Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)
- I'm an early-adopter and enjoy seeing new technology and ideas being put into action. If only to get access sooner, I'd be more than happy to critique and share my opinion on all things design, customer development, software, entrepreneurship, family, creativity, or productivity.
- I'm participating with a team of other students in the Stanford Technology Entrepreneurship online course and helping people learn to apply the Business Model Canvas along with lean startup methodologies as well as attempt to bring our own product to market. (On the side, our team published an ebook that helped other groups in the course to effectively brainstorm toward creating a viable business idea.) (This course is also the reason why I didn't do last month's "No strings" thread.)
- I organize the South Florida Hack and Tell, which is a group for geeks (and those interested in hanging out with geeks) to do interesting events here in South Florida (like learn Arduino, grab a beer, participate as a team in a Hack-a-thon, etc),
- I advise a few local single founders who are without technical expertise and guide them toward good long-term technical decisions for their startup,
- I write (moderately maintainable) software for a living,
- I understand good design from bad design and can push pixels with the best of them (I got a perfect on this color test: http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?pageid=77&lang=en),
- I have a family and juggle a mediocre work-life balance that's gradually improving.
If there's something I can help you with, just ask here or @mikegreenberg on Twitter. Be specific about what you're trying to fix/solve/accomplish. The more details you provide, the better I can help you out. :)
I also hope this inspires other people to help out even if you don't think you have anything useful to offer. Actions like this will only improve our community (locally and across the net).
Cheers! Mike
PS: I'll typically reciprocate the amount of effort/consideration that you've shown in your request. If you show me that you're thoughtful about the feedback you want from me, I'll be more apt to give you something useful. I'll accept any requests made before the end of today and will attempt to respond by the end of the weekend.
PPS: You can check out my previous submissions if you want to see the sort of feedback I can provide.
31 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 89.6 ms ] threadSome examples of how this could be used:
- Send notifications about the status of your service/app
- Get in touch with specific users to provide support
- Messages directed to specific platforms
- Fast feedback from specifed users, like if there is someone who uses a feature more than other, ask why.
- Give rewards to your most passionate users.
In the end i would say that this is a service to let the users know that you are there. I have a quite clear view of all of this even if i might not have expressed it in the best way. I even have already something in my hands. but i wish to know if this is something that people might actually like/use.
Thanks :)
customer.io intercom.io
There are already services which are in this space who are trying to get it right (olark.com comes to mind). I'm not really sure what the right way is, but if I had to take a guess, the experience should feel very homogeneous with the app which offers it. Yes, there's a reasonable amount of value you get out of a drop-in service that you don't have to configure or think about, but I think every point of interaction with the customer should be a carefully-thought decision and not a white-label feature you add as an after-thought.
I think if you were able to figure out how to construct a communication's channel that could be easily added to an app while neatly integrating into the existing experience, that would be a major win that I'd give you money to provide me.
Would you please tell us your impression from the user experience?
http://flashissue.com
Also we have a very nice chrome extension that makes your gmail emails "facebook status" like, e.g. you grab articles and put in email more like a facebook timeline (with title, snippet and thumbnail + source attribution) it also works with the web app but I think it's the first "curator" clipper for gmail, here is the link
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cihaednhfbocfdiflm...
We use it internally all the time and it saves time and gets the email look much more professional than just a link... (better click rates as well)
Thanks!
I'll give this extension a try this weekend and see how people like a different format. I'm not sure how soon I'll have results regarding the newsletter, but will definitely critique the experience. :)
Thanks for understanding.
I am participated here and helped the other posters in past. Right now I need feedback on my latest venture http://simplyhire.in/. Let me know if you can help me with some contacts.
-Hemant
The biggest problem is the overhead of managing your finances and business. It's a distraction that you'll have to learn to deal with one way or the other. In my opinion, find someone that will help you navigate these decisions early and often. (Look to your local Chamber of Commerce or entrepreneurial meetups for qualified mentors.)
Do NOT underestimate how important it is to track your time and money. My approach was to take things in small bites. I setup a DBA and opened a business account and tried my best to keep my finances separate. When I paid for stuff out of my personal account, I made sure I put together an expense form to track reimbursements. Even though there aren't much tax benefits running as a sole proprietorship, the taxes are much easier and you do get to write off a few things. Once you start making 4 figures a month, seek out assistance again and see if it makes sense to formalize your business into a corporation.
There are services which help manage your books (such as Florida startup, http://lessaccounting.com). If it makes sense, use them! They are awesome people and will be a net positive gain for your business. There are also lawyer services which will probably answer questions you have over the phone. One such law service I'm aware of (but haven't used myself) is http://walkercorporatelaw.com/ and comes highly recommended by Andrew Warner on Mixergy.
While this is basic advice, it's will set you with a strong foundation to start off. And having someone mentor you through the process will give you the best possible advice that will be tailored to your practice's needs.
http://pitchremix.com
Any specific thoughts on the site and the service? Do you think there is a large enough market (i.e., do you think many startup founders would pay for this?) And are there any glaring holes to fix? Features that I absolutely must add?
Thanks again!
Maybe re-position your value prop like so: "For $25, we'll consult with you for 30 minutes to help you refine your existing pitch or create one from scratch."
You can still earn your keep but allows your customers to be involved in shaping a pitch that actually reflects their vision.
Thanks again.
I would love to get your feedback on this http://coursebacon.com/. The basic idea behind CourseBacon is to help you identify the best free online learning resources.
For the "star algorithm" I am pulling backlinks from Google, SEOmoz and Twitter.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance,
Carl
I think an online course review site is nice, but there's a lot more that you could possibly do here. Why not setup "degree" programs which are a curated selection of courses from across the net and lead people down a journey on a specific topic? Why not instructor profile pages that can track the quality of the sum of their materials online?
Maybe these points don't matter if this is just something you're doing for fun. But if this is for profit, I'm not sure where you business model is. (And I'd be happy to discuss the above ideas with you.)
Just my two cents.
PS: Would LOVE to see a way to delete my account afterward.
I had signed up for the Venture Labs course earlier this year and found it very interesting. Unfortunately, due to time commitments and various other issues I did not follow through with keeping up with the course.
Could you give me some pro cons of the Venture Labs course itself? How has your experience been so far? Keep being awesome.
Cheers!
Allen's system was simple for most, but I found it needlessly complicated. This is his prescription: http://cyprych.neostrada.pl/_images/processing.png
I opt for the very low-maintenance system I described in exchange for a tolerable amount of chaos. Until I can afford a personal assistant, this will have to be and have stopped investing time into improving my system in pursuit of more satisfying improvements for myself.
*I like to leave the bookmark poking out about two-thirds of the way through the book and keep it on my bookcase in the living room for everyone to see.
Help a girl out?
I can write software specifications but this task is beyond me.
My engineer must think I`m the reincarnation of tesla to have asked me for a spec, but I think I can pull it off, just having trouble getting started with everything else I have going on (new bf and dog, tcombinator, freelancing, my adult career, doing nothing, etc).
I was thinking you can talk to your peeps and see if any of them want to help.
Before the backlash, I don't intend for these robots to be used to kill people. They are for jobs that humans die doing or cannot do, like cleaning up nuclear accidents like fukishima without suffering the huge doses of radiation a man would (or at least not dying/becomong non-operational as a result of it). Thanks
Also, engineering spec is quite vague. If you boss really asked you to do something like, think twice about taking it on. Loose, vague, and otherwise overreaching projects tend to not end well for those involved.
I think my peeps will feel similarly and pass on this one. But I'd be happy to introduce you should you want to come out to a hack night and ask them yourself. :)
Best of luck to you.