I'm Dhaivat and I've been working on JetLenses in the present YC batch. We offer the lowest prices on contact lenses online. On average, each of our customer saves $70 on each order in comparison to buying their contacts from a large online retailer.
It turns out that most of the cost of contacts is just advertising cost and fulfillment overhead. We've built automation software for the fulfillment and prescription verification processes allowing us to cut overhead. We also use statistical models for ad optimization which allow us to cut our customer acquisition costs dramatically and deliver savings to our customers.
I have a technical background (I studied computer science and statistics, interned at Meteor (YC S11) and a quant hedge fund) and my Dad trained as an ophthalmologist. This was the perfect circumstance to realize that this is a large, fairly overlooked space within ecommerce where improved operations through software/data science can have a strong impact.
We're starting with contact lenses and we'll eventually apply our core tech to other prescription medical products with very similar cost structures. At the end of the day, we'd like to make these products cheaper and more easily accessible. Help us out by buying contacts from us or telling your contact-wearing friends about us!
If you wear contacts: We sell the same contacts as your doctor or other retailers, just for a lot less money. Check out our website at beta.jetlenses.com - order from us and save some dough while supporting our run-up to demo day! You can also check out our price comparison tool at https://beta.jetlenses.com/compare_prices - we're the cheapest for most lenses but not all (yet!).
I would love to hear HN's thoughts about this! I'm particularly keen to learn about your experiences buying contact lenses (or even other medical products) and if what we're doing sounds exciting. You can also reach me at dhaivat AT jetlenses.com
Thanks!
Dhaivat
P.S. We currently only ship to addresses in the United States.
https://www.jetlenses.com/Ultra-6PK_p_76.html
https://www.contactlensking.com/prodDetail.aspx?ItemGroupCod...
Why is there such a discrepancy in the pricing on these?
As we grow and we can add more suppliers, we'll be able to have the best prices across the board.
Are you the lowest price on contacts or not?
This doesn't seem to be true (by almost 50%!).
If your primary method of competing is on price, you NEED to be the cheapest.
Heck. Here's a vending machine in a random gas station in Moscow selling them contact lenses: https://imgur.com/a/mCf9XfB
Going to an eye doctor to check your eyesight can be done in pretty much any contact lens/glasses store on a walk-in basis. Last time my eye exam was free because I happened to buy a pack of lenses (I overpaid for the lenses, though).
The US seriously needs to figure out why the heck are you paying so damn much before you guys consider universal healthcare.
This is just ecommerce automation in a niche vertical. Here, they draw in buyers, they stock inventory, and they fulfill.
Maybe he's able to upgrade and use better software to get rid of 15% of "waste" or maybe he's just eating into his margins and it's too early yet for him to realize, either way he's marketing it as a "savings" passed on to the consumer.
Which doesn't mean it's not interesting. If he can prove that his software mix really is contributing to lowering costs and if the niche doesn't sustain/support the business then most likely he ends up finding another niche or selling access to his software tools to help other ecommerce businesses thrive. E.g. sell shovels in a gold rush.
In comparison to Hubble: we don't require customers to get a new prescription. Just order from us, save money.
Long term, the process improvement software that we're building as well as the intelligence around actually acquiring customers will be defensible because it is hinged on customer and supplier data. Happy to talk about this more - dhaivat@jetlenses.com.
I will give your website a try next time I order contacts. Best of luck!
I just purchased Biotrue ONEday 90 pack today from EZContacts today.
You say the price is https://imgur.com/a/66wFxvS $69.99 cheapest plan (option 2)
But just today I purchased it from EZContacts for $30.79
So you'd be best served to Google for the contact lens of your choice and pay for whats the cheapest.
Note: When I tried to re-order from EZContacts, they were charging close to $50. So always start a new search when you are trying to order Contacts online!
it's reasonable for someone to interpret that as "cheapest price for the contact lenses I wear".
By the way most of your images especially on the homepage seem to be scaled up past their native resolution which makes the site look really fuzzy. Your logo for example is 30px but scaled to 50px. An easy win on landing page design would just be to re-export those images at the right resolution.
$18 shipped for 64 lenses. Got to USA very fast. No prescription required.
https://www.reviewofoptometry.com/article/ro0617-can-an-eye-...
Here in Europe I can buy any contact lens I'd like, but I'm still short on information as to which ones might be better, or why.
My doctor only does 1 year prescriptions, my prescription hasn't changed for 15 years. It's important to get your eyes checked, but every year is a bit nuts. I guess we have some federal organization to thank for that.
I'd love to see you guys figure that problem out. Maybe you could figure out how to ship from out of the US or something. Hell, I'd pay more if I didn't have to go to the doctor every year.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me, and it's not just to update your prescription, it's also to check how healthy your eyes are.
The treatment for the hole in the retina was one of the most awesome procedures I've ever had. The doctor puts on this big headset that completely covers his face, with multiple microscope-type lenses and a visible green laser shooting out the front. Looks like the borg. He holds your eye open and using the visible laser to aim, points at the edge of the hole and activates the IR laser, blap, blap, blap (it actually makes that sound) as it stitches the edge of the hole down. It feels like you're getting poked in the eye hard each time so he has to stop after a few cause your eye freaks out and moves. Wait a few seconds till it settles down and continue. My eye felt like it had been punched hard, but that faded by the end of the day. Repair is still holding coming up on 3 years.
Go to to your annual medical checkups.
Thanks!
Essentially, the problem (like all other ad opt. problems) boils down to estimating the expected value of a particular click. This is a particularly challenging/weird problem in this space because unlike other segments of ecommerce, you can't successfully optimize for correlated metrics such as engagement. So, it's a heavily imbalanced problem (i.e. few positive examples, lots of negative examples). In addition to that, the buying characteristics of specific products are heavily related to one another so sales on one affect how we advertise the other. There are a number of other subtleties discovered over time.
Our software produces good bid estimates despite these characteristics.
Feels like YC is losing its edge?
Contacts are a commodity item - whenever I need to reorder contacts I do a lazy 2 min search for the cheapest price online and order there. Customer experience is same everywhere.
Not sure what sort of competitive edge JetLenses has, seems like the idea would've been great in 1995. As a long time contact wearer this market has already been disrupted pretty severely .
For me costs going down fairly steadily since the advent of 1-800-Contacts and the subsequent federal law which put an end to the shenanigans of eye doctors trying to block online fulfillment.
[1] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/contact-...
I assume the owners have good communication, and persuasion skills. Which is admirable, since I lack them.
