

How Whereoscope (YC S10) located a market for its family-finder app - waderoush
http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/09/20/do-you-know-where-your-child-or-husband-or-girlfriend-is-whereoscope-can-tell-you/

======
Mc_Big_G
_we think we can get 10 million families on it, no problem._

Seriously? No problem? I'd love to know the strategy that makes getting 10
million people to pay $10/month, "no problem". I try not to post negative
comments, but I just don't see how anyone can say that with a straight face.

~~~
voberoi
I agree, that's a pretty naive statement to make unless you can:

a) Make a believable case for there being 10 million people who would be
willing to pay for your product.

b) Make a believable plan for how you're going to reach those 10 million
people.

Who have you guys talked to other than one of the founders' girlfriends? Do
you have real data, qualitative and quantitative, that backs up the claim that
you've located a market for Whereoscope? Is anyone paying for the product yet?

Most of statements in the article seem rather speculative.

~~~
mickdj
You raise valid criticisms, and ones we considered for some time before
building the product as we did.

a) Multiple proxies for demand exist, from the existing carrier-based services
to portable GPS units to the use of cards swiped at the school gate in Japan
and China.

b) Agreed. And the people we share our go-to-market plan with agree.

I make it a point to speak on the phone to several families a week. We have
heard from hundreds of users directly via e-mail.

There is a long road from thousands to tens of millions - we don't pretend
otherwise, but we do have that road mapped out.

------
leftnode
Wow, misread that title at first, thought it said Whoreoscope, for finding
women of the night. Similar to SCVNGR, I keep thinking it's some sort of
Subversion too.

~~~
mahmud
Why was he downvotted? I too mis-read it as such, and this might be a valid
concern to bring up to the developers, imo.

I thought it was a play on words: Horoscope/Whereoscope, some sort of
horoscope website that guesses your sex life?

~~~
jacquesm
It's a common enough mix-up that someone actually registered the domain.

~~~
zach
That domain's been around a long time, no doubt because someone imagined the
Venn diagram of people interested in astrological predictions intersected with
people who don't always spell things properly.

Asking people to spell Whereoscope even in the App Store search may also be
posing a challenge.

I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but the nomenclature of YC companies is one of
the things that still makes them seem a little too easily dismissable.

P.S. Private to H------: PickFly.com is still available...

------
vineetk
With an admitted android bias, I'm having a hard time seeing why someone would
pay $5-10/mo for this, working only on IOS4, instead of using Google Latitude
for free, on any number of supported devices.

Latitude doesn't support the manual geofence alerts, but it does have its own
automated alerts, the pros and cons of which are up for debate. For many
people, though, not having to set up and curate alert settings may actually be
a welcome convenience.

~~~
mickdj
Hi,

Latitude (and other friend finders) are solving a different problem.

Our users (families, couples, etc.) tell us their main concerns are:

1) Privacy model: people don't want to broadcast location to everyone, or
(particularly for women) have their use of such a service be known. Having
adjustable privacy settings don't solve this problem.

2) Battery: As soon as you notice battery drain, users turn the service off.

We believe we've solved the first (with small, closed, private groups) and the
second (with sampling only when necessary).

Our Android version is under development right now.

------
JoeAltmaier
Extension: pets, vehicles, city bus, subway train

~~~
mickdj
Definitely :) I'm one of the developers and we actually have hockey teams,
couples, real estate agents, small legal teams and tour bus drivers using the
app as it is.

There are also quite a few people who just track their own iPhone in case it's
lost, stolen, or for curiosity about their own movements.

