HN Explorer

Ask HN: Can I visit your startup in SF?

94 points by maxcameron ↗ HN
Hi there,

My name is Max, I'm a cofounder at Kera, and we're from Toronto. We started Kera to teach the world how to use software.

Cameron (one of my cofounders) and I are coming to SF the week after next (Oct 22-26) so we can make new friends and learn how companies like yours are educating and onboarding new users. We're also looking for advice about building our startup. If you're doing something interesting, have an awesome company culture, or just like hanging with Canadians, we'd love to meet you.

Any referrals or introductions are more than welcome.

You can find out more about Kera here (http://kera.io), and we can be found at @maxcameron & @camwest on twitter.

Thanks in advance,

Max

edit: my email is max@kera.io

88 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] thread
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maxcameron
Wish we could stop by in Atlanta - it's not too far from Toronto.
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jjmanton
I am from Atlanta and I dont even know most of the startups around here.

Seems like there might be a need for the startup map.

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mstank
Wow, great product. Any examples of companies using it or are you still in the early stages?
petercooper
There have been quite a few threads like this on HN over the years (including one I made :-)). I wonder if there's some way of formalizing or aggregating the concept of visiting other companies, it seems there's an audience for it.
maxcameron
Yeah no kidding. We're already staying at one of our customer's houses while we're there. So there's a ton of support for visiting startups.
rabidsnail
Didn't there used to be a tour thing after every Startup School?
jaredsohn
>used to be a tour thing

There has been a YC distributed open house at least each of the past couple of years. Haven't heard if there will be one this year or not.

hugs
"Some way of formalizing or aggregating the concept"... like StartupCrawl? :-) http://startupcrawl.com/ (My startup, Sauce Labs, participated in the crawl in 2009 -- it coincided with RubyConf that year, so there was a lot of flow-over traffic from RubyConf go-ers.)
lauraku
Hmm perhaps if this were more than once a year?
camwest
Peter, aren't you exactly the type of man for this job? =)
petercooper
;-) I have an "OK" level of connections but I imagine something like this would be SF/SV focused and I have no real feet on the ground there. Thanks for the vote of confidence though!
stevesearer
Hm. I'd be interested in helping with this if anyone else would want to brainstorm. Having it be formalized is important as most companies aren't that interested in having random people wander in every day - even with appointments.
ultrasaurus
I'd be in too. I wonder if that's necessarily true, startups in SF seem to be relatively open to devs wandering in, but I think you have a good point.
evanlivingston
I worked in high-end restaurants for a number of years where where there is a practice known as staging. Many restaurants allow cooks to come work for a few days to a few months, generally without pay. One of the biggest advantages of this system is that cooks can gain high-level experience from a restaurant they might be unqualified to work in. It would be cool to this kind of casual system in this industry.
maxcameron
Yeah, that'd be awesome to do a placement at a scaling startup.
mnicole
This is exactly the tool I've been waiting for; great work and good luck!
reiz
Hi Max. My Name is Robert Reiz. I am the founder of http://www.versioneye.com. That is my second Start-Up. I am coming at the same time to San Francisco, from Germany. I like your product, I like Canadians and of course I like Beer :-) I will contact you.
maxcameron
Hey Robert. That's awesome. Looking forward to hearing from you.
zocoi
Checkout http://openco.us/, they are doing a kickoff today where you can spend an hour visiting a startup in their list, from airbnb to zynga and beyond
maxcameron
Looks like we're missing it :( Bummer.
[dead] hockeybias
If you ever stop by Minneapolis, let me know! ...If you are really fromToronto you'll like my site http://HockeyBias.com ! :) The layout is a combo of DrudgeReport/ScriptingNews. The site tracks hockey news from September through the last Stanley cup game each year.

Charlie@HockeyBias.com

dsowers
Your software is really cool. Just wondering why you haven't completed your website yet. The "how it works" just takes you to a google doc. Anyway, best of luck. If you want to venture to Lake Tahoe, I'd be happy to grab a beer.
camwest
Well to be honest we were building our marketing website and realized that we were better off to just put it in a Google Doc since we can iterate faster on it. We literally update it in realtime while users watch which is a lot better than the marketing site refine/deploy process. Once things stabilize a little more we'll extract the information into a great marketing website. Probably in the next 6 weeks.
tomblomfield
This is an awesome tool. How did I not know about it?!
maxcameron
It isn't really something people search for. It's going to be word of mouth until our category solidifies.

What are you working on these days?

Max

stefanobernardi
Max, Kera.io looks awesome, congratulations.

Happy to have you guys visit, and we'd love to talk about using the product too.

We're in SOMA. stefano ]a-t[ betable.com

maxcameron
Thank you so much for the kind words. I'll follow up with an email shortly.

Max

scylla
Come stop by. http://www.appdirect.com

We're based in San Francisco but founded by two Canadians.

maxcameron
Want me to bring you a bottle of CC or a double double or some ketchup chips? No joke.
scylla
Our CEO says CC!

Drop by anyways :)

froseph
Drop by whitetruffle ( https://www.whitetruffle.com/ ). We're located in Rocketspace coworking space. @froseph or joseph@whitetruffle.com
maxcameron
Hey Joseph,

Thank you so much. I hear Rocketspace has some wicked things going on.

I'll email you!

revicon
Hey Max, stop by Gigwalk when you're down here, we're over on 4th and Bryant. I'll pop you an email. -Matt
maxcameron
I'll gigwalk myself over to your office no problem. Talk soon Matt.
enjo
Not California, but if you find yourself in Denver/Boulder I'd love to show you around:)
camwest
Max is going to be in Boulder for Defrag. Are you going?
Xorlev
FullContact will be at Defrag, we could probably finagle something if you wanted to visit. :)
maxcameron
That would be amazing. Can you email me at max@kera.io?
bernardom
Very, very cool startup.

For us non-technical folk, you might wish to add a section to your how-to explaining how Kera.io would interact with proprietary data; for example, if our app happens to be financial, would you be able to see any of it? Or is the script hosted on our end?

(This may be obvious to a dev, but not to me, and therefore caused me to send this to our devs to ask)

camwest
The script is hosted on your end and data is pulled from our servers to yours, we don't store any personal information or anything on our side.

Edit: I'll update the FAQ

volandovengo
Kera looks great! Is it currently an idea that you're trying to validate or are you currently coding it up and waiting to launch?
camwest
We've done a lot of validation and have a bunch of people doing experiments with it. We can chat more about it if you want to reach out cameron@kera.io
briancary
Hey Max - we'd love to meet you guys in person and have you check out our sweet office and awesome company (ReTargeter). How about Friday the 26th?
BrentUnderwood
Awesome company, and awesome dude, I'll attest.

Hey Brian!

maxcameron
yeah, Brian's awesome. He signed up for Kera a few months ago so we've been chatting for some time.
maxcameron
Whatup Brian - for sure I want to meet up. I heard Taige's talking with Samir and making things happen. I'm leaving on Friday afternoon - so Thursday would be better. I'll reach out via email.
jaequery
where do i sign up to invest?
camwest
Ummm email money transfer cameron@kera.io? =)
maxcameron
If you're up for a coffee, let me know. max@kera.io
arram
You're welcome to join us for lunch at ZeroCater. Email in profile.
maxcameron
Awesome - i'll email you this weekend. How is zerocater not in Toronto yet?
meanderingman
I miss you guys. You where awesome office neighbors.
stevewilhelm
We are a ZeroCater client. They are awesome.
ultrasaurus
Max, I'll shoot you an email, PagerDuty is originally a YYZ startup too and we're at 2nd and Bryant in SOMA.
maxcameron
Looking forward to hearing from you. Lemme know if you need anything from up here. Ketchup chips etc.
tatianajosephy
We'd love to see you at CrowdFlower. Email forthcoming.
jaymstr
Definitely welcome to come visit LaunchRock. I'm jameson@launchrock.com.
jaymstr
And really dig Kera by the way. Could be interesting for us.
maxcameron
That would be amazing. Emailing you now.
kloncks
We do payments (https://www.ribbon.co) and would love to show you our offices in SOMA.

hany@ribbon.co

maxcameron
Thanks so much Hany, I really appreciate it. I'll email you asap.