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Treat strangers to coffee (treatings.co)

49 points by osetinsky ↗ HN
My best friend and I disliked our jobs and wanted a non-awkward way to reach out to people whose work interested us.

We finally quit our jobs, moved into bunkbeds (http://instagram.com/p/WOPgf-rcFB/), and learned to code in order to build a community of people open to meeting strangers whose work interests them, over coffee.

We're now talking to companies who will be featuring their employees as "ambassadors" offering coffee meetings ("treatings") to individuals interested in working at their company. We think job sites suck and that networking/job seeking should work like online dating. Would love peoples' feedback, and an upvote!

49 comments

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ryanthejuggler
Pretty nice! Honestly after reading the "Let's have coffee" link submitted I considered building my own.

Problem with the autocomplete, though; it doesn't always seem to work, and so I'm having a lot of trouble adding new skills or favorite restaurants. (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0)

osetinsky
Thanks Ryan - I'm on it. Have you tried on Chrome? It also should be working on iPhone iOS 5+
ryanthejuggler
I figured out that the arrow keys worked as intended :)
yaddayadda
If the idea is to share conversation over a coffee (or presumably another beverage), isn't location important? (It is for me.) So why no option to search by location?
osetinsky
Definitely - we want to set the location by default based on where the user is. The plan is to let people change their current location, although now it is set based on where they are currently working (according to LinkedIn).
golergka
This. Not living in US, I'm used to be treated as an outsider by majority of services and startups showing up on HN, but this particular service would be painfully easy to make convenient for users around the world.
osetinsky
Totally understand and sorry about that. We're trying to open elsewhere as soon as possible. We thought it would help us to focus on New York and then open in other cities after we formed small bases of people there, ~100 people. Where are you golergka?
joshaidan
I wonder if it would be possible to make some kind of API, or way to make it possible for apps to launch worldwide instead of just locally. I know there are challenges for launching for a large area when starting up, but I wonder if there's a way to make it easier for startups.
osetinsky
It's just easier to focus locally at first to work out the kinks. But we probably are missing out on potential learning experiences by staying open in certain areas. Plan is to open elsewhere soon.
mscottmcbee
It's not much better in the US. I live in Atlanta and I feel like I'm missing out on most of the fun. If you're not in SF or NYC, there's a lot you don't get.
osetinsky
I'm from Kentucky, so know how you feel. We're trying to open up elsewhere in the next few weeks, and can't wait.
osetinsky
I'd love to hear peoples' feedback - what they want in a service that helps them connect with people they've never met before, but whose work is interesting to them. Features people would be interested in, things they wouldn't want to see, etc. Thanks!
howillia
I'm curious what would make people more willing to reach out to strangers through Treatings...what information would you want to know about them that you might not find on a standard resume or LinkedIn profile?
osetinsky
An in-person interaction can tell you a lot about someone that you can't glean from a resume. It's also provides a potential foundation from which to start a relationship (collaboration, job, etc.). We're speaking with companies now who are interested in featuring their employees as offering periodic coffee meetings to outsiders interested in the company (almost like soft interviews).
tansey
It's a great idea, but the site is really tough to use and when I first signed up, the app crashed. It seems really focused on NYC-- I couldn't add any coffee shops here in Austin.

Also, how do I browse through people in my city? After I signed up, it showed me thumbnails of people in Austin, but I couldn't click on them for profile details or anything.

osetinsky
Thanks so much. Checking out why the app crashed. We'd like to have only people in your city show up by default (but give you the option to change your city if necessary).

I've gotta get down to Austin ASAP - only hear awesome things!

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osetinsky
This is my first web application. It's built on Rails. I'd really appreciate any pointers about things to look out for as we try to build our user base and scale, as I'm completely new to this. Thanks so much!
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osetinsky
Anyone trying out the web app on their iPhone browser (safari/chrome)? I'd be grateful for any feedback if so.
[dead] seivan
The application itself seems pretty nice and solid, but from what I can see it's Just Another site to masturbate with titles. LinkedIn with coffee?

Then again I'm pretty disgusted by LinkedIn circle-jerking recommendations/connections and roles/titles.

dbalatero
The FourSquare API calls seemed to fail in the Chrome dev console when selecting a coffee shop. I got a bunch of domain origin errors, and one 403 Forbidden. Actually, you should really check the dev console in general – there's a lot of warnings, 404s, etc. that might be important to you.
osetinsky
Thanks so much. Checking it out now. If you don't mind me asking, were you logged in? And are you around New York? Really appreciate it.
jc4p
I'm getting the same error, seems to be a rate limiting issue:

    {"meta":{"code":403,"errorType":"rate_limit_exceeded","errorDetail":"Quotaexceeded"},"response":{}}
Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/RtdaFrg.png

Great idea though, I'm excited to use the site :)

osetinsky
Perfect - this is very helpful. Thanks jc4p, really appreciate it
csdrane
I first learned about your project while talking to you guys at a mixer in DUMBO. Cool to see your site evolve with time and I wish you guys good luck in the future! Hitting the front page of HN should help.
osetinsky
Thanks so much! I'm trying to think of which one that was. We're certainly learning about what can break when your site experiences traffic. But we're getting tons of great feedback.
dc_ploy
Based on the front image, this is about men having coffee with men.
osetinsky
Haha. Is it the illustration that makes you say that, or are you just seeing a lot of men on the site?
osetinsky
We need a few new illustrations. Some women expressed concern about having a male<>female illustration, saying it immediately seemed like a dating site. Not sure what the right answer is there.
jlebrech
and that's why women struggle in the industry.

If you meet up for a geek chat, it's a geek chat.

jonathanjaeger
Hayden (howillia on HackerNews) has been blogging on PandoDaily every week about the trials and tribulations of bootstrapping Treatings. I read it every week, it's well-written and interesting. You can find his blog here where all the articles are accessible: http://howillia.com/
osetinsky
They're always a great and funny read. You've gotta check them out if you have a chance!
howillia
thanks! appreciate the shout-out, glad you're enjoying it. Ideas for future topics are always welcome. Trying to be completely transparent in this series, so it's all fair game!
rrhoover
Also take a look at http://CoffeeMe.in. It's like "tinder for startup folk" and just launched in SF.
osetinsky
Yes we've seen them and love what they're doing. The one-click expression of interest is something we have in common and really excited about. There's definitely something job sites/hiring can glean from online dating...we're just trying to figure out exactly how to execute it.
ohheyworld
I'm a big fan of coffeeme...it's been in seattle awhile and i've met a few people from it
alexmarcy
Would be nice to be able to be able to find out info on the two other contacts in my city that show up during the sign up process, I'd reach out to them but there isn't an easy way to find out who they are.
osetinsky
So people you've already met, but perhaps don't know really well?
mcv
Someone should make something like this, but with tea.
osetinsky
Coffee/tea/drinks. "Coffee meetings" are something most people can relate to, so we've stuck with coffee for now. But we intend for it to be drinks of any kind really. The copy part is hard.
personlurking
Any plans to change the intent to include non-work related meetups? Ex, I want to learn a particular language, I can therefore connect to someone who also wants to learn it (and is near me) so we can study together or perhaps someone who already knows it and wants to learn my language.

Far from the intended goal of your biz, I know, but thought I'd ask.

osetinsky
We really like that. I think the biggest pain point for people, at least when it comes to giving them reason to reach out to strangers, is usually work related. But there's definitely something there. The goal is to facilitate conversations that are mutually beneficial.
mscottmcbee
You might want to do some moderation on tags. Looking up "Android" brings up "Android", "Android Development", and "Android App Development". Looking up "Golang" returns "golang" and "Golang".

I wonder how much people are going to miss out on connections if they pick one of three terms for what's probably the same idea.

osetinsky
Yes, we definitely need to clean those tags up. Thanks for pointing it out.
robodale
Force me to sign in with my LinkedIn account? LOL die now.