YAM - Get paid to ask or answer questions in video Q&A's

@michael_cho Congrats dude! Can't wait to see the app grow!

@ramsay_brown thanks dude! thanks for ur encouragement these past few weeks! means a lot for us :)

@chrisharveyesq great question! Firstly, hats off to the Whale team! I really like what they've made and it's really exciting to have more teams looking into this "video Q&A" space. While we may seem similar, I think there're some key differences (both use-case as well as feature-level): 1. We focus more on story-telling. We do have some influencers/experts (eg. Cesar Millan aka "Dog Whisperer", Tay Zonday aka "Chocolate Rain Youtuber", etc) on YAM, but what excites us even more is allowing "ordinary folks with extraordinary folks" telling their stories (eg. see this English teacher in Aleppo answer on "What're the conditions of schools in Aleppo": https://api.letsyam.com/answers/...) 2. We allow a "free preview" for first half of every video on YAM as we really want to minimize any "buyer remorse". 3. On YAM, we allow the Asker (and not the Answerer) to offer a private price along with his/her question. We did this for 2 reasons: we want the Answerer to see the full "demand curve" of all questions (sorted by price) and we just didn't like the idea of having each user/Answerer declare a "public price tag". 4. We allow users to "ask themselves a question and answer them". Sounds silly but we think it can be really useful in turning typical Q&A format (which tends to be more passive in that you'll have to wait for Qs before answering) into a "self-publishing platform". Think FAQs or questions you wish more people want to ask you :) There' a bunch of other differences (eg. square vs vertical videos, ability to ask anonymous question, $0.05 vs ~$0.30 to unlock an answer, etc), but those are more feature-level differences.

@koridhandy u bet! He's the one and only Tay Zonday (of the "Chocolate Rain" fame: ) He's a really nice guy and super down to earth too! Awesome dude all around.

@michael_cho WTF? hahaha, sounds like a good dude :)

@koridhandy He actually shared a bit on the app abt his personal struggle with agoraphobia: https://api.letsyam.com/answers/...

@michael_cho @koridhandy don't understand how nobody recognized it's him. The instant I heard his voice I knew it's the Chocolate Rain guy haha

@phimema @koridhandy yes Tay Zonday is LEGEND!

@rrhoover haha! you are right! I didn't realize it but now that you mentioned it, it's really like YC logo (except for the blinking lights) :)

@rrhoover @justinkan would love your feedback on YAM :)

@mattmayberry Thanks for the shoutout dude! Really appreciate it! I dig what you guys are doing at Dopamine too! So Dope! Definitely looking to plug into the power of Dopamine into our next version release!

@orliesaurus I'd say it's more a "Reddit AMA + Video + micropayment" app :) r/explainlikeimfive/ is more about asking question to a big group of people, whereas on YAM now you're asking a specific user a question :)

@michael_cho interesting, so this would be a platform for paid mentors to engage with mentorees - I can see someone like Gary V, but maybe not him as he loves giving it all out for free, wanting to be on this :D

@orliesaurus we think influencers/experts/Youtubers will definitely find this useful. Having said that, we also want to help uncover "ordinary folks with extraordinary stories". Like this English teacher in Aleppo: https://api.letsyam.com/answers/...

@michael_cho How do you sign up to be an "expert" - do you need the app (since its iphone only) ? Is there a web client in the works?

@orliesaurus we don't really differentiate between users ("expert" is very subjective...plenty of experts predicted a Hillary victory, look at where we are now). Our philosophy is if the user has fascinating stories/skills/experience to share, we'll feature them :) No web client at the moment. We wanna nail the iOS experience first :) Do you see any content on the app that you find compelling so far?

@nscmnto got it! that's a very good feedback! I kind of agree with you too. Back to drawing board & mockups :)

@nscmnto am curious though why do you like about the "non-tech" format? could you elaborate a bit more?

@michael_cho awesome! Well, Whale is mostly for entrepreneurs, founders, tech people. At least that's the crowd right now. But with YAM you get to ask and reply to questions about other subjects that wouldn't really fit Whale right now. Like politics, relationships, more intimate questions. Whale seems to be more of a Quora for founders and YAM more of a AMA for everyone else. :)

@nscmnto yah that seems to be a fairly accurate depiction for now. Obviously both products will continue to evolve and it's be interesting to see where this goes from here :)

@hicham_amine yes we hope to eventually. But at the moment, we want to nail the iOS experience first and verify product-market fit. We're a very small startup with limited resources so gotta be very careful with how we approach adding on another platform :)

@michael_cho Best of Luck! Great concept though. Can't wait to see it grow. What's your strategy with the two-sided marketplace. How would you approach lot of people wanting to ask questions and no many interest from the answering side ? Happens a lot with two-sided marketplaces

@hicham_amine Our focus right now is finding folks with fascinating expertise or stories and are willing to share them in video (ie. supply side). We ourselves and some users are actively sending questions to kickstart the process (ie. demand side). One interesting additional function we've built from the start (in this MVP) is that we allow users to "create your own questions and answer them". So we literally turn the typical Q&A format (which tend to be passive) to be a kind of "self-publishing" tools! Think FAQs or questions that you wish more folks will ask you. And we're happy to see that some users have started using that feature regularly :)

@davidsfeng yes the plane crash story is a pretty crazy :) Thanks for checking out our app! Whale has certainly done a great job, especially with gathering a critical mass of influencers in the startup space We'll definitely try hard to bring on more experts/influencers onto the platform. Having said that, we also value the occasional "ordinary stories with extraordinary stories". To me personally, the most powerful content on YAM now are those from that teacher in Aleppo or the campaign manager in the recent election. They're certainly not influencers but their stories are super compelling!

@michael_cho Agreed. I actually take that back. Sometimes experiences are just as important as expert knowledge. There are things money and tenure can't buy.

@davidsfeng true that :) I guess the platform is capable of delivering both. If u look at Reddit AMA, I'd say you see a good mix of influencers/celebs as well as ordinary folks with interesting stories to share. We definitely still need the celebs cos they drive eyeballs, but at the same time we also want to help curate and highlight fascinating stories from common folks.

@tudorizer Yah! Tay Zonday is even more awesome in real life! You'll see that intro video once you open the app the very first time :) Glad you dig the "free preview"!

@spenceryang great question! I actually think that the $ is just icing on the cake. I think some folks just really want to share their stories. We have this user, Abdulkhafi; he's an English teacher in Aleppo. He's definitely not doing it for $ (in fact currently we have no way of transferring money to him). But he really wants to answer questions, like this: https://api.letsyam.com/answers/...

@sydney_liu_sl thanks for ur kind words man! Funny enough when we were building the MVP I thought it'd be perfect for @justinkan (he clearly thinks so and went ahead to build one himself lol) I really look up to @ev and I'm a big fan of @msuster 's snapstorms too! So yah, having them on YAM will be surreal :) Having said that, beyond these tech influencers or celebs in general, what I really hope to get onboard more are actually folks like AbdulKhafi (English teacher in Aleppo), Ryan Archuleta (Army Veteran), Cris Hernandez (Campaign Manager for Texas State Rep election), etc. They may not be influencers but their stories are every bit as fascinating and deserve to be heard.

@beuk got it! definitely an enhancement we need to work on to make the main feed more personalized... in the meantime, did you come across any video answers that you thought is compelling content for you?

@neuling2k haha yes, we know there're definitely "leaks" now...but our priority for this MVP is just to main hypothesis, which is whether AMA+video is gonna be a compelling sell. The micropayment is icing on the cake, but we'll look to tighten things a little in the next few builds :) Assume you're enjoying some of the video answers; which ones do you find most interesting?

@michael_cho totally understand. its just whenever i see urls containing numeric parts i automatically increment them and see what happens 😁 to be honest, i actually watched just around three clips till it was clear that these are full length clips 😉

@neuling2k got it! any particular video answers you like or don't like? do you feel you wasted your time watching them?