
Pair (YC W12) is a Path for the Two of Us - mpetrov
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/23/pair-is-a-path-for-the-two-of-us/
======
kalvin
Oh my god, thumbkissing.

"A feature called 'thumbkissing' shows your partners thumbprints whenever
they’re touching the screen, and both phones will vibrate if your thumbs are
on the same place."

This is clearly the best YC startup ever. Hurry up on the Android app for
those of us in mixed relationships!

~~~
mpetrov
We're working furiously fast to have Android ready ASAP. It's only a few weeks
behind and is almost done. This is right now our #1 request, cross-platform
relationships are in these days!

~~~
steipete
Hm, you did realize that the comment sounded _very much_ as being sarcastic,
did you?

~~~
mpetrov
It was definitely not meant to be sarcastic :) we actually do have Android
very close to being done and soon Pair will be cross platform! Sorry for any
confusion :)

~~~
dvdhsu
The parent was referring to the great-grandparent.

------
apike
My marriage definitely benefits when I take tiny bits of time to tell my wife
I'm thinking about her. For example:

\- Text her a random emoji

\- Email her an image I've found (usually using our app Prism
<http://www.steamclocksw.com/prism/>)

\- Send her a Draw Something drawing

The point is to send a "unit of thinking about you" that's simple but unique
enough that it's not mechanical (like a "poke" would be). Pair seems like it
could bring this little habit to more relationships, or at least displace text
and email for those who do this.

~~~
papercruncher
How about a service that you could enter all these things in the morning and
it would send them throughout the day? Like a Buffer for "unit of thinking of
you".

I'm only half joking

~~~
okstr
Funny enough, someone requested an API to set up a script to message their
girlfriend. lol.

~~~
iron_ball
I'm actually doing that with the Instagram API to send her pictures of
puppies. This may be more common than you think!

------
fleitz
Call me old school but I'd rather find someone who lives in the same city than
try to maintain a relationship through an app. If you absolutely need to stay
in touch with someone every minute of everyday it's probably better to just
move.

The solution to working too much to be in touch with the partner you really
care about is not an app, it's telling your boss to shove the job up his ass.
That said, I doubt there will be any shortage of suckers who prefer to spend
time at the office than with their partner.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"Call me old school but I'd rather find someone who lives in the same
> city"_

When my wife and I first met and started dating online (in 1998, before it was
common) we worried that her grandparents wouldn't approve. It turns out,
grandma and grandpa thought it was a cute reminder of their own youth; they
had courted through letters. "Old school" indeed...

Sometimes, despite all your plans and desires, you fall in love with someone
who circumstances don't permit you to spend as much time with as you'd like.
Maybe you're finishing college, deployed to a combat zone, or tending to an
ailing/dying relative. Or maybe you're just busy because you're either caring
for your 4 kids, or making sure they have food on the plate.

Life is like that, and has been since long before you were born. Making it
easier to connect to your loved ones is a good thing.

~~~
wensing
_maybe you're just busy because you're either caring for your 4 kids_

Yep.

------
achille
Tl;dr: the sexting app. I met one of the cofounders at the Stripe CTF meetup.
They're a Waterloo U. Team, seemed like a sharp group. Pair was their pivot.
Initially they had a 3D mouse based on the iPhone accelerometers.

~~~
phamilton
Going from a 3D mouse to Pair seems like more than a pivot. It's more like a
back handspring or some larger acrobatic maneuver.

Someone should compile a list of initial ideas vs pivots. It would be
interesting to see how many groups had pivots this drastic.

~~~
okstr
Haha, what can we say, we're just that flexible. ;)

------
kmfrk
Add a security feature with optional passcode and store the images in a way
that hides them from prying eyes, and you're guaranteed a million billion
horny college students as users.

Ben the Bodyguard[1] meets SMS/MMS for relationships.

Maybe we'll see fewer celebrity photos leak after this[2].

[1]: <http://benthebodyguard.com>

[2]: This is a _good_ thing.

------
k3fernan
The biggest problem I find with long distance relationships, especially across
time zones, is the real time nature of it. It's blocking. Especially for two
busy people.

I would rather record a small video (rather than video chat), write an actual
email (rather than IM back and forth), draw a silly picture (than send smiley
faces back and forth). If you could change it from feeling like a status
report to a message in a bottle, it really does change the dynamics of a long
distance relationship.

Funny enough I recently stopped dating someone because of the distance factor.
Maybe Pair could have solved that "problem".

------
dshankar
I was skeptical when I read the TechCrunch article (I'm a skeptical, jaded
bastard).

But my cofounder Sri and I downloaded it and started playing together. Few
minutes in we were giggling like children and I now see the value in Pair.

It's perfect for those serious couples with useful features like task lists,
built-in Facetime, ability to show "where you are" etc.

Good job!

------
peterjs
Are they planning to introduce a pro version of the application? Some
multitenant upgrade? It could apply advanced machine learning techniques to
identify which of your girlfriends/spouses is using the phone and hide all the
other communication. Not that I would need it, but it could significantly
lower the divorce rates :)

~~~
stfu
Nice idea. Some form of "relationship manager", that keeps track for each
"client" of the different stories.

------
chime
My wife and I just tried it out and loved it. We were giggling like little
kids playing around with the app's features.

On a more serious note, the shared todo list is great! No doubt a lot of other
apps have this but with chat, photo sharing, Facetime, and thumbkisses, this
makes Pair an awesome app. I would've easily bought this for $2-4/user.

~~~
malandrew
Speaking of shared todo-lists, I'd love to see an app for roommates that
handle all the todos of a household and break them down by common tasks:

(1) Food in the pantry - what do we have and what's finished (2) Bill paying
(link into a service like WePay) (3) Major/large household purchases (4) Group
chat for the household (allow linking of chat to the todo-lists and vice
versa)

Bonus points if the app allows you to "connect" to neighbors you know well to
know what things you are willing to share with one another like tools.

I'm not sure how well an app would work outside dense urban areas, but in any
place where unrelated people live with one another and coordinate with one
another, such an app would be useful.

------
Tossrock
Sounds like exactly the same thing as the South Korean produced 'Between' app,
which is already cross platform. Not to say that they couldn't execute better,
but it's not a novel idea.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.co.vcnc.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.co.vcnc.android.couple)

<http://itunes.apple.com/app/id458035189?mt=8>

~~~
kmfrk
And regardless, I'm sure the creators will be interested to learn from related
experiments.

------
rdl
This is disgustingly cute, but that's the point. I could definitely imagine
people using this (it would eliminate a lot of one-word "hi" type SMSes...)

I wonder how they're going to handle migration between relationships.

------
tanish2khn
while I am busy doing another startup, here is I can offer from my personal
experience of using such platforms:

\- first up, you need to give users assurance that they own the data. Allow
them to export data anytime and that too in a beautiful way. I would hate to
loose such memoirs shared with my loved one, just because you failed to raise
another round of funding. (Data persistency can well be the primary reason,
why people still uses emails; It will always be there.)

\- how about a personlize gifts on their anniversaries from the service ? you
have good amount of data to personalize the gifts. seriously, surprize me
here!

\- I have been using tumblr for last year on same usecase. following stats
will help you: march - we get separated by distance. april - 111 posts, may -
74 posts, june - 39 posts, july - 36 posts, august - 11 posts, september - 33
posts, october - 60 posts, november - 23 posts, december - 1 post.

Post distribution: [70% pictures - 10% links - 15% text - 10% videos/music].

where pictures, are of one other, old memories, places we visit, things we
spot. where links, are interesting find of the day. where text, are short
letters, quotes. but no chatters.

\- Now, I would need an information overview of my content pretty much like
tumblr or more, with posting abilities of Path or more.

\- Tumblr isn't built for game dynamics here. She is posting 80% of content
and i 'heart' 50% of her content as a feedback to her. A game dynamics which
involves more participation from not-so active member of relationship? we are
NOT talking about games or chatters(messaging or whatsapp), but subtle or even
funny push notifications if she has posted and i have not yet viewed to begin
with.

\- an instapaper functionality, so that we can share things from anywhere on
Internet, by just sending an email to the account.

\- avoid becoming a messaging app, for love sake ;)

all the best!

------
kalleboo
A suggestion: Make a better (cuter) icon. I scrolled right past it in the app
store search results because it looked like a spam app. Now that it's
installed it looks like a server remote control control app or something.

~~~
jwpeddle
Agreed. I scrolled past it and actually thought "oh, must not be indexed yet"

------
jaredsohn
You can find a FAQ here:
[http://support.trypair.com/customer/portal/articles/443672-f...](http://support.trypair.com/customer/portal/articles/443672-faq)

One interesting aspect to this service is because it only allows you to
actively pair with one person at a time, it doesn't support people with
multiple partners (those in the beginning stages of dating, the polyamorous,
and cheaters).

If this app became popular enough, I could see a partner requiring the use of
this app to make infidelity more awkward, although it could still be worked
around by having multiple phones with an app on each one.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"it doesn't support people with multiple partners"_

Or with multiple loved ones who don't qualify as "partners".

Like, for example, a deployed soldier who wants to keep in touch with his wife
and his kid. Being able to "pair" with each one might be really nice.

------
d2ncal
<http://theicebreak.com> / [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/couples-better-
relationships/...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/couples-better-
relationships/id476063944?mt=8) is a similar app that we launched a few months
back.

------
malandrew
Next up: Path for Families

(I'm actually being serious here. I could see this working, but probably not
in the US where the concept of the nuclear family is much weaker. In Latin
America or some European markets this could work quite well. There's probably
an Asian equivalent to Path for extended families as well)

~~~
ajaymehta
Hold that thought for just a few more days. :)

------
peterdelahunty
It started with a thumbkiss i never though it would come to this :)

------
skbohra123
Ah, we applied to YC10 with same idea for <http://closest.in> :) That's how it
goes.

------
BlackShirt
The shared TODO list is great, a shared calendar would be good. An option to
sync with 3rd party online calendar is even better.

I never managed to get my wife to regularly check our shared Google calendar,
too much apps to check for her. A simple app which handles all the couple
tasks in one place is a great solution.

------
tersiag
This sounds like a great app. Reading the comments makes me wanna try it, but
I need an iphone + a man first...

------
ghuntley
The App has a few language choice issues.

<http://db.tt/l1PKD0hd>

Notably There != Their.

------
jasonshen
This is the cutest thing ever. Congrats guys - looking forward to seeing you
at alumni demo day.

------
read_wharf
Minor point: there is already pair.com. Maybe only people on HN would be at
all "confused" by this, everyone else being unaware of that category of
business, much less a specific one. But pair.com might take it a little more
seriously.

------
badclient
How do you deal with breakups?

------
asheeshbirla
I've been waiting for something like this. Can you allow users to select
photos, videos from the library during the on boarding process? Also, would be
great if it could automatically pull in my instagram photos. :)

------
tumultco
Small thing: on the <http://trypair.com/> site, I tried clicking the play
button several times expecting a video demo until it scrolled up beyond the
initial screenshot.

------
prawn
Pitched this rough idea to my wife the other week and she showed me some
relationship timeline (shared wall between two users) in Facebook so I
discarded the idea. Looks like I was onto something after all.

------
wangjiahua
How does it handle breakup? Does it keep the "path" with ex and make current
GF upset, or all those "pair moments" is gone with her.

------
csel
Can I use this with multiple partners? Lets say I have 4 relationships all at
once, can I have 4 separate accounts?

------
aen
Trying it with my wife. Liking it so far.

------
Tichy
"you’ll get an impressive range of options for how to stay in touch"

Except for actually staying in touch, unfortunately :-)

------
jordhy
Great idea. I suggest you build in audio messages to organize voicemails for
your loved one.

------
zack12
Can i have multiple login account support so that i can manage my multiple
relationships?

------
thechut
Can't wait to try this out... Bring it to Android!!

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phmagic
can I have multiple pairs? I guess that's not the point but would be nice to
keep track of the "in the works" ones.

------
EREFUNDO
One day someone will create an app with a neural interface via blue tooth
signal and you can make out with your girlfriend in a shared dream...lol

------
jeffreylo
What differentiates this from Duet (<https://vimeo.com/32088268>)?

------
ggwicz
So how does it generate profits?

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Vaismania
Congrats guys!

------
Void_
Okay so if I'm getting this right, it's basically iMessage but with "thinking
of you button."

So yeah, that's useful. I mean I'm sure girls consider pressing a button a
very romantic gesture. Must be also very enjoyable for the guys.

Somebody please make TechCrunch with articles about _innovative_ projects.

