Yeah, you're right it can be tough. We started our own organization (https://sdx.community) centered around hackers/builders because it felt like it was missing, exactly as you described!
We share on Twitter, Luma, LinkedIn, and try to get other community groups to amplify, but there's a lot of noise out there, so we likely miss a lot of cool people.
Sometimes you get lucky and there's a good community slack/discord (for example the San Diego Startups slack) where you'll see most events posted. Otherwise, startups that are hiring engineers tend to sponsor and share events. Beyond that you have to just find out from other hackers where they're speaking or joining something.
Sami is brilliant. He demoed Echo Chess at a recent San Diego engineer event and everyone was blown away and asking tons of questions. A lot of love and intelligence went into building this game.
This interview show features CEO/Founders of startups like Zapier (YC S12), WayUp (YC W15), Drift, and RadPad. The title is quite literal, the format of the show is intro -> company mission -> company values.
For founders: you learn about other company cultures and hear leadership/management advice about lessons learned and ideas you can try out.
For employees: you can see what it's like to work inside these startups, or compare/contrast to your current work culture.
Hit me with some feedback! I've found it helps if you mention other podcasts you like for reference (to compare production quality, format/structure/length, etc.)
This is episode 6 of the Mission & Values podcast. David Cancel, now CEO and Co-founder of Drift, has tons of experience in building startup teams and he's full of bold, insightful ideas that you can learn from.
"Our mission is to connect college students with awesome opportunities. Our vision is to democratize the hiring process for students and employers alike."
Episode 5 of the Mission & Values podcast features the intrepid Liz Wessel, CEO and Co-founder of WayUp. It's a cool way to dive into their culture and how it came to be.
Hello! I recently started a podcast called "Mission & Values" that features CEO/founders of startups that have strong company cultures.
The name is very literal - in the 1-on-1 interview, we cover the company's mission and then go through their core values and how they came to be.
For startup leaders, you get to see how others are managing their teams. For startup employees/fans, you get to dive into what it's like to work at the featured startups. For everyone, you get to learn more about your own goals and desires with work.
Here are the guests so far:
1. Zapier - Wade Foster
2. Gumroad - Sahil Lavingia
3. HelloTech - Richard Wolpert
4. RadPad - Jonathan Eppers
5. WayUp - Liz Wessel (recorded, not yet released)
Here's a description I'm playing with (feedback desired!):
"Dive into remarkable startup cultures. Learn about leadership and find where you belong. It's your life, so make your work matter."
I'd love to hear your thoughts about what you like/dislike or would want more of. I'm already learning a lot both about podcasting and about startup cultures. I've had 2 guests that didn't have codified core values, so I've had to adapt the show format as I go.
Using data from the AngelList API as a starting point, I compiled this list to save founders time in considering startup resources in LA. Let me know if you have suggestions for additions/corrections.
I bet the easy-to-remember and apt name helped combat the product's "lack of SEO friendly links". Conversion from someone hearing of a product once in offline media, even if they're a perfect demographic fit, seems impressive.
Bugs and "known issues" become personal flaws. How well the user accomplishes his or her goals become a personal reflection of the creators.
It's a dangerous idea for performers to hang their ego on a performance. Just because you played a crap guitar solo one night does not mean you're a bad person. It's all part of a process - you can learn from what didn't work and try something different tomorrow night. The more time you're in the process, the better your performance gets.
A great performance is about making the audience feel something. Sometimes you can feel like it was your worst solo every, but the audience loved it because you really took a chance and went for something and they were with you for the adventure. It's not as entertaining to watch you play it safe even if it's technically more refined.
To stick with the guitar example, compare Kurt Cobain's guitar solos to those of Django Reinhardt - both made for a great performance, but they are on different planets in terms of complexity and sophistication. My significant other and I have been playing Draw Something and I find it ugly and ad-ridden, yet I love playing the game because we have fun and enjoy the challenge.
He will never accept anything less than perfection because it would be a personal reflection of himself; he loves what he does and it shows through his work.
The best artists I've learned from didn't reach high levels because of ego or a desire to appear perfect. They were able to put unfathomable amounts of energy into honing their craft because they were that passionate about it. The love of the process is what enables the quality of the finished product. Jony Ive strikes me as this kind of artist. His obsession with the process is clear - his love of materials, creativity in inventing new methods of machining...everything right up until when you're holding the device in your hand as the user feeling something.
You could have the button on step 1 read, "next", since the user might be confused about what a "profile" is at this point.
Does making the user find a link in step 1 push them away from refer.ly and out of the sign up flow? Would the search seen on the homepage be simpler there?
Step 2 could be its own screen (rather than the modal.)
Again, the orange button on step 2 could be "next". I was confused as to what the 2 CTAs did...does "Save to Profile" have a different result than "Skip, I'll do this later"?
I hit the "Skip..." button and didn't see the step 3 modal as pictured in the blog post. Maybe there could be some sort of congratulatory moment there regardless of the path taken where the user is rewarded and welcomed to their new profile showing their first Referly product. Something like: "Good Job! Here's the link you just created on your new profile. A few ideas for what to do next..."
No idea. Someone who has experienced that on Heroku should weigh in...
We're hosting static media on S3, but this project has no UGC and very limited amount of media assets, so you'd have to consider the AWS costs depending on your own needs.
When I first deployed to Heroku, I was serving media right from the web dyno, and it was working, but since the app is serving up the files (not Nginx serving them directly instead, or similar), I'd imagine that's not a great solution in terms of scalability.
Yes, maintenance (upgrades, security patches, scaling up instances...) if you're going DIY on AWS is also significant. The time needed for setup + maintenance varies greatly depending on the developer(s) as well as the exact project needs, but at a minimum, Heroku needs to be at least as expensive as AWS minimum costs + bare minimum setup costs before switching to AWS could be considered cost-effective.
It is quite light. You should have seen the first version (even lighter!) The idea is to let people's cards shine and do all the talking and have the UI be as minimal as possible. I'll keep refining as I get more feedback. Let me know if you have any ideas on what you'd like more.
Thanks for trying it out! This is the ecard site I wished existed for years...no spammy ads, and no confusing sign up where you don't really know how much it will cost, etc. The main incentive right now for creating an account is to be able to have all your cards in one place (on your profile) and be able to edit them.
Re: the Flickr images, all the images pulled in via the API are not edited, copied, or saved in any way on Card Karma. They are actually loading right from Flickr's CDNs. I've tried to get feedback from a number of Flickr photographers and a Flickr admin to make sure I'm inline with their terms, and so far it's not been a problem.
It took me forever! I went to school for Jazz Performance on the banjo, so I had to learn Django, working with AWS products, etc, as I built the app. See my comment below for more tech details.
Great insights. The 'make a card' steps are made to accomodate folks who have the next-next-next syndrome (i call it!), but also have more customization options for folks who want them. It's really the bulk of what you can do in the app, so I'm thrilled you dug it.
Yes, the share page is tough. My instinct is more in line with yours, but I kept getting feedback that after you shared your card there needed to be more stuff to pull you back in ("now what?!"). But, I agree, it needs more work there.
The only emails sent from the site are welcome and password reset messages and that sort. I want to really guard the brand against becoming spammy, so I've delayed sending cards via email from the site until I can get it right. In the meantime, I've been happily surprised that most people don't mind the options that are there!
Keep the ideas coming. I really appreciate your feedback.
We share on Twitter, Luma, LinkedIn, and try to get other community groups to amplify, but there's a lot of noise out there, so we likely miss a lot of cool people.
Sometimes you get lucky and there's a good community slack/discord (for example the San Diego Startups slack) where you'll see most events posted. Otherwise, startups that are hiring engineers tend to sponsor and share events. Beyond that you have to just find out from other hackers where they're speaking or joining something.
Where do you live?