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Comment by ashraful | Hacker News Reader

http://www.hackerlunch.com

I am working on an iOS app that lets hackers meet up with each other and have lunch.

I moved to San Francisco from Bangladesh last year and found it tough to meet other hackers. Being rather introverted, tech meetups didn't really work for me. I felt that a one-on-one meetup would be ideal. So that's what I'm building.

I'm hoping to launch within a few weeks. If it sounds interesting to you, you can sign up for an email notification when I launch, just go to hackerlunch.com. I'll probably do a Show HN once I launch as well.

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Awesome idea, but the background image (the cityscape) takes about 7 seconds to load for me. Try optimising it down to a smaller filesize?

This is a really cool idea! Glad you're launching worldwide. Good luck with the launch.

Sounds like a great idea, sort of like a non-romantic version of Tinder for hackers.

Sounds great man! Let me know if I can help out from USC. -fellow Bangladeshi

Are you launching this specific to SF, or other cities as well?

No, It'll be open to everyone. I originally intended to limit this to SF but have changed my mind since.

I initially tested out this idea by creating a simple form that asks users for their name, email and zipcode and manually pairing them up myself via email. I limited that to San Francisco zipcodes only, since I figured it not doing so would mean that I would have a bunch of users who may not have anyone nearby to get paired with.

A lot of people who weren't in SF actually emailed me and expressed their disappointment in not being able to try it out. So this time I'm opening it up to everyone.

If you are the only one in your city, you'll get a message telling you so and you'll be paired whenever a new user in your city signs up.

If anyone has any better ideas, I'm open to suggestions regarding this.

Since posting this I've had a few people advice me to limit the launch to one or a few cities.

It seems like a good suggestion, since the app wouldn't be too useful until there's a least a few users nearby. Focusing my attention on one city would definitely help with that.

I'm still considering the best strategy, so if you have any advice, comment here or email me at ashrafulsf@gmail.com

Reminds me of letslunch.com

The basic idea is fairly similar. The key difference is that, instead of you requesting someone to have lunch, the app automatically pairs you with someone.

I believe this would make the experience much more natural and fun.

Also it solves the problem, where a large number of users are only interested in having lunch with a few people (VIPs on LetsLunch).

I'm hoping this will make HackerLunch more about meeting interesting people and less about "networking".

I haven't used LetsLunch in years but the last time I did it was random pairing. You couldn't actually decide who to meet although you could submit who you'd be interested in and what general areas of interest were. If they changed that aspect then it sounds like you're building the original LetsLunch concept.

Hey guys! I'm the founder of http://LetsLunch.com we still have the automatching feature which schedules your lunches two days in advance. infact it is the most popular feature on our site. We do have a mobile app coming up in few weeks that will have same day matches and other geolocation/mobile based stuff. Good to see other sites coming up in this field.

Oh sorry, I never used letslunch and always thought you needed to request lunches with people. Glad to know the automatching is a popular feature, since that is what my entire product is.

Any thoughts or advice on HackerLunch? I'm sure you have a lot of interesting insights into the space since you guys have been doing it so long.

I'm in a similar space as the founder of Glassbreakers. We're automating the process of connecting women who can mentor each other. We should all lunch -

Sure..we should all lunch.. how does october 1st sounds like for lunch at plants restaurant in financial district.

that works! I'm [redacted] shoot me an email and i'll send you a calender invite.

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