Tried to keep it dead simple:

-> Import connections list csv from your contacts (e.g. from official LinkedIn exports)

-> Upload your target/prospect list (just need linkedin URLs)

-> System finds matches by profile URL

-> You click to enrich profile data of all the matches

-> System scores the strength of each paths (so you know which of your contacts to ask for the intro).

Enrichment is a waterfall composed of Apollo & Google CSE + agents - bring-your-own-key model.

Intro requests messages are automatically composed, and you can one-slick create a gmail draft.

View paths by target name, account (company) name, or by connection (sort by most or best paths).

Pre-loaded some illustrative (NOT REAL) sample data so when you start you can see what it looks like / how it works.

Why I built it: it was a customer request that I only realized later was a replacement for these products.

I'm the founder of (IMO) a more powerful (and complex) warm intro product (Draftboard) - over the weekend a user asked for this feature and I just built it to be responsive. Only realized what I had midway through.

I actually really dislike this approach of having to get people to export their connections list and send them to you, but I guess some people are used to it (in contrast, Draftboard maps all paths through all your - and your team's - contacts without them needing to export/import/download anything)

Anyways, would love feedback.

github.com/draftboardco/lean-intros

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48126255

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

Would love feedback - in open alpha:

www.draftboard.com

Nothing to see here, no conflicts of interest.

Let’s trust the people who kidnapped babies and raped and pillaged their way across southern israel.

A loan is a form of debt, which is one of the two main forms of capital - the other main one being equity. Debt is less expensive than equity, so companies prefer to issue to raise capital via debt than equity.

No.

VCs don’t make decisions on where a company keeps its cash; the founder/CEO does. And founders freaked the f-ck out. Let’s make sure to remember that founders had 100% agency in the decisions they made about their cash.

Here’s a selection of comments in the Whatsapp founders group Im in - all founders, no VCs:

Thursday 3/8 (36 hours before FDIC takeover):

“I'd consider moving to one of the too big to fail banks..”

“I agree the risk is higher then we thought before, I'm in SVB, with 4% - and looking to understand where to go now.”

“It's a numbers game - if a lot of people do what I do at the moment - it will fall.....”

“Does someone have a contact at Chase for B2B SaaS customers? I'm thinking it's wise to already have an account open there in case it will seem like we need to move off SVB.”

“Let's say we want to open a Chase account and move company funds?”

“for those that have their money in SVB and do not have another company bank account - what are the immediate options?”

“If there is a risk of a bank run, why not take the money out”

“Basically our whatsapp group creates bank runs now... power to the founders?”

“we just moved 85% of our money out”

“I just pulled ours”

It’s not surprising a VC would think she has more power than she actually has, but she also clearly has no idea about the wildfire that was spreading among founders themselves. Founders don’t give a sh-t about what their investors think (generally) - founders make the decisions they think are best because they have the most to lose (or win) from being wrong (or right). And they are much, much, much more likely to trust their fellow founders than their VCs.

Build an ML model trained on actual images of women’s breasts and bras that are verified to fit them well. Once the core model is built a separate, a smaller size on-device model is built to be the model users actually interact with. A user submits an image of breasts and is told right away which bras in which sizes would be the best for them. Photos containing faces would be blocked from being uploaded. No photos would leave the device unless a user opted in to do so in order to help improve the model.

Monetization is straightforward: affiliate fees for directing users to buy bras at retailers, plus sponsored placements in search results at some point.

Biggest concern is how to come up with the initial data set, but I’m fairly certain there’s a solution there.

Am I crazy or is this as obvious as it seems to me? ThirdLove sucks, as do calculators like this.

Generally I’m of the opinion that consumers are responsible for their own choices; but Apple has allowed bad actors to exploit the availability of weekly subscriptions and prey on suspecting users.

Tricking users into these high priced subscriptions is a tried and true strategy in the app store. The press caught on late (2018) but it was happening from the moment apple opened up subscriptions to all developers in June 2016. Started with crappy coloring book apps and then spread like wildfire from there. Bending Spoons is simply the evolution of that.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/15/sneaky-subscriptions-are-p...

What super users of editing products do you know that only stay 10 weeks?

None. What’s actually happening is Bending Spoons is exploiting the App Store’s ease of payment and dark patterns to trick unsuspecting users into enrolling in a super high priced subscription without their knowledge.

“let’s talk about Bending Spoons’ business model. The basic concept is very simple:

- Find a solid app that someone else built and buy it from them (see Splice (acquired from GoPro) and 30 Day Fitness)

- Optimize the monetization of said app (by implementing from scratch or fine-tuning existing subscriptions), thereby driving higher lifetime value (LTV)

- Take that higher LTV and use it to bid on expensive ad inventory (on Google, Facebook, Apple Search) where you can acquire more users (aka drive more downloads) - i.e. leverage performance marketing for growth

- Convert those new downloads to paying users

- Massively ramp revenues and cash flow by combining the new users + the better monetization

- Use the new cash flow - plus the debt from those lovely Italian banks - to fund the next acquisition

- Lather, rinse, repeat

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this business model. What differentiates Bending Spoons, though, is how they do it.

Remini - Bending Spoons’ new app that the press is gushing over - is $10 a WEEK. And Splice, the app that started it all? That’ll set you back a cool $5/week.

Does anyone really think it’s appropriate to pay $10 a week for a photo editing app?”

https://open.substack.com/pub/impassionedmoderate/p/ryan-rey...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31480582

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

1. Until June it was impossible for a developer to issue a refund to an angry customer - Apple simply did not allow developers to do that, despite the app store being around for 13 years. This has led to untold frustration among developers - angry customers email us, leave horrible reviews, leave screeds on social media about how we “won’t” refund them, when in actually Apple reserved that right only for Apple support agents. Literally - if you forgot to cancel your Calm or Headspace subscription, neither Calm nor Headspace could give you a refund. You had to call Apple. That’s insane and leads to horrible customer experiences. (I can send you actual emails we got blasting us for this, and us pleading with them to contact Apple because we literally can’t do anything to help them).

2. You may love the Apple subscription experience, but we shouldn’t be letting Apple decide what experiences we do and don’t have online (within reason). For instance: Apple doesn’t allow subscriptions priced at less than $0.99. Why not? What if I had a product that i wanted to sell for $0.50 a month? Why should Apple get to decide that that’s not high enough? There are many examples of things like this.

3. I think we should grapple with the ideas and arguments of the author, when in this case or others, and not focus on the pedigree of the publication they write for

The problem is that what you describe is the short term positive impact to Tinder. But that’s far outweighed by the long term negative of having your whole business dependent on the whims of Apple. For example, anytime Tinder wants to make an app update, Apple has to approve it. Well, if Tinder goes after Apple with regulators by filing complaints and pointing to antitrust violations, Apple now has the power to mess with Tinders business. Or if Tinder wanted to offer its users a 20% discount as an inducement to subscribe directly with Tinder rather than through Apple, Apple can and does prevent them from doing that right now by refusing to allow Tinder (or any developer) to reference in the app the fact that lower prices can be achieved by subscribing via web. The examples are countless, but essentially the more reliant Tinder is on Apple, the worse for Tinder and the better for Apple.