

Zen99 (YC S14) Makes Life Easier for Freelancers with Finance, Insurance Tools - artfuldodger
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/15/zen99/

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chime
Just signed up. I am probably your ideal user. I work 100% on 1099, I buy my
own health insurance, and I wouldn't mind paying you if the service was a net
gain for me.

My thoughts:

1) The sign up form has a First________Last name field. I thought I would tab
from First and land on a hidden Last field because of the gap between the two.
Tabbing just moved me down to the next set of fields. If the words First and
Last had been closer, I would not have been confused.

2) I cannot type in the date in the New Earning report. It sucks to click 5
times to get to Jan 31, Feb 28 etc.

3) I expected some Q&A about my consulting/tax profile. I file jointly with my
wife who is on W2. I expense out things like home-office, cellphone bills etc.
I would love to specify these in advance/batch so the tax estimate is more
accurate. I don't want to put in every identical phone bill manually.

4) You don't cover Florida for health insurance yet. Understandable for a beta
but please don't make this service just for CA/NY.

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tzier
All good points. (1) and (2) are easy fixes. (3) is on the way. And (4) is
definitely coming soon - we won't just be for CA/NY.

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ndcrandall
I can honestly say this was the biggest pain for me as a contractor. I decided
to go without health insurance and paid the fine for not paying quarterly
taxes just because I didn't want to deal with the hassle.

Even though this is a free tool, I would have gladly paid for it to help
alleviate those issues.

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tzier
Noted! We're definitely excited to help solve this pain point. Nice to know
that users would be willing to pay for it - I think that makes the "free" even
more compelling.

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ylhert
Yan here, Zen99 CTO. Just wanted to thank everyone for their support over the
past few months! I hope this can really help all of my fellow 1099er's out
there(Not doing 1099 work anymore, but I did freelance development for a long
time).

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tzier
Tristan (CEO) here. Article went out right before we had a few hours of
meetings, but I'll be around for the afternoon replying to any feedback!

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sachinag
What is with the Zen prefix? Zenefits, ZenPayroll, and now Zen99 - all went
through YC and all do benefits/payroll/legal administrivia.

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crazy1van
In this case I think it's meant to rhyme with "1099" like the IRS form.

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tzier
Spot on.

