We are 2 Italians, in Treasure Island, and we are launching CoffeeStrap. | Hacker News Reader

We are 2 Italians, in Treasure Island, and we are launching CoffeeStrap.

blog.coffeestrap.com

46 pointsmahesh_rm52 comments

I can't find a link from your Blog to your Product—it should be the most prominent thing on the page. Most common mistake around, no worries :)

Otherwise, looks cool.

Ouch! :)

Thank you, a second click on the header logo [Coffeestrap /blog] when on blog main page will bring you to www.coffeestrap.com, but we probably need to make it more intuitive!

I've read the page but still don't understand what this is.

Hi, we match you for one-to-one Coffees with people speaking different languages, on the basis of your age, gender, and location. Not random languages, but the languages you want to actually want or need to learn, practice, or not forget.

I think a lot of the communication problems come from your name. coffee is the short name of a programming language. And bootstrap programs are things used to start something. It sounds like a programming thing, even though it isn't.

Some help with your English (my mother's an English teacher, I've been a professional writer, and I live in the UK):

"We help you learn foreign languages by setting up one-to-one meetings with native speakers of languages you'd like to learn."

This is a perfect description.

I would shorten that to just: "We help you learn foreign languages by setting up one-to-one meetings with native speakers."

I'd also strongly consider testing a question-answer type headline. Something like:

"Want to practice a foreign language?" Second line: "We'll set up face-to-face meetings with native speakers."

Another possibility:

Want to practice a foreign language?

Meet native speakers for coffee and practice one-on-one.

+, shorter is better and the extra words are redundant.

I think all that's needed is a simple one-line explanation in the right place.

Also a better name. Yep.

Why not explain it just like this on your landing page? I got the general idea (after finding the landing page) fairly quickly but can't hurt to spell it out I think.

Nice idea by the way, I guess it's a lot like Verbling except in the real world rather than on video chat.

Yep.

What the hell are those gender symbols? I chose the one that looked like it didn't have fallopian tubes. Also anticipated a male-first bias and that confirmed the selection. But wow, how about something more common?

ok, after that comment (and the others about that) we:

- laughed quite a bit; - decided to change the gender symbols;

Totally right.

So did anyone else think this referred to something involving CoffeeScript and Twitter Bootstrap?

YES! then I was like... huh?

That's what I thought it was going to be when I saw the title.

Definitely - although the idea itself is a nice surprise.

It is amazing, we were not expecting such an extraordinary response! Thank you to everybody is writing us with feedback, suggestions, and encouraging words, we are going to answer shortly to all of you!

Sorry for the confusion with coffeescript and twitter bootstrap as well: we though it would be a nice name for a tool allowing you to bootstrap your language in front of a coffee. I think this misunderstanding is probably going to be very HN specific, though! :)

We also apologize for our English inaccuracies, we are getting better everyday, but I guess we need to eat some dogfood and go out ASAP for some coffeestraps..

This is not related to your business at all, but what is it like living (and working?) on Treasure Island? Are there restaurants, bars, etc? It seems like such a weird place being a former military base. Admittedly the only time I've been is for the yearly music festival.

It's actually a wonderful place. Nice and calm. There is one grocery store, one small pub (or as you want to call it) and an avenue centre. A lot of lawns.

Whenever you want the busy mood of the city in 15-25 minutes you are the Transbay terminal by bus (24/7).

It always seemed to me to be cold as hell, with a view worth a billion dollars once or twice a quarter -- how does that correlate with your experience?

We think it is just a calm great spot if you are full inside the development of your product and, like us, you do not need too many amenities, but rather to focus and take a nice walk/run along seaside from time to time. And San Francisco is literally 10 minutes bus, running 24/7. I wouldn't say it is the right place to settle down, but it's in our opinion an environment totally suitable for lean product bootstrap.

It's a bunch if low income housing with a hideous commute anywhere getting onto the bay bridge in either direction is a time consuming venture. There's practically no infrastructure on the island. Hence being inexpensive to live there. Great place to get in with the red mafia though, if that's your thing.

The "red mafia"? Who or what is this?

Russian mafia.

google is your friend.

The gender symbols are very confusing, I've never seen the ones provided before to represent gender?

Aren't these the universal gender symbols? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_symbol

Ahhh looked at the HTML and inferred from there but it should be a little more obvious?

Hopefully you guys can get enough people to sign up to reach usefulness! I signed up. Seattle. :) FYI - Facebook login didn't work for me. Let me know if you can't repro it and I'll send details.

Really thank you! I'm on you error right now! Trying to figuring out now what went wrong!

I absolutely love this idea. As I've traveled to different places I've learned how amazing it is to people able to speak to people in their own, native language.

It breaks down barriers between cultures, ideologies and preconceived notions and makes us all just humans.

As an American, it pains me that so many people in the US don't or aren't able to travel to foreign countries and don't make the effort to learn other languages.

For me, it's been a life-changing experience.

Hi Bradley, this has been true for us as well, and this is exactly the spirit through which we are building CoffeeStrap!

Your site contains ridiculous TL;DR; "Legal" section but i cannot easily find "change your languages" options, there is a "reset password" link but it directs into webpage that doesn't contain any styles. Picking languages or gender is very unintuitive. I really love your idea, i would like to see this page going viral, but in current state it's hard to pass friend a link without wasting few minutes for explaining what it's actually about.

If there's a feature you know isn't working ("apply with twitter"), why have it up there in the first place? At least, please have it so that clicking on it leaves my form fields intact. I know I spent only 20 seconds filling it out but that was annoying.

Dho. Sorry about that. We built CoffeeStrap in 4 weeks and we do not have tested extensively everything. Totally our mistake!

The entire concept and execution seems a little underdeveloped.

The language on the front page is confusing and the website's navigation is different on at least three different pages.

It seems like a simple but nice idea. Good luck! I just signed up :)

Love the idea, but I miss Indonesian in the list of languages. :-)

Oh, and other have pointed out already: the gender symbols make very little sense.

I thought this would be CoffeeScripted scripts for Bootstrap. I also struggled to get to the home page. Some testimonials would go a long way.

It seems like a cool idea. I can see it turning into a dating service... The language barriers can make things sexier ;)

Google login didn't work for me. The page says that I've logged but nothing happens. No Turkish? Good luck

Wonderful suggestion the Turkish one. As soon as the wave of HN fade we are going to deploy the fixes and add the new language.

For the Google login, the login process has still some problems here and there. After the login we don't have, yet, a page explaining what to expect next. That why nothing happens.

We are already working on that, next deploy we will hopefully be ok.

Please fix the French translation: "Joindre à la communauté" -> "Rejoindre la communauté".

Thank you! I'm going to do that right now!

Nice service, no love for Hungarians. Can you please add it?

Sure thing! In a bit it will be there!

OK, cool.

A few questions. What in the world is this? What would I do with this? How do I do whatever it is I can do with this? I feel like this sounds like it could be something that sounds cool but I'm completely lost at this point. Something about cultures, or something, right?

Hi, it boils down in fact to something very simple: we message you matching you up for real world coffees with other CoffeeStrappers who are compatible with you on the basis of your spoken and practice languages, your location, your gender, your age, and your interests, when you both are available. The rest of the infrastructure is only accessory, and its function is to making this match possible, accurate, and safe.

I admire you guys hanging your balls out there.

With that said I'd say you should really look into a content specialist.

So far you have a language based company/service that is having trouble communicating the general concept.

Wish the best.

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