

Ask HN: Review my Startup: GroupTabs - jsm386

GroupTabs offers location based group deals. As soon as enough people check-in, the deal unlocks, and everyone gets the deal.<p>www.GroupTabs.com<p>We launched last week. Our first two deals have already gone down, and our third deal is set for tomorrow night.<p>We combine the popularity of discounted group deals with location based services. Our goal is to incentivize the many people with smartphones who have never heard of foursquare/Gowalla/etc (at least until last week's Facebook Places announcement) to try out checking in. We are hooked up to Twitter/4sq API already. Gowalla is next. Facebook Places we will do as soon as they unlock Write access.<p>We went non-native via gtb.me to hit as many phones as possible on launch. Android/BBerry apps are almost ready for public beta. iPhone works based non-natively, ironically, so it comes last.<p>...And, to address what is probably the first question, our deals our small, so they are designed to 'tip' rather quickly. And we require that participating merchants have some special going on until our deal unlocks, so you are rewarded just for showing up, even in the event the deal doesn't tip.<p>Advice that we can offer from our launch: This has been said a lot of times, but it should be said again. Read http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-from-balsamiq-studios/ We read it adozen or so times. If you are launching a startup you need to read it. Pledi's advice is invaluable. We were covered by VentureBeat (http://bit.ly/a8s2Ad), Mashable (http://bit.ly/9alqKF) and ReadWriteWeb (http://bit.ly/9UmAjH) among others before we even launched.
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marknutter
Pretty neat idea, and I commend you guys for going up against Facebook,
Foursquare, Gowalla, and Twitter who are sure to provide the exact same
functionality at some point.

A few things I noticed right away:

1\. I can't tell what city you're servicing right away, I had to search for
the tiny address at the bottom of your homepage (NY I take it). You should
make it very obvious where you're targeting right now. Maybe put the address
in the hero section where you have the other event details, and perhaps
provide an embedded google map too.

2\. This is a minor design issue, but your main logo pushes your hero section
down almost 200px. I would tighten things up a bit, but that's just me.

3\. Design again: get a good designer to help you with your typography. If
you're DIYing your design, look into grid systems, your alignments are
headache inducing.

Where is your revenue coming from? Are the venues paying a fee for the
potential of foot traffic?

Also, what would stop me from creating a similar service which simply queried
Foursqure, Twitter, Facebook, Gowalla, etc. for location info and providing
deals based on how many people checked in? It would essentially just be a
deals site that functions on check-in services: you advertise a deal, you
negotiate with the venue, and all people need to do is show that they checked
in with one of those services.

Good work so far, though!

~~~
jsm386
1\. Thanks...we are getting people from all over the country (and world)
registering...so we should make that clearer.

2/3. Design is a work in progress and yes it is done by ourselves. We have a
new release of the index coming soon. Well aware of grid concept so will see
what we can do about that.

Revenue is from venues for verified check-ins (GPS).

As to a similar service, nothing stops you or anyone else. The notion of
culling check-ins goes against what we are selling the business on, which is
bring in new people, not people who are going already and checking in. _It
would essentially just be a deals site that functions on check-in services_
That really is what we are. We are platform agnostic...just started with
checking you into foursquare if you like automatically because it is most
popular in NYC. We

~~~
marknutter
Sounds great! Good luck, guys!

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alttab
May want to change the name. GroupTabs sounds like everyone is paying together
(are they?).

If we are just unlocking deals by having enough people show up - its certainly
a chicken or egg problem determining if the people go. What happens if not
enough people show up? They get screwed out of the deal that they went to a
specific place solely for. The appeal for business owners is to get people to
come, right? This means that the ones you are attracting are by virtue not
customers otherwise. This is tricky and may require pre-organization from the
users to make sure enough people show up to unlock the deal.

~~~
jsm386
Thanks for the feedback. The service is actually free to users, so know paying
together. For example, tomorrow night's deal: You get a free glass of wine,
sangria Or beer with every tapas you purchase at a restaurant, Sala, on the
Bowery in NYC.

Whether a deal tips or not is our biggest issue...which is why we are setting
low thresholds. To address it, one of the first changes we've made is posting
our deals earlier than we initially planned to...instead of that morning, we
are looking at anywhere from 1 to 3 days ahead. Also rolling out an update
homepage with a feed of upcoming deals to build up interest.

~~~
alttab
This is similar to groupon, with a twist. Also try looking into issues they've
had. I recall business owners complaining and pulling out of Groupon due to
network effect negative impacts on their businesses - along the lines of "now
they only come when I have coupons and I can't afford to do that"

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Clickables:

<http://www.GroupTabs.com>

[http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-
ad...](http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-from-
balsamiq-studios/)

<http://bit.ly/a8s2Ad>

<http://bit.ly/9alqKF>

<http://bit.ly/9UmAjH>

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ScottWhigham
Yeah, "GroupTabs" doesn't imply anything related to what you do IMO. I agree
that a name change is a priority.

Also, how is it different from Groupon?

~~~
jsm386
Thinking about the name...

As to Groupon, two big differences: 1) You are not paying for anything up
front. You simple get percent off/something free/etc if enough people show up.
2) Groupon deals 'tip' if enough people commit to buy. We 'tip' if enough
people show up.

~~~
ScottWhigham
Okay. I just read your response to someone asking for your revenue model. Can
you explain how check-in is going to work? I think your reply was incomplete.

~~~
jsm386
Check-ins are GPS verified. We are not doing a hardware solution like
Shopkick, but we also aren't allowing SMS checkins like foursquare. We've gone
for a middle ground. No GPS coordinates that fit in the lat/long we've set as
acceptable around the venue then no check-in.

Merchants are charged based on check-ins.

