benwerd

Founder here! AMA.

I’ve definitely let the project fall quiet, but I’m planning on spending more time on it. I use it on my own site at https://werd.io and there are quite a few others.

It likely is, and I’m serious about paying it!

You need to validate your business as quickly as possible. Here's one way to do that:

Consider your top 3 assumptions relating to the following risks: users (do people want this?), business (can you sell it will it be profitable for you?), technical (can you complete the project in a way that will be useful for others?). These are the things that, if they're wrong, will mean you'll fail.

Then give yourself two days and find out the answers to those questions.

The only way to find that out in that time is to go out and talk to people. Give them a call; email them; reach out on Twitter - just get that feedback however you can. Be open to learning and being wrong, even though you've worked on this for a long time.

Some suggestions:

Users - find some people you think would want this and talk to them about it.

Business - find someone who's sold something similar successfully and talk through what they did with them.

Technical - speak with people who have written similar projects at the database layer.

Engineers don't typically like picking up the phone, but there's no alternative to asking questions and knocking down those risks as quickly as you can.

I think it’s fair to say that in the US, the same program can be applied really well in one location and poorly in another place. This doesn’t mean that these programs are inherently bad - but does mean a lot of work needs to be done to reform how government delivers programs in places where they don’t perform well.

There’s a lot of scope for service design in government, and human-centered design. Of course, there are also lobbyists at every turn trying to hobble the process because there are profits to be made.

It would be amazing to see an America where its culture of innovation was laser focused on making life better for everyone. I wish we were there today.

ForUsAll | Ruby on Rails Engineer | Remote | Anywhere in the US | Full-Time | https://forusall.com

ForUsAll is helping everyone reach financial safety in retirement using tools, advice, and assets normally reserved for the 1%.

We’re hiring experienced Ruby on Rails engineers to help us push the envelope of what’s possible inside a 401(k), including by providing crypto investments as part of a retirement savings plan. We're a remote-first team with a collaborative culture and a focus on doing great work for people who have been traditionally underserved.

More information here: https://werd.io/2021/hiring-senior-ruby-on-rails-engineers-a...

Job description: https://jobs.lever.co/forusall/e42cb189-f015-40a7-80c6-45e64...

Apply here: https://jobs.lever.co/forusall/e42cb189-f015-40a7-80c6-45e64...

Other roles at ForUsAll: https://jobs.lever.co/forusall/

For context: this is the social networking platform started by the Trump team: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/01/gettr-trump-social-...

From the meta-description: "GETTR is a non-bias social network for people all over the world." So at the very least, their copywriting needs some work.

ForUsAll | https://forusall.com/ | San Francisco, full time, hiring remotely (US-only)

We're hiring Ruby on Rails, Node, React / Redux, and QA / test engineers.

We're helping regular people save for retirement using the tools, assets, and advice ordinarily reserved for the wealthy. That includes ESG funds (fossil fuel free), crypto, and we'll later add real estate and pre-IPO company investment.

Our stack is based on Ruby on Rails with an increasing amount of Node, on AWS. The front-end stack is React / Redux.

I'm specifically looking for great communicators with a startup background and a bias towards action - and who can add new perspectives to our team. If we're serious about serving all of America, our team had better be representative.

If you're interested, email me at ben.werdmuller@forusall.com or DM me on Twitter (@benwerd). I'd love to chat.

All positions: https://jobs.lever.co/forusall

> And so you do have to be thoughtful culturally about not over-rewarding the people who only do the new stuff and forgetting about the people who actually do the tedious work to finish it, because then you just end up with like a graveyard of alpha beta products that have never quite gone to GA.

This is really good - and a minefield I've seen myself in a bunch of startups. Don't limit your rewards to the flashy stuff.

It's all about (1) culture; (2) proactive outreach.

Reach out to communities like Women Who Code, Lesbians in Tech, and Code2040. Work with them. Pay them.

Then go out and find people whose work impresses you on the web. Email them directly.

Make sure you're not hiring for "culture fit". Instead, ask: how will this candidate provide a new perspective?

And make sure your culture isn't accidentally a dude's club. What are you doing to promote inclusivity and empathy? How are you avoiding baking common biases into your culture? Who gets to set process? How is success measured?

ForUsAll | Senior Product Manager, Senior Ruby on Rails Engineers | Remote OK but must be in US (office is SF) | Full-time only (no recruiters or contractors please) | https://forusall.com

ForUsAll allows everyone to build a safer retirement using the advice, assets, and tools normally reserved for the 1%. We're starting with a new kind of 401(k) plan.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, React / Redux.

Descriptions: https://jobs.lever.co/forusall

Happy to answer questions.

If Mozilla wants revenue diversity, it can be found through empowering independent creators on the open web. The open, standards-oriented, values-based browser is the key, not a sideshow.

ForUsAll | Front-end Engineer | Full-time | Remote (US only)

ForUsAll aims to help all Americans build a brighter financial future. In particular, that means helping ordinary people on non-tech, non-Fortune 500 salaries save for retirement and have better financial wellness now.

We're looking for a front-end engineer to join our team. We're using React, Ruby on Rails, and an increasing amount of Node. Ideally you've joined a startup before and you're excited about product explorations as well as building great, well-structured code.

I'd love to chat. I'm at ben.werdmuller@forusall.com, or DM me on Twitter at @benwerd.

There is a less than zero chance I'll be boarding one of these planes again, ever. Trust is an important idea in any product, but particularly in areas like aviation, and I don't see how they can possibly build it back.

I do see an opportunity for software that ensures you are only booking journeys on the aircraft you feel are safe.

I write regularly at https://werd.io - about tech, politics, the intersection thereof, and some personal stuff.

I use Known, a platform I cofounded, which supports the Webmentions / IndieWeb ecosystem described in the article. https://github.com/idno/known

I'm excited that this was downvoted into negative points! I'd love to hear why this was a bad answer.

The ACLU, because our civil rights are seemingly continuously under attack.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, because hate groups are enjoying a resurgence under the current administration, and I want to live in an inclusive society.

Planned Parenthood, because women’s rights are human rights, and we all should be concerned for women’s health. (And again, these rights are under attack under the current regime.)

Mozilla, because they support the kind of technology and the kind of tech industry I believe in.

ForUsAll | Front End, Back End, Dev Ops Engineers | San Francisco, cA | Onsitee | Full-time, Salary + Options + Benefits

ForUsAll (forusall.com) is a financial wellness startup that aims to help everyone build a stronger financial future - not just people on high incomes or who work for well-funded companies. We're starting with retirement savings, because almost nobody is saving enough.

We have a diverse, empathetic engineering team working on a meaningful mission and an inclusive culture. We've also got over a billion dollars of assets under management. And we're looking to expand with:

Front End (React + Redux) Engineers: https://jobs.lever.co/forusall/6822e2ab-db0b-44d7-b573-db419...

Back End (Ruby on Rails) Engineers: https://jobs.lever.co/forusall/44733c91-4d4d-4aac-84fa-c81f4...

Dev Ops Engineers: https://jobs.lever.co/forusall/64036b7d-8b67-4de9-9719-ffba2...

I'm happy to chat frankly - I'm the Head of Engineering. Email me at ben.werdmuller@forusall.com.

Yes to all, and I think it’s our responsibility as democratic citizens to be aware of them. What’s the point of having the right to vote and having people represent us if we’re not aware of what they should be dealing with wrt foreign policy, say? If everyone buries their head in the sand or only considers domestic issues, we don’t really have democracy. It becomes a charade that helps us feel reassured that we have freedom. Real freedom, and real democracy, come from an educated and aware populace. We can’t and shouldn’t look away from atrocities at home or abroad. It’s a global world, and we need to be able to direct the politicians who work for us.

Did you read the report? The 6 journalists were the 4 slain in Annapolis and the 2 killed by a falling tree. Khashoggi was killed in Istanbul, not the US.

I'm not so sure - I don't necessarily think it'll be federal straight away, but I think there's real possibility of state-by-state rules, which will eventually give way to federal.

This is how I know I would suck in a company like this. Yeah, it's Steve Jobs - but I find the level of reverence on show in this piece to be a little hard to take. It's certainly revealing of the culture there at the time.

> And when you can get the time for thoughtful reflection on your idea from a visionary like Steve — well, that’s a good day.

Being humble is one thing, but forcing yourself into this kind of fawning emotional servility feels dangerous to me. He was smart; he was lucky; he was a human, like anyone else. I don't think this level of hierarchy is something that I would seek to build at any of my startups, or would hope to support in a startup that I invested in or advised. It just feels unhealthy to me.

> This stands in stark contrast to the meeting I attended on Tuesday with Amazon's general counsel regarding their Rekognition service.

And I think that cuts to the core of this: this is an anti-Amazon move. Nonetheless, I do also think it's a pro-consumer, pro-civil liberties stance. It's also a recognition that the tide is turning with respect to consumers and privacy; here, Microsoft is getting ahead of this changing trend and establishing that they're on the right side of it. Amazon is going to find itself hurting on several levels next year, as legislation likely finds its way onto the books and the consumer tide changes further.

And in fact, we're seeing some great open source companies, including Elastic, which just had an IPO last month. Modern decentralization has yielded the promise of valuable assets that actually become more valuable through being open, which means that VCs in 2018 are singing a very different tune to VCs in 2014.

No, we won't see another company that's exactly like Red Hat. That's how the technology industry works. We're not going to see another successful Facebook, either. But we will see many more companies that push our expectations and moves the industry forward. Many of them will absolutely be based on open source software and communities.

This is a lot of the underlying motivation behind the indieweb community, which is growing (and holding an event in NYC this weekend): https://indieweb.org

If it's important to your reputation, professional or otherwise, you should own it. Starting a self-hosted blog is easier than ever to do, and immediately frees you from these kinds of arbitrary actions.

Anecdotally, I'd say that the issues outlined here led to an even worse problem: the experience of founders pitching to them was poor.

It's pretty high, I'll grant you - but 1/3 that of San Francisco. And the rent is correspondingly lower. Chico etc are significantly lower than that, of course, but they're a longer drive away - Santa Rosa is just an hour on the 101 from SF.

If I ever found another startup, I'll do it somewhere with significantly lower rents but proximity to a startup hub. For example, the Santa Rosa area fits the bill in SF, and there are areas of New York that are significantly outside of Manhattan or Williamsburg. It's just not worth the runway hit, and those locations force you to try for a certain kind of funding that might not actually fit the startup (or its stage) well. Cities like SF have enormous value to a startup but not so much that you have to be in them day in, day out. There was a time that this was the optimal thing to do, but I think it's passed.

> What's happened is that most of the major social networks only hire and promote people who make decisions primarily based on analytics. As a result these sites no longer have any real communities or organic content, and have been completely hollowed out by math-friendly refrigerator magnet junkfood.

_Exactly_ this. Rather than understanding their users as real humans, having unique insights about them, and building something that meets their real needs, everything has been about maximizing hollow engagement metrics. And guess what? That's good for short term revenue but not long term trust. If you're running a startup and the main way you learn about your users is through statistical tracking and A/B testing, you're missing an important opportunity to get to know them properly. They will lead the way and although you can't simply ask them what they want, if you understand them deeply you'll know what to do.

I'm excited about the next wave of platforms, which are tapping into enormous unmet needs. It's early days, and I can't stand the "web 3" label, but there's definitely going to be a sea change.

Hey! Cofounder here. The GitHub link is what many of you will really want: https://github.com/idno/known