ankitshah

We're all about high fives, hugs, eye contact, and being in person. Attention and trust are really important variable in our f(human connection).

I think 100 attendees isn't a horrible thing if they actually feel a sense of common ground. The real difficulty is eliminating the friction that exists between people in those large gatherings. Something we try really hard to accomplish, in between all the tea times we host, is create larger gatherings for the community and cities at large that welcome people in a way that gets rid of all notions that any attendee would need formalities to treat the others like the most amazing person in the room.

Making me blush. So unnecessary. But we're doing our best. Long road ahead if we want to create a real dent while staying mindful.

Robert! So cool that we cross paths again on the internet. We're trying hard, but time will tell if we actually are hitting the nail on the head. Things have been good so far, but this is certainly a tough thing to grow effectively :).

Wow. This is amazing. Thanks so much for being so receptive to what we're trying to do. This is exactly what we're going for. Except for 8mn people in NYC, not just 100.

In time.

It was pretty beautiful. Thanks for the love JD. And the pun. Because that wasn't at all predictable ;)

Oh, and if you want to see what he's talking about, here are some pictures https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.785821618171086.10...

IT LOVES YOU TOO T.ZHONG

Appreciate the good words, and I'm glad this resonates with you!

Although we avoid mystical, religious, or occult contexts, I do think it's important to understand the shared soil from which a lot of these things rise. It's helpful to have some common glue for a community to center around, especially when it involves some notion of what it means to be 'good' in the societies we live in. For lots of people, that comes in the form of some spirit or beyond-tangible belief.

With TWS, we assume that the people around us give us more than enough to believe in. (But if we were to get into it, I'd likely argue that's what most mystical or religious groups are about on some level. But let's not get into it :).

In time! Lots of social norms we gotta be more understanding of before we expand into South Asia in general.

I have a personal interest in expanding into India and nearby areas, given my family background and a lot of nonprofit work I've done in the past, but we definitely have more operational challenges to sort out before we can focus intently on international expansion with an appropriate amount of tact and attention. In time!

Hey! Thanks to @nickbarnwell, we'll have a suggest city feature tonight.

Didn't realize this was going to be on HN today, and did NOT plan for such amazing traffic. Everything we do is spread via word of mouth, so we don't face these issues as much as we have been today!

Nick you're awesome. Thanks for being so on the ball brother!

Wow. Didn't realize this was on HN. Hi guys. Ankit here. I started TWS. Happy to answer any q's here or by email (Ankit at teawithstrangers.com). Actually in the middle of a gathering of the SF host community right now so will be a tiny bit delayed on responses but will get to everything!

Lots of gratitude for all the good words and valuable critiques.

http://teawithstrangers.com might be relevant ;)

Love how this is tactically oriented and not just an expose of stuff that happened to work.

Just noticed the coffee thing sitting at the top of HN, and realized I never posted this. I launched this a week ago through diff networks. It's gotten 5000 hits so far, 1700 from California, and 300+ sign ups (just as shocked as you by a ~20% conversion). I've already begun getting tea with people on Friday last week, but it'd be lovely to meet you / anyone you know in the area as well.

I've been doing something like this with a slightly different angle for a while now (see http://tea.byankit.com + http://tea.byankit.com/penn). Would love to learn more about your inspiration and see what some of your thinking was behind the initiative. We should talk.

agreed. terrible rap.

you're right! I referred to him with full name throughout the site later on (in the annotations), but the album cover was meant to be more playful, so I went with his nickname (http://rapgenius.com/Maboo). appreciate you looking out though :)

you got me there

very, very good analysis. great write up jason. saving this one.

Good luck dude!

Entrepreneurs shouldn't be building things for the sake of making money. If you're an entrepreneur, it's your job to solve real problems that people have. It's never about you. It's always about the people you're serving.

I think this all depends on the nontechnical cofounder you're dealing with. Some have an idea and just want it built, and, as rcavezza mentioned, have done no customer development. As a nontechnical founder myself, I don't think it's reasonable to start seeking a web consultant or a technical cofounder until a solid amount of work (read a month or two developing the business) has been done. Customer development is only one piece of the pie, but thinking about how the iterations of the product might look, actually designing the site (at the least on a mockup software with the UX clearly defined), and really having understanding of what the consumer wants and rationale for why the product is to work the way it does is all extremely important. A very concrete vision for the product and what future versions of it would look like (contingent upon user feedback and usage, of course) is also crucial. None of that comes in a week of work. It takes lots of time and a huge amount of conversations with users, entrepreneurs, and people who understand the space you're working in.

That said, after that work was done and the nontechnical founder could reasonably say they were ready for their prototype to be built as an MVP, then sure, I'd go with $1000 - 2000 to get it built. Again, to reiterate what others have noted, this depends on the complexity of the product. I don't like the idea of saying "get it done in three days." Too arbitrary. Building a minimum VIABLE product takes communication, and I'm not sure if enough communication would be done in 3 days to actually build something viable.

For those of you that are interested in a JS/jQuery-heavy project with a RoR backend, I am actively looking for someone to help me with this. I have been actually working on this business full time for the last 1.5 months, and I'd like to say I am finally ready to work with someone technical to make this happen. Feel free to contact me @ a[dot]shah811[at]gmail[dot]com