- Eric Mijakovsky, the course facilitator at Startup School, is hosting online office hours for startups.
- Office hours are an opportunity for founders to discuss specific problems they are facing and brainstorm solutions.
- The first startup to participate is BoxCore, a futures gaming platform that asks trivia about televised events.
- BoxCore is currently in beta and has had 240+ users for the NFL playoffs.
- The founder is looking to build the next version of the platform and expand the team.
- They are planning to add utility to the user, such as live scores and previews.
- The founder believes they can provide a better user experience than existing sporting platforms.
- Eric suggests focusing on a specific sport or team to start and testing what users actually want.
- BoxCore is currently acquiring users in Mexico and considering focusing on soccer.
- The founder wants to provide a product that becomes the second screen for all the sports users follow.
- The main struggle for the founder is their lack of technical expertise, but they have managed to launch a successful beta version.

- The speaker hit a wall in January and realized they needed to scale their project.
- They received an offer of $50k and started hiring engineering students for $5 an hour.
- They want to reposition their project for Euro 2020 and the Olympics, but it's recommended to focus on building features that make the app addictive for current users.
- It is suggested to have weekly cycles of gathering user feedback, fixing problems, and testing the fixes.
- The speaker has had over 500 predictions and 300+ signups, with half being organic.
- The discussion then shifts to another person talking about their hard tech company that turns smartphones into smart binoculars.
- They have a prototype and have raised funds through Kickstarter.
- The speaker asks for advice on navigating the supply chain issues caused by the coronavirus.
- The suggestion is made to consider 3D printed parts instead of plastic injection molded parts.

- The speaker discusses the potential of 3D printing to eliminate the need for parts from factories in China.
- They advise placing orders for components to ensure timely delivery.
- The speaker warns against overestimating demand and suggests focusing on fulfilling pre-orders first.
- The importance of hiring only when necessary and avoiding unnecessary expenses is emphasized.
- The speaker suggests reaching out to Kickstarter backers to identify potential developers for the product.
- They discuss a mobile app called Trackport that tracks the time trucks spend at shippers and receivers, addressing invoicing and payment issues.
- The app is aimed at truckers and trucking companies to help them get paid for waiting time at shipping locations.

- The startup has launched an app for truckers and currently has 7 or 8 truckers using it.
- The app is used by truckers for areas where they know they will have problems.
- Truckers typically encounter problems 2-3 times a week.
- The startup is working on a cryptocurrency processing system to automate payment between brokers and truckers.
- The founder advises keeping the payment system simple and focusing on the core problem of truckers not getting paid for time spent at the dock.
- The goal for the next week is to double the user size and have the majority of loads using the app.
- The app currently logs the times but does not have an auto-invoicing feature.
- The founder is advised to manually send invoices if the truckers are not comfortable using the app.
- The goal for the next week is to have a total of 14 users.

- The app, Meme Party, allows users to join games with friends and create and vote on memes.
- The main metric being tracked is weekly users, as the app is meant to be played with friends during gatherings.
- The team has been doing in-person events at breweries to grow their user base, with a high conversion rate when talking to people directly.
- They are working on adding analytics and are transitioning into marketing after releasing their iOS and Android apps.
- The main challenge is getting users to continue using the app after the initial in-person interaction, and they are considering strategies like in-app messaging and social media marketing.
- Suggestions are made to create a short video tutorial and explore venues like card shops and pubs for marketing opportunities.
- The team is aware of the need to improve user experience and address bugs in order to improve retention.
- The goal for the next week is to reach 100 weekly active users.

- The app currently has no revenue generation features or ads in order to prioritize user experience
- The focus should be on getting to 100 users, retention, and understanding user behavior before worrying about monetization
- The idea of having tournaments for the app is suggested as a potential revenue generator
- The main innovation should be focused on the game itself, making sure users are excited about using it
- The transition from building WordPress sites for individual companies to a hosting platform for small businesses is discussed
- The target market for the hosting platform is both existing WordPress users and new customers who want someone to handle their website
- Different landing pages may be needed to cater to different customer segments
- The website should focus on solving the problems of small businesses, such as getting listed on Google or getting more leads
- Marketing is identified as a challenge that needs to be addressed, with a need to make the information less technical and more accessible.

- The speaker transitioned from an enterprise solution to a B2B with a B2C mindset.
- They started doing simpler blog posts and YouTube videos on how to do certain tasks.
- They recommend talking to friends who have similar problems and asking about their experiences in setting up websites and the problems they faced.
- They suggest doing these conversations in person or over a focused video call.
- The speaker recommends segmenting the potential user base and gathering data to identify the best target group.
- They emphasize the importance of finding more potential customers in the identified target group.
- The speaker offers to follow up and see how things go in the next week or two.

- Eric Mijakovsky, the course facilitator at Startup School, is hosting online office hours for startups.
- The first startup to participate is BoxCore, a futures gaming platform that asks trivia about televised events.
- BoxCore is currently in beta and has had 240+ users for the NFL playoffs.
- The founder is looking to build the next version of the platform and expand the team.
- They are planning to add utility to the user, such as live scores and previews.
- The founder believes they can provide a better user experience than existing sporting platforms.
- BoxCore is currently acquiring users in Mexico and considering focusing on soccer.
- The main struggle for the founder is their lack of technical expertise, but they have managed to launch a successful beta version.
- The speaker hit a wall in January and realized they needed to scale their project.
- They received an offer of $50k and started hiring engineering students for $5 an hour.
- It is suggested to have weekly cycles of gathering user feedback, fixing problems, and testing the fixes.
- The discussion then shifts to another person talking about their hard tech company that turns smartphones into smart binoculars.
- They have a prototype and have raised funds through Kickstarter.
- The speaker asks for advice on navigating the supply chain issues caused by the coronavirus.
- The suggestion is made to consider 3D printed parts instead of plastic injection molded parts.
- The speaker discusses the potential of 3D printing to eliminate the need for parts from factories in China.
- They advise placing orders for components to ensure timely delivery.
- The speaker warns against overestimating demand and suggests focusing on fulfilling pre-orders first.
- The importance of hiring only when necessary and avoiding unnecessary expenses is emphasized.
- The speaker suggests reaching out to Kickstarter backers to identify potential developers for the product.
- The discussion then moves on to a mobile app called Trackport that tracks the time trucks spend at shippers and receivers, addressing invoicing and payment issues.
- The startup has launched an app for truckers and currently has 7 or 8 truckers using it.
- The startup is working on a cryptocurrency processing system to automate payment between brokers and truckers.
- The founder advises keeping the payment system simple and focusing on the core problem of truckers not getting paid for time spent at the dock.
- The goal for the next week is to double the user size and have the majority of loads using the app.
- The app currently logs the times but does not have an auto-invoicing feature.
- The goal for the next week is to have a total of 14 users.
- The discussion then moves on to an app called Meme Party, which allows users to join games with friends and create and vote on memes.
- The team has been doing in-person events at breweries to grow their user base.
- They are working on adding analytics and are transitioning into marketing after releasing their iOS and Android apps.
- The main challenge is getting users to continue using the app after the initial in-person interaction.
- Suggestions are made to create a short video tutorial and explore venues like card shops and pubs for marketing opportunities.
- The goal for the next week is to reach 100 weekly active users.
- The app currently has no revenue generation features or ads in order to prioritize user experience.
- The focus should be on getting to 100 users, retention, and understanding user behavior before worrying about monetization.
- The idea of having tournaments for the app is suggested as a potential revenue generator.
- The transition from building WordPress sites for individual companies to a hosting platform for small businesses is discussed.
- The target market for the hosting platform is both existing WordPress users and new customers who want someone to handle their website.
- The website should focus on solving the problems of small businesses, such as getting listed on Google or getting more leads.
- Marketing is identified as a challenge that needs to be addressed, with a need to make the information less technical and more accessible.
- The speaker transitioned from an enterprise solution to a B2B with a B2C mindset.
- They recommend talking to friends who have similar problems and asking about their experiences in setting up websites and the problems they faced.
- They suggest doing these conversations in person or over a focused video call.
- The speaker recommends segmenting the potential user base and gathering data to identify the best target group.
- They emphasize the importance of finding more potential customers in the identified target group.

- The speaker discusses a concept of small micro groups where individuals can save money together.
- The groups pool money each month and one person takes a lump sum until everyone has collected a certain amount.
- The speaker suggests starting the concept without an app, using platforms like Venmo and Google spreadsheets.
- They recommend testing the idea with family and friends first before considering building an app.
- The speaker mentions the need to consider regulations and potentially obtaining a money transmitter license.
- They suggest looking into platforms like WePay that may offer services for pooling money.

- The speaker is discussing Phi Labs, a software project aimed at predicting genetic evolution to design better flu vaccines.
- The problem is that the current flu vaccine has less than 50% efficacy and scientists are making educated guesses about the DNA of next year's vaccine.
- Phi Labs aims to use computer software and machine learning to make better predictions based on available data.
- The bottleneck is the computational analysis of the tens of thousands of influenza sequences collected every year.
- The speaker is currently prototyping and testing the software on small data sets.
- The first milestone is to analyze more than 500 sequences in less than 1 month, eventually aiming for 1 hour of analysis.
- The goal is to provide a faster alternative to current software, which takes at least 1 month to run.
- The speaker has been working on this project full-time and is in the process of solving technical challenges.
- The suggestion is to focus on the primary problem of providing a faster analysis and gather feedback from scientists already using slower software.

- The speaker discusses their goal for the next month, which is to benchmark their progress and soft launch their product.
- They mention having a friend who may be interested in their product and agree to send a tweet with the site when they launch.
- The next speaker introduces themselves as Amy from Curvedware, a company that provides pants for curvy women with technical features.
- Amy talks about the challenges she is facing with developing a sample prototype and finding the right manufacturer.
- The speaker suggests considering alternative options such as finding a new supplier or learning how to create patterns herself.
- They discuss the importance of building a prototype for personal use and potentially selling a few to other women with similar needs.
- The speaker advises Amy to focus on building a small number of products iteratively rather than trying to mass-produce right away.

- The first speaker advises someone to start by making and selling a few handmade products at a higher cost to solve a specific problem
- They suggest reaching out to friends and other hikers rather than focusing on social media marketing
- The second speaker explains their company provides mental health care as a workplace benefit, offering regular therapy to all employees
- They discuss the benefits of proactive therapy and the potential ROI for companies
- The second speaker asks for advice on making their first sale in the B2B market
- The first speaker suggests starting with previous connections and using in-person meetings to gather feedback and understand the problems HR departments are facing
- They recommend reading "The Mom Test" for guidance on conducting user interviews and focusing on the problems HR directors bring up themselves

- The speaker expresses gratitude and offers to help
- They suggest sending a tweet in a couple of weeks to catch up
- The speaker mentions the duration of the office hours and offers a sample experience
- They mention the possibility of running more office hours in the future
- The Startup School forums will be the place to find information about future office hours.

- The speaker discusses the concept of small micro groups where individuals save money together.
- They suggest starting without an app, using platforms like Venmo and Google spreadsheets.
- Testing the idea with family and friends is recommended before building an app.
- Regulations and obtaining a money transmitter license should be considered.
- Platforms like WePay may offer services for pooling money.
- Phi Labs is a software project aiming to improve flu vaccine predictions using computer software and machine learning.
- The bottleneck is the computational analysis of influenza sequences.
- The goal is to provide a faster alternative to current software.
- The speaker is prototyping and testing the software on small data sets.
- The next milestone is to analyze more than 500 sequences in less than 1 month.
- Amy from Curvedware discusses challenges with developing a sample prototype and finding the right manufacturer for pants for curvy women.
- Alternative options such as finding a new supplier or learning pattern creation are suggested.
- Building a prototype for personal use and selling a few to others with similar needs is advised.
- Amy is advised to focus on building a small number of products iteratively.
- The first speaker advises starting by making and selling a few handmade products at a higher cost to solve a specific problem.
- The second speaker provides mental health care as a workplace benefit and asks for advice on making their first sale in the B2B market.
- The first speaker suggests starting with previous connections and conducting in-person meetings to understand HR department problems.
- Reading "The Mom Test" is recommended for conducting user interviews.
- The speaker offers gratitude and assistance, suggesting a tweet in a couple of weeks to catch up.
- The duration of the office hours is mentioned, and the possibility of running more in the future.
- The Startup School forums will provide information about future office hours.

I'm the course facilitator here at Startup School.

Excited to do another round of online office hours with companies in startup school.

So office hours for those that might be tuning in for the first time are an opportunity that we take at YC for the partners to actually spend a concentrated, a focused 20 to 30 minutes with each startup, really to dive in and talk about a particular problem or a particular situation that the founder is experiencing, and help them brainstorm ways to solve that problem or figure out ways that they can work through and get past that problem.

So we're gonna be doing that in an accelerated fashion here.

We've got a bunch of startup school companies that have signed up through the startup school forums to do office hours.

And we will do them in front of everyone who happens to be watching this.

As I talk to the founders, I'm really going to try to keep my advice kind of focused in such a way that even if you're tuning in and you don't have the exact same problem, hopefully you can still get value from these sessions.

Really, in general, 1 of the reasons why I like doing office hours is oftentimes we as founders are really stuck in our own world.

We're working from home, we're working in a small team, working on a project, and sometimes we just like spin our wheels trying to solve problems.

With office hours, it's a great opportunity to kind of like talk through your problems with someone else and potentially even figure out ways internally that you can solve them just through the act of saying them out loud and sharing them with someone else.

So as you're watching this, if you have friends that are also working on startups, consider that maybe at some point, you should just take the time to talk founder to founder through the problems that you're having, might be a way to solve.

So without any further ado, let me pull in the first person.

Start by saying what's the name of your company and what are you working on?

What I'm working on or what we have is we have a beta that's live that had what it is is a futures gaming platform.

So what it really is is we ask trivia about future events that are televised.

So mostly sporting events, but we also do entertainment like the Oscars and stuff like that.

And people just answer what's gonna happen at the event.

You know, who's gonna win the match, who's gonna win best picture, all those type

I don't completely understand from what you're doing.

That's where we're gonna end up, but we're not monetizing it yet, but yes.

And you're gonna play it, instead of playing it against the house, you play it against your friends.

You play it in groups against your buddies, you know.

Okay, and what stage are you at right now with the company?

We had 240 plus users last month for the NFL playoffs.

It's a beta what we have right now and we need to basically build the next version now.

We believe we got proof of concept at least to ourselves we prove prove it to ourselves like that it can be a second screen during a live event.

So for example for the Oscars we just had a lot of people reaching out and being like, hey, you're late to score in this or that.

And how many users do you have right now?

We have 20 in the latest competition active users right now.

But the truth is, is I've been doing it the whole thing by myself.

And so I've brought down the amount of content we have.

And I'm building a team, trying to scale to-

So yeah, We have the competition, but there's 2 other legs that are very important that we need to add to this product that aren't there yet.

And that would be in the form of live scores, of previews, recaps, all that type of stuff.

Like those are available on other sporting platforms.

But we think we can do it better than the other sporting platforms because the key is that users are giving us in real time their preferences.

When you like, if we give you a catalog of like 10 different sporting events that are happening this week, you're only going to pick the ones that you're interested in.

And so because of that, we know in real time what you're following.

If you go to ESPN.com and you put in your preferences, you're going to put in who's my favorite team, but your favorite team may not be the most relevant story for the following weekend.

I get it, but I think what I would be pushing to do, especially at the early days for a company like this, is really to test what is the smallest thing that users actually want that they can't get out of the existing apps.

Like right now, if you're a sports fan, there's a multitude of different apps that you can use.

But presumably, if you want trivia about a specific team or a specific sport or specific type of sport, maybe that's missing.

So have you tested like carving off just a very tiny portion of what users want and just delivering that rather than trying to do every sport, every feature?

We have live is just a trivia competition or future events that you play against your friends, you know, and we've had people that have done betting on their by themselves.

For example, the Super Bowl, we had a group of 10 people, 1 guy, 39 people to play against him.

But like on your website, you've got the Grand Prix, you've got the World Cup, you're talking about Super Bowl, I see some like other World Cup, like why not just pick 1 specific sport to focus on?

Because that's not how sports fans behave.

Sports fans, and I say from experience, don't tend to follow just 1 sport.

They follow multiple sports year round, you know?

I don't think, what I'm trying to say is like, even if they follow multiple sports, if this is truly a problem that they can't solve anywhere else, Wouldn't they want to solve it just for 1 sport, for 1 team at 1 time to start with?

Couldn't you make it go viral within just the community of like 1 particular football team or 1 particular cricket team and just get everyone who's like interested in that team using it to start?

And let me think about it a little bit more because basically what we're acquiring users or where we're working on the user acquisition is in Mexico.

Now, the way I've been thinking about it, and it sounds like you may not be on the same track, but the way I've been thinking about it is that, for example, the Mexican soccer fan follows Liga MX, but he also follows Champions League.

He also follows some of the European leagues, you know, and so what we the way we're approaching it is more like, hey, let us give you all the different things that you follow that like most like the way it works is domestic players will give you these type of competitions, but they only focus on domestic or on 1 particular thing.

And so we're trying to kind of break down the barriers and give you the programming.

If there's many apps that are already solving this for local teams, international teams, etc.

Why do you think there needs to be 1 app that has all of them?

Because, well, 1 is because you just said that 3 apps is very uncomfortable or not optimal.

But I think it's mostly about, hey, I want a product that gives me, gives me, that becomes my second screen for the sports that I follow.

Not just a subset of the sports that I follow, but all the things I follow.

So, your second screen, it would be that like you are watching the event and at the same time you're following live, how you're faring against your friends or how the stats or how things are kind of evolving during the match, right?

And so I'm thinking, the way I'm approaching it is I'm thinking about the users themselves.

And so like, I know a lot of people or like the people that I've pulled in, that like, hey, we want more content of, for example, the Real Madrid Barcelona, But we don't want all the games happening in La Liga this week, that type of thing.

Tell me, what are the problems that you're struggling with right now?

The problem that I'm struggling with the most is I'm not a technical founder, but I learned how to code and I basically launched the beta that got over 200 users.

Thanks, yeah, so I learned how to do this.

I started in June, but I basically hit a wall at the end of January, and that's what I told you right now, like there's not a lot many users.

I hit a wall and I realized like, okay, this is as far as I'll go by myself, you know, or like, I'm not gonna be able to do a lot better.

Like maybe I can, but I don't have the time, you know.

So I need to scale I need to get people and so someone had been offering to give me money for a while.

So not that much, but 50K, but like, anyway, I'm gonna take that money.

And so I went back to my alma mater in Mexico and I'm getting engineering students for $5 an hour.

There's a couple more that may work out as well.

And so my problem is how do I structure the whole thing to be ready to your point of 1 event, 1 thing, focus on that, Euro 2020 and the Olympics happening this summer.

And so I kind of want to like reposition, re-gear the whole thing to like-

My recommendation is, that sounds like it's a long way off.

I don't know when Euro is, but my recommendation would be, don't wait that long.

You already have 20 users who already started using it and are interested in it.

I would start talking to them and seeing how could you build features that cause them for this to become like an addictive app, something that they could use on a regular basis.

And then iterate on a weekly cycle saying, okay, well, I talked to users, they have these problems that are holding them back from becoming active users.

We have the engineering team, try to make batches of work that are less than 1 week.

So this is like a really important strategy.

Oftentimes people think in these really long-term future dates, they're like, okay, I want to have the app ready by...

The problem with that is the feedback cycle for your engineers and for the whole team is really long because it's February.

It'll take you a couple months to get the app ready.

Then you'll spend some time getting the launch ready.

And then you'll launch in like July, you know, before the Olympics.

A much faster, a much better cycle would be to do this on a fast basis where every week you sit down with your engineers and you say, here are the things that I'm hearing from my users.

Here are the things that I think we should fix.

And then here's how we're gonna test to see if the fixes that we just built are actually useful.

Oftentimes I talk to founders that set up like 1 meeting on Sundays for maybe a couple hours between them and their co-founders.

And they actually use that time on Sunday to plan out what they're going to do for the following week and to measure the results from the last week's work.

That's actually how I have been doing it since the launch of the beta in September until I burned out last month.

I've had users that have given me over 500 predictions, multiples.

And I think half of it was organic, half of it was like a little promo we ran, but anyway.

Well, Jose, really glad to get the chance to chat.

I hope to hear some updates and hopefully not all the way till August.

I've got to move on to the next 1, but it

Hi, I'm Mary I think you need to unmute your audio.

We're actually building a hard tech company.

I guess I saw somebody say, hey, there needs to be more hard tech companies.

What we're doing is essentially turning your smartphone into smart binoculars.

Allowing users to zoom in, view, capture and live stream events.

Imagine if you're up in the nosebleed section and being able to zoom in on the game and certain plays, be able to record snap photos, share on YouTube or Facebook Live.

We're at a point where we've developed this product.

lot like the, the magicals binoculars in Harry Potter.

We actually were inspired by Star Wars electro binoculars, that's what they call it.

So it's kind of like, You use your camera on the phone and then it magnifies it.

And it's a new category in consumer tech, which is why I wanted to talk with you because you brought the first smartwatch to the market.

And so would love to hear some of your advice.

I see that you have the prototype, maybe show it off a little bit.

We had very little funding, but we did raise our goal of $27,000.

of so when will you start shipping them to customers

Yeah, we've already done our tooling, our first article.

And 1 of the obstacles I see right now, we're all ready to bring these, the first batch, the first pilot is what we're calling it.

The pilot production to ship to our 200 plus backers and also have enough to seed the market.

We have major leagues interested as well as...

So as of right now, so you have some early customers that ordered on Kickstarter, getting ready to ship them.

Or have you talked to any of these customers?

And so based on our crowdfunding campaign.

Why are you waiting till the Olympics to start shipping if your users are all around the world?

Oh, it's just a timeline in July, rather than say July, we're saying, we'll be there in time for the 2020 Olympics.

1 of the- If I'm understanding correctly, it's a plastic folder for your phone with a lens?

Yeah, so we have a proprietary touch pad on top that maps to an app, and you're able to control your smartphone camera functions with our touch pad.

We have an app in the app store, in the iOS app store called IQ Space Live.

And it's I like your eyeball, not the letter I.

And so what's the biggest problem that your startup has right now?

Well, what I wanted to ask of you is, given that you brought in a new product, a new category as well, If you were bringing that to market right now, just what would be some of your advice you would give us considering the coronavirus is causing issues in supply chains and so forth?

Your question is like around the supply chain.

We're trying to mitigate risk for manufacturing in China.

But our tool's there and we certainly could get the first plastics out.

Is there a reason why you need to build plastic injection molded parts?

Is it possible to do this with 3D printed parts instead?

Well, We've already done that for the first.

Yeah, but like oftentimes 1 thing that I, as I talked to founders, people sometimes skip ahead to the plastic injection molding step way too fast.

Oftentimes end customers are totally fine with 3D printed products, even if they're buying it off Kickstarter.

In fact, we've had several YC companies go through to the point where they were making thousands of units 3D printed completely just by themselves off 3D printers and actually selling them to customers.

That would be 1 way of eliminating the need to actually get parts from factories in China because you just have them coming off of your 3D printer.

We sold the products at a reasonable price.

And of course with Kickstarter, you always have to do a little discount there to get the interest going.

So I'm not sure that we could do the 3D printed ones at scale for the price.

There's a- But you, like, I mean, you sold- It's not just the plastics that we're concerned about.

So 1 thing that I would do if you have about 300 orders, right?

So if you have like something like 300 or less than a thousand, 1 thing that you can do is just place the orders now for all of the components.

Since you've got the money from Kickstarter, you kind of have an idea.

So that you can just like put it out of your mind.

Yes, it will take a couple months for the things to ship.

But if you just place the orders, and you work with the factory to make sure that they're, you know, the 1 thing that I like to do with factories is just, you know, let them know every week that I exist, like remind them over WeChat.

But in your case with 300 units, I don't think you're going

I think that'll be, I think that'd be all fine.

Well, we have, we have more, I mean, that's just what the pre-orders were.

Yeah, I would focus on building those pre-orders first.

I've noticed a lot of other hardware companies, they kind of get ahead of themselves.

That means I should really build several thousand units because it's cheaper to build several thousand units than just 300.

But this is actually like a very potentially dangerous mistake.

Because first of all, you want to get your 300 units out to the Kickstarter backers so that they're happy and that they tell their friends.

So if you start trying to plan for like thousands of units, it may actually delay the first 300 to those customers.

And so if at all possible, try to build just 300 or 400 or 500, some small number of units to start so that you can actually ship those to the end customers as soon as possible.

And then, if I can just ask another couple questions.

What would you say would be the most important hire once you got your funding and so forth.

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YC SUS: Eric Migicovsky hosts founder office hours