

Introducing LunchTree - Lunch networking for the startup community - jspaulding
http://lunchtree.com

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Happy to test this in the SF community -- looking forward to meeting at least
one of you next LunchTree :)

Everything about the signup seems very fluid, up to the final sms
confirmation. If you could, keep us updated on stats for number of signups,
geo distribution, feedback after the first couple lunches, etc. Good luck!

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jspaulding
Great glad to have you on. Once there is some interesting or meaningful data
I'll be sure to make a blog post. Thanks

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simonk
Any chance of Canadian locations? You only allow zip codes to be put in for
future locations.

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jspaulding
Yeah.. sorry for the zip code only thing. I'm certainly interested in
expanding as much as possible. For now my focus is on establishing some
traction in one place and finding a business/marketing co-founder.

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jspaulding
I'm the founder. If anyone has feedback or questions let me know! thanks

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onteria
Two questions after looking over your service:

* How do you plan to make money off of this? From your FAQ you appear self funded, and it doesn't look like there are any sort of fees attached.

* Since you're just starting out, there's a good chance that someone could sign up and not have anyone to do lunch with because everyone else is too far away. How will you handle this to further expansion?

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jspaulding
Regarding making money - I'm not sure yet. There would be a few options -
including either charging members per lunch or charging restaurants. However,
I'm planning to wait and see how the service evolves before I start thinking
about that too much.

The problem of signing up for lunch and not having anyone to match with is
definitely something I'm trying to avoid. A couple ideas (not implemented yet)
- warn people that there are very few people signed up in their area. Allow
matches with 3 or 4 people (so there is not an odd man out type situation)

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daralthus
Have a look at startupflyer[1] which is a similar idea in hungary. They make
money by simply charging the members at the meetups. You choose 5 people based
on have/need infos. If someone is choosen he will get notified that he should
go.

[1] <http://startupflyer.com/en>

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jspaulding
Thanks for the link. I will indeed have a look over this site. cheers.

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mgkimsal
cool idea - similar to something i'd planned last year, but your execution
beats mine (meaning, you actually executed!) :)

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jspaulding
Thanks. Did you get anywhere at all with the project? I know of someone else
who is working on a similar idea. Not sure how far along they are.

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mgkimsal
not much further than some sketches and honing the process flow with a couple
friends. my target audience was going to be different - that's the main diff I
can see so far.

well done :)

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swombat
Why only SF? How about London? I'd sign up.

Also, why only 2 people? You could have lunch networking with 4 or even 6 or 8
people... Try it and see how it goes. Small businesses have done networking
lunches/breakfasts for a long time, and often there are about 20 people around
the table.

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jspaulding
The reason that its bay area only is that I want to make sure things are
working smoothly before I expand. I really want to avoid a situation where
people are signing up and then not getting matched for lunch or having a bad
experience. A secondary point is that I need a good source of free restaurant
data. A lot of the APIs out there are pretty restrictive and I'm not sure of
the best solution yet.

I definitely like the idea of lunch with 3 or 4 people. I'm not sure about 6
or 8 but open to the possibility. 2 is just for simplicities sake - as this
gets started.

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asnyder
Reminds me of OkCupid's blind date: <http://www.crazyblinddate.com/>, they're
redoing it but the concept was very similar, but for dates.

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rdamico
Overall, great concept!

Minor note: On the "Connect with friends & colleagues" screen, you might want
to explain why I should give your site access to my linkedin/facebook/twitter
accounts.

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mcgraw
Awesome! I was thinking of something like this last year but on a bit of a 'I
want to meet somebody right now' scale. I'd use this if I didn't end up moving
away form the bay area. Good luck!

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madmaze
Great Idea, may need a little bit of fine tuning

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jspaulding
Thank you! Which parts do you think need fine tuning?

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alain94040
Congratulations to Jesse for relaunching.

And thanks for helping build awareness for everyone in that space :-)

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jspaulding
thanks Alain

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jasonshen
This is really cool. Props. I live in the city but work in Burlingame,
otherwise would love to try it.

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jspaulding
Well theoretically it should work in Burlingame.. but realistically you'll
probably have to wait till more people hear about this.

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peregrine
Would like to see this for other communities, but what community matches SF in
number of startups?

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jonathanmarcus
Great idea! Congratulations on the launch.

