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I am happy to share my latest side project in the hope of gaining some value first users and feedback.
If you use railways in London you will (or maybe not) be aware of the concept of "incomplete journeys". If you forget to tap in/out of a station with your travel card you will get charged the maximum fare. To rectify this you are required to manually log in to the TFL website and check for a refund. I find that awkward and time consuming.
I decided to built Oyster Alerts to check for incomplete journeys and thought you might also find it useful.
The site is very much an MVP now but does function and you will be alerted of incomplete fares.
It would be awesome if you could check it out and give any feedback.. http://oysteralerts.com
Thank you
In the past three weeks I have launched three landing pages. Two based around watches, which didn't really get anywhere.
The third was www.oysteralerts.com which I built and launched on Tuesday. After posting to HN, IndieHacker, Product Hunt and a WhatsApp group I am in, I have 11 pre-registrations along with a handful of those people commenting about how useful this is! A PH employee has even reached out and wants to feature this on the front page.
What has excited me most is the PH feedback and random people from the internet signing up.
Is this enough to show validation of my product? Right now I am thinking to ditch the other two ideas and roll with this for the moment.
Thanks
Have others went on this journey before? Any tips to save me from wasting my time. Right now, all I have is meetups on Meetup. And I reckon 90% of them won't bear fruit. I'm not sure about any of the "seek co-founder" type sites.
Thanks
FYI:
I launched https://fintechreport.info at the beginning of the year as an MVP and have received positive feedback etc.
This type of product strongly relies on content marketing, which is not really my area and as such, seeking a co-founder to manage that side of the business while I manage tech and build out the site features I have in mind.
So I posted a question on a more local business forum about how to go about partnering with a stranger who approached me for a startup.
I have been saying that we go 50/50. I do the engineer and he does the business. I was asking about how to practically go about forming a relationship that protects us both etc but I got completely flamed about being naive and getting abused by the "biz guy with the idea". Their argument was that I would put in all the work, my time was valuable and I should get paid for it thus not build his app for free.
I'm having a hard time agreeing with that to be honest and I just ditched the conversation. Am I being totally naive?
I think the non engineer has plenty to bring to the table with regards business development, sales, domain knowledge etc. I personally feel we are perfectly paired and I would much rather partner up with a stranger than friend/family member.
The way I see it is that we will both go out and take a punt on the concept and see what happens. I am really stressing a "LEAN" approach with short feedback loops so I don't get burned building out a product that nobody wants.
What is the take of engineers on here who get approached to co-found with engineers? I am sure that insisting on getting market rate for your efforts is a non runner if you are ending up with 50% equity in the company holding the revenue/profits/IP.
I recently ran an ad campaign on Facebook which linked to my landing page www.fintechreport.info
The campaign resulted in 12 survey completions for a cost of about £30.
I am not experienced in this kind of thing (engineering background). What is a good way to analyse these survey results and determine if the idea is somewhat viable.
Many thanks
I have agreed a new job offer in principal based on the following high level terms. I have also resigned from my current position in good faith. This is a UK based employment contract and I am not directly seeking legal advice just opinion without warranty.
* Offer of base salary (in offer letter) * Offer of share options (in offer letter) * Recruiter on phone said shares vest over 3 years
My contract has arrived and there is no mention of share options and the contract also stipulates that any previous documents including offer letter are not valid upon signing of the contract.
I emailed my potential employer about these concerns and they seem to be fobbing me off, telling me that the offer letter is binding and that they are in the process of raising new money. Because of the new funding round they have changed their Articles of Association and Shareholder Agreements for some institutional investors. They say they can then post round, issue the new EMI options for the team. Employer also said the shares vest over 4 years among a few other confusing details.
How big a deal is this and would it raise a red flag for you? Obviously I need to request all of this be put into the employment contract. If they push back on this, then it is my attitude that the company has made me an offer they are not in a position to be able to formalise. If that is the case, I will withdraw my acceptance of the offer in principle.
There are also a few other things that I do not like and I am wondering how much I can/should push back on. For example, in the first two years they need only give me 4 weeks notice if they want to let me go (+1 week for subsequent years). My notice period, shall I want to leave is static at 3 months. I don't like this.
What should I do? Would this type of treatment be a red flag for you? Would you continue to want to join? I am getting concerned now and my gut is starting to feel like it's telling me something.
Thanks
I am currently starting up my first side project.
While it isn't my primary aim, I would like to figure out how I can get it valued to a suitable price and aim to sell in 12 - 18 months time.
I'm trying to figure out if I should aim for a high number of non-paying users or less paying customers.
What kind of metrics do potential buyers look at?
I recently read a thread on here about passive income. One suggestion was to write an ebook on a niche topic. I have experience on a niche topic and would welcome the challenge of condensing the knowledge into an ebook.
Simply put the book would be a practical guide on writing software around the topic. With chapters on background info, fundamentals etc and a bunch of sample code for a variety of languages.
The problem is I don't know where to start. Am I going for a simple ebook that I will host, market and sell myself, like Mark Murphy does with Commonsware for Android development, do I use a publisher like PragProg or go for a traditional publisher?
Apart from researching the content and writing yourself, what other tasks/costs should I be aware of that typically aren't fulfilled by the author. e.g. graphics/cover design.
Many thanks
I've recently started asking questions on good old Stack Overflow that have been battered by closures due to being out of scope, not a proper question etc..
I've basically come to the realisation that I need a decent web forum to join and participate in. I am part of other forum on other topics but not for software. I participate on boards.ie and the Development section. Some great guys there but not a huge amount of "footfall" so sometimes questions don't get a great response.
I have just joined Dream In Code and going to give that a go but I'm curious to hear where people here hang.
Thanks in advance.
First perspective job has a coding exam, foobar! I never seem to do well in these, just ties my brain up in knots.
How do you guys handle programming tasks for interviews, where they should only take a predetermined amount of time?
I'm half way through my time on this task already and I haven't even touched the unit tests.
It seems that anytime I get one of these tests, I spend far too long digesting the problem, far too long planning, far too long coding up first the first half.
That brings me to about half way through my allotted time and then I start to panic.
I feel useless. I mean don't tell me a future job is dependant on the interviewer liking my code or that there is a clock running. I've been able to break out more complicated tasks in less time, it's just when there's this whole judgement thing going on I get fired. Mainly because there is a million ways to do something..
Funny thing is, that any time I go into a new job, it was without prior coding and I exceed their expectations :/
I am a geek: Programming, computers, tech, discussing things in fine detail, picking wholes in theories and all things around me (not argumentative), reasoning out everything...
Even back in high school, 15yrs ago, I noticed that the above put most people off me. Put off largely by the fact that I thought differently than most people and was fairly creative in the not so normal ways (think gaining access, hacking things etc and not art, music etc)
It's continuing into adult life.. most people just end up thinking i'm odd. I find it difficult to mix with, who I will, call for ease of explanation "non-hackers". It's a pain because to get on socially in life you need to be able to mix with all types, chat about what I would consider nonsensical topics, trash news, sports, weather etc. It get's depressing at times, it's also annoying when I see types being able to have normal conversations >.<
When I do find somebody similarly minded it's great and we can chat about all sorts of stuff for hours. I've never really had the chance to create a group of friends like this.
I have recently moved to a new city with where I have no friends. After about 9 months I have ended up in a cycle of work, home, computer, bed. I haven't made any friends really as I generally find it difficult to fit in with the regular crews of people (probably introvert). I need to find a group of hacker, coder types who'd have no problem breaking out their favourite IDE abd learning a new language over some beers or whatever.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't look like your stereotypical nerd really. I'm trendy, look cool and can chat generally to people in passing but not really engage and make friends.
So my question is. Has anybody ever been in my type of situation before.. how do you find friends who are just like you.. a HN reader?
Does anybody share my dilemma?