Here's an idea I had for a facebook app. Can you guys please put it through the Ycombinator gauntlet and give me any ideas, or feedback you might have (positive or negative)
The Idea:
A facebook app where you can enter all of your gift certificates/cards, the store, the value on the card, and the expiration date. You will then get notified when the card is about to expire so you can make sure to use it. I still need to think of a way to tie it into the social aspect of Facebook of course.
I got this idea after having three $50+ gift certificates expire on me! There must be a way to get these things organized.
I'm going to be the first to say... DO IT! If it solves a problem and it's a simple idea, and it lets millions of users access it, you got it. Of course not every person may hear about it or install it, but that goes for any app.
Remember, you can always improve the app later on... such as allowing users to trade coupons of equal value for other things! For example, I found a coupon on a carton of ice cream for a free ice cream at Friendly's... I was going to throw it away, until I read the odds and saw that users had a 1 in 20 chance of getting that coupon. That made me realize it must be valuable. Turns out that coupon is for a FREE $5.99 ice cream sundae. Do I really want to eat that much ice cream in one sitting?
Now, let's say you're in college, and have tons of roommates and friends, and you can easily swap gift cards around. Even with college students you don't know, just to make new friends. For a $6 movie ticket or something. So I don't have to eat that ice cream, BUT someone else can get the benefit of it.
I don't know. Let the users figure it out. Especially when you're 18 and 19 and shy, it makes it easy and fun (especially in nerdy majors) to do something like that to get conversation started.
Or let's say someone gets a $50 gift certificate to Abercrombie and Fitch, but they don't wear those clothes, or they wear Tall sizes, and that store doesn't carry anything. Should they throw it away? Why not trade it, like for a $50 used textbook.
Then, eventually you become cool within your college and also your professors give you good recommendations. It's also something that you can talk about 2 years from now when you're doing even cooler things.
Creating something is the best thing a person can contribute to society. The ONLY reason not to create something is if you have another immediate project where you can help even more people and more realistically, in which case you would create that other thing. Otherwise, creating wins. Just say to yourself that you will simply spend 2 days on it, and make it happen.
What if you generalize this one step further to allow bartering of any kind. I think bartering is by nature more fun than transactions involving money, and although the facebook marketplace probably allows barter ads the features are designed more for transactions with money. If you built a system around bartering and pushed the fun aspect, you may be able to work alongside the facebook marketplace.
Of course, now I have gotten completely away from the original idea, but I'm just putting the idea out there.
I think he should do the simple idea first, release it right away, then either expand that idea, create another app on facebook, or simply do NO FURTHER MODIFICATION at all. It doesn't HAVE to be this all-encompassing time-consuming project to be worthwhile.
Why debate what may happen 3rd or 4th generation when he needs to create something in the first place? He's excited about a simple idea, and that is what he should do. Why should he worry about what he may or may not (if he chooses to) do in addition to the original idea he's excited about? That's a bad trap to get into. Thinking that one needs to have everything planned out is why few people ever start or finish anything on their own initiative.
Does it solve a problem? Is it something you will use? Is it something you can be proud to show others (e.g., it's not porn)? Are you excited about it right now? Then, create it. If thousands of other people like it, great! If not, it will still save him $150 a year and give him something to talk about.
Not every idea has to be stretched out to the point it might take you 6 months to create (which translates to 1 year actual time.)
This makes sense to me. Just do a quick and focused implementation of my idea and see how it goes. I haven't worked with the Facebook API yet, but hopefully this idea wouldn't take more than a month to make.
In Massachusetts, gift cards / certificates are not allowed to expire or lose value unless they're dated. And if they do have a purchase date or expiration date, then 7 years is the deadline, regardless of what the expiration date actually says.
But, a coupon, especially a $20 coupon that saves you money on something YOU want, can be just as good as a gift certificate--and would still be allowed to expire in a few months, even in Massachusetts. So, this idea is still useful for Massachusetts.
Now this is something. And it can perhaps be generalized to giving away other property you can't enjoy yourself. I might ask some of my friends if they had use for some stuff I have lying around, but certainly not every friends' friend.
That's a great idea. So when you enter your cards, you can choose a time frame for giving away your cards e.g., let me friends claim this card if I haven't used it at least one week before expiration.
The other alternative would be just to create an app to anonymously email mom and tell her to stop getting you those Bed, Bath, & Beyond gift certificates for your birthday.
The Idea: A facebook app where you can enter all of your gift certificates/cards, the store, the value on the card, and the expiration date. You will then get notified when the card is about to expire so you can make sure to use it. I still need to think of a way to tie it into the social aspect of Facebook of course.
I got this idea after having three $50+ gift certificates expire on me! There must be a way to get these things organized.