[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Chums (YC W21) - Shop online with friends
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Launch HN: Chums (YC W21) - Shop online with friends
Hey HN, we're Noah and Dick. We founded Chums
(https://www.chums.co) to help you recommend products to your
friends and have more fun shopping online. A lot of people ask
their friends for advice when they're shopping. We think this can
be more fun and we think your friends can help you find the right
product, especially during COVID when we're stuck at home. Noah
launched the first version of Chums in late 2019. Originally, the
app was a platform for users to find and share referral codes.
Users could create a profile page and add their favorite brands to
it. Soon they started adding products and reviews to the brands on
their profile, and it became clear that the social shopping
opportunity had much more potential than sharing referral codes.
Noah started digging into the world of ecommerce, social shopping,
and affiliate marketing, and a mutual friend introduced him to me
(Dick) as a potential advisor. As the fourth employee at Honey,
I've spent an unreasonable amount of my life thinking about
ecommerce. Honey built a product beloved by users, but struggled
for a long time to convince investors and partners of the
business's potential. But perception of the browser extension and
affiliate business models has shifted a lot in recent years due to
the success of companies like Honey. 2020 saw a 50% rise in
ecommerce, and while we expect brick and mortar shopping to have a
resurgence as the world reopens, online shopping will probably
continue to grow. It's clear, though, that shopping online isn't
nearly as fun as shopping in person with your friends. In addition
to being a lonely experience. 90% of millennials make purchase
decisions based on recommendations from their friends, but there
aren't any good tools/platforms for those conversations right now.
Also, shopping online has risks. You can't trust reviews on Amazon
[1][2]. "Impartial" review sites are often bankrolled (either
directly or indirectly) by the brands they're reviewing [3]. Top 10
gear/gadget lists are impersonal and missing context [4]. We aim
to fix these problems. On Chums, you can review and save products
to your profile, start group chats, ask questions about purchases
you want to make, and recommend products to friends. Our focus is
on shopping with your friends and friends-of-friends, with the
hypothesis that input from your community will help you have more
fun getting the right product. When you buy something, we split our
affiliate commission (usually around 4%) with you. What makes Chums
unique is that you can't keep that cash--you have 24 hours to give
it to the friends who helped you decide what to buy. We hope that
this "pay it forward" mechanic will encourage more fun and genuine
recommendations. Looking forward, our plans include a social
mobile app, an upcoming browser extension, and live shopping
experiences. Shoot us an email at noah@chums.co or dick@chums.co if
you want to start a conversation. You can also join the HN group
chat on Chums by opening this link on your phone:
https://chums.link/rBQ6. Last thing: we're looking for a full time
design lead and front end engineer. If you or someone you know
might be a good fit, please let us know! We'd love to hear what
the HN community thinks! Noah and I will both be in the comments
all day. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25581727 [2]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25459434 [3]
https://www.vox.com/2017/9/23/13153814/casper-sleepopolis-la...
[4] https://onezero.medium.com/the-problem-with-relying-on-wirec...
Author : dickfickling
Score : 37 points
Date : 2021-03-17 17:04 UTC (5 hours ago)
| earlyriser wrote:
| First time seeing an app website where the call to action is not
| the stores' buttons. I wonder if reserving the name is performing
| better than a download link.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Damn, I had this idea as well, I had a Trello board with a load
| of ideas in around this. If the authors want some ideas happy to
| share with them...
| dickfickling wrote:
| Hey Andy, we'd love to chat. I just sent you an email.
| sk55 wrote:
| Sign up flow on the homepage is pretty awesome!
| benatkin wrote:
| This is the closest to "cheems" or the spanish variant "chems"
| (my name on wormate.io where i've risen to the top ten a few
| times on Android) I've seen for the name of a YC startup.
|
| May you go to the moon, and unlike poor Cheems, return home
| safely.
|
| https://youtu.be/YWOZtGMer48
|
| Kidding aside, I installed it and am impressed. One of the
| smoothest onboarding experiences I've ever seen! And it seems
| positioned better than most recommendation services to make
| money.
|
| I also wonder how you coded it. Any chance it's a flutter app?
| dickfickling wrote:
| Thanks for the kind words! Our mobile app is built with React
| Native, website with React, and backend with Node/GraphQL. This
| is the first time I've used GraphQL, and it's been a dream come
| true.
| erispoe wrote:
| Are you bringing the PinDuoDuo experience to the US?
| tz180k wrote:
| Was thinking the same thing!
| hyperation wrote:
| Cool. It would be nice to have a feature which can facilitate the
| logistics of wholesale bulk purchases (example, products from
| Costco).
| dickfickling wrote:
| We love the idea of group buying as we get a lot of product
| inspiration from Pinduoduo. We've spent a lot of timing
| thinking how to leverage the fun of group buying without the
| traditional discount incentive. It's hard to do! The solution
| we launched with is 'buckets' (and we made an HN group here:
| https://chums.link/rBQ6). Groups can discuss products to buy
| together and make decisions together.
|
| We're open to all thoughts and suggestions though, and would
| love to hear more about your idea and the value you think you
| could get from it.
| bruceb wrote:
| So looking at the screen shots on the site, i see 1.3k cred, 3.4k
| cred etc list next to profiles...
|
| But I have no idea what that means. What is cred in this context?
| dickfickling wrote:
| Cred (short for credibility) is a feature we're building like
| HN/Reddit karma. Users earn cred when a recommendation they
| make is followed through on or upvoted. We want users in Chums
| to have credibility when they make recommendations, because the
| problem we're trying to solve is to help people really find the
| right product and make decisions based on 'credible' and
| thoughtful advice.
|
| Hope this makes sense!
| ahstilde wrote:
| Interesting. I've definitely felt that the SEO-optimized review
| sites (Wirecutter and Strategist) tend to be lacking in their
| quality of suggestions.
|
| How do you monetize in a world where affiliate commissions,
| especially Amazon's are dropping? [1]
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/amazon-slashes-commission-
| ra...
| dickfickling wrote:
| I have a lot of love for Wirecutter, but I definitely agree
| with you. Their suggestions are often focused on too broad an
| audience to be relevant to me.
|
| Re: monetization, for the short term, we've got relationships
| built through my time at Honey that give us confidence we'll be
| able to get above-average affiliate commissions. The costs to
| run this business are low, and we expect per-user purchase
| volume to be significantly higher than your average affiliate-
| driven review site.
|
| That said, our end goal is to bypass affiliate altogether and
| become a marketplace like Amazon, only with more
| reliable/trustworthy content, and more fun. From there, the
| monetization possibilities are pretty much endless.
| smt88 wrote:
| I'm not lawyer and this isn't legal advice, but...
|
| you may not want to mention the benefits your startup is
| getting from your previous employment. The company may feel
| that the relationships were theirs, not yours.
| patricktomas wrote:
| Congrats on the launch, Dick and Noah!
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Your landing page is absolutely beautiful - simple to digest, no
| marketing fluff, and intuitive onboarding flow. However, the
| email to download the app entered my "promotions" category on
| Gmail (usually this happens for domains that were registered
| recently). Also the link in the email for "go to chums" was
| broken.
|
| Nevertheless, I found the app and signed in - as expected, really
| well designed and intuitive to use. It was nice to immediately
| see some recommendations for the hashtags I selected.
|
| A lot of my online purchases would fall under one or two hashtags
| (#climbing and #workfromhome). For climbing gear, my purchases
| are almost always based on recommendations from friends and great
| climbers online. If I was executing on this idea, I would seed
| one of these hashtags more thoroughly, and then go after that
| specific community - there are many climbing forums where people
| could really benefit from having something curated like this.
|
| I look forward to following your progress! Best of luck to you
| all.
| dickfickling wrote:
| Thank you! We're fixing the email link now.
|
| I appreciate the advice to seed a few hashtags more thoroughly.
| That's absolutely something we intend to start doing over the
| next few weeks.
|
| Again thank you for the kind words!
| evnc wrote:
| My biggest issue with Amazon has been unverified and
| untrustworthy 3rd party listings, sometimes not meeting minimum
| safety standards, which Amazon has taken a "lol not our problem"
| approach to -- e.g. baby food [0] and car seats [1]. (There was
| an HN thread about it [2].)
|
| What steps if any will Chums take to combat this?
|
| [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/20/amazon-is-shipping-
| expired-b...
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/20/tech/amazon-fake-kids-
| product...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17009675
| dickfickling wrote:
| The products that are discoverable through Chums are either
| directly recommended from friends, or are part of our product
| catalog. For products that can be found at various merchants,
| we give users a choice of where they can make that purchase.
| Users can write reviews of products that call out untrustworthy
| third-party sellers.
|
| Our ultimate goal is to build a sense of community and chase
| the "good feeling" that you get when a friend takes your
| recommendation. We hope that the social aspect of the app will
| keep people accountable and being able to see content from
| friends or friends-of-friends will make the reviews more
| trustworthy. 3rd party listings could be shared, but since
| there's no incentive for users to plug products, the reviews
| will be more genuine. The community can call out products that
| they don't like/trust.
| OoTheNigerian wrote:
| Great Job Noah and Dick!
|
| This is brilliant and looks well executed. It is definitely well
| positioned to replace the wish list, review list, registry etc.
|
| How do you avoid the distraction that comes with solving a
| problem that can pull you in too many directions? This can easily
| become a Pinterest, Affiliate shops, Price monitoring, coupon
| code sharing etc.
|
| What are your plans to stay focused while listening to your
| users?
|
| I signed up and sent you guys an email too!
|
| PS: You may want to make referral links vs text (we pay per text
| message in many countries). A link will let up put it on our
| WhatsApp status etc.
| noahchums wrote:
| Thank you so much. The way we've been solving the problem so
| far is listening to what users want and making changes they ask
| for (if those changes are in the direction we want it going). I
| think there is no easy way to do this - it's just talking to
| tons of users and having a clear internal vision of where we
| are going with it. We see a big opportunity and have a vision
| of what it looks like so we're just trying to optimize for that
| and balance feedback.
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(page generated 2021-03-17 23:01 UTC)