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aorshan

785 karma · joined June 24, 2011

Personal website: www.adamorshan.com

Gmail: adamorshan

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aorshan··on Rate my name
I hate to be blunt but the first thing I thought was testicle. Not what you want the first impression to be.
aorshan··on Ask HN: ACM membership?
I like the ACM club at my school. Its the best collection of programmers at my school so Its the best chance I get to hang out with coders and similarly minded people. They also had a great hackathon a month or so ago where we got to meet some awesome people and get sponsored by top level companies.
aorshan··on Check Out This Berkeley Freshman’s ‘Ridiculously Automated’ Dorm Room
This is fantastic. As a college student I can absolutely attest that this is one of the coolest dorms I've ever seen and completely wish my dorm was as cool as this. Might be a project for next year.
aorshan··on Ask HN: Does doing what your users say they want ultimately end in betrayal?
Steve Blank had a fantastic post about this you might want to take the time to read.

http://steveblank.com/2012/02/27/killing-your-startup-by-lis...

aorshan··on Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings. 1 year now!)
I'd just like to point out that I've come to Mike for help on numerous occasions and he has always given me fantastic and useful advice. If you need to get questions answered, Mike is the guy you want to talk to.

Oh and Mike, I still haven't been able to find an internship for this summer. Thought I had one locked down, but I guess not. Still trying though! Oh and thanks for the interview skills book, it was amazingly helpful.

aorshan··on Growth Hacker is the New VP Marketing - Andrew Chen
Same here!!
aorshan··on Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator
This is pretty clever. Well done guys.
aorshan··on Ask HN: How to choose the right business model for my web app?
I would need a bit more detail about what your app is and what it does before I could make a recommendation.
aorshan··on What's Dropbox going to do now?
I think a different way to think about it should be, since Google Drive and Dropbox are pretty much the same, why should I switch from Dropbox to Google Drive?

I certainly can't think of a reason and thus will happily remain a Dropbox user.

aorshan··on Getting President Obama To Play With Your Product
I love this. It shows how important it is to keep your ear to the ground to look for opportunities like this.

More importantly, it shows what happens when you have the confidence to go out and ask someone to do something. I argue that most would not have the confidence to go up to President Obama and ask him to try out their app. It is essential to be willing to get out there and hustle.

aorshan··on Ask HN: Is there a "Business for Hackers" book?
Both of Steven Blank's books come pretty close. (Four Steps to the Epiphany or The Startup Owners Manual)

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is also a great place to start.

aorshan··on Need some advice before going "all in" on my start up project
When I'm trying to come up with new or interesting ideas, I like to turn to Science Fiction. I rewatch a movie or reread a book, thinking about what technology and cool ideas they have, and see if there is anything that could be made.
aorshan··on Ask HN: What do you use for a daily todo list?
A piece of paper and a pen.
aorshan··on What colleges have startup mentality?
As painful as it is for me to say this, the University of Miami isn't very startupy. We have a really great office on campus called the launchpad to help students start companies, but I haven't seen a single tech company come out of there. Most of our CS department is very theoretical and research oriented. However our ACM is pretty cool and we just had our first hackathon a few weeks ago. It was sponsored by twillio, microsoft, mongoDB, sendgrid, and a few other companies.
aorshan··on Ask HN: How do you come up with a name for a product?
Some might disagree with me on this, but I believe a name should convey what a product does. By hearing your product name, with no background information, I should be able to have a general idea of what your product does or at least what it is used for.
aorshan··on Ask HN: Learning flask, I need a small project to make. What can you suggest?
If you have access to a twilio account, this repository on GitHub is a really good place to start building a twilio app. I used it a few weeks ago and had a lot of fun messing around with everything twilio can do.

https://github.com/RobSpectre/Twilio-Hackpack-for-Heroku-and...

aorshan··on Poll: What email client do you use?
I use the Mail app on my mac
aorshan··on HN, what's bothering you?
I feel like I'm wasting my time in my college classes. I love being at college and would never give it up, but classes don't challenge me and aren't interesting.
aorshan··on I have 404,772 users. Now what?
You could follow soundcloud's business model and offer premium services like more uploads and things of that nature.
aorshan··on Facebook To Acquire Instagram For $1 Billion
I'm sorry but Instagram is not worth 1 billion dollars. Nevertheless, congrats to the founders!
aorshan··on Side Project: 1 Month, $10,000
http://vizualize.me/ and http://re.vu/ both do this.
aorshan··on Ask HN: What was your first real project?
http://cranksomeone.webs.com/

Just built it this weekend. If you want someone to talk to that is also starting out in programming, drop me an email anytime.

aorshan··on Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (April 2012)
just shot you an email. Let me know what you think.
aorshan··on Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (April 2012)
Would you guys be interested in taking a summer intern at this position instead of a full hire?
aorshan··on Ask HN: What did you build in March?
I'd love to. Sending you an email now.
aorshan··on Ask HN: What did you build in March?
I built a crank calling app using twilio and sendgrid at a hackathon this weekend. Its nothing special but its the first thing I've really ever made.

http://cranksomeone.webs.com/

aorshan··on Ask HN: The hardest job you'll ever have.
I take a bit of offense to that. I am an early 20 something and I thought that was a useless and uninformative job posting that held exactly 0 appeal to me.
aorshan··on Finding a technical co-founder: You're doing it wrong.
There are always new articles like this about how this silly MBA type wanted to throw money at something and make a product or how that finance guy thought he could give you 5% equity for building his whole product.

As one of the people on the business end who actually get it, who roughly understands the technical challenges, who recognizes how much hard work goes in to a startup, I wonder what the percentages are of people like me vs those described in the article.

aorshan··on Ask HN: Best non-technical book you've read lately?
If you haven't read a Kurt Vonnegut book, I highly recommend that you do. The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Breakfast of Champions, and Slaughterhouse 5 are all great places to start.
aorshan··on Ask HN: Best non-technical book you've read lately?
Major Major Major Major is one of my favorite literary characters. I definitely recommend catch 22 as a good read.
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