Honest feedback about an idea.
Hey IH,
in the last few weeks, I had couple of "micro questions" for my lawyer regarding the co-working space we've worked in. There is no way for the laywer to charge for those questions, which usually happen via mail or phone.
My idea: develop something like intercom, where the laywer can implement a little chat bubble on their website and charge customer $5, $10 for "micro questions".
What do you think?
Edit: Laywers are just an example. A lot of different services (e. g. tax expert) would work as well.
Edit 2: Pricing is also just an example. Each customer would pay us a monthly fee and could charge whatever he/she finds appropriate.
It's actually not a bad idea. Fast enough to give it a try. Just build an Intercom plugin and use their new bot system. You should be able to get this project going in no time.
I would also suggest to build an MVP as quick as possible on an already existing system.
Do it on top of intercom, or on our own?
Well anything that works the fastest. If you're skilled enough, go for it, otherwise use something as simple as a payment link over live chat. Just get it out on the field quickly and look if it sells.
Sure, will do!
Yeah, Intercom’s messenger is now a platform. You can build little widget apps inside it. Before you do that just build an MVP with the custom bots feature and the pay with stripe widget.
Don't you think it is a bad idea, to charge the customer twice? One for intercom, and one for our service?
Wouldn't you rather figure out that your idea is actually needed by paying $100 / mo for Intercom
and building a little widget...
...than spending $100k building your whole app?
Getting that insight into what's valuable fast and cheaply is so important. After you figure out what's valuable, you can then decide whether the full solution should be inside Intercom or built independently.
Does that make sense?
Let me go through intercoms docs and see what the best solution is. But spending $100 instead $100k is almost always a better idea :)
I thought about building the service with a friend of mine and inserting some lines of code to a lawyer's website similiar to intercom.
Don't you think, that using intercom would be disadvantage?
It reminds me of a service I've used before, https://www.justanswer.com/
Quite Useful actually
This is what popped into my mind. I used it recently to talk to an immigration expert. The time I saved with a $50 question was worth every dime.
Oh, wow. Love it Brian. How was the UI/UX?
Very similiar, raullopeztx! I searched for hours, and couldnt find something.
With my idea, you need to implement some lines of code to your own website (like intercom). I don't believe aggregating makes much sense. Whats your opinion?
I like it. If you think about it, how many of this "Micro questions" can be answered in an hr. Probably quite a few, so if a expert would get 5 to 10 questions to answer in an hour, it can add up
Exactly. The majority of questions are probably the same and if you charge enough money, it's a win-win for everybody involved.
The issue with a self-hosted widget is that the lawyer should have a pretty solid traffic to their website to get 5-10 answers in an hour.
Marketplaces like Justanswer handle the marketing part and bring audience.
True, but almost every lawyer has its own websites. It's like a mini startup minus "figuring out of a business model". On top of that, it should be our job to bring traffic or handle the marketing. It's all about bringing extra revenue and customers.
@oemerax how do you go about implementing something like intercom in the first place.
If its not to obvious, why not, but you are always dependent on them.
Also, each client has to pay intercom $49/month. Don't get me wrong I love Intercom, but thats not a good strategy.
I understand that aspect of not wanting to be dependent on intercom, what I meant was that what tech stack and what web architecture do you think you will need to build something like intercom and don't you think it will be very time consuming and complex to build.
Yes, it would be very time consuming. Therefore, talking to some lawyers or similiar first is really important. Afterwards, you can brainstorm about the tech stack. You can automate a lot of stuff with e. g. Stripe, though.
How would you start?
Yes I will absolutely talk to the lawyers first, as they determine the form and shape the project will take, but i will absolutely not rule out any tech stack for now, heck if intercom or drift is the quickest way to get up and running I will go with them, as I can always get rid of them down the line when my idea has been validated.
But then on second thought I doubt implementing your own intercom type tool from scratch will really be difficult enough to justify you having to depend on intercom, considering the massive amount of opensource tech and tech documentation out there that will quickly get you halfway done with your project.
The one thing which is a deal-breaker is, that the customer gets charged twice. Will have to check if thats ok. Do you know any other service such as intercom, but for free and with an api?
I sadly don't know if such an api service exists.
No worries, Smithmayowa. Thanks for all the comments!
The economics for professionals is to obtain recurrent clients. They’re not really interested in answering 5-10$ questions, especially given their websites do not really generate a sufficient flow of them.
Did you actually talk to your lawyer about that idea? From my experience with accountants and lawyers they hate small jobs.
Getting the first clients is always really hard. Especially when you are a new laywer. On top of that, you always "loose" client, as soon as the job is done. So most lawyers (freelancer, or 1-4 people at max) are searching for new clients. $5-$10 was just an example.
Yes, I did and he showed interest. Will meet him this or next week.
The product would be 1.) easier, 2.) faster 3) mobile first and a lot of people prefer chatting over talking on the phone.
Go for it. It will work. I have tax questions, legal questions and much more. You have your validation. Build. Send me link when you are done. I will be your first customer
Love it. Thanks so much bismich.
My thoughts:
In general there is a massive need for this and the tech ( technology) is highly fragmented. What I mean by that is there are companies that are already doing "micro questions", but tackling a very concentrated area (healthcare second opinions for example)
Incentive structure based communication is the future on the internet - no doubt. Earn.com is a good example that it works and I'm sure that will penetrate into all communication channels like chat / sms. We need to stabilize the blockchain infrastructure and tokens in order for this to get mass adoption.
Absolutely. Healthcare is a different animal.
Blockchain is the perfect use case for that.
Do it for developers, who are willing to write snippets of code in budget, in time. There is a lot of inexperienced developers who would like that, I guess.
Personally, I wouldn't see devs paying money for code snippets...
I agree Raz.
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My lawyer charges me for every minute he spends helping me whether he is helping me via email, phone, or in person.
The idea is similar to https://clarity.fm/ (an excellent service) it's a huge market, the challenge is having enough 'experts' in any given field. It's easier to market to a specific niche to prove your MVP - I'd try and laser your focus to a specific subset of legal or tax etc. (lease issues which you've already identified, traffic tickets, employee contracts etc) first then add other verticals as you identify where you can add value and solve friction.
Its not about aggregating experts on a site. Its more about users that are organically finding the website of the lawyer, for instance on Google and asking a micro question.
I jumped ahead 3 steps and was not helpful, sorry for that - what I meant was your are monetizing a conversation which is the same biz model as Clarity, the com channel is irrelevant could be sms, voice, chat, IM, video: realtime or scheduled on their site or yours. Clarity has a directory of experts but you have to recruit businesses to use your service and then onboard them to your platform (which is hard to scale) one thing that makes that initial marketing effort easier is if you streamline your focus on a subset of a particular vertical - a chatbot that on-boards and collects the relevant and thoughtful data for specific problem X, and then market to that micro-vertical with a best in class solution. The solution needs to present the pre-qualified and pre-paid client (if the interaction isn't pre-paid I don't think it works) to the expert professional for the micro-answer and follow up. If that makes any sense. I think your idea is really good but if the person already has a relationship with the expert (lawyer retainer example) then the problem you're trying to solve is a micro-billing issue with their accounting software not a micro-answer issue for a cursory interaction. Hope that is more helpful, good luck!
Do you have a user story in mind? And are willing to work on that project? I'm building a team and I like your clarity of thought.
Personally, I like the idea. It's something on the lines of https://www.codementor.io/ I guess if codementor can work, this can too.
For me, the best way to go about it would be to build a codeless/effortless/crude proof-of-concept and try it out with real lawyers, designers, coders, or consultants and then take it from there. User PayPal to transfer the money manually, then get on a chat/call with an expert to get answers to micro questions.
All the best!
Maybe not PayPal but Stripe :). Otherwise solid feedback Abhishek!
@oemerax just fyi& headsup wrt to Pricing. W3C is in the process of rolling out standard for seamless in browser support of transactions, called Payment Request API (more at https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/payments/), which might simplify billing per answer w/o monthly subscriptions (should help conversions). That's all down the road of course, but something that might be interesting past the validation/ proof stage.
Oh wow. Thanks dv8! Any idea when this is going to launch?
Well, based on W3C rollout schedule it is "Candidate Recommendation 27 August 2018" so I guess it is today) But that just a standard specs (when and if) it will be supported by the browsers (obviously Chrome has support of it) is an open question. Glad to be of help)
I would look at Firebase as a core technology for this. It is great for chat apps as the real-time data synchronization is built in. Great platform for rapid prototyping/mvps
Yes, 100%
I haven't checked if anything like this already exists, but I think it is a great idea.
However, you rely on people finding the website of a lawyer who happens to have your system installed. I'm not saying it's bad, but just something to consider.
For example, once you have a lawyer, he can provide an extra service of short question answering, which doesn't mean the general public is his or her target.
On the other hand a lawyer could leverage the service to gain visibility, but that would imply an aggregator of some kind, that deals with marketing and load balancing between people, etc.
You have to work hard on your value proposition and test it out with lawyers and customers. And then you can improve the businesses model to accommodate the feedback you received.
I really believe you can be onto something here.
I did and there is almost no one doing it. Competition is always a good sign, though. A lot of similiar ideas out in the wild.
Yes, we need to hire sales people. Once the word-of-mouth is happening, a lot of people will jump in. A referral program is also important.
Thanks Aquiles.
Why wont the lawyer just use intercom ?
Doesnt work. I am a lawyer myself, and the billing pattern generally works based on time. So depends how complicated your question is. So the process has to be: (a) tell me the question (b) I will estimate and tell you how much time it will take to answer and hence the price; (iii) You pay and I answer.
Outside of the startup world, nobody knows intercom. On top of that, its more of a customer releationship tool than anything else. Plus, you need to connect it to Stripe etc.
Do you track you visitors? How many do you loose on avg.? What are the most common question you get asked?
Edit: I like the onboarding idea. Will write it down.
I'd see the hardest part being covering different timezones and having multiple users handling the single chat widget. You'd need seperate shared inboxes perhaps with a first-come, first-served approach. Tracking payouts to professionals could also be a fun challenge. I hope you nail it!!
IMHO this is going to be a marketplace problem. Getting good quality lawyers that can be matched to the queries being asked by your customers. At least in the early days get a niche set of customers ( startup people ) for example and answer their queries.
It will not be a marketpalce Rahul. It more of a SaaS B2B business.
Challenge accepted! Thanks Rich :).
Go get em' I keep trying to tackle tricky problems like this because most people give up. Start lean with your optimism tank being 50% full of wanting to grow and 50% full of wanting to get a cheap education through what you'll learn 😉
wouldn't your lawyer bill you for their smallest block i.e. whatever their rate is for 30 mins even if they only spent 10. lawyers would probably see this as cutting into their money.
I dont think so. Instead of loosing a customer and money, you can charge via micro-transactions.
This is a fantastic idea. One suggestion that I have is not to market this as a one off micro transaction for the lawyer. The lawyer should consider this as a lead to acquire a new customer. The $5 or $10 is just an added bonus.
Regarding the technology, I would suggest creating a web widget and exposing it within the client website. That way it’s a simple integration for the clients and future enhancements can be made to the widget without changes to the client website.
Thanks wish33! Had the same thougths. Any recomm. about web widgets?
Any question that can’t be answered by a bot will require understanding, thinking, and liability. Not gonna happen for $20 (imho)
The pricing is set be the customer, in this case the lawyer.
Nice idea, you should talk to lawyers first to understand how to make it work on their side.
@raullopeztx mentioned a good reference. Good news as it validates that there is demand for it.
I would go for a niche: micro-questions about copyright, about taxes, etc. Focusing on the audience of the co-working space (freelancers?)
Already talked to one and he was very interested. We need to find a way to build this and implement it into the codebase of the customer.
+1 on focusing on the audience.
Hey @oemerax love the fact that you're using lawyers as an example. I've built Intake360 as a CRM for lawyers and law firms. Maybe one day we can collaborate on something for the legal industry. I like your idea. Maybe even expand to mobile apps using video call for the micro questions.
Would love to, Vez. My email address is in the profile description. Let's move this conversation to mail.
Two concerns:
This might be too little to get lawyers interested or at least quality lawyers.
Would this constitute legal advice if the lawyer is being paid for it? There are forums where lawyers are active and share their opinion but are not paid for it
laywers are just an example. It could be any service e. g. tax experts etc.
Depends on the lawyer, but I would guess, that 90% is not legal advice.
Makes sense. I can see the value in it. I would be happy to spend a few dollars and get professional advice from an accountant etc.
Good luck.
Thanks Salil!
It's not clear that lawyers will want to do any "work" for that low of a price.
If you think about it -- these guys are making like $200 an hour at least, so is the 5 minutes for $5 really worth it? $60 an hour.
And these guys probably also don't want to be sued, so they won't give you "true" legal advice unless you enter some agreement with them. So sounds like a hard sell.
The pricing is just an example. If I have an important question, and it will get answered instantly, I would pay $50, $70 or $100.
Lawyers basically exchange money for expertise/know-how. Why only pay for complex issues?
How long does it take them to make that $60 / hr? With this service, they can answer 100 questions / hr so the $5 becomes ($500)
How will they answer 100 questions / hr? Each question may take 5 minutes or so to answer at best, so they'll only be able to answer 12 per hour. That's $60 per hour.
That if they are answering the questions themselves. You can program bots with some questions that have already been answered. Again, we are testing the idea - 100 questions / hr is arbitrary as the $5 / question. I think it should me more than $5
The pricing was just an example and nothing fix. Well, if you can answer it within a few mins and charge. Why not? The bar is set vay to high for the customer, if he/she wants to hire a laywer.
This will work. Target new grad lawyers from top school or else with a good reputation. Think about the design , the process and the implementation. If you need a co-founder ping me bis4tips@hotmail.com