12ish

@_jacksmith We chose 12 minutes because that's about the length of a short conversation and 4 slots fit into an hour with time for bathroom break in between. People can buy consecutive slots and we make their 12ish one long call. @muldster Yes, our intention is to create a broad marketplace where people can charge anything from $1 to thousands (thinking about celebrities raising money for charity here) per 12-minute slot.

@colinmathews - I just realized you're using Amazon Payments. Why not PayPal? I assume few use the former.

Hi! I am one of the co-founders of 12ish. 12ish lets you make money by talking about the things you love. Set a weekly schedule and a price, and people can book a phone call with you. Both your phone and theirs ring at the scheduled time and 12ish bridges them privately for precisely 12.5 minutes. Payment is collected automatically and delivered to you minus our fees. Sometimes you have questions that you don't even know how to put into words. 12ish lets you have in-depth conversations with people (called "12vers") to tap their knowledge. For example, the other day I had a complicated Google Analytics question and would have loved to just talk briefly with an expert. On a different note, one of my close friends had a years-long battle with infertility. She’s made herself available on 12ish to lend an empathetic ear and to help others in that situation know what to expect. We just launched recently and welcome all feedback and questions!

sounds like Clarity. why did you decide to limit it to 12 minutes?

@colinmathews — The concept and execution feels somewhat inspired by Fiverr. Is that your vision for the product? A large, open, and filterable marketplace?

@colinmathews - excited to try this out. I've taken ~8 calls on Clarity and enjoy the service but I like that you're constraining the call to 12 mins to give me an opportunity to speak with and (hopefully) help more people. Of course, this is entirely reliant on your ability to bring people to the site (on both sides since you're a marketplace). How are you tackling this and can you share any numbers re: the number of callers and people taking calls now?

@rrhoover You are totally right. We are in the early stages right now of getting some really notable people available as 12vers to address this. Our first efforts are focused on charities and the celebrities that they work with since 12ish could be an amazing and really easy way to raise money for causes. We're also exploring other ways to kick-start this to get over the chicken/egg issue that exists with this kind of idea. It's a little early to be able to share numbers, but we have had unsolicited people book, pay, and have 12ishes with our users. This was the kind of validation we were hoping to get, and I'm really excited that it happened so early. Now we're working hard to iron out things that confuse our potential customers, clear up our marketing, and build our 12ver base so that we can showcase just what the platform is capable of!