
Show HN: Captain's Table – Meet new people every month over dinner - shakers
http://www.captainstable.co/
======
personlurking
Slightly reminiscent of early London coffeehouses

"...customers sat around long communal tables strewn with every type of media
imaginable listening in to each other’s conversations, interjecting whenever
they pleased, and reflecting upon the newspapers. Talking to strangers, an
alien concept in most coffee shops today, was actively encouraged. Dudley
Ryder, a young law student from Hackney and shameless social climber, kept a
diary in 1715-16, in which he routinely recalled marching into a coffeehouse,
sitting down next to a stranger, and discussing the latest news. Private boxes
and booths did begin to appear from the late 1740s but before that it was
nigh-on impossible to hold a genuinely private conversation in a coffeehouse.

As each new customer went in, they’d be assailed by cries of “What news have
you?” or more formally, “Your servant, sir, what news from Tripoli?” or, if
you were in the Latin Coffeehouse, “Quid Novi!” That coffeehouses functioned
as post-boxes for many customers reinforced this news-gathering function.
Unexpectedly wide-ranging discussions could be twined from a single
conversational thread as when, at John’s coffeehouse in 1715, news about the
execution of a rebel Jacobite Lord (as recorded by Dudley Ryder)
transmogrified into a discourse on “the ease of death by beheading” with one
participant telling of an experiment he’d conducted slicing a viper in two and
watching in amazement as both ends slithered off in different directions. Was
this, as some of the company conjectured, proof of the existence of two
consciousnesses?"

[http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/08/07/the-lost-world-
of-t...](http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/08/07/the-lost-world-of-the-
london-coffeehouse/)

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spacko
Seems to be a great project - but it is intimidating being required to be
_awesome_. Evokes pictures of myself stuck in a group of awesome people making
it obvious to myself how not-awesome I am ... so I am not going ... :-(

~~~
teh_klev
Agreed. That word is an instant put off for me every time I see it used in
contexts like this. Time for it to be retired.

~~~
shakers
Ah, totally see where you're coming from. Looking over the copy again, I
couldn't remember why we used awesome instead of interesting, like how it's
expressed in the section below. We've changed it.

Thanks for being awesome ;)

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kevin
Why do you jump me to a signup form as soon as I go to the URL? Let me get a
good look at you first. Tell me your story. Buy me a drink. Give me some good
pillow talk.

When I read the copy on your site, it feels like it’ll be cool and casual and
mysterious, which is the right approach. This aggressive Typeform maneuver
ruins that feel.

I would sign up for this if there was a way I could indicate that I don’t want
to talk about work.

~~~
shakers
Hi Kevin! Thanks for your feedback. That's odd, we haven't seen the behavior
you're talking about yet, it shouldn't go directly to the form. Was that on
desktop, tablet, or mobile?

We've now put the form behind a button which looks better anyway. For what
it's worth, we also checked out Wufoo which looks better in-line but, unless
we're missing something, you can't add a free form "Other" response to a
Checkboxes question and the Multiple Choice question forces you to pick one
response. That would have required us to add a new free form field after the
location preference field if they picked Other.

Appreciate the feedback on the copy. Thanks for the idea for talking about
work/not talking about work. Definitely could be a concern for a lot of
people. We've added another question to the survey asking for work talk
preferences.

~~~
kevin
Desktop. Safari. I think the problem might be that Typeform tries to auto move
the cursor to the first field input so you can just start typing right away.

We used to do this on Wufoo forms, but when people embedded them, we saw this
problem and turned it off if the form was embedded.

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cactusface
This is a great idea. It would be nice if you did double dates for couples.

> We work with a variety of high-quality restaurants in different tier price
> ranges to accommodate every budget.

It would be nice to see a list of restaurants. Some people eat out a lot, have
strong opinions about where's good and where's not, and really care about
where they spend their time and money.

> The best part of eating out is being able to order exactly what you want.

The best part of eating out is sharing a bunch of good food with other people.
This is apparently not a US thing.

> If you want to share and don't hear back, don't worry, people fail to
> respond to emails all the time.

This is a little confusing / weird.

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Hytosys
I would love for this to penetrate smaller towns and cities where meeting
people is particularly difficult. Promising morals in the Q&A.

Your hero image[1] is a major turnoff and leads me to understand that I'll be
meeting with a culturally homogeneous group.

[1]
[https://res.cloudinary.com/hrscywv4p/image/upload/c_limit,f_...](https://res.cloudinary.com/hrscywv4p/image/upload/c_limit,f_auto,fl_progressive,h_1500,q_90,w_2000/v1/275285/restaurant-690975_jdbssb.jpg)

~~~
shiggerino
That is absolutely ridiculous. Nowhere on the site is it implied that you have
to be white to participate, and if someone flakes out at the last moment at
the restaurant because it's not a "safe space" where they can talk about what
special snowflakes they are, that's probably for the better for the three
other participants.

On the contrary, I think diversity is strongly implied, how can someone be an
interesting person if they just parrot the same opinions and beliefs back at
you?

I guess it boils down to whether the organizers want to just score Silicon
Valley brownie points or if they want to have fun and create something unique.

~~~
EliRivers
Nobody said "white" until you did.

~~~
shiggerino
That's the only thing I could see that they had in common in the picture.

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shalmanese
This seems very similar to the now defunct grubwithus. I tried it in the early
days and it was great but it suffered very noticeably from the Evaporative
Cooling Effect [1]. It was very noticeable after about a year that the quality
of people was much lower and I evaporatively cooled myself out as well. It's a
huge challenge with models like this to avoid that problem.

1: [http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-
sundays-2-the-...](http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-
sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/)

~~~
shakers
Ah, so cool! This is actually a direct result from my experience with
grubwithus (which I loved). The Evaporative Cooling Effect is definitely real
and caused a lot of flaking from that service.

That experience is why we don't let you see/know in advance who's coming and
why we handpick the groups.

~~~
shalmanese
Hand picking groups doesn't help if you can't compel people to go. People who
have 2 or 3 bad experiences will just silently stop going and those people are
most likely to be the ones who have the most to offer.

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andresmanz
Very nice! Well, two things to mention:

1\. The title image is not entirely visible on tablets. See here:
[http://s9.postimg.org/au2hwrc0e/Screenshot_2015_06_19_10_58_...](http://s9.postimg.org/au2hwrc0e/Screenshot_2015_06_19_10_58_37.jpg)

2\. The domain name is epic. I always read 'Captain Stable' instead of
'Captain's Table'!

~~~
shakers
1\. Bummer. I blame Strikingly though they're awesome in every other way. 2\.
I agree. If you like, you can reimagine the service as Uber for Boat Captains
(that's our back-up).

------
mdevere
Thoughts:

1\. Felt a little strange signing up without understanding anything about your
process. How are you planning to match me with other people? You don't know
much about me yet.

2\. I would definitely be interested to meet with a bunch of HN-type people
over dinner and chat nerdy stuff.

3\. How are you planning to ensure a good turnout? I would hate to show up to
find that most people had dropped out at the last minute.

~~~
shakers
great questions.

1) we check you out. this is how we know you don't know the other people and
what you're interested in (at least at a basic level). we found filling this
kind of info out makes people even more weirded out, since it's more dating
style and so we do what we can in the background instead. after the dinner, we
make sure you had a good time, and if not, try to figure out how we can change
your dinners so that you have a great time.

2) awesome, based on the responses we've gotten so far, you're not alone.

3) we always plan a full meal. that is, if somebody from the table we'd
planned can't go, we fill it with someone else. if someone says they'll attend
and cancels, we email them and let them know that we have a three strike
cancellation policy. it's not fair to others when they cancel and we have a
low tolerance for that.

~~~
meesterdude
> if someone says they'll attend and cancels, we email them and let them know
> that we have a three strike cancellation policy. it's not fair to others
> when they cancel and we have a low tolerance for that.

FWIW, this might be counter to your target audience. People who sign up for a
service like this will be more likely to present with some form of social
anxiety that has inhibited them from socializing normally in the first place.
Certainly not everyone, but certainly not no one either. Trying to respond
with a heavy hand to such people will only alienate them further; try
responding with compassion and understanding and above all else respect.
saying you have "low tolerance" for that basically means you have low
tolerance for people's quirks and flaws. Attending might be a struggle for
some people.

Also, you don't need to mention names or faces; but you could mention some
interests that each person has that you would be going to dinner with.

~~~
codewithcheese
I would like to present a counter point to your generalization. I am
interested in this. I work from home on a own business. Do not suffer social
anxiety, however my social outgoings are limited due to work from home alone.
I would suggest that this type of random dinner would not be very appealing
for people who suffer from social anxiety.

------
meesterdude
$10 for 1 dinner a month with a few strangers at some restaurant? That's a bit
much for so little return. I mean, I pay less for netflix and get way more out
of that. But, it's not available in my area so it's not like I'd buy it
anyway! Still, more frequency / less cost would be more attractive. Otherwise
it just feels like a money scheme.

~~~
jasonkester
Sounds like their self-selection mechanism is working nicely.

In fact, they could probably offer $100/month and $1000/month subscription
levels where the product was completely unchanged except that you were only
matched with people from your own subscription level.

After all, there are certainly people who would welcome the idea of having
dinner with three people for whom $1,000/month is no big deal. And those
people might be less interested in hanging out with folks who thought of $10
as a lot of money.

Genius idea, when you stop to think about it.

------
kfk
For me the best way so far to meet a large group of people is to meet those
who know a lot of people in the first place and get introduced by them to
others. This service seems to connect those with small networks, I am not sure
that works? I would think more in terms how to create incentives for big
network individuals to connect with small network ones.

~~~
shakers
hey kfk! thanks for the feedback! we take network size into consideration when
we put together groups among other factors. making sure everyone who attends
the dinner gets value out of it is our highest priority.

small networks can totally have fun too. (professional) networking is a side
benefit of the service, we're putting together people purely because we think
they'll have a fun dinner together.

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BjoernKW
Good product idea. The dinner aspect certainly is vital because it's much
easier to connect with people over a good meal than in most other situations.
However, I was thinking that connecting with people from different backgrounds
and cultural contexts IMO is most rewarding in terms of experience and
personal development. Apart from the large cultural hubs such as London, New
York or (to some extent) Silicon Valley meeting a large number of diverse yet
like-minded people might indeed prove a bit difficult.

One thing that came to mind for me in particular is that meeting interesting
new people who share a general kind of mindset is one of the aspects that are
great about Freemasonry: You get to meet people from almost every walk of
life, background (cultural and otherwise) and age bracket.

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weego
Your site appears to be broken in Chrome at least. The questions section is
unstyled in full desktop width (its edge to edge which looks pretty bad
compared to the rest of the site), and there is no form below the "fill out
the simple form below" header.

edit: Oh wait, I have to click to show the form? Why do that when the
instruction text suggests I should be seeing a form.

edit 2: That form is horrifyingly bad.

~~~
shakers
Ah, you caught me.

I'm using Typeform for the submission and Strikingly for the website.

Good feedback, I'm eliminating the welcome screen as we speak.

------
grizzles
Nice product. You are selling an experience for $10 that I could see myself
buying. Your signup process is too long.

~~~
shakers
Thanks! Appreciate the feedback. How could we make it shorter for you? What's
the minimum amount of questions? (FWIW we started with only name and email)

~~~
grizzles
If it was my site, I would start with just email and then try to get more from
there. That outweighs any other data you can get by an order of magnitude.

~~~
shakers
Thanks! I've taken the liberty of putting your HN email in our database. We'll
be following up shortly. :)

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dagw
Sounds a little bit like an idea I've had kicking about in my head for a while
(feel free to steal). A 'dating' site for people who just want to meet up with
new and interesting people, do something fun and then definitely not at all
have it lead to anything physical or relationship related.

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inglor
This is a really cool idea, I think if you show off some of the interesting
people and meetings in the home page it'd go a long way to show you won't
(probably) be meeting weirdos.

It'd be nice to know if you can elaborate a little on how the matching happens
and based on what criteria :)

~~~
shakers
hey inglor! totally hear you. we'd love to showcase members and we might in
the future but for right now we're focused on bringing in the right mindset
(people who want to meet other cool people).

for matching, it's our secret sauce, but the first thing we do is manually
check your social profiles just to make sure the group doesn't know each
other.

------
SagelyGuru
I actually like best meeting people who are different from me and have
different interests and views and I like learning from them. It is not clear
to me how the selection is made but if this is the objective, then thumbs up
from me.

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dagw
Slightly off topic, but did anyone else find that the form they used was in
every way worse, both from a UX and just general design perspective, than just
a nicely laid out 'normal' web form?

~~~
corford
Personally I like typeforms but I think they work best in a modal rather than
embedded.

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shiggerino
Great project. I'd sign up in a heartbeat if I lived in the US.

~~~
shakers
Sign up! Someone in Antarctica just signed up (as a joke).

All jokes aside, we'll plan something ad-hoc if there's a critical mass in a
particular city. We've had a decent amount of sign-ups in cities outside the
US.

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baldfat
There are places to meet new people it is called Church, Temple, Mosque and
bars/clubs.

If your not religious and/or don't drink or dance I see that you would need
this service.

~~~
Paul_S
You forgot libraries and dogging sites.

~~~
baldfat
Oh and walk around with a baby. That one is awesome. Second only to the new
puppy walks.

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wodenokoto
So, you didn't ask me anything about my interests are education. How do you
guarantee "awesome people"?

~~~
puranjay
They all have a Fedora collection

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kylegordon
This is a great idea. Looking forward to it coming to Scotland and the rest of
the UK!

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skatenerd
Also check out: mealsharing.com

