Put another way "Hire for strength not lack of weakness."
Put yet another way, the strengths can yield asymmetric upside, while the weaknesses, if truly known and not deal-breakers, could have limited downsides, especially if it's a weakness like "doesn't have x years of experience"
Hey HN! We’re Daniel and Arjun, founders of StandardCode (http://www.standardcode.io/). We make it easy for companies to comply with child data privacy laws such as COPPA and GDPR by providing APIs for collecting parental consent and ID verification of minors.
COPPA regulation makes it difficult for companies to cater to children under 13 without building in safeguards to collect and manage parental consent and to block third-party sharing of data without transparency. As a result most companies just prohibit users under 13 from signing up for their services, either as a policy or by having an age gate that prevents an under-13 child from signing up.
However, with a record number of under-13 users on the internet due to the pandemic, behavior is permanently shifting and many companies now want to cater to all audiences. By providing APIs to manage the collection of consent, we allow companies to safely acquire underage users while minimizing friction in the sign-up flow.
Our customer-facing REST API presents a few high-level resources that are needed for collecting parental consent and ID verification for children. Customers typically make 1 API call to create a profile for a child, and then 2–3 more calls to collect parental consent or verify age and ID if necessary. Afterwards, we push data to a webhook endpoint to notify the customer when consent has been collected or an ID has been verified.
Our business model is based on usage — we charge a small fee per user for whom we need to collect parental consent or verify age and ID.
We'd love to hear from you, especially if you have experience with products catering to children!
You mention COPPA and GDPR but which country regulation do you cover (and in which language?). How do you ensure that the Parents giving consent are the parent of the child (and that you are not getting spoof?). How do you keep up with the changing regulations, with some country having multiple layers (Union, Federal, State, City, ...).
I like the focus on Childs, but you could also extend it to do KYC for financial institutions, the market may need a cheap and reliable solution.
thank you! We’re starting out of the gate with COPPA and will fast-follow with GDPR so we currently cover the United States (in English).
re: spoofing. this is a tough problem to solve and no existing solution guarantees this. we would be able to see suspicious behavior though like multiple verification attempts, time between submission and verification, etc.
Changing regulations is tough. We work with a privacy lawyer to keep us abreast of changing policy and have researchers maintain a database of applicable state, federal, and international laws as well as recent lawsuits.
Financial KYC is interesting for sure. Right now we’re focused on child privacy and very much believe there’s a lot of work to be done there still.
Honestly, this is great. So many applications do this poorly if at all and COVID has not helped the situation. I do wonder about compliance across state/national lines.
thanks! the laws do change across country lines. while we’re focused on the U.S. right now, we’re actively researching applicable laws in other jurisdictions.
Great to see innovation in this space. How does your service compare to offerings like those from PRIVO? Something we get a lot of value out of is their review of whether our practices are compliant (and if not, how to achieve it - all done in the design phase of new features etc) on top of offering a widget for verifiable parental consent. Is this something you also offer?
thanks! so far the companies we’ve talked to are delaying full-blown reviews as long as possible because of the stage of company they’re in.
We certainly do work very closely with each company to work through their product and integrate as seamlessly as possible. whereas we don’t offer an official security review as of now, it is something we’re considering for the future. would love to chat, DMing you now!
congrats on the launch! this is a really neat implementation and i'm a big fan of honey as well. really slick.
quick note. may want to clean up the testimonials. all 3 are 5 stars, have 3.4k cred, and were posted 2 hrs ago. coincidence or not, comes across as a bit fake.
I was JUST talking about how I wish it was easier to collect customer insights and share them out more broadly in internal newsletters. Kudos. Nailed a serious serious pain point.
What's the service? If it's a local one, you're way better off doing it in a market that you are familiar with (your hometown). Not sure what you really mean by "not known for startups" and that shouldn't matter. If your app provides a useful service, people will use it.
There are many other unknowns launching in a city you are entirely unfamiliar with, especially if you have to move there.
It comes back to what the app actually does. Do you have to be in the city to launch it? Is there an offline component of it? If the answer is yes, stay home.
Congratulations on the launch. This is a rare instance where the combination of cost, technology, and ease of use makes this solution 10x better than the status quo and a no-brainer.
How extensible is this to other tests? Is it just a matter of pilots and trials or are there certain tests that are too sensitive for computer vision to reliably assess?
What % of the diagnostics market is urine-based versus blood-based?
This is great! This is sort of like how Clear brokers deals with airports to expedite security, except for more interesting and complicated airport processes.
Could have used this coming back from Rome to the United States via Spain. Ended up going through customs 4 times just to make a transfer.
Curious how difficult it was to do this for 500+ airports so quickly, especially since you're a private company and operating beyond security gates in an era of permanently heightened security.
Thanks! You're spot on about the difference between us and Clear. It sounds like you had a tiring customs experience on your trip from Rome to the USA!
It wasn't easy to launch in 500 airports. Through a ton of research and work, we were able to partner with many companies and individuals who had the appropriate access at each airport. The key for us was that we wanted to create the one trusted, consistent place book this service.
Clear is an awesome service, but their strategy/service is a bit different than ours.
We provide you with a dedicated agent/problem solver (pun intended) that takes you from curb to gate and gate to curb. We're also really helpful on international trips where there are language barriers and insanely long immigrations/customs lines.
We also make sure you're safely off in your vehicle when you exit the airport and your'e not getting ripped off on a taxi or car. For example, in places like Mexico City or Beijing you're swarmed by drivers trying to get you in their car as soon as you exit the airport.
Put another way "Hire for strength not lack of weakness." Put yet another way, the strengths can yield asymmetric upside, while the weaknesses, if truly known and not deal-breakers, could have limited downsides, especially if it's a weakness like "doesn't have x years of experience"