Turning bar queues into live data people will trade for a free drink
Real-time wait times across a city of venues, with a rewards loop that gave patrons a reason to contribute the data the product ran on.
This file is a scaffold, not a finished case study. The framing below came from the previous hrzntech.com site. Everything marked TODO needs your account of what actually happened.
The problem
A wait-time product has a cold-start problem shaped like a chicken and an egg. The data is only worth checking once enough venues are covered, and venues are only worth covering once people check. Most products in this category die in that gap, having solved the engineering and not the incentive.
What we did
TODO: how the rewards loop was designed, and what it was trying to buy. Was the free drink paying for data, for retention, or for venue buy-in? Those are three different products, and the distinction is the interesting part.
What changed
TODO: adoption, venue coverage, whatever you can defend. If it did not work, that is a publishable case study too, and often a more persuasive one for the kind of founder you now want to reach.
What we would do differently
TODO, optional. One paragraph.