it pivots into a marketplace/leadgensite for lawyers offering a defined divorce package but we had similar models 10yrs ago and they just do not work). The landing page could be stolen from one of ClickBank's merchants (you know those shady ultra long landing pages which want to sell useless stuff). I understand that YC startups are proud to be part of YC and thus, put the YC label on their site and everywhere else but often (and in particular here) it's the only USP such startups have.

ISL 14y ago

As someone whose parents divorced amicably, I must opine that this is a great idea. The difference between my experience and those of others whose parents fought bitterly is considerable. Done right, this idea can be a force for good.

mhartl 14y ago

This is a cool idea. I'd like to see something like Wevorce on the other side, i.e., a startup that gives couples more flexibility in creating a marriage contract that meets their needs. Does anyone know if that already exists?

bira 14y ago

I would invest in these people in a heartbeat. YC is lucky to have you onboard.

bambax 14y ago

I don't understand how this is a "startup" in YC/PG's sense of "growth machine". From the article, the purpose of wevorce is to offer a new approach to divorce, where just one lawyer works for the whole family (partners + kids), instead of the usual arrangement where each partner fights the other to death. This certainly sounds like a good idea, but isn't it just a kind of counseling business (the Accenture of divorce)? Even if they can speed up the paperwork a little, at least one lawyer will still be needed for every "customer" (couple divorcing), so how does this scale in a startup sense?

bambax 14y ago
Replying to my own question like on Stackoverflow, it could be that what wevorce does (from a business perspective) is create a new market (a cheap divorce where there is only 1 lawyer instead of 2, and less paperwork), and providing this market with a software solution that it builds and maintains. Wevorce doesn't employ lawyers directly, it just acts as a marketplace between them and people wanting to get divorced without killing one another, and it takes a cut in the form of software licence. So from this point of view there's no reason it couldn't scale indefinitely.

HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago

At least in Minnesota, there is a trend towards attorneys who practice Collaborative Divorce and I'm told it's spreading across the country rapidly. How does Wevorce fit in with this?

j-reynolds 14y ago
Great question. I'm Jeff, with Wevorce. Collaborative Divorce actually started to catch on in the '80s and does some great work. The trouble is that it is more expensive and unstructured. Just coordinating schedules of the various professionals can several hours in fees. That's one of the problems our system fixes. These sorts of issues meant it spread rapidly at first, but has struggle gaining new converts lately. Actually, most of our mediators (we call them Divorce Architects) come from a Collaborative Law background.

mikesickler 14y ago

Just got divorced for the 2nd time last week (what can I say? It's a gift), and what I'd really like to see is a web app that does the following: Give parents and extended family tools to better manage their split parenting work, from parenting schedules, to birthday wish lists, to the child’s clothing sizes, favorite foods, etc. - Enable the family on one side to be engaged with the life of the child when the child is with the other parent. - Help the child avoid feeling as if they have “two separate lives”. - Function as an intermediary between both sides, with focus solely on the child, thus allowing them to cooperate with each other without danger of confrontation. Seeing Nana on Dad’s side communicating and cooperating with Mommy benefits the child greatly. - Ideally, this technology-assisted “virtual” cooperation in time will serve as a bridge to real-life cooperation and engagement, healing, forgiveness, and understanding. Features - Each parent and child can post their work/holiday/event/school/sports schedule - Track parenting time - Keep a diary of the child’s activities (food, health, etc) to share with the other parent - Track shopping lists and assign who buys what (Christmas, bday, etc) - Track contact info (school, coaches, etc), clothing sizes, etc. - Share important documents (report cards, etc) - Share videos, pictures, audio messages, text messages with parents and extended family - Q&A and community support for parents - Allow for indirect phone calls between parties who don’t want to share their phone numbers, or chat video the web site. - Allow for translations to be added to videos and messages.

j-reynolds 14y ago
Great feedback, mikesickler. I'm one of the founders and I can tell you that your requests are in the planning stages. Our vision is help families build sustainable lives over the long-term (I'm 38 and I still get uncomfortable when my divorced parents are in the same room). The tool you describe will be part of it. I'll share your comment with the rest of the team so we can add some of these to our features list. Thanks!