What are the legal implications here? I can't see this being on the good side of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 that states ...
'The Act prohibits gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with the participation of another person in a bet or wager that involves the use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any federal or state law (termed “restricted transactions” in the Act).'
@omaral@j_ceniza Hi Omar! In the app we make it very clear that parlays are not agreements or contracts (which bets/wagers are defined to be), and all USD/BTC transfers are voluntary, optional gifts. For more info see http://parlaywith.me/legal/ and http://parlaywith.me/terms/ and check out the UI when you make a monetary parlay.
@lorendsr@j_ceniza just because you call it something different doesn't make it legal. I can't make an app and just change the name of things ... and then go " we aren't gambling because we are giving gifts vs money".
with that being said, i would make sure you have some badass legal counsel and that your investors are 100% clear on this topic, esp if you took money from friends and family. in no way am I saying it won't work, I'm just saying its risky and only an investor with experience in this new space will understand ALL the implications - so don't take anyone's money unless they are aware. You don't want to have those conversations of 'i thought you said this was 100% legal... i want my money back!'
@omaral@lorendsr@j_ceniza- Hi! Thank you for your questions on legal strategy.
Parlaying is a materially distinct activity from betting because when you make a bet, you're making a binding agreement – if you lose, you are obligated to pay up. In Parlay, you don’t make agreements, meaning that if you would like to send a friend money you can, but if you do not want to, there are no consequences. Our users explicitly acknowledge and agree to this, it's reinforced throughout the app UI, and there are no penalties for not giving gifts (“gift” is the legal term for a monetary transfer that you are not obligated to make). This is an important distinction – you can’t lose your life savings on Parlay. Even if you parlay with a lot of money, upon losing the parlay you can simply choose not to transfer. And regarding gambling in general, gambling consideration in all US states requires something of value to be at risk. When there is no agreement, there is nothing at risk.
We have on retainer a couple of the best gambling lawyers in the country, we did not take investment from family or friends, and we share with investors the relevant laws and Parlay's legal opinion.
@sidneylsr as a user, the first time someone doesn't pay up, I'm deleting the app.
Also, I still stand by my point earlier - you are marketing the app as a betting app ... you even used 3 of the most common wagers that most people bet in your first post!
John Oliver might have explained it better in his segment on DFS and the legality behind it:
Hi everyone! Cofounder @parlay, AMA!
Challenge your friends about anything. For…
👊 bragging rights
💰 money
😇 charity
“You can’t eat a Chipotle burrito faster than I can”
“I will lose 5 pounds this month”
“Donald Trump will lose the election”
“Parlay will get 1000+ PH upvotes”
We’ve been dreaming of having Parlay on Product Hunt – thrilled to finally be here!
We would sincerely value your feedback and advice. Would you use this? If not, what’s stopping you? Something in the app we can change or add? Or if it’s completely not your thing, do you know of anyone who might be into it? 🙏 send them our way 🙌
Some interesting UI issues:
❓ Emoji vs Icons – My brother started out coding the app with normal SVG icons everywhere and they were just so boring/lifeless/unemotional! So we went through most of them and found emoji replacements. But I’m being advised that we have to make our own flat icon set. What do you think?
❓ Path vs Slack – We came up with our reaction feature back in ‘14, modeled after Path’s emoticons, which had a small set of options. Pros/cons of this versus the Slack method of allowing any emoji?
❓ Expanding list items – The strong convention with list items is that tapping them opens a new page, eg Twitter. We felt that making the list items expand inline reduces perceived friction, and might lead to tapping them more often. What do you think?
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@sidneylsr like the idea of the app, but a huge gap is the lack of contacts integration. Is that coming soon? I don't use Facebook so that is not an option for me.
@mykecheckonetwo Agree, copying emails and phone numbers is definitely a pain/friction point. We are working on contacts integration as we speak! Thank you for the feedback!!
👋 Parlay Cofounder, AMA!
I know there are a lot of technical hunters out there ⌨💻😸 If you’re interested in the tech details, it’s a Cordova Meteor app:
Cordova – it’s certainly not as quick and snappy as native, especially with such a complex app, but many of the things I’ll be able to improve upon to some degree, and the priority in a startup is getting something out there that people can use, and it would have taken me much longer to make a native app for one mobile platform, let alone both! I hope to have the time/resources to switch to React Native. If you’re interested in render performance of SPAs (single-page web apps with client-side template rendering and routing), check out my Medium article:
http://medium.com/parlay-enginee...
Meteor – full-stack Javascript SPA (or Coffeescript in my case). Reactive JS templates backed by real-time data automatically pushed over websocket from the Node servers, which watch the MongoDB Oplog (Mongo’s real-time changefeed). Hosted on Galaxy, Meteor’s PaaS built on Amazon EC2 that does a great job of scaling websockets horizontally for you.
Visual design – I’m very new to this. Up until recently everything was #00 text on an #ff background. Was amazed to discover how much difference a few shades of gray make 😝 If you have anything to suggest in this realm (or about any aspect of the app, really), I’d be grateful ☺ loren@parlaywith.me
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@lorendsr@parlaywith I really miss the ability to easy challenge my facebook friends that haven't signup yet :/
@lajlev@parlaywith I miss it as well! Unfortunately Facebook changed their API, and apps are no longer able to see your friends who haven't signed up. We're working on getting your contacts in there though.
@sidneylsr Congrats on launching on PH! Psyched to take a look at what you guys have been working on. Sidney and Loren are both really smart and have been committed to taking on this challenge. Look forward to seeing where this goes.
Too complicated UI.
Too many small distracting items.
No visual hierarchy.
I do believe there is still much design work to be done to bring the most important things to front and clean up the irritating visual mess.
@aramiggs I agree 😊It's a relatively complicated activity, and we've simplified it a lot, but we know there's a ways to go. On visual design, the screenshots are a bit outdated – the profile in the live app has been improved a bit, and we have a plan for a new "New Parlay" page. If you have specific suggestions, I'm all 👂☺️
@lorendsr I would pay more attention to keeping the screenshots updated, 'cause before downloading users actually rate your app's design based on these screenshots, and in cases like mine, this may prevent them from downloading the app.
My main piece of advice would be making it as clear as possible, removing all the small elements, which create visual buzz and distract your users' attention from the most important functionality.
Good luck!
Had this exact same idea a few months ago but never did anything with it. It's great to see the idea come to life though! :)
I agree with others that there is a lot going on, especially on the community parlays page. Even just having a different background colour for open parlays (when you're viewing the comments) compared to closed parlays would help
@marsh931 Thank you – the open parlays have a grayer bg color than the white of closed parlays, plus a shadow on the edges, but I'll try out some darker shades!
@zacharydewitt Here was a good recent one... Sidney parlayed me $10 that > 15% of my 2k Facebook friends will respond to individual messages promoting us on PH 😆http://bit.ly/1XdXylG
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