
Launch HN: Withfriends (YC W19) – Memberships for Small Businesses - kunalgupta
Hi HN!<p>We’re Joe, Martha, and Kunal; co-founders of Withfriends (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;withfriends.co" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;withfriends.co</a>).<p>Withfriends runs membership programs for small businesses. Bars, theaters, barbershops, can use Withfriends to convert their customers to become monthly-paying members. Members receive simple &amp; automated benefits, and small businesses earn additional revenue.<p>We’ve started by focusing on music venues and event organizers. All three of us come from a lifetime of organizing events, primarily in NYC. Joe and Kunal started a music venue and collective art space in Brooklyn, called The Silent Barn. Kunal started one of the first video game galleries, called Babycastles. Martha and Joe used to run a newsprint listing called Showpaper, which aggregated shows from hundreds of venues every week. We know that culture in cities is defined by the beloved small businesses around us, we know how cultural funding works and where it falls short. With our own businesses, we saw that by changing how we asked for support, we could radically change the volume of people funding our venues, and by automating member benefits, it was easy to facilitate them. After testing an early iteration of the product with a handful of organizers, we decided to bring these insights to a larger audience as Withfriends.<p>How does it work? We found that people are most willing to purchase a membership when asked in the checkout flow, with their credit card already out. Instead of asking business owners to promote memberships as an entirely new product, we integrate with the point of sale to sell memberships as an add on to any purchase.  This makes selling memberships as easy as selling tickets for any small business, so they can start today. Withfriends uses point-of-sale APIs to make this possible, and automates member benefits directly in the POS, like presale and discounts. Any business can write in custom member benefits in addition to Withfriends benefits, but we have data from over 100,000 purchases to date on the platform, so we start each business with a proven set of membership tiers and benefits specific to their business as soon as they sign up. We’re taking infrastructure that has been proven by large institutions like museums, and making it accessible to any small business organizer anywhere, whether they have a staff of 50 or only 1.<p>We already are working with over 85 small businesses around the country, and have 5500 members supporting them. We&#x27;ve generated an average of 40% additional revenue for our businesses.  We’re making $6k in MRR, and our membership revenue is growing 30% month over month.<p>Much of our initial traction last year was from our own networks, relying on an invite-only approach to new sign-ups, and we activated each and every membership program by hand. This taught us a lot, but since joining Y Combinator we’ve been focused on preparing for the public by automating the setup flow. Now anyone can become an organizer on Withfriends in minutes, and start growing their members with every upcoming event. This has allowed us to jump from 7 small business sign-ups per month before Y Combinator to over 70.<p>When we began, we took a 5% fee of the membership revenue, and charged ~$1 per ticket when an organizer uses our native ticketing. That pricing is the same as other ticketing or fundraising platforms, but none of them offer businesses the 40% revenue boost that Withfriends creates for our customers. Since then, we&#x27;ve built an integration with Eventbrite that allows organizers on Eventbrite to easily sell memberships too - in that case, we only earn membership fees. We believe memberships are our strength, so we&#x27;re testing new pricing that focuses on membership revenue entirely. By making memberships for small businesses easy and successful, we’re thrilled to help them grow and become more  sustainable.<p>It’s an honor to be able to share this idea with the Hacker News community and we’d love to hear what you all think. If you have any music venues or event organizers that you would like to be a member of right now, we have a referral program open which you can access at this link (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;withfriends.typeform.com&#x2F;to&#x2F;P80RQX" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;withfriends.typeform.com&#x2F;to&#x2F;P80RQX</a>) and we’ll buy you a membership and some tickets once they sign up!<p>Look forward to hearing from you all,<p>Joe, Martha, Kunal
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mariusz331
I always wait too long to get a haircut until my hair is overgrown and I'm
forced to.

I've been thinking about asking my barber if I can pay him $60 every two
months for 3 haircuts. It's a small discount but I'd do it mainly as a forcing
function to keep my hair in check.

This seems like a potential use case for your product that I'd happily
subscribe to.

~~~
the_watcher
I would love to subscribe to a monthly haircut at a fixed time (something like
first Monday of the month at 4pm), use it or lose it.

~~~
rubyfan
I’d signup for that

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orliesaurus
I have a friend who is trying to turn his small business for families into a
membership-first business. This looks like it could do the trick, I'm
forwarding the link to him: thanks for sharing!

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jahearn
Glad you see the fit, looking forward to helping them set up :)

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craze3
I would describe this as "Patreon for brick-and-mortar venues", and it is
badass! Good job guys.

I just recommended a SF venue to you guys via typeform. Cheers!

~~~
kunalgupta
thank you craze3. We are super excited too. I like that comparison because the
major thing we are all discovering together is that we really care about
creators (Patreon) or organizers (Withfriends) that we love, and all we needed
was to make it easier to get behind them. The member benefits make it feel
good, but I believe the desire to become a member comes out of something more
essential to who we are.

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frakkingcylons
What POSs do you integrate with? Mostly mobile POS or also Windows-based POS?

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kunalgupta
Mobile. I've heard tall tales of integrating with Windows-based POS's!

In contrast, thankful for the excellent Square API.

We have Eventbrite + Ticketfly live right now, Square upcoming, and have Toast
and Shopify high on our lists.

~~~
frakkingcylons
Yeah working with Windows POSs is no fun, way more fragmented than mPOS plus
they're all old and crusty. Unfortunately, figuring out a way to integrate
with them may be unavoidable since so many merchants have them.

You might want to get in touch with the folks at Fivestars
([https://www.fivestars.com/](https://www.fivestars.com/)), they have a lot of
experience integrating with Windows POS systems in particular.

~~~
kunalgupta
That is great advice. Thank you.

~~~
frakkingcylons
You're welcome, and congrats to y'all on the launch!

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kaushikt
A Coffee Shop i regular here in India were looking out for something like
this. Forwarding this to them !

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kunalgupta
hell yeah

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shanev
Congrats Joe! Wouldn't have thought I'd see you or the mention of Silent Barn
on HN!

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jahearn
Thanks! Trying to take everything we've learned to the next level :)

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nyrulez
Congrats Kunal and co! Really love the business model and value you're
offering and I am really excited for the word to spread and this model
becoming much more standard for physical venues around the country. I think
the market here is huge!

~~~
kunalgupta
Thanks so much nyrulez!

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sachin18590
Love the idea and the way you guys are going about it. All the best and
congratulations on the launch :)

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kunalgupta
thank you sachin18590!

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nessup
Love what you guys are building and the partnership-friendly messaging in this
post. Best of luck!

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kunalgupta
Thank you nessup.

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shafyy
Not important, but there's horizontal scrolling on your website on Firefox and
MacOS :-)

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kunalgupta
::quickly commits hotfix::

Gosh, you must be confused, shafyy. We have absolutely no horizontal scrolling
problems on Firefox and MacOS.

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dopeboy
So cool to see a CVC success story on here. Congrats Kunal and team!

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kunalgupta
thank you dopeboy!

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cm2012
What kind of marketing are you doing?

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kunalgupta
My dream marketing campaign would be to work with teenagers around the country
and encourage them to tag "Withfriends" everywhere, giving them free tickets
to a concert every time they send over a proof of tag.

But we would never do that!

Instead, we don't have a marketing program running right now, but we do have a
"Jeweling Program" here:
[https://withfriends.co/meet_the_team](https://withfriends.co/meet_the_team)

If you're well connected with businesses that people really love in your
community, we have a way to partner with you on bringing them on board
Withfriends.

We share a lot with you and earn your trust on just how cool the memberships
future is, and then in turn, you share this with iconic businesses that trust
you in your community, and effectively they end up sharing it with their
neighbors by using Withfriends, and we all help build resilence for small
businesses in a widespread way. You get commission for basically connecting
this idea with your community.

We haven't run this program much - but we plan to revive it. It's really
important because it helps us touch more kinds of people outside of our
organic signups. For example, it's how we first started working more in the
Bronx, instead of just Brooklyn.

You can reach out to be a jeweler at team@withfriends.co for now. Just let us
know your 3 top businesses and more about the commmunity that relies on them.

~~~
cm2012
Ah. In any case, you can probably acquire new SMB customers using Facebook ads
for a reasonable ROI. Something to think about as your business grows.

~~~
kunalgupta
For sure.

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TACIXAT
What are some example of benefits?

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kunalgupta
We run as many benefits as we can take on for members of small businesses, so
that businesses can rely on us as a partner to run their membership program.
They can focus on their core business.

To date, this includes: discounts, first access to event tickets for members,
members-only merch (hoodies, shirts, pins), members only events - as the
benefits we built-in/are prototyping.

First-access to events, members-only gatherings, and discounts, are the most
common member benefits running on Withfriends. Those are built in.

On top of built-in benefits - businesses can take more control and write in
benefits. To help them, we have a member-lookup/scanning app in beta for staff
(a member side is coming soon). That makes it easy for staff to handle
benefits off platform, or simply treat members well.

Members of North Brooklyn Farms (more about them here:
[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59xwjx/diy-spaces-go-
main...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59xwjx/diy-spaces-go-mainstream-
to-survive)), members get a bag of veggies every time they visit
([https://withfriends.co/north_brooklyn_farms](https://withfriends.co/north_brooklyn_farms))

Members of Bluestockings (by the way, what an honor to work my lifelong
legends) get discount benefits at the store, even before automate them.
([https://withfriends.co/bluestockings/join](https://withfriends.co/bluestockings/join))

Members of AdHoc (also legends) get a zine delivered to their door, and a
curated playlist.
([https://withfriends.co/adhocfm/join](https://withfriends.co/adhocfm/join))

Members of Chicago Meat Collective ... get extra meat
([https://withfriends.co/chicago_meat_collective](https://withfriends.co/chicago_meat_collective))

When you sign up Withfriends, you get a simple, effective membership program -
we encourage businesses to be as minimal as possible and just turn it on.
We've found that members want to support the small businesses they love. You
don't need to overthink it.

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streulpita
babycastles is awesome, pumped for you guys!

~~~
kunalgupta
ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ ⧓

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psawaya
Really excited to see Withfriends launch! One of the most exciting companies I
saw at YC Demo Day this year :)

~~~
kunalgupta
Thank you so much psawaya!

