I just had a coffee with Mei and Bill, two passionate students who are on fire about their new startup idea. It’s past the “napkin-sketch” stage with a rough minimum viable product and about 100 users.

I thought they had a great insight about an application space others had previously tried to crack. But they needed to convince investors that they are Facebook not Friendster.

Mei and Bill are building a better version of an on-demand help service like TaskRabbit. And “better” doesn’t do it justice. They have a unique insight about the nature of interactions between customers and service providers I have never heard before. If they are correct, they’ve found a unique combination of customers and value proposition that will make these customers want to immediately pay and repeatably engage. The early indication from their minimum viable product is that they have found signs of product/market fit. Even more interesting, their product might have a much higher initial order size and much greater lifetime value than existing on-demand help services.

All good. So what was the problem they wanted to meet with me about?