Ask HN: Help validating my startup, goowi.net

I am having a hard time speaking to your business model because I don't quite get what you are doing. I believe somehow you would like to help my business to allow my customers to donate funds to charity through me somehow? As a business I would have a number of issues that would need to be addressed.

First, you name off quite a few statistics and have no sources cited for those statistics. You also post other big brand names in a quite large block under your youtube video player. Do these companies work with you? Are they onboard? I would guess they aren't, or you wouldn't be asking us to validate your startup; it would already be validated. Are these socially conscious companies? Maybe, but I don't get it.

Second, as a business, I have no idea what I am signing up to do. Must I pledge a certain amount of money to any random cause my customer wants to put the money towards? Is there a tax advantage? Is there a liability on me because my donated business money does not go to an actual charity due to an error or omission? Many "youth soccer teams" take donations but are not tax exempt and the filing becomes and interesting problem. What if, as an organization, we don't agree with every charity in the world and only want our donations to go to certain charities?

Third, what is your part and benefit in this? Are you a 501(c)(3) United States Federally exempt charitable organization yourself? I highly doubt this, as I have started 2 charitable organizations and they aren't easy to get set up. If you are a for profit (or even a non-profit 501(c)(3)) organization and you take my organizations money and use a portion of it yourself and then pass the rest on to charity, do I get a tax advantage? How do I explain that properly to my accountant? Am I really being charitable and socially conscious? What portion goes to you for development and what part goes to charity? You could say "a truly charitable and socially conscious organization wouldn't worry about details like tax filing and advantages." I wish we didn't have to think about these things, but the IRS is a cruel mistress and because of our fiduciary duty to our organizations we must all answer to IRS rules.

The list can keep on going, unfortunately.

As for the site itself, it loads very slowly. There are a lot of spinning gifs while your logo and your "big block of corporate logos" load. The wording is difficult to read. Other than the very nicely made video, I am afraid this looks like a corporate email fishing scheme. I don't mean to be rude, but I am involved with an organization with a very high charitable dollar count and I would have a hard time signing up on your site.

I think you're on to a winner with regards identifying a pain point for people in terms of dealing with the numerous charities, people, and organisations who request/solicit money from them. But does this product not just add one more channel that they then have to deal with? Because I'm someone who has the problem you highlighted, I was nodding along with the video on your website. But then I realised it doesn't solve my problem because it doesn't reduce the number of existing channels I already deal with. It is actually changing my problem from n to n+1.

The Goowi platform looks to add value to businesses as opposed to individuals. And like your video says "businesses aren't people" which means they don't have pain points, they just have a profit margin. So if your product increases that profit margin by increasing sales sufficiently through perceived social responsibility then you're looking at a viable customer base.

Things I'd point out though are that this platform is going to compete with existing loyalty schemes that put money back in peoples pocket as opposed to having them give it to a charity. For certain demographics the charity angle could work better than a loyalty scheme. With loyalty schemes the pay back is generally pretty low but consumers don't mind because they get something free. The cash equivalent of this going to a charity might not seem like a whole lot of money under the cold light of day. Also as with loyalty schemes certain people (like me) dislike the lock-in nature and hassle of such schemes. I prefer companies that give back without making a song and dance about it or companies that are inherently socially responsible.

To bring it back to the video. I don't think your helping Nicole, your just helping the business and Nicole is a means to an end. I'm not criticising that, I'm just saying that's how I see it.

Finally, and I'm sure you given this thought, providing the platform as a white label product would look like the best course because Nicole needs to see Company X providing the money going to charities and not Goowi.