Leap | https://leap.so | SF Bay Area | Full-time | Founding Engineer
Leap is a social learning platform for a traditionally underserved market — people 55+. We're building a platform for small group, synchronous events where older adults come to learn, grow, and connect.
Joining as a Founding Engineer is a chance to have a ton of ownership, agency, and impact on an important mission — building more meaningful connections.
"Now I'm wondering if my idea is bad or if my distribution is awful."
This is a false dichotomy, I think. Trying to grow is an essential part of how you evolve the idea and discover what the "growable idea" really is. This is one of the core things I took away from this PG classic: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
Leap (https://leap.so) | Full Time | SF Bay Area ONSITE | Founding Team
Leap is the social learning community for people 55+. We are building a platform to power classes and conversations in small groups, over audio and video.
Our north star is helping foster more meaningful connections among a community that is traditionally underserved by tech.
Founders are myself (formerly co-founder/CTO of Screenhero) and Caroline Ingeborn (formerly CEO of Toca Boca, making awesome iPhone games for kids).
Leap is the social learning community for people 55+. We are building a platform to power classes and conversations in small groups, over audio and video.
Founders are myself (formerly co-founder/CTO of Screenhero) and Caroline Ingeborn (formerly CEO of Toca Boca, making awesome iPhone games for kids).
If you accept pain fully (Resistance = 0), then you won’t suffer. The more you resist, the more you suffer. And if Resistance is high, then even a little bit of Pain can cause a lot of suffering.
> spent his time on backups instead of solving millennium problems
The fundamental issue with this comment is that it assumes that solving millennium problems is obviously a high impact thing to do. It ignores the complexity and unpredictability of the world.
The TarSnap developer's story is a great example of this -- how "working on backups" led to impactful work that he probably didn't predict when he started it.
I often see people fall into the trap of moralizing about what "good" work is. Ironically, that prevents them from ultimately having the most impact that they could have.
> A lot of times writing, to me, feels like sitting alone and talking to myself. I write stuff, I publish them, and nothing really happens. The lack of feedback – good or bad – makes me doubt the work I do.
This is one place where having a co-founder/collaborator/co-worker is valuable: built-in feedback mechanism.
Another way of framing "the price is too high" is "the value is too low -- here are the things XYZ that I would love for you to add to justify that price for me."
It seems the second flavor of feedback is more useful to the developers.
There seems to be a lot of griping about the $100/year price here. The folks behind Muse have made what seems to be a solid product and want to charge for it to build a sustainable business. I don't understand what the issue is.
On the one hand, people complain about having to pay for things (especially subscriptions). On the other, they complain about startups that try to grow fast, subsidize the cost of the product with venture money, and get acquired and shut down. I don't have a problem with either approach; I think they both have their place.
But how can software developers trying to build great products (and businesses) escape this lose-lose scenario?
You may not feel that this specific product is worth $100/year to you. That's fine; not everything is for everyone. But how do we, as a tech community, better support people and teams trying to create value in a sustainable way?
'I used to work at McDonald's making minimum wage. You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? It's like, "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it's against the law."'
This reminds me of something Alex Honnold said in the fantastic documentary Free Solo:
“She [his girlfriend] sees things in a different way. For Sanni, the point of life is happiness. To be with people that make you feel fulfilled and have a good time.
For me it’s all about performance. The thing is anybody can be happy and cozy. Nothing good happens in the world by being happy and cozy. Nobody achieves anything great because they’re happy and cozy.”
I found his perspective so fascinating and revealing about people who are among the best in the world at something.
The thesis is more that we don't actually know how to "do good" because the world is complex (nth order effects, unintended consequences, etc). So the intention to do good isn't enough. (Of course, that doesn't mean we should purposefully have bad intentions.)
Instead, let's look at impact as an indirect outcome of a ton of experimentation, evolutionary pressure and a complex system. Then the way to have impact is to experiment. So focus on doing that instead of getting stuck in figuring out how to "do good".