There were definitely bad actors in the pandemic PPE procurement rush. It's mostly cleaned up now (prices/availability are more reasonable) but we would start to see all the lawsuits/investigations come forth from the activity earlier in the year.
Too many folks jumped into the business without knowing how it works/how to do verification.
We've done a fair bit of nitrile glove trading (after our initial work with N95 procurement & donations early in the pandemic) and happy to answer what I can.
Cheqout (YC W21) | Elixir / React | San Francisco, US | Full-Time
We're an in-person ordering & payments platform for restaurants, just finished YC and have raised a few million $ to support our rapid growth. We're already in 100+ locations and for a number of them, fully responsible for their entire ordering & payments stack.
You'ld be joining a small engineering team (4), working in concert with the founders so you'ld be integral to our efforts & will have significant impact. Elixir backend, React front-end. GraphQL. Postgres. AWS. Terraform
As we're still a small team, we'ld prefer experienced candidates only as we do not (yet) have the bandwidth to provide mentorship & grow junior engineers.
https://www.cheqout.com If you're in SF, LA or NYC, we have multiple installations you can well, cheqout.
Send me an email if you're interested refencing hackernews. [email protected]
Cheqout YC W21 | Elixir Engineer | Full-time | San Francisco | https://cheqout.com
Cheqout provides in-person ordering and payment for local businesses starting with restaurants. We are now at 150+ locations & growing our revenues 20% week on week while helping restaurants thrive during & post Covid.
We are looking for a 4th engineer on our team with at least 2 years experience with Elixir. Ideally in San Francisco Bay Area.
Cheqout YC W21 | Sales & Engineering | San Francisco Bay Area / New York | https://www.cheqout.co
Cheqout is an in-person ordering & payments platform. Our first vertical helps the restaurant industry by increasing their net profit as well as simplifying their operations. We're growing fast (> 250% in Feb) & we're post-revenue.
We're looking for:-
- Field sales account executives (SF & NYC)
- Back end (Elixir) engineer
- Front end (JS/RN) engineer
Our team is still pretty small & we need experienced hands ready to execute.
Been helping a 501c3 charity buy PPE for donation send to individual healthcare workers. https://www.humankindnow.org (work is still ongoing. After starting with hospitals/critical zones/etc we've now started with the underserved non 'headline' communities )
Now contemplating a group buy for general public/businesses with the re-opening to top off the work. https://bit.ly/groupbuymasks
Starting up: expect lots of discomfort. There's so much bigCo support you have to re-build and it is hard to hire. It might be better to spend 6mths - 1yr at A/B stage co first then only to the founder stage. Alt, try doing something on the side to begin with. Find a partner in crime.
L7 & single? You can afford to pay the outside co-founder a bay area survivable amount (140-200 varies) and have that person work through some of the early situations and then skip out when things are moving along (eg. think A round). Risk-adjusted & safe but yet keeps a lot of the upside while allowing you to taste what it's actually like.
L8? Risk-reward ratio is skewed towards staying at a FAANG. Find and fund a few projects. See what happens. Get excitement outside of work (take all! possible vacations)
Either way, maybe find some time to talk with a proper counselor/therapist (and not HN...). Doesn't hurt and can help with the disconnected feel.
ps. funding env for form FANG, it's good assuming you are doing something sort of close to what you were responsible for. Don't expect risk-reward to be favorable though..
Grab | Senior Engineers + Other Opportunities | Seattle, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines | ONSITE
Help drive Southeast Asia forward. We've raised $8 Billion to provide transportation, logistics and financial services to millions of people every day across the region.
Go, iOS/Android, React Native, High Scale / Data Science / AI/ML work.
In San Francisco? Drop by a general (not just Grab) regional update meetup July 16th @ http://bit.ly/2XBP15T
200 coming in cold is too high without a solid record / examples / focused vertical.
Have paid 200/hr easily and was happy for a 2 month project with a specific scope ( needed a solid RN<>iOS/Android bridge w. a lightly documented video player + optimization ). In another case, 250/hr (2k / day x 4 day week x 6 mths) to shore up team as it ramped up.
In both cases :- super clear communicators / solid engineers. 8-12 years eng. experience, 3-5 yrs in specific language.
In both cases, it required 2-3 strong references & examples within the specific requirement we needed. And it took 2-3 weeks back / forth before we decided (and we looked/searched hard for other options)
I've also 'taken chances' with folks at the 80-120 range. And that's the typical range where it's much easier to make the decision and never went much beyond samples and a quick 30min tech chat. Onboard fast ... and off board just as fast if things don't work out in the first 2-3 days.
If you're just starting out, placements are fine, build your portfolio up for 2-3 mths, then start looking at the 120-140 range. Once there, 6-12 mths out, you should see what you're good at / what are the particular trends and then focus there. Then you're closer to targeting specific companies (eg. do outreach) and for those specific hotspots, you would be able to command the 180-250 range.
Definitely target companies that just raised their A or B rounds. Else, it's the standard network + word of month @ those rates. Do try Angel.co as well (w. specific / targeted messages)
In the spirit of hacking to make things better(while waiting for Slack to launch their feature...) I bolted on message threading onto Slack. It consists of a two part effort. First using the Slack api to overlay a reference map on to all messages and then secondly, overlaying a UI upgrade onto the slack web client (via JS/dom manipulation encapsulated via a chrome extension).
Conceptually, this means it is possible to also 'upgrade' various other sites/apps that we feel is lacking in some way or another.
This "They'd need to solve payment collection;" is an intriguing problem if it is still present. The spate of startups (doordash/postmates/et.al) solves the problem (and more) but I certainly wonder if there's a more focused solution to the specific problem. Would there happen to be more specific details/datapoints?
I'ld add that drone delivery for takeout would be a nice win, given that most restaurants that deliver are already limited to nearby locations and speed is desired.
With a proviso that it might be easier in a suburban situation to begin (given a lawn to drop off the goods).
yeah.. the beauty of the rocket cost asymmetry means they only need to do it 'sometimes' and not all the time to drastically reduce launch costs. (75% of cost is in the first stage, fuel costs are 0.3%)
+1. Having something that can use the existing rail infrastructure in off periods would be great as a transitional adoption method. That way you have time to address the institutional jitters while still providing/proving real service.
For example, during weekends / night when the load is much lower (or service doesn't run anyway).
In the 4 minute / 40 people scenario, you're only talking about 10 people every minute. 10 pods stationed at that stop solves it.
Now, everyone doesn't wait 3-4 minutes. They just get on the next available pod. Remember, people coming into a typical station don't come 40 at a time. They come in clumps of 1-4.
All of which transforms a batch system (subway/light rail), to a continuous system.
There is an assumption that stations are off the main rail. Which, given the size of a typical pod, is feasible. It is certainly much smaller than your typical light rail system
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btw. wrt to speed.
There's nothing stopping you pre-ordering a destination at a machine (or smartphone) before you get to a pod. Swipe your credit card, see your name on the pod you should go to. Walk in. Sit. And go.
And in the case of your daily commute, even easier. Have it pre-set. Jump in to a pod, face-recognition (or nfc/ble) and if it's your 'typical' time, you're off. No pressing/no swipes. Just go.
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NIMBy's are always going to be an issue and off-grade (eg. above/below ground) is typically going to be required.
Self-driving cars.. are definitely -the- alternative. But only if there's actually enough road. Eg. it's not going to go any faster during rush hour. It just means you're not going to be driving.