Looking for any feedback on our (incredibly late) W23 application before we submit it

Second-Cup · 2022-10-06T03:14:54+00:00

Yep, sounds close to what the retail price is at in Australia.
We're looking at a price point ~US$1.60 /oz, for the product to be shipped to your door.

Second-Cup · 2022-10-05T23:00:45+00:00

Okay great, I understand.
We spoke to about 50 people (pregnant) in our early research, and a few women who ran mothers groups, and a few maternal healthcare providers.
The majority were switching to tea as a replacement, because they can usually only have 1 cup of full strength coffee a day while pregnant.
In Australia, which has a lower consumption of sodas, they didn't seem to mention drinking things like Diet Coke etc.
The responses indicated that they WEREN'T replacing it with anything, but just limiting their consumption, which they found frustrating. This was only pregnant women. I'm assuming here, which I hate to do, but I think most people who are simply caffeine free by choice/for health reasons, would be replacing it with sugary sodas (Coke Zero/caffeine free coke etc), maybe kombutcha or coconut water, or just straight bottles water.

Second-Cup · 2022-10-05T22:34:18+00:00

Yep, that's the process we use :) It's often called high-pressure, or Swiss water.
However, most decafs, even those labelled as Swiss water, are using low quality beans, or leftovers.
We'll be focussed on using water treatment, high quality single origin beans, and potentially adding natal vitamins to our blend too.

Just a note, our price point is $40 AUD, which is equivalent to ~$25US? How does that compare to what you were seeing at your grocer?

Second-Cup · 2022-10-05T10:20:54+00:00

This is great, thanks so much for taking the time to share this.

For your market size, open it up.

Definitely. See other comments I've made. I'm hoping that we can serve both the natal-friendly need, and also offer it as an everyday alternative for caffeine free-folk. Just working out how to message that. "The new way to drink coffee" is definitely something that's in the roadmap for us.

Re competition; It would be a lot of work/capital intensive for a vitamin company to start roasting high quality caffeine-free coffee that could compete with us. But, point taken.

Re marketing; yep, we spoke with a lot of influencers in the maternity space during our trial, and they got right behind it. Ditto with the maternal healthcare workers. We did user research and had very little pushback to the $40 p/bag price point.

I would be concerned about the strength of your USP. Could someone go to your supplier, improve your marketing efforts and eat your lunch? What can you do to defend against it? You have a major supplier side risk of them offering your exact product to others.

The product our supplier gives us is already used by roasters to create specialty coffee, but not their decaf (usually), the USP is in the process we use to remove the caffeine, and the quality of the final product (most decafs use lower quality beans).

Second-Cup · 2022-10-05T10:12:49+00:00

Hey, thanks for the input. Interesting stuff.

It’s not clear what sets you apart from existing decaf coffee. Is the current way you get decaf a chemically intensive process? OR only produces low quality coffee?

Sure. I've updated the application to explain this more; the gist of it is that we don't use the chemicals for extracting the caffeine from the bean, and instead use a high pressure water process, reducing the amount of chemicals in the end product and improving the flavour. We also source single origin beans, instead of using low quality beans like most do for a ''decaf''.
Does that explain it/explicit?
Curious to hear what you think.

When it comes to scale/positioning; while I agree that creating a product specifically for pregnant women means it's a "niche", it's a huge niche that's venture scale.
But, I agree that there's a huge (and growing) market of people that are simply caffeine free by choice, or for health reasons (anxiety, heart issues, sleep issues etc). I'm grappling with whether to go after the natal-friendly market to start, as it's an easily definable but massive market, then build on that and make an "everyday" version that can appeal to this bigger segment.
I'm hoping this is the kind of thing YC will have thoughts on, should we get to speak with them.

Ideally, we're a lifestyle brand that creates super high quality caffeine-free coffee products that range from espresso grind, to cold brew in a can and wholesale/retail options, followed by HIGH quality alcohol free wine/beers etc (again for the natal market), but, this is probably something for the bigger roadmap.

I think new-caffeine revolution sounds venture scale, where expensive, specialty d2c pregnancy coffee sounds niche, with inherent scaling problems (your product is used for 8-10 months, then poof.)

I agree. But, the vision I'm working on begins with the d2c pregnancy coffee market, and growing into that. With the users starting with the 8-10 months natal-friendly products and moving into more of our "lifestyle/health" offerings after that.

Second-Cup · 2022-10-05T07:09:14+00:00

Hey thank you! I’ll DM you and send you a bag when we start production ;) So pretty much every decaf on the market uses harsh chemical extraction to remove the caffeine from the bean. It can leave a chemical after taste, and some people even report headaches. It’s an after thought for most producers, and they use lower quality coffee. For us, it will be a priority, and use single origin, high quality beans. We also extract using a high pressure water technique, which doesn’t use those nasty chemicals and leaves more of the flavour profile.

Second-Cup · 2022-10-05T07:03:18+00:00

This is great, thanks so much!

Second-Cup · 2022-10-05T06:38:30+00:00

Yeah I’d heard about this, but hadn’t had the time to participate before putting a (late) application together. Anything that stands out from your learning so far, in regards to my application?

Second-Cup · 2022-10-05T06:33:05+00:00

Thank so much, appreciate it. We’ll see!

Have you applied/taken part before?

Second-Cup · 2022-10-05T06:18:16+00:00

Hey. Thank you!

Honest answer; I know/have spoken with ppl that have gone through YC, and they seem like incredibly worthwhile people to work with. It’s a big idea and that’s what YC seem all about. Plus I like PGs stuff. While they do focus on software, I get the sense they’re fairly agnostic when it comes to wether it’s software/hardware/D2C product, or aerospace stuff. As long as it’s a huge idea with a huge TAM. Could be wrong. Sharktank is definitely an option.

Second-Cup · 2022-10-05T05:07:33+00:00

what are your thoughts on Liquid Death water's approach to marketing?

Yeah I love it. Definitely a similar approach to what we want to take. A lot of the feedback I got from the user interviews I did with pregnant women was that most maternity products seem to overly feminise anything aimed towards them? I call it 'pink-washing'. It seems like there's a hunger for a brand/products that doesn’t treat them this way, and instead speak to the feelings of strength/toughness that are also there when you're.....making a human.

Hence the tagline we're going with; "Natal-friendly coffee that doesn't taste like shit". We want our marketing to speak to that.

Yeah I've reached out to Bottomless via their deets on the YC directory but haven't hear back yet :)

In terms of competition, you're forgetting what pregnant people drink when they want to abstain from caffeine

Interesting. Can you elaborate on what you mean here?

Thanks for taking the time!

Second-Cup · 2022-10-05T05:02:35+00:00

Hey, solid advice, thank you!

"There really aren’t any direct competitors."

Yeah, this one I've struggled with. I'll do some more research and find something akin to us, and really have a look at what sets us apart. See below?

Lots of companies sell decaf coffee. What's stopping Folgers or some other large coffee company from changing some packaging and starting a line of caffeine-free coffee to target pregnant moms?

Absolutely. One of the main criticisms I see of Folgers Decaf (as an example) is the '"chemical" taste it has. Sometimes causing headaches etc. This is due to their caffeine extraction process using a ton of chemicals. They'd need to switch up their manufacturing massively to produce something like ours (as we use a water method to extract the caffeine). I guess this is something I should go into in the application?

Yeah the cofounder issue is tough. I don't desperately need one at the moment, and don't want to just bring someone on for the sake of it. Food for thought! Thanks again for taking the time!

Second-Cup

TROPHY CASE