

Ask HN: What startups have you bought things from? - jawns

We see a lot of startups promoted here on Hacker News ... but which ones -- if any -- have you actually purchased things from?
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chbrown
WakeMate here, too. Trying to sell it off, though. Kind of disappointed,
really:

a) I had to send if off to the refurb. center after about two months of use
(and pay my own shipping).

b) I haven't seen much progress in the app except stability increases. With
all that raw data, I can imagine tons of fun features, particularly social
applications.

c) Their website's claim, "You pick the factors and Wakelytics shows how they
affect your sleep," translates to "You tag your nights and we let you sort by
those tags." This is typical of the lackluster analysis-web app that your
sleep data gets uploaded to.

d) The app self-admittedly cannot analyze sleep periods of less than 3-4
hours, and in reality considers anything less than 5-6 hours too short to
recognize or record. (There is no mention of this shortcoming/limitation
anywhere on their website.) This makes it pretty much useless for polyphasic
sleep. Or naps of any kind.

No big deal, though. $60 is not that much money. It's a nice effort, and a
good idea, but just not a very satisfying execution.

~~~
EricR23
Just noticed your post below mine! Gah. Sad to see other people are sharing my
feelings on it!

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rdl
Instapaper, HelloFax, AppSumo, Humble Bundle, AirBnB, lots of iphone/ipad
apps, Mailfinch (USPS mails pdfs), earth class mail (receives mail and scans
it), google voice, pandora, hulu, netflix, 23andme.

As for hardware, super super happy with the Withings scale and the Fitbit;
fairly happy with the Zeo, not very happy with the WakeMate. Kind of looking
forward to getting a lockitron.

Omnifocus (desktop, iphone, ipad) and other Omni packages are probably my most
favorite commercial software, though.

Probably will sign up with tarsnap, but I want to set up my own dduped rsync
backup too.

~~~
jaz
Is earth class mail worth the price? I thought about signing up about a year
ago, but some bad reviews made me hesitant.

~~~
silencio
I haven't had any bad experiences with Earth Class Mail, although they are a
bit pricey especially for their street addresses. I travel out of town quite a
bit and UPS/FedEx delivery people are beyond unreliable to my home and the two
other addresses I use, so I have most mail and about half my packages shipped
to my ECM address.

The mail scanning is a huge bonus when I'm away for a long period of time, and
packages can be stored for weeks (or even indefinitely, if you want to pay for
storage fees) to be picked up at my leisure. Doing things on my own schedule
wherever I want and not worrying about the UPS guy leaving a package on _the
front lawn while it's raining_ is a great thing.

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benologist
I bought some stuff from AppSumo in a package once though I didn't end up
using any of it for very long.

MongoHQ I came across here when they announced their integration with Heroku,
we never used Heroku but we did go on to become a fan and paying customer of
MongoHQ's for the last year or so.

AppHarbor I have a free account on, I _really_ like what they're doing but I'm
not sure if I'm ready to give up control of my servers yet!

ChatterAnalytics from the other day I'm just waiting for them to do something
so I can pay to use it, cause that scratches an itch that I have that I hacked
around half-arsedly the day before their post here.

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GavinB
Dropbox is the one startup that's earned the right to charge my credit card
every month.

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zbruhnke
I've bought stuff from Appsumo, have a paid account on twilio, paid account on
Dropbox, heroku, use wepay, optimizely,and hipmunk.

those are the ones that i can come up with off the top of my headm
additionally out of all those I cannot think of one of them i have a complaint
about

~~~
kn0thing
Hurray! I must know: did you book a hotel or flight on hipmunk?

~~~
zbruhnke
I've booked several flights on hipmunk since launch (probably 7 or 8 total) in
the last few months, I typically travel to places I have homes or friends so
no hotels as of yet

did not even know you guys offered it (hotels) honestly, I was in Dallas about
a month ago and found myself googling hotels in the area and checking on
where? on my iphone before calling (the old school way haha) ... i'll make it
a point to check it out next time

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code_duck
I've bought 40-50 Android and iOS apps, mostly made by individuals and
microcompanies - I think some people might consider them startups, others
would not. Does a company have to have grand plans to be called a startup?

I've done business with startups like Etsy from when they were in the startup
stage, to the established business stage (Etsy still considers themselves a
startup though, however I think a company has passed that stage 6 years and
150 employees in).

I've hosted sites on Heroku, bought 'pro' on Forrst, and booked a flight
through hipmunk. It seems there are probably some other companies in there,
less well known, but it's not coming to mind.

~~~
kn0thing
Score! Thanks for searching with hipmunk.

~~~
code_duck
Thank YOU, it's such an excellent interface!

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JimmyL
I love followup.cc, and gladly send them money each month.

~~~
aaronwhite
I hardly send an email w/o it at this point

~~~
ckeller
Seriously, it's my savior ;-) Well worth the money.

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EricR23
Purchased a WakeMate. Very disappointed... My unit came pretty much
dysfunctional-- it won't stay turned on-- and they have yet to resolve my
issue. Many e-mails simply go ignored.

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staunch
Olark.

Anyone who doesn't use Olark on their site is at a huge disadvantage.

Happy to pay em.

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daimyoyo
I have used HelloFax several times and it's awesome. I save a lot of money
with it because I don't have to go to fedex and pay them $0.25/page just to
send faxes.

~~~
tdfx
I'm on their $4.99/month plan. I hardly ever send any faxes so I never go over
my quota, but it's nice to have my own number to be able to receive them. On
the rare occasions I need to send a fax, their editing/signing tools are a
true pleasure to use.

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dcpdx
I'm a regular user of HelloFax; it's a lot easier than going to OfficeMax to
fire off a couple-page document every now and then for my day job.

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jonmarkgo
AppSumo, Humble Bundle, Pandora, Netflix, Arduino, Github, Kickstarter, WePay,
Twilio, UserVoice, MailChimp, and likely more...

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citricsquid
WakeMate, despite its flaws (which are few and far between) it's a fantastic
thing to have, I love it a lot.

Also Appsumo.

~~~
riskish
does wake mate really work?

~~~
citricsquid
Yes. It's flawed for me in that you can only use it as an alarm, not just to
track your sleep patterns, but if you want an awesome alarm then yes it's
fantastic. When I use it as long as I set a reasonable length alarm (say 8
hours) when it wakes me up I feel great.

I would recommend it.

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eswat
I have a paid accounts with Dropbox, Instapaper and Simplenote and donated
some money to Forrst. I’ve bought stuff from AppSumo and have bought a
Wakemate. I’ve also bought several OSX and iOS apps from companies I could
arguably call startups. There’s also the various Kickstarter stuff I donated
to and indie games I’ve purchased.

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herval
Github, appsumo, dropbox, lasfm (not a "stsrtup" anymore, I guess), hipchat,
rovio, zynga and a few ios devs (goodreader, instapaper, quickoffice,
mypad)...

I'm pretty sure there are others, but these are the ones I can remember from
the top of my head. And all of them RULE!

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Ntagg
Adgrok, monthly subscription, and they've been great (my only affiliation is
as a customer).

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krispykrackers
I booked a flight to Memphis through hipmunk.com, it went amazingly smooth and
my flight was fantastic. What a forthcoming success to such a previously
defunct process! <3 himpunk!

~~~
lauraannmorris
yeah I agree. hipmunk is awesome. i also use etsy. and here in EU, couldnt
live w/o spotify so paid for premium.

~~~
kn0thing
So much love in this thread. Thanks, hipmunks!

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kodeshpa
TuneIn radio for sure,I can listen to tons of radio stations, podcast, espn
games for free on all platform and in just .99 cent i get pro version with
which i can record stations.

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pktm
Does kickstarter count?

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rokhayakebe
getclicky

