dlf

Is the title hiding on purpose? Also, should the menu bar be fixed?

A List Apart is certainly ahead of me when it comes to what's up with web design, so I'm honestly not sure if it's supposed to be like that or if there's something amiss.

I always just rip through these things and then try to figure out how things work later. The trouble I've had with these is that it lacks context when I'm not actually trying to do the action it's calling for. I may not be the average user though.

To be fair, isn't one of the things that sets apart a UI as "good" that it is, in fact, intuitive?

It seems better than usable. It's quite good.

I think this is another one of those apps where it would be killer to be able to play around with a demo before registering. "Sign up to save your data" sort of thing.

I think age is relevant insofar as it's indicative of experience. I think there is value, both for the OP and commenters, in knowing the age of a particularly young poster because you can reference your experiences in learning to build things and encourage them in their pursuits. It's also incredibly encouraging to see young people building at an early age.

You imply that they were gaming the system to by using their age to get on the first page, rather than their merit. I'd say that something perhaps mediocre built by someone who is young merits recognition more than something mediocre built by an older, perhaps more experienced developer (we've all seen the "Weekend project" posts, but we say "hey cool, you did that in a weekend?!").

As you say, "I think anybody who wants to learn, share, and grow should be commended and encouraged, and I’m glad HN agrees with me." Isn't knowing how young someone is or how experienced they are relevant to assisting in ones learning and growth? If you've been a Rubyist for 15 years, another's advice to you on something you've built is going to be much different than if you've only been at it for 15 months.

Let's not shit on a 14 year old kid (yes, everyone knows what post you were talking about). There's no "manipulation" in mentioning your age when you're seeking feedback and growth. It's very helpful to know where someone is in their development when offering feedback and encouragement, and I think if HN is to be the sort of place where folks come to "learn, share, and grow," we should allow people to share their age or how long they've been at it.

You did bring up a good point though, that this may not have made it to the front page if it wasn't for his age. Perhaps HN readers should be more generous in helping folks get feedback on their work by upvoting "Show HN" posts. If what they've built is really complete shit, then we should help them learn why that's so by upvoting and commenting on what they've built. It seems more constructive than passive aggressive blog posts tearing people down.

Awesome to have you respond on this thread... by "more experienced folk," I didn't realize I'd get the author of one of the books I recommended to comment here. Your writings and talks have helped me get a better understanding of design, even if I'm still a complete noob. Thanks!

I'm not much of a designer, but one thing I've picked up from watching folks build convincing designs is that it's really an iterative process. The first crack at it might be just passable, but as you learn and implement new things, you can come up with a fairly compelling design. In fact, the first step should just be some ugly, pencil-drawn wireframes.

I think the first and most important thing to get right is making sure you're solving the user's problem. Create user stories, and try to really put yourself in the shoes of the user. Training yourself to think like someone who is non-technical and perhaps a casual app user is often the most difficult step, but once you do that, it's almost like programming the experience and walking them through the app. Make the workflow as intuitive as possible ("don't make me think" principle), then worry about polish.

Some useful resources that I've found useful and that might serve you well:

http://bootstrappingdesign.com/ http://designforhackers.com/ http://hackdesign.org/

Keep in mind I'm pretty green as well, but I hope this helps. Hopefully some more experienced folks can chime in and call my b.s.

That's definitely interesting, but I was thinking more recruiting as an industry. That feels more like a recruiting hack, which may be where industry disruption starts.

Would probably need to know more about what it does, but as a bootstrapped startup, we've been very frugal about what we spend money on. To knwang's point, the value prop would have to be abundantly clear (which is always the case). Saving money isn't as important as saving time. Time, as you've probably heard, is the scarcest resource to startups.

Sounds pretty awesome. I've used Runkeeper, but this realtime social aspect is really cool. Getting into their app marketplace would probably make for a nice spike in usage.

I noticed the same thing wrt recent activity. I'd like discovery to be front and center, and be able to scroll through a list rather than 2 at a time in the right column, and having to click each time. Continuous scroll would be optimal.

People use the term "vesting" to refer to a clause typically embodied in a founders' agreement in which the shares "vest," or become shares that you actually have a right of ownership over, if you continue to perform your duties.

Vesting schedules typically last 4 years with shares vesting quarterly or monthly.

So, you can think of it like this: After year one, you'll own a 1/4 of your 50%, or 12.5%. Year two, 1/2, or 25% ...and so on. You don't actually own the full 50% (i.e. doesn't "fully vest") until year 4.

Many vesting agreements carry a one year cliff, which means that none of your shares vest if you leave the company before performing for one full year. This is to prevent the "lazy founder" problem, where one founder is doing most of the work and the other one is goofing off, or decides to leave and take another job.

This is important because the first year is the most risky for a startup and requires all hands on deck. If someone flakes out, you can't have a big chunk of shares tied up in them. One, because it isn't fair. Two, because you likely need to go find yourself another founder or will need that equity for first employees. It scares off experienced founders and investors to see a chunk of your cap table trapped in a "bad decision" founder that flaked out. This same logic carries over to why there are vesting arrangements... you shouldn't be compensated if you abandon the company and don't put in the same work as the other founder.

Hope that helped explain what it is and the reasoning for it!

My concern with the approach is that it doesn't seem very lean. An idea that a developer has kicking around isn't necessarily one that has a market. I'd suggest getting involved early on the product development side and getting out and talking to customers.

Articulated market needs are much more valuable than just an idea... Nathan Barry had a nice post on HN the other day having to do with this: http://nathanbarry.com/finding-ideas-project/

Business Model Generation (http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/book) is a helpful resource as well.

It's dangerous to make the comparison to Moneyball when none of the factors used in this "algorithm" track cleanly to measurable statistics that are indicative to future success like you have with sports.

There is also nothing in this algorithm that seems to account for scrappiness, determination, ability to take hard hits, and a host of other intangibles that make someone a good entrepreneur. I'm not sure you can measure that algorithmically, other than possibly from past entrepreneurial experience, although that's a story better told by the entrepreneur rather than some arbitrary proxy.

If I ever take VC, I hope it's from a VC that believes in me, my team, and what we're doing, and not just whether I fit into their mold of what they think an entrepreneur should look like.

I guess it's sort of a "don't make me think" sort of thing. If I see a share button, I think "oh, I should share this!" or if I think "hey, I should share this" but don't see a share link, there's just a little more friction to actually sharing it (sounds super lazy, but it's true).

So, I might not think of sharing it without seeing a button, and if I do think of sharing something, but requires me to copy, go to Facebook, write a note, paste, go to Twitter and do the same thing, I'll just be like "oh, forget it." (unless I'm really excited... I shared the general link on Facebook, but not any individual song).

I would think of sharing as a feature, rather than clutter. Here's my user story - "As a user, I want to share this tasty jam with my bandmate so we can shred together" (decided to have fun with that one).

It may be going to far, but you might even want to make sharing a song a call to action ("Did you enjoy this song? Share it with friends!" [followed by big fat Facebook & Twitter buttons])

I don't put failing and rejection in the same category. Failing means you couldn't accomplish what you set out to do. Rejection means that someone else doesn't believe enough in what you're doing to bet on you. It could be a failure to communicate on your part, but it could also just be something else completely random, especially when you're talking about a highly selective accelerator like YC.

To me, rejection is almost a non-event. If you're doing something worthwhile, you're going to see a lot of rejection. Not everyone can get on board with what you're doing. That's okay. Other people will get what you're doing and believe in you (unless you haven't shown anything... gotta give folks a reason to believe in you, after all).

That said, I understand your point (learn. move forward.) That much I agree with.

Awesome!

I'm sure someone else has already said it elsewhere in the comments, but I find myself wanting to share the different demos with people and I'm sure it would improve the viral coefficient. Toss some share buttons on there, perhaps?

In any case, I'm going to take this for a spin next time I sit down with my guitar. Nicely done!

Neat!

Next: Stripe and Curebit. (With their speed of development, I just had to check their site to make sure this hasn't already been done.)

Late to the convo, but you might want to reach out to the guys at Thoughtbot. They've had good success with their apprenticeship program. apprentice.io

Good to see CSS control is coming soon. I think that's pretty key.

P.S. I shared this with the Maxwell School alumni group on LinkedIn, so hopefully that drives some traffic your way! I think that my fellow MPA alums will dig it.

I absolutely love this. I'm learning to code (slowly) and have an infatuation with data visualization. I've imagined what something like this might look like, and I think you guys absolutely nailed it. Well done!

Pipedrive should fit the bill pretty well. https://developers.pipedrive.com/v1

I really like it and can see myself using it (future notes is a killer feature), but I'm not a fan of the background either. I'd use one of these: subtlepatterns.com

Maybe fix the logo and navigation to the top of the page.

Having worked on actual legislative and regulatory amendments, this would be useful simply for collating input of stakeholders. One example would be regulatory comment periods.

add a favicon

Maybe a bigger submit button for updating the status. It's kind of hidden down in the corner below the share links.

Wait... I believe I just answered part of my feedback. I see it automatically adds a category once I add a car. That's cool.

In that case, that should be almost the first thing the user does. The form when you sign up is really scary looking. I would just have a modal that let's you enter the cars you own, and maybe a few that you would like to own, then let the user take it from there and play around in the communities.

It's a good idea in general, but the reason that these automotive forums have persisted virtually unchanged since 1998 is because they're sitting on a tremendous knowledge base that you can search.

If you can figure out a way to get these forums to migrate to your platform (yes, make it a platform), then I think you're on to something.

The other option is to just create the communities from the ground up and let the users fill in the gaps in knowledge.

People tend to have particular tastes when it comes to cars, so I think it's good to form communities around makes and models early on, or more general categories like hotrods or european sports cars.

Of course, I usually only go to car forums when looking up how to do a repair or something on my own car. It's a classic Saab, so the forums are simply the best place to get information on repairs.