Launch HN: JetLenses (YC S18) – Lowest Prices on Contact Lenses

80 points by dpandya 7 years ago | 70 comments

Hi HN!

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.

dirtae 7 years ago |

ContactLensKing.com is substantially cheaper than JetLenses for the contacts I wear, the Bausch & Lomb Ultras. $43 for a 6 pack on JetLenses, $30 on ContactLensKing:

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?

dpandya 7 years ago | |

Basically: scale and supply chain. On some lenses, where we're on an even playing field, we're able to dramatically beat everyone else on price (e.g. Biofinity Toric XR, MyDay Toric, Proclear Toric XR).

As we grow and we can add more suppliers, we'll be able to have the best prices across the board.

privacypoller 7 years ago | | |

so, you're basically saying "we're the lowest price, except when we're not because of 'unfair' competition on scale and supply chain, but help us gain these advantages and we'll be competitive"

Are you the lowest price on contacts or not?

alasdair_ 7 years ago | | |

You claimed "We offer the lowest prices on contact lenses online."

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.

harias 7 years ago | | |

I'm curious as to what percentage of current market are you able to target without the scale and supply chain?

bilberry 7 years ago | |

For the acuvue moist for astigmatism daily contacts, JetLenses seems to be 25% cheaper than contactlensking

dpandya 7 years ago | | |

This is great to hear! We've had a peak sales day thanks to all the HN-directed customers.

yznovyak 7 years ago |

I'm in Ukraine now and it seems that I can buy most of the lenses for a fraction of US price. Here's one of the online shops I used last time: https://linza.com.ua/ to convert UAH to USD you can divide by 25 (actually 27, but 25 gives good enough approximation and is easier to divide by). The same lenses I bought with VSP in the US for >= $150 cost here $14/month. And the most expensive monthly supply of daily lenses here costs $38.

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.

h4b4n3r0 7 years ago | |

Same is true for most drugs as well. We basically pay for nearly all pharma research and safety studies (through taxes, insurance, and out of pocket) and the rest of the world gets a free ride. It’s one of the reasons why we pay so much. The other being that making the healthcare system more efficient would eliminate (according to the Obama administration) about 3 million jobs, so it’s not politically feasible in the short to medium term.

maaaats 7 years ago | |

Also from Europe. Weird that lenses need a prescription in the US.

rsrs 7 years ago | | |

It isn't like prescription for medication, it's just the numbers that were measured. You don't need a doctor signature to get eyeglasses or contacts (although your insurance company might want an optometrist confirmation that your eyesight isn't perfect).

javiramos 7 years ago |

What kind of competitive advantage do you have compared to other similar companies (e.g. Hubble [1])? Is contact lenses just a race to the bottom in terms of pricing? Other than cost, are there any other elements that differentiate you?

[1] https://www.hubblecontacts.com/

alaskamiller 7 years ago | |

Hubble is going the Warby Parker or Dollar Shave Club route, by vertically integrating manufacturing and branding.

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.

dpandya 7 years ago | |

This is a really important question and @alaskamiller has got the right points other than the selling software to others bit - we're pretty confident the stuff we're building is impactful in our space since we're seeing the results.

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.

javiramos 7 years ago | | |

Do you think this approach could work in other verticals/products other than contact lenses?

I will give your website a try next time I order contacts. Best of luck!

brianbreslin 7 years ago | |

Hubble is super risky as they aren't verifying prescriptions and are also selling old tech (off-patent).

6841iam 7 years ago |

I don't think your claim is true. You are not the lowest price.

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

https://imgur.com/a/3x4ZzTD

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!

dpandya 7 years ago | |

We don't claim to be the cheapest on all products yet - there's some bizdev work to do before we can say that.

privacypoller 7 years ago | | |

the title of this post is literally "Lowest Prices on Contact Lenses"

it's reasonable for someone to interpret that as "cheapest price for the contact lenses I wear".

derekdahmer 7 years ago |

Same price as Costco ($50) for 12pk Acuvue Oasys - thats great. If it went lower I'd switch.

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.

dpandya 7 years ago | |

We're transitioning to a new website ( which is already live on mobile devices when you go to https://beta.jetlenses.com/ ) . It's probably order of magnitude better and the logo is rendered as an SVG :)

mrnobody_67 7 years ago |

I use Daysoft.com -- way cheaper than these guys or even Hubble

pravda 7 years ago | |

I just got my first batch from https://www.daysoft.com/

$18 shipped for 64 lenses. Got to USA very fast. No prescription required.

desireco42 7 years ago |

As YC company, I would prefer if you could offer me to improve my vision. I have presbyopia which is normal after certain age. Innovate and offer me something better. I don't need another dollar shave club. At least this is how it looks to me. :)

desireco42 7 years ago | |

It seems that others are more industrious. Still there is a lot to be done

https://www.reviewofoptometry.com/article/ro0617-can-an-eye-...

ocdnix 7 years ago |

I'd like to have metadata about the materials used in the lenses, specifically info about wetting agents. My go-to lens is Acuvue Moist, which has the "Lacreon" wetting agent, aka polyvinylpyrrolidone. When my lens store stopped carrying Moist, I had a hard time figuring out which other brand would have an equivalent gradual moisture release effect, given the jungle of proprietary material names. I'm not saying I'd like to see the chemical formula for each lens (although that would be nice too), but some physical parameters beyond brand name and type of lens would be useful.

dpandya 7 years ago | |

That sounds interesting, but if you've been prescribed the Acuvue Moist, you can only purchase the Acuvue Moist as per law. So, although this info would certainly be interesting (and maybe reduce some customer confusion), it wouldn't actually be actionable.

Filligree 7 years ago | | |

You're US-only, then?

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.

benehmke 7 years ago |

FWIW, the biggest pain is the prescription.

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.

orliesaurus 7 years ago |

Can you elaborate a little bit more on this, what do you optimize, what statistics do you use, etc > We also use statistical models for ad optimization

Thanks!

dpandya 7 years ago | |

Sure, I can talk a bit about it.

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.

ereyes01 7 years ago |

I have an eye condition that requires me to wear scleral lenses to see normally. They bill insurance over $2200 per pair of lenses. If that price can be brought down, that would be a big deal for me. Is this sort of lens a target for you?

dpandya 7 years ago | |

Yes! Please just email me at dhaivat @ jetlenses.com with the specific lenses you need and we can figure out if we can get them for you.

ape4 7 years ago |

How many numbers (parameters) make up a contact prescription?

dpandya 7 years ago | |

It depends on the particular contact lenses - can be anywhere from 1 - 8+.

alokv28 7 years ago |

Congrats on the launch! Can you say more about how you drive your costs down?

smolsky 7 years ago |

What about using VSP?

dpandya 7 years ago | |

Hi. If you have out of network benefits in your insurance plan , then we can provide you with the necessary paperwork to make a claim. We can also process HSA/FSA cards at checkout. We aren't an in-network provider for VSP yet, however.

ablaster1 7 years ago |

Weird to see that they're not at all cost competitive with most retailers online other than 1800 which is very expensive.

Feels like YC is losing its edge?

anomatopoeia 7 years ago | |

Not at all cost competitive for my brand either.

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.

colinbartlett 7 years ago | |

I paid $85.69 including all taxes and fees recently and this site looks like it would be $112 so about 30% higher. I must be missing the innovation here because it seems like just another contacts retailer I’ll have to price compare with when I buy.

soared 7 years ago |

Curious if 10 years ago yc would accept a company that just sold contact lenses online.

ISL 7 years ago | |

An interesting question. This [1] suggests that the contact lens market is ~$10B, which is in the realm of YC aspirations. That market is likely to grow as the purchasing-power of people globally continues to grow. Sounds like YC to me.

[1] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/contact-...

privacypoller 7 years ago | | |

except how is this market captured? Seems to be more supply-chain and scale, or R&D in the actual product. These guys appear to hope for the former, but not sure how they can beat the bigger players other than some vague comments akin to leveraging supplier and customer data. The smaller startups that have built online presence have already focused really well on streamlining the experience, order fulfillment and customer service at low prices; how much margin is left to be the new player and compete on price?

turtles 7 years ago | |

Yeah. I'm also like wtf. The website looks about 10 years old.

I assume the owners have good communication, and persuasion skills. Which is admirable, since I lack them.