2,231 karma · joined August 12, 2009
We are just solving for the filtration and letting people figure out the fit.
But, you make a good point, in the videos I try to point this out but we could do better. Where could I add this to make this more clear?
IMO Amazon is convenient, but this is your health and it's worth an extra step.
We are now removing the subjective feedback and only talking objectively:
1) Does the mask pass the claimed PFE (particulate filtration efficiency) standard that it claims to pass?
2) Does the mask pass the claimed breathability (as stated in the standard they are claiming, ie N95, KN95, surgical)?
3) Does the mask meet other parts of the standard?
KN95, N95, KF94, Surgical, FFP2 and others all have hundreds of pages of standards that they have to meet. Most people don't know what these are but we make masks so I've read all of the standards.
Most masks or respirators fail in #3 and we are working on being specific as to why those are failing but we have about 400 masks posted and the notations are being transposed as I write.
The heavy lift we are doing here is around our particulate filtration efficiency test in which we do either the NIOSH N95 NaCL (0.3 micron) test or the ASTM 0.1 micron latex particle test.
I'd love HN feedback on how we improve the interface and make this a true resource for people.
Disclaimer: Yes, I'm a mask manufacturer and that's how I justify keeping all of this equipment up to spec, but I'm not big enough to make all of the masks for the world so I'd rather people find a good mask than just use my mask.
Any feedback is appreciated.
I think they are just bad at sales.
We have government and hospital contracts. But, we are really good at sales. My team is really good at sales. Previously, My President and head of sales ran a medical sales division at a company with 300 sales people. We have about 17 sales folks. And we wouldn't be thriving without that team.
They also might not be great at manufacturing.
There stuff is really expensive. They are selling an ASTM Level 3 mask for $37.5 + $8 Shipping! That's $0.90 a mask delivered.
https://shop.demetech.us/collections/surgical-mask-astm-leve...
I can buy a Chinese made ASTM Level 3 masks delivered for $0.18 FROM CHINA.
How can they win charging 5 times more? Because "America"? That argument is many a 3x multiple :)
If I were to guess by looking at all their photos, it looks they have a very manual process for making masks and packing masks. We've had to semi automate the packaging process to survive (which no one else has done). When we fully automated it later this year we will be able to sell our masks much much cheaper than China can.
Our masks sell between $0.20 - $0.59 which is still too high, but all of our margins go directly into investing in the product.
And yes, we could ship 1mm easily. We have shipped 10MM in one day. The issue would be booking the LTL (1mm is only about half a truck) which would take several days to arrange right now.
But they would be pallet wrapped and labeled that day.
When a hospital wants to buy from Armbrust, we send them to our shopify store, they can put in a PO and we ship same day. It's like bringing the internet to a world that's been using fax machines to communicate.
The short version is that we work with small newspapers, and small newspapers sometimes like the idea of working with people from Austin instead of San Francisco. (Yes, I realize how crazy that sounds.)
It also suits me better personally, and it seems to be easier to raise a relatively large (and young) family.
I made a go of it in the valley for a year, and it was a lot of fun, but we're happy to be a part of the Austin Tech community now.
Rhodes and Marshall have specific requirements, even your job hire probably had requirements (high-school education, must be able to lift 30 lbs).
That's what makes YC so amazing... anyone, anywhere, can apply.
Spending time thinking about our business for us included talking to customers and asking hard questions. Only after understanding our customers could we build anything at all--for an enterprise product like ours, it's impossible to iterate in a vacuum.
Working on your company should always be the answer, but before we could ship code, we needed to know where we were going.
As PG points out, "The biggest mistake founders make when applying is to confuse us. Half the time when I'm reading an application I'm thinking 'I have no idea what this person is even talking about.' I suspect this often the writer's own confusion showing through."¹
Trying to explain our very-difficult model helped us to both understand it and define for ourselves.
Admittedly, it was a bit weird to just start making money without knowing where the future of the company was going. The YC app itself forced us to talk through these things; but maybe this problem is unique to our company.
I think it's way more than serendipity. I think the YC staff is extremely good at identifying where good teams and good products meet.
Our application process helped hone and focus our business in ways that nothing else has. I would argue that working hard on your YC application is working hard on your company.
As you've pointed out twice (#2,#3), there are always exceptions to rules.
If a company does not make it past a YC interview, then there was something that YC didn't like... it can only help that company to try to extract that issue and deal with it early on.
Apologies if you felt mislead. LMK a better title and ill change it. Also, I hope there's plenty of stuff in there that demonstrates how to write a good application.
Plus, being two guys from the Midwest, we really didn't know what we were doing. After YC, our path was much clearer.
Smaller the market; better the brand. No one else has this and that's what Buffet is buying.
If I'm a local SMB in a small town, chances are that I'm not going to trust some big company with my SEM, SEO, retargeting, and Facebook ads. If local papers can offer these services, they can win local in aggregate better than any other company.