kylebragger

Good point; updated.

Heh, I tried, too. Managed to snag gum.io though.

This was definitely my experience when Forrst went out in late December. Nonetheless, AngelList is doing a seriously awesome service for folks like me.

Thanks a lot, I'm glad to hear that. Hope it wasn't too obvious I used iPhone headphones. Dan knew immediately :)

I'm a developer, and to be honest, not a ton. For better or for worse, I spend the majority of my time building cool[1] stuff. Some things, like Forrst, have taken off and garnered me some nice exposure. Other things have ended up being duds. Other than that, I do blog[2], albeit infrequently, but I'd like to change that; I think it is important to speak up if you feel you have something thoughtful/insightful to add to your community/industry. However, I've found that I much more enjoy the passive recognition that comes as a result of creating neat stuff, because it feels much more "real" than trying to promote myself for the sake of it. I really don't care /that/ much about my reputation[3] insofar as I'm not out to be the #1 anything; I'd rather build amazing things than worry about what top 10 list I'll (never) end up in.

[1] at least to me

[2] http://kylewritescode.com/

[3] that's not to say I don't care about it generally speaking; I do strive to be thoughtful, helpful, and someone that people respect.

I was the sole developer on Forrst from late Dec 2009 through about November 2010. I hit the same point as you -- burnt out from doing it all, but finally financially able to spread the load a bit.

Our app isn't huge, but still pretty complex and comes with a bit of a learning curve. The dev I hired I'd originally met on Forrst, and that provided a nice opportunity to get to know him and his process for a bit before we started discussing working together. It's worked out beautifully so far.

I hear you on managing others -- it's been a learning experience for me, and I know I'm not great yet, but getting better all the time. From my perspective, I've tried to approach this from the standpoint of "would I enjoy working for me". Also, I think it's important to keep things in perspective -- two devs is still really small, and should (to me at least) feel more like a partnership than a more formal manager/employee relationship.

That being said, I'm curious if you've been able to gather any data on why they're not sticking around. Even an informal exit interview over coffee or something. Seems like that could be useful in determining what to do next.

Happy to send invites. Just email me at Kyle At forrst .com

I'm still in awe at how well this turned out. Huge kudos to you both. And, made me realize: Clearly we need to do a better job keeping tabs on awesome collabs like this. I'm certain there must be more.

Congrats! I'm thrilled to hear that you found someone through Forrst. Clicking around the project -- looks awesome.

Joshua, if I may ask: would you mind elaborating a bit? Is it the fear of letting someone down, concern you may be making a mistake in passing, something else? All of the above? Thank you.

This is probably one of the most frustrating aspects of the whole process. I'm raising money for Forrst right now, and I've lost count of the number of folks who have done this. They make it seem like saying a two letter word is some superhuman feat. Makes me extra grateful for the guys who stuck to their word and followed up quickly with a yes/no.

Definitely a great question to ask. Re: the karma - couldn't hurt to throw that up there then.

That's a great point. Duly noted.

Point certainly taken. I actually (surprisingly?) have a bunch scheduled, so presuming all goes well, I'll have some real feedback and hopefully folks vouching for what I'm doing.

I agree that I'm not exactly selling myself well enough. Wondering if it's worth showing that on this site, or just discussing in more detail with interested parties. I do agree that I'm not doing the best job of setting myself aside from the invoice pros.

Thanks. I think that it's likely a combination of both. Also, I'm looking to help so-called idea guys - folks who probably don't use HN, but have an idea with potential, and a little capital to throw at it. FWIW, folks who turn to HN for guidance and feedback probably aren't the target demographic anyway, and they certainly wouldn't need my help :)

Thank you. I think that's a great idea — I'll update the site right now. Neat idea re: karma, though not sure how much weight that would have for the types of folks I (think) I'm targeting. Couldn't hurt, either way though!

Thank you. I actually already have about 15-20 hours scheduled (most prior to launching the actual one page site), plus a couple entries on the MVP form.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to angle this, but my ideal customer is an "idea guy" who does have the means to pay, an interesting idea, and "gets it" with regard to what it actually takes to build a product.

I do like the idea about involving some kind of idea sanity check, though I'm kind of doing that as folks contact me — I'd rather tell them that it's not really a viable idea as is, and spend a little time working through that, vs. take their money for the 2 hours or MVP product just because I can.

I thought about adding that but didn't want to emphasize one technology stack over another, at least not on the one-pager.

That being said: PHP, Ruby, some Python; Mysql, Postgres, Mongo.

Clickable: http://youshouldworkwith.me/

Only insofar as it being a potential personal homepage replacement. We're shooting for something that our members can use in that way, but what is not visible yet is a way to browse their contributions to the site. We also have no plans to aggregate social services, only link to them.

Certainly, I'll put it there now. Totally understand about the confusing elements of the site. Something we're working on polishing. Cheers.

Happy to give HN members invites - Kyle at forrst dot com

I was there from July '09 until I left to launch Forrst in March '10 -- really sad to see things come to this, but I hope there is still a happy ending in store for all involved.

Heh, this is actually about 33% of the entire service. One cool thing to note is that it's entirely powered by our API; even authentication is done via OAuth2.

Oh, I'm definitely not advocating building everything in 24 hours. Moreso, I'm saying that I think at this point it's possible for nearly anyone to round out their toolkit and prototype their ideas into a working MVP. Doesn't have to be polished or detail-heavy; focus on the minutia later, just get something tangible in front of users now.

Reading Mark's HN post the other day definitely helped get me pumped to build something.

I knew that I wanted to do some kind of reverse Q&A, but fleshed the entire thing out within the 24hr period.

Yeah, using a grid-based css framework is a huge time saver. I find things tend to get a bit less readable when you've got "grid_5 alpha push_2 foo bar" classes everywhere, but hey, it does wonders for getting an MVP done.

Also, that JSM post never gets old.

Could not agree more. The litmus test I've been trying to use is "does it feel like I forgot something" — if yes, it's probably a good stab at an MVP. Once it gets into the hands of users, the things I felt that I forgot or otherwise omitted from the initial iteration will either make their way back in, or get discarded entirely, depending on user feedback.

I'm already over the 5MB free limit.