HMO: Help Me Out • Hacker News Board

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#181

Post by crawfordcomeaux » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 5:35 AM UTC

benjamincburns wrote: post #164

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #117

HMO: I've got ADHD something fierce and, even when medicated, it takes me a long time to organize my thoughts in a way for others to understand. I need to process my notes for the video linked to below, identify the problems being discussed, as well as how a hackerspace can solve (or begin to solve) them. I've tried to get people to help me with this, but every attempt gets sidetracked by people wanting to debate whe…

What's your time frame for this? I'm really tied up through Monday the 21st, but if you contact me via Skype or Hangouts (see profile) on the 22nd or later I'd be glad to help. Also you might not remember me, but I think we met at a Startup Weekend in Baton Rouge in 2011? Maybe it was 2010? Either that or some other similar event in NOLA. I'm in Christchurch New Zealand now, but I miss Louisiana something fierce.

I'm really hoping to be done by then. Trying to knock this out ASAP. Good to re-meet you :)

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#182

Post by emhart » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 2:26 PM UTC

avalaunch wrote: post #153

emhart wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be happy to put some stuff in an email for you. For reference, I ran one of the largest early successes that unfortunately turned into an ongoing trainwreck. I'm actually still bullish on crowd-funding, but there are definitely some things worth sharing from the experience. Email is in my profile.

That sounds like it would make a great blog post (or 2). Would you consider posting about your experience somewhere?

Sorry for the delayed reply, I've been on the road. Unfortunately, as it is an ongoing situation, I'm waiting until every backer receives their items before talking publicly about the experience/lessons learned. Maybe I'll post it up on hn when the time comes, though.

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#183

Post by topcat31 » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 11:11 PM UTC

notduncansmith wrote: post #168

# How I Can Help I have a lot of knowledge in the web space. I specialize in front-end development, as well as Node.js on the back-end. I work at a web dev shop and have a lot of experience teaching and mentoring new developers, as well as resolving interpersonal conflicts. I'm also constantly tweaking my dev environment (editors, build tools, technologies, etc) and, as a developer, have a mini-obsession with product…

Cool idea! A few random ideas and thoughts that may or may not be useful:

1) seems like a perfect complement to something like mattermatrk: http://mattermark.com/ perhaps try reaching out to those guys? They offer startup tracking so pairing it with this fantasy-investment style game could work well.

2) learning from fantasy football - perhaps you get people to sign up in groups and compete against each other with new money being released into the pool each month/quarter?

3) you could bring people back into the app when the startups they have invested in get in the news? This would involve building a lightweight RSS-scraper and some logic but might not be too hard and would add a nice feedback loop for the product.

4) maybe you let people use (small amounts of) real money to invest in the startups, and let people buy and sell their investments? Kind of like a second market platform? this would make it inherently more compelling for people to stick around but it's almost certainly a lot more work to build...

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#184

Post by topcat31 » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 11:17 PM UTC

rpicard wrote: post #49

I worked with a dozen startups to put together the Startup Sticker Pack: http://startupstickerpack.com/ A dozen stickers from cool companies for $5. I'd love to hear from people about why they would / wouldn't want to buy one. It's not quite selling as well as I'd hoped. I'd also like to hear from startups / groups who might be interested in buying one for each member of their team. You can email me at mail+hmo@rober…

Nice idea! I imagine that 90% of your sales (if not more) will come from wholesale. I think I saw you were reaching out to co-working spaces and so on but I'd ensure you're speaking with conference organizers, hackathon organizers etc etc.

The biggest problem there is that they will likely want their sponsors on the stickers rather than your set of startups...

Maybe you flip the model on it's head - get the startups who are on your stickers to finance the stickers and then offer the package for free to consumers. It's basically free marketing for these startups - maybe you share the customer's email address with the startup too in return? Feels like a small investment from each of the companies but you might get more orders that way?

just some thoughts

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#185

Post by joshdance » Tue, Apr 15, 2014, 2:59 PM UTC

emhart wrote: post #32

joshdance wrote: post #11

HMO - Kickstarter advice. I'm helping my mad scientist inventor friend launch his Kickstarter. He has created an amazing water flight machine (think Flyboard-ish) and is launching the Kickstarter in 2 months and asked me to help with running the technical side of the campaign. Do you have: 1. Advice? Who to talk to, what to do, what to avoid? 2. Connections? Writers, bloggers, outdoor enthusiasts.

I'd be happy to put some stuff in an email for you. For reference, I ran one of the largest early successes that unfortunately turned into an ongoing trainwreck. I'm actually still bullish on crowd-funding, but there are definitely some things worth sharing from the experience. Email is in my profile.

Would love that email. Thanks. My email is in the profile.

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#186

Post by joshdance » Tue, Apr 15, 2014, 3:00 PM UTC

snide wrote: post #26

joshdance wrote: post #11

HMO - Kickstarter advice. I'm helping my mad scientist inventor friend launch his Kickstarter. He has created an amazing water flight machine (think Flyboard-ish) and is launching the Kickstarter in 2 months and asked me to help with running the technical side of the campaign. Do you have: 1. Advice? Who to talk to, what to do, what to avoid? 2. Connections? Writers, bloggers, outdoor enthusiasts.

You might want to contact some of the Maker related blogs who always like seeing inventive products like what you describe. Most of them are based in bay area. Tested.com might like something like this, you can find a contact email on their homepage.

Thanks snide. I will check them out.

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#187

Post by joshdance » Tue, Apr 15, 2014, 3:00 PM UTC

bovermyer wrote: post #30

joshdance wrote: post #11

HMO - Kickstarter advice. I'm helping my mad scientist inventor friend launch his Kickstarter. He has created an amazing water flight machine (think Flyboard-ish) and is launching the Kickstarter in 2 months and asked me to help with running the technical side of the campaign. Do you have: 1. Advice? Who to talk to, what to do, what to avoid? 2. Connections? Writers, bloggers, outdoor enthusiasts.

My game company, Silver Gryphon Games, has done two successful Kickstarters and runs a Kickstarter advice group on Facebook. Drop me a line (email in profile) if you want some pointers.

Tried to find your email bovermyver didn't see it. Mine is in my profile. Thanks so much!

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#188

Post by ASquare » Tue, Apr 15, 2014, 3:26 PM UTC

basicallydan wrote: post #2

Alright then let's see how this goes :) Email: dan [at] danhough.com ## Help me out 1. I want to open up a co-working space in London, or possibly elsewhere in the UK. Idea is pretty fully-formed but I'm missing a few pieces to the puzzle. Anybody experienced in this? 2. I'm releasing my first non-free iPhone app pretty soon, marketing advice would be super useful. It's meant for London Pub Crawls. ## Let me know if…

> "I'm releasing my first non-free iPhone app pretty soon, marketing advice would be super useful."

This should answer a lot of questions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7592282/

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#189

Post by notduncansmith » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 12:16 AM UTC

topcat31 wrote: post #183

notduncansmith wrote: post #168

# How I Can Help I have a lot of knowledge in the web space. I specialize in front-end development, as well as Node.js on the back-end. I work at a web dev shop and have a lot of experience teaching and mentoring new developers, as well as resolving interpersonal conflicts. I'm also constantly tweaking my dev environment (editors, build tools, technologies, etc) and, as a developer, have a mini-obsession with product…

Cool idea! A few random ideas and thoughts that may or may not be useful: 1) seems like a perfect complement to something like mattermatrk: http://mattermark.com/ perhaps try reaching out to those guys? They offer startup tracking so pairing it with this fantasy-investment style game could work well. 2) learning from fantasy football - perhaps you get people to sign up in groups and compete against each other with ne…

1) I've actually spoken with Mattermark before (not about this), they're really cool guys and if I get super-serious about this idea then I'll definitely reach out to them. I'm actually planning on using their API for part of this (see below).

2) Yknow, believe it or not I didn't actually think too much about this. I guess I assumed the details would be too different for me to borrow much from them. I'll definitely give it a look though.

3) Not a bad idea. I would hope to monetize somehow, but a monthly subscription would have fairly little value if I'm only checking in with them once every few months.

4) I wish! Chances are any accredited investors would already be using AngelList for that, and obviously I can't let unaccredited investors make investments (plus then startups would have to be on board, basically a whole giant mess).

Thanks a lot for your thoughts!

One thing I'm thinking for the whole "returns" mechanism is to have startups return a fixed amount per hour/day/week based on their Mattermark score (basically, how much mindshare momentum they have), similar to how properties in social games give you a certain amount of currency back every [interval].

I could also consider income: most investors have some sort of regular income they use for investments, as opposed to purely bootstrapping off of the first few investments. That could be interesting (perhaps as you level up, by making sound investments, your income rises?).

Re: HMO: Help Me Out

#190

Post by sithu » Thu, Apr 17, 2014, 3:28 PM UTC

Contact in profile.

How I Can Help: I'm a semi-technical internal medicine physician in fellowship specializing in cardiology at a large academic institution. I have experience on the clinical side, taking care of patients, work flows, etc. I have a masters in epidemiology and biostatistics, and am currently involved with clinical trials, some animal translational studies, and large database analysis. Would be happy to talk to anyone with an interest in health care.

HMO: I'm not good with the administrative and infrastructure aspects of medicine, including billing, HR, ICD/CPT coding, insurance, labs/PACS systems, etc. Would love to connect with people who have worked in these areas, either in a startup or established company!