Does anyone else think that this camera taking pictures based on who you spend the most time with could be really depressing? "How come there are no photos of my kids and a whole album of my boss with fancy filters added?"
Hey guys - I'm one of the co-founders of Forecasteroid. This is my first ever web application, so would love any and all feedback.
My background is in finance, self-taught programmer - my goal with this app was just to make something that would allow people to build a budget/forecast for their business quickly and easily.
I'm currently working on adding integration with Quickbooks Online and other cloud accounting solutions, so hoping to have that rolled out in the near future!
I think this point could open the door to a more interesting conversation if we take pot out of the equation.
I do agree that we need to legalize pot, and I can see how for some people it would have this effect. In my experience, it's not so much that pot replaces the effects of alcohol (much different effects as mentioned by others), the real impact for me is just being in the habit of using one over the other to alter consciousness/relax.
Considering the wide range of molecules that are psychoactive, it is interesting to consider what 'drugs' could be seen as a better alternative to alcohol. Interested if anyone here has ideas on what less harmful substance(s) could step in to fill this role?
I'm in Vancouver, BC but happy to set up a call. Currently working on a prelaunch fintech startup, always great to hear from people interested in the field.
Here in Vancouver, BC, it seems to be treated as being de facto legal.
You can walk into a dispensary, make an appointment with their in-house naturopath and claim to have any of a long list of medical conditions which includes insomnia, digestive problems etc. As long as the naturopath signs off on a form stating that you have told them you have a condition that is on the list - you are eligible for membership at the dispensary with no prescription necessary.
Within 5 blocks of my house there are two such dispensaries, one of with is renting a retail unit that used to belong to a high-end salon, so essentially anyone can head on in to a clean, safe store and choose from a wide variety of cannabis products.
Obviously we still have the problems caused by criminalized marijuana to some extent (criminal records preventing employment, wasted resources etc.) but it's impressive how far things have come without decriminalization actually passing into law.
Right now we're using Excel to gather the initial data, but we're working on building it out so that all of the data gathering happens in our web app. We're working on building a sort of 'wizard' interface similar to TurboTax etc. where it will ask questions to narrow down what information is needed.
Definitely getting the output formatted as something investors can play with and double check will be big for us. We're working on developing a method to generate an Excel-based model from the app, but that's definitely one of the more technical challenges we're facing right now.
Thanks for some excellent insights here - much appreciated.
At a high level - our concept is to create a prescriptive tool for bottom-up forecasting (i.e. building up from metrics like the ones you mentioned to how those drive revenue/costs)
What tools for analytics/finance have you found to be most useful? Ideally we'd like to set up our product to tie in to existing systems directly (where possible) to essentially automatically track overall performance vs. plan over time.
Getting some ideas as to what processes SaaS businesses currently use would be hugely helpful to make sure we're staying on the right track.
+1 for Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby. I'm admittedly a relative novice (my background is in finance, but I've been learning to program through books and online resources for about a year now).
Reading this book led to many "Aha" moments where I really started to understand the benefits of OOP. Great read.
My name is James and I've been a freelancer in the area of financial forecasting for 1 year. I have an MBA in financial management from a top Canadian school and 5+ years of industry experience.
I'm also a Rails developer (no formal education in CS, just self taught through books/Edx etc). My primary motivation for doing freelance work is essentially gaining a better understanding of the market for my startup. The startup will be focused on providing tools to allow entrepreneurs to easily track their business performance vs forecast on an ongoing basis.
Kind of an esoteric title, but the book is filled with outstanding information and actually specifically addresses the standard MD diagnosis of inflexible calves and how to really drill down to the root cause. Definitely worth a read. Good luck and congrats on setting self improvement goals!