[Top Builder 2024]: Dylan (LunchMoney_R2)

[dylanbathurst]

🏗️ Top Builder 2024 Application Form to track progress through Round 1 - 3 ~ Currently in Round 1

📝 Instructions

1. Only complete this form if you have been chosen for Top Builder, by PlebLab.
2. Provide detailed information to assist the judges in evaluating your project.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The Team

• Team Name: LunchMoney
• Number of Founders: 1
• Team Background: I am Dylan Bathurst and I am a software engineer and second time founder with 1 exit to eBay under. I started my career doing frontend development at Zappos.com in 2008, and have worked at many different companies over the last 16 years; ranging from ecommerce and marketplaces, to mobile and SaaS companies. In 2017 I decided to pivot my career to bitcoin and have worked at companies like Purse.io and Blockchain.com since. I have the technical, marketing, and business experience to create a company that can scale technically and also reach millions of people.
• Bitcoin & Lightning Involvement: I have been in and around the bitcoin/lightning space since 2017. I was the sole frontend dev on the blockchain.com exchange for a year after it went live. Scaling GMV $0 to 8 figures. I also spent the next 2 years working on on and off/ramps for bitcoin in the blockchain.com self custodial wallet. I've primarily used LND to implement various side projects in order to test what can be done with lightning/bitcoin payments on the internet.
• Origin Story: While working at Purse.io I started to think more like a bitcoiner and while implementing Google analytics into our product (which I had done many times before at other companies) I thought, instead of collecting all this data from users in the background without them knowing, what if we paid them for this data? Also, bitcoin/lightning would be the most seamless way to go about paying these users for this data. That was the basis for the idea of LunchMoney.

💡 The Idea

• Project Overview: LunchMoney is a browser extension and set of libraries that allows users to sell their demographic information directly to websites they visit. It allows websites to implement libraries that can pay and use demographic information from website visitors to customize their website to first time visitors.
• Website: https://www.getlunchmoney.com/ (work in progress)
• GitHub: https://github.com/dylanbathurst/lm-extension
• Project Stage: There is an MVP version of the extension on github.
• Supplementary Materials: https://www.loom.com/share/0087236f59504ed39ea444b87b76cd79 https://www.loom.com/share/6b9619f06f054da29a8062db6ac89f71

📚 Additional Information

• Additional Links/Info:

📌 Submission Type

• [x] Initial Project Creation

🚀 Current Project Progress

• Progress Made: Extension built, integration with LND
• Challenges Faced: full data flow testing from paying customer to end user payout.
• Future Roadmap of what's next: Release a production level MVP of the extension and library for website owners.

⏳ Round 1 Milestone

• Keep in mind that completion will need to be by February 10th, 2024.
• First-round milestone the team has set for themselves: To get a fully functional extension submitted to the chrome web store for review. This will enable me to start getting user installs which will help as a selling point to onboard websites.

📝 Submission Complete

• All required information has been provided above.

📅 Top Builder Program Structure

Registration Opens: Monday, December 18, 2023

• Application: Interested teams apply for Top Builder.
• Selection: Teams will be chosen based on their application. See FAQ for details.

Round 1: January 13 - February 10, 2024

• Workshops: PlebLab weekly workshops start, available live and online.
• Chat Access: Selected teams join the PlebLab internal chat.
• Mentorship: Begins for teams.
• Project Milestones: Teams are set and judged on their first-round milestones.

Round 2: February 10 - 24, 2024

• Team Reduction: PlebLab cuts half of the Top Builder teams. (Only half continued in Round 2.)
• Project Milestones: Teams are set and judged on their second-round milestones.
• Workshops: PlebLab weekly workshops continue.
• Mentorship: Continues.

Round 3: Starting February 24, 2024

• Team Reduction: PlebLab narrows down to 6 Top Builder teams. (All will be pitching in Austin.)
• Final Milestones: Teams set final project milestones for the last round.
• Preparation: Teams prepare their pitch in front of judges. Final teams are contacted to come to Austin for Startup Day.

Final Round at Startup Day: March 14, 2024

• Preparation: Teams work on their final pitches at PlebLab.
• Presentations: Final teams present before judges on Startup Day.
• Deliberation: Judges decide during a happy hour.
• Announcement: The winner of Top Builder is announced at Austin BitDevs.
• Celebration: After-party for Top Builder.

[dylanbathurst]

Week 3

I've continued to build out the functionality on across the extension for user, the library for businesses, and the chrome web store submission.

Extension

• [x] Connect to local regtest lightning node
• [x] get node's info, balances, and invoice
• [x] refresh balances/invoices
• [ ] generate new invoice and hand off to website to be paid (partially done)
• [ ] recognized the invoice is paid, and hand off user demographics to the business.

Business library

• [x] Checks for the window.LunchMoney (webln like) provider for interfacing with a user's lightning node.
• [x] Requests for user's node to generate an invoice and asks for all user demographics.
• [ ] Requests for user's node to generate an invoice for a subset of user demographics.
• [x] Ability to receive an invoice, and pay it programmatically
• [ ] Receive user demographics after paying an invoice and customizing the user experience with the data

Chrome web store submission

• [x] Uploaded initial image assets required for web store listing
• [x] Linked getlunchmoney.com to store listing
• [x] Added title/description to listing
• [ ] Create and link terms of service and privacy policy
• [ ] Create and upload final alpha release code bundle

Struggles

• The amount of obscure message passing needed in chrome extensions is difficult to maintain
• Getting errors when trying to generate an invoice from the chrome extension.

Wins

• Have gained much more familiarity with LND node/invoice apis and how they work.

[dylanbathurst]

⏳ Round 2 Milestone

• Keep in mind that completion will need to be by February 24th, 2024.
• Second-round milestone the team has set for themselves:

Browser Extension

• Submit extension to the chrome web store.
• Flesh out market rate for requested data. (ex. requesting for a users email, name, and age will generate an invoice for a higher amount of sats than if you request only the user's age.)
• Polish styles for the popup and options page

Website demo

• Add mock shopping items to the demo page
• Create toggle to show shopping items a user will see when LM is turned off, then what they'll see when it's on.

Business feedback

• Take marketing feedback from meeting with Brian from Wolf to get the value prop for users and businesses across better.
• Get feedback from 3 bitcoin related businesses about the concept

[dylanbathurst]

Route 2 Update

Browser Extension

• [x] Extension submitted and just approved in the Chrome Web Store!!!
• [x] Added ability to request different amounts of data from a user at different sat rates
• [x] Cleaned up styles for popup and options page, and started adding shadcn components for more standardization

Website demo

• [x] Added shopping items to demo to see a difference in the before and after paying the invoice. See demo here: https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1LyxBnbyjjYxN?s=20

Busines feedback

• [x] Updated my pitch with some value props base on feedback
• [x] Added demo to my pitch and showed it to 5 different teams and received very positive feedback and ideas to improve.