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navneetloiwal

217 karma · joined August 16, 2011

co-founder, coefficient.io
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navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Do you regret being a generalist?
I can provide perspective from both sides of the table, to add to the wonderful comments already posted.

The first few years in my career were a will-do-anything attitude. So yes, like the OP, I did a bunch of different things. A few years in, I harbored similar thoughts of feeling inadequate. A jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none. Especially, since I was at Google and was surrounded by the best of the best and experts/specialists in anything you could name.

My next stint was at an early stage startup (<10 employees). This is when I started to realize that this "weakness" may actually be a strength. You could point me to a wide array of things and I could run with it. I could take the principles from one stack/language/system and use them in another.

Now, as a founder, my favorite hires are generalists. Engineers who have a wide breadth of experience, a do-whatever-it-takes mindset, and ideally, a sprinkling of product/business sense. They are the first-principles thinkers. They can handle ambiguity and change without batting an eye. They will figure when/where you need a specialist.

Be proud of being a generalist.

navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2021)
Coefficient | Sr. Backend Engineers | Remote From India/USA/Canada | Remote Only | coefficient.io

Coefficient is the next evolution of spreadsheets. We connect spreadsheets to all the other company systems (eg Salesforce, databases, ...) to empower the business user to work with data in the familiarity, power and flexibility of the tool they love -- the spreadsheet. This is a massive market since spreadsheets are the mainstay for business users across all types of companies and geographies.

Today's data and BI tools were designed for data specialists and data engineers. However, as more companies and business functions embrace data-driven cultures, they are held back by the inherit complexity of existing tools, as well as the technical expertise required to set up, maintain, and operate them.

The founders are serial entrepreneurs whose last startup, Shopular, was backed by Y Combinator and Sequoia and acquired by Rakuten Ebates. Coefficient is backed by top-tier bay area VCs (undisclosed).

We are looking for senior backend engineers to help us shape and deliver our vision. You will work alongside the founders to define features, design core backend architecture, and develop resilient, scalable systems from the ground up. You should have 6+ years of experience as a backend engineer and python experience is a must.

To apply: email join@coefficient.io

navneetloiwal··on The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
This! As programmers, it is easy to list N reasons why spreadsheets suck and deserve to die. But the reality is that it is the most ubiquitous business software and the non-tech/business users would rather be in a spreadsheet than anywhere else. Companies run on spreadsheets, even if they have the best "data stack" and tools. Because few, if any, software can beat the

* flexibility (throw data anywhere and link it to each other, make edits, write notes),

* power (formulas, etc), and

* familiarity (the most underrated factor) of spreadsheets.

Nothing else allows the non-tech user to feel empowered like spreadsheets do.

Spreadsheet evolution has been slow though. Google Sheets added cloud + collaboration 10 years ago. We (https://coefficient.io) are adding the layer of connectivity to sheets so they can remain in sync with the actual sources of data (Cloud apps like Salesforce, DBs, BI tools, etc) so sheets actually become "live" (even though they have been in the cloud for a while) and to reduce manual work and increase trust/accuracy. There is so much more that can be done to leverage this largest software platform that is out there.

navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2021)
Coefficient | Sr. Backend Engineer | Remote From India/North America | Remote Only | coefficient.io

Coefficient is a no-code solution that allows business teams to work with real-time data directly from their spreadsheets. You can sync your Google Sheets to your company systems such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Google Analytics, Looker, MySQL, Redshift, Slack and more. This empowers anyone in the company to build reports and analyses that are real-time, flexible, and accurate without any knowledge of SQL or other advanced tools. Native Slack integration coupled with a powerful business rule engine enables you to keep the right people up-to-date at the right time.

Coefficient is a VC-backed SaaS startup in the SF Bay Area. The founders are serial entrepreneurs whose last startup, Shopular, was backed by Y Combinator and Sequoia and acquired by Rakuten Ebates.

We are looking for senior backend engineers to help us shape and deliver our vision. You will work alongside the founders to define product, design core backend architecture, and develop resilient, scalable systems from the ground up. You have 7+ years of experience designing and building complex backend systems and solid Python experience.

To apply: email join <at> company domain

navneetloiwal··on Excel Never Dies
Yeah spreadsheets are ubiquitous workhorses -- small companies to large, old to new, across geographies ...

Spreadsheets have many problems. We are going after their "connectivity" to the rest of the company systems. Hidden errors / debugging is definitely another big problem which we are only tangentially solving. If your data is imported into the sheet through Coefficient (instead of a copy-paste of a downloaded CSV), then you can always trace the lineage/timestamps/etc all the way to source.

As for hiring developers, the truth is that day-to-day business needs grow faster than you can hire devs. So yes, at a certain point companies move some workflows to dev-built tooling or specialized SaaS tools, but their bucket of unhandled workflows still grows larger every day. That is why you can't kill spreadsheets.

navneetloiwal··on Excel Never Dies
We started a company with the core premise that spreadsheets will never die [0]. Spreadsheets are so good at the most casual data viewing and exploring tasks to creating complex financial models. They are also the de-facto choice when you have data (not big data) from multiple sources that you need to "join". We tend to underestimate the beauty of this tool which can be used productively at all points of the skill spectrum. Everyone feels at ease in the familiar territory of a spreadsheet, which is what makes it ubiquitous and basically impossible to kill.

If spreadsheets were two-way connected with your core systems like SaaS tools, DBs, Slack, etc then you could represent serious business logic and actions without being a programmer. It is the best platform to build a "no code" tool for non-programmers.

[0] http://coefficient.io

navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2020)
Coefficient | Sr. Backend Engineer | Remote From India/North America | Remote Only | coefficient.io

Who we are Coefficient is a VC-backed SaaS startup in the SF Bay Area. We are still in stealth and just raised a large seed round. The founders are serial entrepreneurs whose last startup, Shopular, was backed by Y Combinator and Sequoia and acquired by Rakuten Ebates.

What we do Coefficient is a self-service data warehouse for business teams. Today's data tools and BI stacks were designed for data specialists and data engineers. However, as more companies and business functions embrace data-driven cultures, they are held back by the inherit complexity of existing data analytics tools, as well as the technical expertise required to set up, maintain, and operate full BI stacks. Coefficient's mission is to unlock organizations' latent data productivity, by enabling users to model, re-shape, and build reports using data from any data source—all within an intuitive, no-code interface.

Who you are We are looking for a lead backend engineer to help us shape and deliver our vision. You will work alongside the founders to define product, design core backend architecture, and develop resilient, scalable systems from the ground up. You have 7+ years of experience designing and building complex backend systems You have extensive Python experience. More details: https://angel.co/company/coefficient-io/jobs

navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Who is hiring right now?
Coefficient | Sr. Backend Engineer | Remote From India/North America | Remote Only | coefficient.io

Who we are Coefficient is a VC-backed SaaS startup in the SF Bay Area. We are still in stealth and just raised a large seed round. The founders are serial entrepreneurs whose last startup, Shopular, was backed by Y Combinator and Sequoia and acquired by Rakuten Ebates.

What we do Coefficient is a self-service data warehouse for business teams. Today's data tools and BI stacks were designed for data specialists and data engineers. However, as more companies and business functions embrace data-driven cultures, they are held back by the inherit complexity of existing data analytics tools, as well as the technical expertise required to set up, maintain, and operate full BI stacks. Coefficient's mission is to unlock organizations' latent data productivity, by enabling users to model, re-shape, and build reports using data from any data source—all within an intuitive, no-code interface.

Who you are We are looking for a lead backend engineer to help us shape and deliver our vision. You will work alongside the founders to define product, design core backend architecture, and develop resilient, scalable systems from the ground up. You have 7+ years of experience designing and building complex backend systems You have extensive Python experience. More details: https://angel.co/company/coefficient-io/jobs

navneetloiwal··on How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim
I use pen and paper notes for meetings & discussions. While I love the act of physically writing, not having notes accessible and searchable at the tips of my fingers means I am not able to get the most out of them.

This discussion is timely as I have been researching smart pens the last few days which can give you exact copies of your paper notes into an app. Anyone here used them? Do you like them?

navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2015)
Shopular (Redwood City) -- iOS engineer, Android engineer, Data Analyst

We are a Sequoia backed startup. Our vision is to be the ultimate smart shopping companion for every shopper, revolutionizing the access to information to help you save time and money. We are a small team and looking to get two mobile engineers to lead the mobile apps.

If you love data and finding insights with the purpose of making the product grow faster and identify areas of opportunity, you'd be a great fit for the data analyst role.

We have over 5M users, yet a small team of 5 engineers. This is a huge opportunity. We are looking for experienced and accomplished engineers.

Please send us email at join@shopular.com

navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2014)
Shopular - Redwood City, CA

Looking for Senior iOS and Android engineers - shopular.com/jobs

===== About Shopular

Shopular is connecting shoppers and brands in the moments that matter. Our mission is to be your personal shopping concierge that provides the most intuitive and effortless way to save money. The iOS and Android apps have over 30,000 reviews and widely loved. Time featured Shopular as one of the 50 Best iPhone Apps of 2013. Shopular is backed by Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital. shopular.com/about

The best part is that we are still a small team of 5: high-caliber engineers from Google, Shopkick, Ooyala and Loopt We are growing the engineering team and looking for experienced and eager individuals who share our passion for creating consumer experiences that "just work". You get significant equity, significant responsibility and a company with traction and backing.

===== About the roles

We are still a small team of 5 engineers and looking for experienced iOS and Android engineers who can take the apps to the next level.

You should be a master of iOS/Android with significant prior experience building beautiful consumer-facing apps with a large number of users. You have built complex apps from scratch. You share our passion for creating consumer experiences that "just work".

Email join@shopular.com

navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2014)
Shopular - Redwood City, CA

Shopular's mission is to create the most intuitive and effortless way to save money while shopping. The iOS and Android apps have over 20,000 reviews and widely loved. Time featured Shopular as one of the 50 Best iPhone Apps of 2013. Shopular is backed by Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital.

The best part is that we are still a small team of 5: high-caliber engineers from Google, Shopkick, Ooyala and Loopt

We are growing the engineering team and looking for experienced and eager individuals who share our passion for creating consumer experiences that "just work". You get significant equity, significant responsibility and a company with traction and backing.

Our stack: iOS/Android, Python, Postgres, Redis

* iOS Lead

Master of iOS with significant prior experience building beautiful consumer-facing app(s) with a large number of users. You have built complex apps from scratch. When needed, you are comfortable jumping into the backend (python or ruby experience preferred) to build features to support the app.

* Android Lead

Master of Android with significant prior experience building consumer-facing app(s) with a large number of users. You have built complex apps from scratch. When needed, you are comfortable jumping into the backend (python or ruby experience preferred) to build features to support the app.

* Backend Lead

You can handle the entire backend stack including the DB, production app servers, web servers, caching. You have built systems with significant scale and low latency performance. You have deployed and maintained servers, built DB schemas to scale, used effective caching for performance, handled high throughput systems. You will lead the entire backend.

* Full-Stack Engineer

You are a go-getter, fast learner, get-work-done engineer. You love new challenges and find creative solutions for problems. You are comfortable building features in the backend, to creating web UI using JS/HTML.

* UI/UX Designer

You have experience building mobile app interfaces. You are full-stack and can handle interface and UX design and also the visual design. You strive to build the most clean and delightful UIs that can improve lives of millions of users. You stress about every part of the UX and every pixel of the UI.

All roles require strong prior experience. If you have been looking for an early-stage startup opportunity where you can create a significant impact and be part of a stellar team, we may be the right fit. Lets talk more!

Join us in our quest to transform physical retail and create the most intuitive consumer experiences. See more at shopular.com and we look forward to hearing from you at join@shopular.com

navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2013)
Shopular (shopular.com) - Palo Alto, CA

Shopular's mission is to create the most delightful and effortless experience for saving money while shopping. The iOS and Android apps have over 15,000 reviews and widely loved. Time featured Shopular as one of the 50 Best iPhone Apps of 2013. Shopular is backed by Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital. We are a small, tight-knit team of high-caliber engineers from Google, Shopkick, Ooyala and Loopt.

We are growing the engineering team and looking for experienced and eager individuals who share our passion for creating consumer experiences that just work. You will get to start at the ground floor at a startup that has received significant backing.

Our stack: iOS/Android, Python, Postgres, Redis

* iOS Engineer

Master of iOS with significant prior experience building beautiful consumer-facing app(s) with a large number of users. You have built complex apps from scratch. When needed, you are comfortable jumping into the backend (python or ruby experience preferred) to build features to support the app.

* Android Engineer

Master of Android with significant prior experience building consumer-facing app(s) with a large number of users. You have built complex apps from scratch. When needed, you are comfortable jumping into the backend (python or ruby experience preferred) to build features to support the app.

* Backend Engineer

You can handle the entire backend stack including the DB, production app servers, web servers, caching. You have built systems with significant scale and low latency performance. You have deployed and maintained servers, built DB schemas to scale, used effective caching for performance, handled high throughput systems. You will lead the entire backend.

* Full-Stack Engineer

You are a go-getter, fast learner, get-work-done engineer. You love new challenges and find creative solutions for problems. You are comfortable building features in the backend, to creating web UI using JS/HTML.

* Data Analyst

You love playing with data to squeeze the right insights from it. You are an expert at SQL and scripting languages to gather and massage the data.

* Product Designer

You have experience building mobile app interfaces. You are full-stack and can handle interface and UX design and also the visual design. You strive to build the most clean and delightful UIs that can improve lives of millions of users. You stress about every part of the UX and every pixel of the UI.

All roles require strong prior experience. If you have been looking for an early-stage startup opportunity where you can create a significant impact and be part of a stellar team, we may be the right fit. Lets talk more!

Join us in our quest to transform physical retail and create the most intuitive consumer experiences. See more at shopular.com and we look forward to hearing from you at join@shopular.com

navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2013)
Shopular (shopular.com) - Palo Alto, CA

Shopular's mission is to create the most delightful and effortless experience for saving money while shopping. The iOS and Android apps have over 11,000 reviews and widely loved. Time featured Shopular as one of the 50 Best iPhone Apps of 2013. Shopular is backed by Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital. We are a small, tight-knit team of four high-caliber engineers from Google, Shopkick, Ooyala and Loopt.

We are growing the engineering team and looking for experienced and eager individuals who share our passion for creating consumer experiences that just work. You will get to start at the ground floor at a startup that has received significant backing.

Our stack: iOS/Android, Python, Postgres, Redis

* iOS Engineer Master of iOS with significant prior experience building beautiful consumer-facing app(s) with a large number of users. You have built complex apps from scratch. When needed, you are comfortable jumping into the backend (python or ruby experience preferred) to build features to support the app.

* Android Engineer Master of Android with significant prior experience building consumer-facing app(s) with a large number of users. You have built complex apps from scratch. When needed, you are comfortable jumping into the backend (python or ruby experience preferred) to build features to support the app.

* Backend Engineer You can handle the entire backend stack including the DB, production app servers, web servers, caching. You have built systems with significant scale and low latency performance. You have deployed and maintained servers, built DB schemas to scale, used effective caching for performance, handled high throughput systems. You will lead the entire backend.

* Full-Stack Engineer You are a go-getter, fast learner, get-work-done engineer. You love new challenges and find creative solutions for problems. You are comfortable building features in the backend, to creating web UI using JS/HTML.

* Data Analyst You love playing with data to squeeze the right insights from it. You are an expert at SQL and scripting languages to gather and massage the data.

* Product Designer You have experience building mobile app interfaces. You are full-stack and can handle interface and UX design and also the visual design. You strive to build the most clean and delightful UIs that can improve lives of millions of users. You stress about every part of the UX and every pixel of the UI.

All roles require strong prior experience. If you have been looking for an early-stage startup opportunity where you can create a significant impact and be part of a stellar team, we may be the right fit. Lets talk more!

Join us in our quest to transform physical retail and create the most intuitive consumer experiences. See more at shopular.com and we look forward to hearing from you at join@shopular.com

navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2013)
SEEKING FREELANCER - Palo Alto, CA or REMOTE

PROJECT: Shopular (shopular.com) is a mobile shopping app. We have a lot of interesting usage data which we want to analyze and visualize. We are a small fun team and this project will get a lot of external visibility. Both roles have a chance of turning into longer projects / fill-time.

DATA AND VISUALIZATION ENGINEER: You can comfortably work with huge data files (GBs) and proficient in a scripting language like python/ruby to massage that data to get interesting aggregates and insights. You can visualize the insights using a package like D3js. Prior D3 experience huge plus, especially with visualizations on a map.

DESIGNER: You have experience building infographics and other visualizations. You are very creative, self guided and can take off from a concept/idea. Please point to prior work.

If you think you are a good fit for either role above, we'd love to hear from you ASAP.

CONTACT: join@shopular.com

navneetloiwal··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2013)
Shopular - Menlo Park, CA. Series A funded startup hiring early team (first 5). No Remote. H1B ok.

Shopular (shopular.com) is creating the most user friendly and novel mechanisms for mobile to disrupt physical retail. See the intro video at shopular.com and app reviews on Android and iOS. Shopular is the highest rated app in the space with almost 1M downloads. So far the team is just 4 people and we have raised a series A from a tier 1 VC.

We are looking for: * experienced iOS engineer * experienced Android engineer * senior backend/systems/data engineer (our stack is python-django-postgresql-nginx).

You should be very consumer oriented, have strong passion for creating experiences that add value to users' lives, thrive in a small, tightly-knit team and show a lot of initiative, ability to handle responsibility and be a quick learner.

Email join@shopular.com

navneetloiwal··on SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon Launch Webcast (starts at 12:00am PDT)
What is the white gas that comes out of the launch vehicle (pre launch)?
navneetloiwal··on Show HN: Airgram - Send iOS/Android notifications, without building an app
This first version is light on management features for the service owner because we wanted to get it out early to get feedback. What you suggest is absolutely on our list of things to do soon.
navneetloiwal··on Show HN: Airgram - Send iOS/Android notifications, without building an app
Yes, we are already talking to him to learn from his experience
navneetloiwal··on Show HN: Airgram - Send iOS/Android notifications, without building an app
Neat app you have, there. We are not planning to charge for the apps, but keep a look out for premium features on Airgram.
navneetloiwal··on Show HN: Airgram - Send iOS/Android notifications, without building an app
Yes, absolutely. Quiet hours will show up in a day!
navneetloiwal··on Show HN: Airgram - Send iOS/Android notifications, without building an app
We believe that mobile web apps need to become much more powerful than they are today. Developing native apps for various platforms is not easy, and frankly, unnecessary for most services. This is just our first step in bridging the gap between native apps and mobile web apps.

We are looking to provide a suite of services around notifications that not just make it easy to deliver the notifications, but provide better targeting, management and analytics.

navneetloiwal··on Show HN: Airgram - Send iOS/Android notifications, without building an app
Push notifications are a great way to consume time-sensitive information, like price/airfare, sports, stocks, app reviews, etc. Airgram makes it dead-simple to deliver these alerts without having to build your own app, so that you can focus on building interesting services.

Give it a spin! http://www.airgramapp.com

"I think notifications will become the primary way that we consume on the mobile device and may be the reason we move away from downloadable software and back to web based software on our mobile devices." - Fred Wilson (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/03/mobile-notifications.html)