We're 2 developers with more than 8 years of working with Rails stack. You'll get full-stack Rails development, including Dev Op work for a very reasonable rate.
Emailed. I lost contact with you some time ago, but we were always wondering when the service would become publicly available. Glad to hear it's coming soon!
Perhaps I wasn't clear. Collecting email addresses is fine, but make sure you're really getting people who are genuinely interested in your product. My point is that people shouldn't focus on hoarding emails. The focus should be on testing certain message, certain angle of the product, whether they like the future vision, etc...
I used to do what you did too. Pure PHP without frameworks projects always grow unmaintainable. At least go with a framework like CodeIgniter. Rails is great too if you prefer Ruby (which I do).
Wow, thank you everyone for the incredible responses and support. I'm really glad people found the post useful.
I didn't link to Munchery because I intended to write something to help future interviewees, not to promote the company. But it's really encouraging that people seem to like the idea :)
Investing in people over their ideas is always advisable. But let's not forget how brilliant people can still fail. Tons of bright kids come out of MIT, Harvard, Stanford, etc... Should you blindly invest in all of them?
Instead, I prefer Mark Suster's "invest in lines, not dots" strategy. You really have to spend more time to have a better idea on whether you should invest.
In hindsight, of course Drew Houston would be a good investment.
I'd suggest doing at least email-based registration. Email is still the most common form of communication online. Although a lot of people have Twitter accounts, there aren't as many power users as email.
I am disappointed that there's still nothing in there regarding foreign founders, who account for a fairly large percentage of new startups. Are foreign founders supposed to just plunge themselves into it and hope they don't get removed from the US after their visa runs out? What can they do if they want to start a company in the US right now?
I understand immigration is a complicated topic, but if the US plans on retaking the lead without the help of immigrants, it'll have very little chance of success.
It's not that Mark is wrong. He doesn't try to answer THE question, because there is no right or wrong answer. It's not so black and white, yes you should do it or no you should not. What he did was giving great advice that should seriously be considered, but the choice is up to you.
Read his advice, he tells it like it is. If you choose to do it, then you have answered the question for yourself. If Mark advises against it and you think he's right, indeed you're not an entrepreneur. If you do it anyway, simply prove that it's the right answer.
I used to be like you, not using a framework for exactly the same reasons: I wrote everything myself, and since it's PHP, it wasn't that hard. I knew how to exactly when something was going wrong, I didn't have that power of clarity when I was using a framework. But over time I've learnt the following lessons:
1. I was naive to think that my code would be better than the code of an established frameworks that have undergone through extensive testing by a big community.
2. It's a lot harder to bring people on board to help with coding. I can navigate my code very easily, but many people who are used to how to do things in a framework found it very hard.
3. Without the help of a community, I had to code EVERYTHING myself. There is no gem or plugin to install, which will REALLY help speed things along. In a startup environment, speed is a real competitive advantage, every bit of speed you can gain over your competitor should be pursued. I can't stress this enough.
4. When you run into serious problems, Google search is unlikely to help if you don't use a framework. You're likely the only one with that problem. Whereas if you use a framework, there's a very high chance other people have run into the problem before, and the error thrown out will be in a Stack Overflow or a bug tracker somewhere. Your life will be much easier when trying to track down serious bugs.
I used to use PHP for about 5 years, and I think the problem with PHP and frameworks is that there are so many frameworks around, and we just don't know which one are the one to use. So many developers have this question. Code Igniter or Kohana or CakePHP or... 20 other frameworks out there? It really sucks when you have to put in the time to figure out which frameworks work for you, and it's one of the reasons why people don't use a framework in the first place. Where as for Python, Django is a clear winner and Ruby, there's RoR. Those languages have many other frameworks too, but they have a clear winner with a large community who could help you.
As for me? I'm now doing almost everything in Ruby and Rails, and not looking back. I feel very good about the way I work now. I have become as good with Rails as I was with my own code, and it only took a few months. I suggest you give it another try. It will be time consuming at first, but it's very worthwhile in the long run.
Is your goal to do a startup, or become a programmer?
If it's the former, I strongly recommend simply learning HTML/CSS/Javascript and make a killer front-end of your product without the back-end logic. Trust me on this.
Not only is it faster, it's the pretty front end that gets other developers to understand your product. Don't worry if your "product" lacks logic at first. Static content serves the purpose just fine. At the same time, this will convince people that you can carry your own weight in the startup. Now you have something real useful to offer and contribute instead of just an idea.
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Rails, HTML, CSS, JS, React, Mobile
Email: [email protected]
We're 2 developers with more than 8 years of working with Rails stack. You'll get full-stack Rails development, including Dev Op work for a very reasonable rate.