rohamg

Thanks so much for all the love, HN! I'll do my best to address everyones' questions in one post:

1) Cross-platform support: ZenHub for Firefox, Safari, and mobile is coming soon - how soon depends on how much our current user-base wants more platform support vs big features we have spec'd out. No worries here :)

2) GitHub API rate limit: GitHub has worked with us to lift the API request rate limit for users that need it, we're also limiting the GitHub API calls we do have to make with caching systems and other tactics, for eg disabling polling when you're not looking at the board. TLDR: we have no worries here either.

3) Major GitHub UI updates: these do have the potential to break some functionality, but our major feature (the Boards) is pretty robust. Also, we're really fast and can react to GitHub's changes within minutes if not hours. We're now working with GitHub to get a heads up on changes that may affect our product, so again - no worries.

4) Transitioning from Huboard / other tools: should be painless: you can even use both products in parallel during the transition period and pick the one you like best (hint: it'll be ours!)

5) Errors with our homepage (zenhub.io): we're fixing issues as quick as they pop up, bear with us :)

6) Other comments or requests: please vote on feature requests by creating new Issues or +1'ing existing Issues on our public GitHub support repo: https://github.com/zenhubio/support/issues

We developed ZenHub.io [1] with a similar vision - to centralize all our company workflows into GitHub. It's free and already in use by hundreds of happy teams.

[1] https://www.zenhub.io/

Nimrod is not even at 1.0; not an option for a production scale application.

One very important benefit of privacy is it allows experimentation without commitment: because we live in a society that often rushes to label, pigeon-hole, and categorize, privacy allows one to experiment with activities, world views, preferences, without broadcasting the process to the entire world.

Absolutely, I generally agree with you.

> After the tech world saw Zuckerberg become a billionaire by absconding with 'not his idea', ethics and respectable business behavior is much less common, unfortunately.

If anything, the Zuckerberg situation is a counter-example: similar to OP, Zuckerberg was the technical guy, and similar to OP, he was not placed under sufficient contractual obligations before beginning the work, thereby allowing him to "abscond" with the "idea" (if such a thing is even possible).

FWIW incorporation is not time consuming NOR expensive.

But yes, you're right that a simple written agreement is much better than nothing (though doesn't provide full protections on both sides - founder vesting, dispute resolution, etc.).

If your cofounder is a half-decent business guy he knows both of the above, which makes this situation somewhat suspect.

Agreed.

OP: the code and intellectual property belongs to you unless you transfer copyright over or mark as open source. That said, code is hardly the most valuable asset in an early-stage startup. The best real way to "protect" yourself (besides getting legal docs papered) is to stay involved in every important discussion and develop your own relationships with investors. Your cofounder should welcome this, and should help you develop your non-technical skills.

If you notice any unease, red flags, shadiness, lack of transparency, BAIL OUT. Incorporate yourself and transfer the IP into a company owned 100% by you. Find a new business partner.

To be fair, the justice system convicted him of a misdemeanor, hardly enough cause to fire most founder/CEOs. This was a (justified) decision by the RadiumOne board to move on, and heavily motivated by the court of public opinion (due to RadiumOne's impending IPO).

Good riddance indeed. The guy's blog post was a goldmine for psychoanalysis. Not just the quote you mentioned - the entire post is written in a very aggressive, martial style.

Re: the other folks you mentioned, it sounds like you're letting personal biases cloud your perspective. We (the public) don't know the details of any of these cases: if the details were not damning then they should be clearly explained. If they're not clearly explained, it's natural to assume they're damning.

Bad days always happen, mistakes are always made, nothing ever goes according to plan. If you don't fail some of the time, you're not taking big enough risks. Jason's post attracts people that understand this to work for Fab - clearly you're not his target audience :)

And yes, I would demand equity and compensation commensurate with the risk being taken and the effort being put in. No-one is promoting slave labor here.

A "fitbit with extra featres" would be underwhelming. Anything that is not revolutionary on the scale of the iPod, the iPhone or the iPad would not be credible as a core Apple product - which is what Wall Street is crediting the iWatch with being. If Apple did come out with a FitBit competitor they'd be wise to avoid the "watch" moniker, perhaps going with iFit, iBand or something similar.

General education is absolutely more important than career-specific education. The education that happens outside the classroom is even more important: and general education contributes to this by mixing together folks from different majors and walks of life.

Personal story: I went to high school in France. When it came for me to decide between colleges, I had the choice between a 3 year degree at Cambridge and a 4 year degree at Stanford. The Cambridge program was for "Natural Sciences", Stanford didn't ask me to select a major until 3 years in. I chose Stanford, took a wide variety of classes far outside anything i had been exposed to previously, and ended up with a degree in Economics -- in addition to a BS and an MS in Biology during which I had the opportunity to pursue many courses in CS, statistics, data analysis, etc. It was also fun, so much so that I ended up staying 5 years instead of 4. Today I work in tech. Had I chosen Cambridge my perspective (and my life!) would be very different.

couldn't you then make the argument that ebay missed out on the guidance of one of its smartest board members? (just playing devil's advocate here)

Thank you! Great feedback! TBH we've been in "private beta", we have a v2 of the site in development which provides a lot more context / detail and is much more optimized for conversion.

Great feedback, thank you. We'll take a look.

Nice! Finally. We've been itching for this since building ZenHub.io, our project management extension built on top of GitHub (http://zenhub.io)

all these comments are all like saying "i think it would be better if electricity conducted faster through plastic than copper" - regardless of your reasoning of where is the "better" place to start, the reality is if you spend time talking to non-technical folks they don't give a hoot about servers and databases, they get excited about the possibility of just building something. after they've built something simple, and overcome the hump of seeing all of this as magic, they are ready to dig into everything else.

spend time talking to your customers before prescribing solutions to their ills - it applies to startups as well as social good projects.

Hah! Everyone would indeed benefit from learning some biology, quantum mechanics, philosophy, and fighting! This is the principle upon which the US higher education system is based - and as someone who came to the US for higher education, I have to say it's the best setup in the world (as compared to the silo'd, short-sighted, and quickly obsolete teachings you pick up as an undergrad anywhere else). Were you kidding?

You're a developer, so for you learning OS concepts is more useful. If you look at comments from non-developers who have learned the very basics of coding, you'll see their minds have been opened up to dimensions they never before considered possible. Looking at an OS after you have a rudimentary understanding of the building blocks is totally different than trying to learn each black box independently.

I used to think like you, I don't anymore. We (Axiom Zen) co-organized the HTML500, Canada's largest free learn-to-code event. In one day, 500 people came together and learned the very basics. The response was overwhelming, check it out for yourself: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23html500

These folks are looking with totally fresh sets of eyes at what you and I take for granted. Learning the basics gives them the same appreciation you and i have for the abstractions that can be built on top.

...And this is why every startup should use intercom [1]

intercom will let you do exactly what the OP suggests: segment and message your users based on how they use (or don't use!) your product, as well as who they are and how important they are to your business!

disclosure: I am an early investor. but don't worry, intercom will be around for a while: they just raised $23M from Bessemer [2].

[1]: https://www.intercom.io/

[2]: http://insideintercom.io/silicon-valley-outsider-raised-30m-...

Thanks for posting this, scardine! We've stayed pretty quiet with ZenHub but the product is in use by a few thousand people and everyone seems to like it :)

We built ZenHub last year after cycling through a bevy of different project management apps like Trello, Asana, Tracker, JIRA, etc. We found ourselves frustrated having to juggle multiple tools and decided to centralize everything into GitHub.

ZenHub is built upon the GitHub API and injects additional features directly into the GitHub user interface via our browser extension. Features include gorgeous Kanban-like boards with filtering built in, unlimited file uploads of any type, and a very effective +1 feedback button added to every GitHub Issue or comment.

Disclosure: I work with Axiom Zen, the company that built and maintains ZenHub.

Intercom is an exceptional example of tackling a large and hairy problem with dauntless focus. As a user, evangelist, fan, and investor - I'm proud of all of you and excited to see what comes next. My favorite part of the blog post? "fundraising is a pseudo-achievement" - smart, smart smart!

Awesome roundup, thanks for the shoutout :)

We soft-launched ZenHub.io [1] on Betalist in early November and have been very happy with the results so far. Several hundred high quality users who are engaged, providing feedback [2], and inviting their team members. The tweet-storm whipped up by Betalist was cool too :)

[1] http://www.zenhub.io [2] http://github.com/axiomzen/zenhub-now/issues

He did explain himself a day later: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...

Why not use GitHub? You can file and look up commit histories, write comments, track Issues/bug reports, collaborate with others.. all in one place.

If you want a public debugging journal for a private or self-hosted project, I think Evernote combined with http://postach.io would work beautifully.

Very interesting, I'm looking forward to checking out the product! We use GitHub exclusively for everything; even our non-technical team-members leverage GitHub for sales, HR, marketing, blog post writing.. You name it. We did have to build a product to make this easier on ourselves [1], into which we've been resisting integrating chat. Chat is the only non-GitHub piece of our workflow, Gitter looks promising!

[1] http://zenhub.io

Welcome to the internet! You must be new here :)

Jokes aside, using any proprietary web service has the exact same downside. And yet here we all are using Google Apps, Dropbox, GitHub, HipChat, Intercom, and dozens of others. As a team, we found additional web services add exponentially increasing complexity; we eventually needed a platform to keep track of all the platforms we were using. So we back-tracked and went the same route as the Wiredcraft guys, centralizing everything into GitHub.

As a community, instead of advocating turning the clock back (which will never happen: the toothpaste has exited the tube), we should explore ways to satisfy security & reliability concerns while maintaining convenience. Also, you can self-host GitHub.

i disagree entirely. Andy is not within his rights to publicly slander a business he has never stepped foot in - much less to entice others to do the same - because someone hung up on him. Especially not on Yelp, something businesses live and die by, at least in the Bay Area. As Trip said, Groupon was being a pest and should have expected to be treated as such. I have no sympathy for Andy here.

0xfe your account is dead. but your comment is accurate: > Interesting. He just got one of his cronies to write a review: http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=BfVinuuuFVCAr77TnI9k...

I wonder how long it's going to take before he realizes he is fucked?