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aj_icracked

475 karma · joined October 10, 2011

YC Badge: 0x691f1441058af24bbf7d248bd48e34e20c25a70f

Chief Chicken Tender at www.Coop.Farm - We're building chicken coops for any backyard with cams that do a bunch of AI for predator detection, alerts, egg monitoring, remote health monitoring, etc! It's a super super fun company to build.

Formerly ran iCracked (w12) which was a nationwide smartphone repair, insurance, and trade-in company. Grew it to about 5k people and people and we sold it to Allstate in 2019 and had a blast building it.

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aj_icracked··on Remembering Bob Lee
I met Bob the evening he launched square cash at a Giants game. Incredibly friendly and approachable guy. He walked in the room and introduced himself by sending me $1 over email by CC'ing cash@squareup.com. I remember thinking, holy cow we have the CTO of Square hanging out with us on the day of one of the biggest product launches he orchestrated - what a time to be alive.

I spent the next few months / years keeping in touch, grabbing beers, and unsuccessfully trying to get him to join my company (iCracked) at the time. I always loved catching up with him and getting the pulse of what was happening in silicon valley. He had a few antique arcade machines and would light up when talking about them.

The last time I was able to catch up with him was we randomly ran into each other on a beach in Mexico a year or so ago - we got together for dinner and traded stories (this was peak covid). I'm tearing up writing this. You'll be missed Bob.

aj_icracked··on Does anyone want an Airbnb alternative with lower or zero fees for hosts?
As an airbnb host for a ADU, they only charge me 3% of bookings and I'm nearly always booked (probably 80%). Hypothetically let's just say it does $50k / year in bookings... paying airbnb $1500 for the customer base, support, booking engine, etc is super cheap. Airbnb is really only expensive as a guest IMO.
aj_icracked··on Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?
We're building a product at the intersection of smart home tech (think cameras with computer vision for predators, alerts, etc), light robotics (automatic doors), and services (think press a button and a person shows up to clean the coop, etc). We did this small news article a few months ago that shows what we're doing if interested https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/chicken-coop-sitting-...
aj_icracked··on Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?
Not at all, I assume egg prices will normalize in a few months / quarters to previous consumer costs - call it $1.50-$2 a dozen. It's super odd though that we're launching a company that allows anyone with a backyard to raise chickens / get eggs. For a lot of people, eggs are a bonus byproduct of raising them. A lot of people get joy from it, reduce nearly all their food waste, fertilize their yard, teach kids on taking care of them, they'll take care of you, etc. :)
aj_icracked··on Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?
Ha! I actually run a company that does Coop cleaning, babysitting, coop set up, day old chick delivery, etc. We're launching the world's best Coop in 45 days, stay tuned :)
aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Fake AA batteries, or drain acid from current ones
Could try this https://www.amazon.com/Dummy-Battery-Placeholder-Cylinder-Co...
aj_icracked··on Ask HN: What are your contrarian views?
I was thinking about this yesterday that at my next company that I may not have PMs and just work with our Eng's. We've had incredible PMs in the past but I do wonder how necessary they are with a team that has focus and knows what to build (better than I do at most times).
aj_icracked··on Show HN: I made a new kind of Bible app
This is great, keep it up!
aj_icracked··on Ask HN: How much money did you have when you retired?
I'm sure you've stumbled on this but the Financially Independent / Retire Early (FIRE) is a pretty cool thread to poke through. My CEO buddy that just sold his company is doing it. https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/
aj_icracked··on Introducing the next generation of Mac
You can disable the siri in Touch Bar and configure it to have the buttons you want. We do that to every new laptop we give our team, it's great.
aj_icracked··on Ask HN: You have $300k in stocks. What would you do?
I would go to Reddit WSB pag and buy $3000 TSLA calls
aj_icracked··on Boost VC closes $40M fund as revamped ‘sci-fi’ accelerator
Huge congrats to the Boost Team. Brayton and Adam are two of the most grounded and helpful people I've met in the VC space. I'm personally involved in a few of their companies they've introduced me to and love what they're building + the community aspect. Rooting for you guys!
aj_icracked··on Hit by Big Loss, Bird Seeks $300M in New Funds
Jay, this is awesome! I really appreciate this and it's super great to open this for the HN community. I love that approach to balancing paywall vs. critical mass / sharing. Thank you!

PS. I'm an Information sub and love how deep you go in the reporting - keep it up, it's very refreshing.

aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2017)
iCracked (W12) | Performance Marketing Analyst / Sr. iOS / Full-stack | Redwood City, CA | ONSITE https://www.icracked.com/careers

We're a venture backed nationwide smartphone repair company that is launching smart home / IoT installation this quarter. We're changing the way on-site service works. At iCracked we hire great people and trust them to do right by our customers and our peers - so you’ll have significant autonomy over your work. We value diversity, humility, and open collaboration, and we foster an environment of constant learning. We believe that small, empowered, self-motivated teams can make big contributions to the business. We think that supporting your career development and having meaningful, rewarding work to do is a requirement. We want this to be the best job you will ever have.

Reach out to me at ajf[at]icracked.com if you're interested. :)

aj_icracked··on Apple Apologizes and Updates iOS to Restore iPhones Disabled by Error 53
I am a little torn on this given there isn't a cited source and I don't know if Apple would give TC (or anyone) an exclusive on this. If it's true we're dancing in the streets though!
aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2016)
iCracked Inc | San Francisco | ONSITE

iCracked experienced over 100% growth in core services in 2015 and is hiring again for most technical skill sets along with Designers and Product Managers.

We are in need of experienced individual contributors who want to make their mark on an international brand. If you are someone who requires very little direction, thrives when given autonomy and can lead tasks through implementation, there are several spots available to you at iCracked.

Apply today at https://www.icracked.com/careers or hit up my HR leader with your resume at wes@icracked.com

aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2015)
iCracked (W12)| Redwood City, CA | Lead UX Designers and Front End Engineers wanted!

iCracked is a world leader in repair, buy back and trade in of iOS devices. With over 3,000 repair technicians across the United States and Europe, iCracked can repair your device at the push of a button!

We're experiencing massive growth in our repair requests and customer base. We are in need of a lead UX Designer and a few Senior Front End Engineers to help us get to the next level.

Please check us out and apply at https://www.icracked.com/careers

aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2015)
iCracked (YC W12), Redwood City, CA

iCracked continues to grow and is focused on these key hires below: -UX/UI Designers -Front End Engineers -E Commerce Manager -Technical Recruiter -VP of Sales

Please visit us at www.icracked.com/careers today to see our full list of open opportunities!

aj_icracked··on YC Stats
Who else wants PC and Lawstudent2 to continue this debate? :) I'll bring popcorn.
aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2015)
iCracked.com (YC W12) | SV / SF / Berlin / London | Onsite | Full time

Hey all, we're looking to hire around 80 people in the next year to join our existing team of 120. We have 2500 iTechs in 300 cities performing repair, trade-in, and a new monthly membership product we launched this week. We love engineers and envision a world where you will never need to worry about your tech products lifecycle again. You would press a button and we would deliver, install, repair, buy back, etc any of your consumer electronics.

We're growing like crazy, have some of the best minds and investors put together with our team, and are looking to build a massive company. It's been a wild ride so far. Feel free to check out what we have open at https://www.icracked.com/careers . If you're interested email me at Aj.Forsythe[at]iCracked.com

We're hiring: UX/UI Designers

iOS Engineers

Back-End Engineers

Front-End Engineers

Full Stack Engineers

Senior Back-End Engineers

aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2015)
iCracked (YC W12) San Francisco or Redwood City, CA

Our company is just under 100 strong with offices in the Bay Area, London, and Berlin and the iCracked engineering team is currently 12 individuals. We are looking to grow that to ~25 in the next 12 months. Our system currently consists of our website, 3 sets of custom built business admin tools and 3 iOS apps (1 consumer and 2 enterprise).

Revenues have gone from $1.7M in 2012, to $>17M in 2014 with massive growth estimated for 2015. We are a graduate of YCombinator (W12) and one of Forbes Top 20 Most Promising Companies. Backed by the preeminent Venture Capital firms in Silicon Valley and growing like crazy. We are poised to dominate a massive global market with backend technology that can be applied to a variety of different markets in the future.

Back End Engineers- https://www.icracked.com/careers/job?gh_jid=36814

Front End Engineers- https://www.icracked.com/careers/job?gh_jid=6133

iOS Developer- https://www.icracked.com/careers/job?gh_jid=6130

Additional Benefits:

Competitive Compensation Meaningful stock plans 401(K) plan Medical, Dental & Vision Benefits Catered lunches and dinner Fully stocked kitchen Team retreats New workstation, hardware and software Health Membership Two offices to work from; our headquarters in Redwood City, and office in San Francisco Flexible Vacation Policy Anyperk Membership

aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2015)
iCracked -Redwood City and San Francisco (Soma)-

The worlds largest on-demand mobile buy back, repair and warranty service continues to grow exponentially.

WANTED: Product Designers, Product Managers, Back End Engineers, Front End Engineers,iOS Programmers and many more!

Visit https://www.icracked.com/careers

aj_icracked··on Storing Emails from These Senators Will Be Easy, If They Ever Send One
Sounds like our peeps in Washington.
aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2015)
iCracked is looking for VP of Engineering to lead our Engineering team in creating the ultimate on-demand repair, insurance, and trade-in service. Initially, the VP of Engineering must have the ability to develop a relationship with a small team of highly talented engineers. This team represents a great core nucleus that our VPE should understand how to grow and push in a way to achieve great things. The VP of Engineering is responsible for delivering the company’s products on time and within spec. This role will report and work directly with me (CEO).

Our company is just over 100 strong with offices in San Francisco, Redwood City, London, and Berlin and the iCracked engineering team is currently 14 individuals and we are looking to grow that to ~35 in the next 12 months. Our system currently consists of our website, 3 sets of custom built business admin tools and 3 iOS apps (1 consumer and 2 enterprise). Our stack is powered by PHP, MySQL and Javascript (JQuery and AngularJS). We also have 5 people on our front end engineering team that are excellent (Check out iCracked.com)

We have a platform that powers thousands of iTechs that’s based on managing and optimizing, on demand workforce through a robust backend platform and network. You can think of it as an Uber-like service, but addressing an entirely different market need. The company is on fire.

Revenues have gone from $1.7M in 2012, to $>17M in 2014 with massive growth estimated for 2015. We are #83 on the fastest growing INC 5000 companies globally. Backed by the preeminent Venture Capital firms in Silicon Valley and growing like crazy. Graduate of Y-Combinator (W12) Poised to dominate a massive global market with backend technology that can be applied to a variety of different markets in the future.

We're building a complete Warranty, Repair, and Trade-In platform that should consolidate 3 multi-billion dollar a year industries under one consumer brand.

We have an incredibly talented and fun team put together and are excited to talk to new members that can add tremendous value while doing the best work of their lives. We're a lean development team that moves fast. We push to production multiple times a day and continuously iterate on the core service. This is an exciting time to join if you truly want to be involved in developing the core product at a tech driven company.

What we’re looking for in you:

Responsibilities

Technical leadership – act as a check and balance system relative t o key architecture decisions and other key technical trade-offs.

Implement processes to deliver results – create and maintain deadline-driven processes that ensure high quality products, identify inefficiencies, create and deliver on goals.

Team leadership – clearly define individual roles and responsibilities, motivate and empower our engineers, generate engineering buy-in, manage progress as well as overall team happiness, dynamics and recruiting. Execution – work with engineering leads to plan to achieve product goals/business priorities, set priorities and timelines, help allocate engineering resources.

Customers/Users – engage and represent the company in a way that will establish credibility and confidence with our customers/users.

Coaching – mentor engineering talent to build a rich team and foster collaboration, good habits, stable code, and creative problem solving skills

With iCracked, you wouldn’t be starting a new job; you would be joining a family. We take care of all team members and provide almost all amenities to make everybody’s lives better. Salary is negotiable and we have set aside great equity packages and other benefits for you. If you're interested please connect with me at Aj[at]iCracked.com

aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2014)
iCracked is looking for VP of Engineering to lead our Engineering team in creating the ultimate on-demand repair and trade-in service. Initially, the VP of Engineering must have the ability to develop a relationship with a small team of highly talented engineers. This team represents a great core that our VPE should understand how to grow and push in a way to achieve great things. The VP of Engineering is responsible for delivering the company’s products on time and within spec. This role will report to the CEO.

Our company is just under 100 strong with offices in the Bay Area, London, and Berlin and the iCracked engineering team is currently 15 individuals and we are looking to grow that to ~25 in the next 12 months. Our system currently consists of our website, 3 sets of custom built business admin tools and 3 iOS apps (1 consumer and 2 enterprise). Our stack is powered by PHP, MySQL and Javascript (JQuery and AngularJS). We also have 5 people on our front end engineering team that are excellent (Check out iCracked.com)

We have a platform that powers thousands of iTechs that’s based on managing and optimizing, on demand workforce through a robust backend platform and network. You can think of it as an Uber-like service, but addressing an entirely different market need. The company is on fire.

Revenues have gone from $1.7M in 2012, to $>17M in 2014 with massive growth estimated for 2015. We are #83 on the fastest growing INC 5000 companies globally. Backed by the preeminent Venture Capital firms in Silicon Valley and growing like crazy. Graduate of Y-Combinator (W12) Poised to dominate a massive global market with backend technology that can be applied to a variety of different markets in the future.

We're building a complete Warranty, Repair, and Trade-In platform that should consolidate 3 multi-billion dollar a year industries under one consumer brand.

We have an incredibly talented and fun team put together and are excited to talk to new members that can add tremendous value while doing the best work of their lives. We're a lean development team that moves fast. We push to production multiple times a day and continuously iterate on the core service. This is an exciting time to join if you truly want to be involved in developing the core product at a tech driven company.

What we’re looking for in you:

Responsibilities:

-Technical leadership – act as a check and balance system relative t o key architecture decisions and other key technical trade-offs.

-Implement processes to deliver results – create and maintain deadline-driven processes that ensure high quality products, identify inefficiencies, create and deliver on goals.

-Team leadership – clearly define individual roles and responsibilities, motivate and empower our engineers, generate engineering buy-in, manage progress as well as overall team happiness, dynamics and recruiting.

-Execution – work with engineering leads to plan to achieve product goals/business priorities, set priorities and timelines, help allocate engineering resources.

-Customers/Users – engage and represent the company in a way that will establish credibility and confidence with our customers/users.

-Coaching – mentor engineering talent to build a rich team and foster collaboration, good habits, stable code, and creative problem solving skills

Professional Qualifications:

-Start-up DNA balanced with strong organizational skills. This person should be able to help the company through an important growth phase.

-Demonstrated track record of developing engineering talent.

-Experience implementing process discipline into a high growth start-up environment while developing a great engineering culture.

-Understand engineering goals within the big picture business and product priorities. Understands how to make important product trade-offs.

-Takes ownership and responsibility for all engineering deliverables, has ability to push hard when needed.

With iCracked, you wouldn’t be starting a new job; you would be joining a family. We take care of all team members and provide almost all amenities to make everybody’s lives better. Salary is negotiable and we have set aside great equity packages and other benefits for you.

Email me at Aj[at]iCracked.com if interested!

aj_icracked··on Half a Decade After Demo Day
WePay + iCracked = WeCracked ... We should merge!!!!
aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2014)
iCracked is looking for a lead iOS developer to join our team in creating the ultimate on-demand repair, buyback, and insurance service. We are helping tens of thousands of customers a month with our platform and we're growing like crazy. We want someone to join our team and take ownership of projects and scale with us to 100X the size we are now. You would be joining us as our second iOS developer on the team and we have 3 iOS apps that are currently deployed. (2 Enterprise, 1 consumer facing @ http://bit.ly/1jJRLBJ )

We are Y Combinator (W12) and very well funded. We have an incredible, core team of 70 with beautiful office spaces on the water in Redwood City. Think of us as the Uber meets AAA of iOS devices. iCracked started on a college campus repairing iPhones 3 years ago. Now, we have a 24/7 on-demand dispatch service going out to over 600 iTechs in 11 countries around the world.

We're a lean development team that moves fast. We push to production multiple times a day and continuously iterate on the core service. This is a exciting time to join if you truly want to be involved in developing the core product at a tech driven company.

To really set yourself apart, we'd love to see projects, apps (maybe even your own startup) you've created from scratch in your free time. Send us a link with a short description.

What we’re looking for in you:

- Demonstrated ability in developing and deploying apps

- Fluent in Objective-C

- Strong knowledge of CocoaTouch, iOS SDK’s

- Demonstrated passion for developing your own projects

- Comfortable coding views by hand (We rarely use IB)

- Familiarity with: Rest API's, Git, MVC

Bonus Points (but not required):

- Background of C/C++

- Good design sense

- Experience building web applications

We love founders and the founder mentality.

With iCracked, you wouldn’t be starting a new job; you would be joining a family. We take care of all team members and provide almost all amenities to make everybody’s lives better. Salary is excellent and we have set aside great equity packages and benefits for you.

If you’re interested reach out to AJ Forsythe at AJ[at]iCracked.com

aj_icracked··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2014)
iCracked (W12) is looking for full stack hackers to take over the warranty, repair, and buyback space for iOS devices- And we're winning.

iCracked is looking for a Full Stack Developer to join its team and create the ultimate on-demand online and offline customer experiences. You should have Full Stack abilities, amazing PHP and SQL skills, and be all around awesome.

Think of us as the Uber meets AAA of iOS devices. iCracked started on a college campus repairing iPhones 2 years ago. Now, we have a geo-locational, on-demand dispatch service going out to over 500 iTechs in 11 countries around the world. This allows anybody to sell or repair their iPhone, iPod, or iPad whenever, wherever. We are Y Combinator (W12), very well funded, and looking for talented developers to join our team.

We have an incredible, core team of 55 with beautiful office spaces on the water in Redwood City. You'll be joining a talented team of developers and designers to bring together the ultimate on-demand and on-location buyback and repair experience for thousands of existing customers and millions of potential customers around the world. We're working with all kinds of fun data, visualization, APIs, and services to provide a new kind of market and customer experience never seen before.

We're moving fast. We build, iterate and ship constantly so you will be pushing code to production all the time. This is an exciting time to get in a position at the company, as you'll be able to be involved in a lot of the big picture development for our exciting projects in the pipeline.

What we’re looking for in you:

• Full Stack Abilities

• PHP Mastery (We’re always using the most of what PHP has to offer, so you should be well versed and unafraid to dive into the newer features of the language), SQL Dominance, and everything in between

• A love for grepping logs, SSHing around, and editing config files

• Drive (Our business is growing fast, so we need developers who aren’t afraid to take charge of a project and see it through to completion)

• All Around Awesomeness (Everyone here is friendly, intelligent, and very outgoing, and we want to invite more people like that to continue making the company an awesome place to work)

With iCracked, you wouldn’t be starting a new job; you would be joining a family. We take care of all team members and provide almost all amenities to make everybody’s lives better. Salary is negotiable and we have set aside great equity packages and other benefits for you.

aj_icracked··on 25 year-old's company makes millions on cracked iPhone screens [video]
Haha, still working on the millions part. We're launching an insurance company, buyback, and redistribution in the next 6 months so we're really excited about that.

Thanks for the comments, good and bad :)

aj_icracked··on iCracked (YC W12) Takes On The Geek Squad With Worldwide Local iPhone Repair
Cgislason, We have a GeoIP service on the site so when your in other countries, our iTechs show up for those specific countries. We are working on broader integrations as well, apart from expanding 4-5 new locations a week.

We also get a ton of mail in repairs from around the world in places we don't have iTechs yet. This has been very popular for US military abroad which we offer extremely discounted prices to get their devices up and working again. We are trying to expand as fast as possible now, so any referrals for iTechs are greatly appreciated!

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