How far along are you?
We have early traction and early revenue with our web based minimal MVP – and a “Bright as the Sun” vision of what we need to build next as our Mobile App. We also have GREAT enthusiasm & support from our users… In fact the USD 50K we raised so far mostly came from our early users who fell in love with the project. Strangers found the opportunity, filled out a form, signed the YC SAFE digitally and wired the money – most of them we never even met in person. Last but not least: we have success onboarding partners to our MVP, which proves that we are solving real pain points community leaders and influencers have. — HISTORY: We launched Humania MVP on 19th May, 2024 in a closed (not advertised) beta, with about 100 people, whom we invited via targeted comms… they liked it very much, used it as intended. And then the magic started happening: they came with ideas, and we had regular “epiphanies” talking to them in interviews we are continually leading. Then we kept toiling away building the features we saw we needed (mini courses called “Challenges”, co-ownerhip for Groups, etc.), and „soft opened” the MVP in October, 2024 for a wider audience. Still… to learn from their usage. Next breakthrough was the realization of a need for an AI chatbot feature for experts to offer their artificial version (based on TXT from books, blogs, videos). We rolled it out in Dec., 2024 – any user or community can now haven an Ai chatbot on Humania. Then we discovered that people try to contact each other for Dating. (They used consulting requests to get through to each other). So we added Relationship Status and filtering in February. The new Dating features skyrocketed incoming interest, and boosted Retention. Thus we pivoted in the recent weeks from mentoring to Dating first. Instead of just mentoring we became The platform for “Contacting New People You Should Know – for Dating, Friendship, Mentoring, Community – for free or for money”. – NEXT STEP: We need funding for our Dating focused mobile App based on our great success with Dating in the web based MVP. 1. We build a professional New App based on the learnings of the MVP where the 3 distant use cases will be separated while keeping them drive usage from the surface (Dating) towards Personal Development, and then Communities. 2. the Dating section of the new UI will resemble a dating platform much more, but your first impression from another person will not just be a picture and some general (bullshit) text, but something Brave he/she shared (we will show the experience card most people validated). 3. we want to evolve our AI chat feature to also propose Dates & Mentors, after each conversation with a user (based on the contents of the conversation as well as experience cards shared and past interests recorded). – CURRENT FEATURE SET: Our web based MVP enables people to 1. post „experience cards” of challenges they have solved on their profiles (successes they have achieved, adversities they have solved, that can be of use to others) 2. set relationship status and search based on relationship status 3. earn „credibility tags” by validation from 2 other members, who testify, that the experience I shared is of value to them (thereby making me credible) 4. give conditions for stragners to contact them 1on1 (for free or for money – in person or via telephone, Zoom, messaging, etc.) 5. launch IRL groups (mastermind groups, personal development groups, man groups, female circles, business dinners, AA groups, etc.) 6. manage their groups (number of places, gender limitations, waiting list, recurring events, message to members/applicants, reminder before the event) 7. have personal AI chatbot on their profile 8. offer challenges to others (mini online courses of things one should experience) 9. show other users as personal mentor on their profile & appear on Mentor’s page 10. show their mentees and personal feedbacks on their profile 11. have easy link to propagate: humania.me/username 12. see map view of users and groups Partners can 1. have Communities with monthly membership fees 2. these communities can offer: – AI chatbot – IRL groups – challenges (online courses) 3. show map of their community members and groups – GTM SUCCESS: Our GTM with the present MVP is B2B. Our main personas are: 1. personal development schools, for mentoring network and dating, 2. influencers with large following but no community, to launch a community 3. opinion leaders unable to handle incoming request for advice to show personal mentees. We put together a Partner Program and it works surprisingly well (our sexy AI Chatbot helps a LOT) – we are in the process of onboarding partner communities in our pilot market (among them: Club for Men, Boyscouts, Alpha Christian Community & others).
How long have each of you been working on this? How much of that has been full-time? Please explain.
First version of the idea (and the name Humania) came to me (Istvan) in 2015, while on our honeymoon in Sicily. Then for years I wanted it to also a social platform, where people mostly interact online (like Mighty Networks or Discord) – I even built a proof of concept using Mighty and WordPress and WooCommerce. (It had 1500+ paying customers, and a 66% NPS.) Then we started talking with Gábor & Co (the Dev Team), we even did a thorough planing, yet we could not shift gears for another year… Eventually a sentence cleared the fog: BE THE LINK PEOPLE POST ON THEIR COMMUNITY PAGES! – and we started working in earnest in 2023. Part time still. 2024 we spent experimenting & learning, then „the great pivot” came towards dating early 2025. – Now I – Istvan – am (almost) full time: working on product (testing & features), customer relations, GTM. Gabor and team are building Humania part time for now while they also make money as “developers for hire”. Investment is the key for them to build Humania full time. János, our COO is the „newbie” in the team. We met on an Alpha event 2 months ago, and then he entered the picture as an investor 1 month ago. Since then we discovered that our worldview is the same and we have the same goals, that we can best further through building Humania together.
What tech stack are you using, or planning to use, to build this product?
MVP: We are using Next.js and deploy our platform to Vercel. We use Postgresql for database, React Email for emails, Mapbox for maps, and Stripe for payment processing. App: React Native, Next.js
Are people using your product?
Yes
How many active users or customers do you have? How many are paying? Who is paying you the most, and how much do they pay you?
We have: – 1,124 signups in the MVP – they shared 606 experience cards – 467 are paying customers Last 3 months Retention is: 74.55% Gross income so far: $2,242 (GMV) Top paying customers: – Hajnalka – $197.86 – György – $107.25 – Dóri – $93.12 – Szitás Anita – $88.54 They spent the money on membership fees, and courses.
Where does your revenue come from? If your revenue comes from multiple sources (e.g., multiple products, multiple companies or a mix of consulting and this product), please break down how much is coming from each source.
We keep 15% transaction fee from transactions between our members (one time consultations, monthly support subscriptions, group memberships, community memberships & AI chatbot subscriptions) – and 30% on online courses. (Transaction fees on 1to1 consultation we have not yet imlpelemented, these escape us at present.)
Anything else you would like us to know regarding your revenue or growth rate?
1. We are at an MVP, our main purpose so far was testing features and willingness to pay – not revenue. 2. We started onboarding partners in March with our new AI chatbot feature, revenue will meaningfully jump in April even with this MVP 3. Our MVP can only handle membership fees and online courses – it does not yet handle consultation type transactions between users 4. Our real growth (thereby revenue) potential will only show once our „dating first” new mobile App is launched
If you are applying with the same idea as a previous batch, did anything change? If you applied with a different idea, why did you pivot and what did you learn from the last idea?
A LOT has changed… 1. Dating came in as a new feature and strong growth driver. People register for dating, stay for personal development to be ready for a relationship (and community.) 2. We pivoted towards Dating. We are no longer a mentor platform, but platform to connect „New people you should know”– our new App will be „dating first, mentoring second” 3. AI chatbot service is a new feature to lure in experts, community leaders and influencers, who onboard their community to use chatbot, form groups, facilitate dating. 4. We have a new Partner Program to onboard communities efficiently (even now, our MVP is string enough for communities to want use it). 5. our COO has arrived – materialized 🙂 –, with Janos Ratkay, who also invested 15K of his own money.
If you have already participated or committed to participate in an incubator, „accelerator” or „pre-accelerator” program, please tell us about it.
Have not.