Ask HN: Any freelancers or potential co-founders in NYC?
My name is Victor. I'm a non-technical founder living in NYC, and I'm not interested in a 'ninja' or a 'rockstar.' We have the Teenage Mutants and Mick Jagger for those roles. I'm not interested in boring, insulting, or intimidating you with a list of "requirements" that reads something like "must know technologies a-z and ideally have experience in platforms 1-100." I don't consider myself "too smart" or "too special" to tell real details of my life as a human entrepreneur (have you seen Air Bud or Dolphin Tale? Other creatures can make quite the paycheck). In other words, I won't say something like, "I've started and exited 5 top media companies and own the best startup in NYC.... but I won't say what it is because it's top secret that tech firms hire hackers, so e-mail me if you're serious."
Please.
I recently graduated from the College of Business at Northeastern Univeristy, where I studied Marketing and Entrepreneurship. I've been fortunate enough to have worked in some really cool roles in the corporate world since I was 15 years old (I'm currently 24). My first job was at Majesco Entertainment, where I was a bug tester for games they released on XBOX, PS2 and Gamecube. Anyone ever play Bloodrayne, Advent Rising, or Psychonauts? These (very breakable) games were my summers.
A couple of licensing and marketing roles later, during my Junior year of college, I was accepted to participate in an executive run mentorship program and case competition at The Martin Agency (ad firm for GEICO) in Virginia. Wow. What an experience. Almost every employee there was a brilliant, genius individual. There's a reason why their campaigns are the most well known. This was one of the defining events in my young life.
At the time, I was interested in pursuing a career in advertising. By the end of the program, my mind was made up. The answer was no. I saw the flaw in the way traditional marketing (I call it 'interruption marketing' - others call it this too) handles today's world of consumers. I didn't know what the solution was, yet, but I began thinking about it and it never left my mind. I was set to see it through.
Today, 2 years out of college, I live in a humble section of Prospect Park, Brooklyn. I've been doing some freelance marketing consulting to pay the bills, and in the meantime, developing a tech startup that I truly believe is the 21st century marketing solution. Please understand me. I truly believe this. If you could see my face now, I'd be speaking wide-eyed and passionte. Okay, enough with creeping you out.
I've been working on the venture with two brilliant individuals who graduated from NYU, also non-technical (don't fret here from the thought of another two non-techies - these men are brilliant). It's an iPhone application. We've been working on the venture for about a year. Nailing down the concept, how it works, creating the mockups, revising and refining each iteration, speaking with potential business partners and reaching out to investors.
My partners and I have mockups of the application built, as well as angel investors (friends & family round) who are legitimately interested in providing us with the seed money to develop a working prototype, sign up businesses, gather customers and take the venture to the next step.
I won't list endless technologies.
We're looking for a hacker - cofounder or freelancer - who can help us build our iPhone application. It consists of a mobile client application for consumers and a web management system for businesses. If you can possibly be of help, I'm sure you know it. We can discuss the kinks of technologies, what you think is best and more personally. It's a reason to chat, if anything.
Please break through the ice and don't be shy. We're all human here (except for the robots taking over the world).
If you're in the NYC area and may be interested in hearing more about our service, share the meaningful events in our lives, and discuss the great work we can possibly do together, please reach out to me. My e-mail address is victor(mindlessspace)dweck(at)gmail(dot)com.
As a final note: I made sure to read the all of the guidelines and terms of Hacker News and did my best to respect all of the best practices. Please do let me know if I overstepped any boundaries in writing this post. If so, I will remove it immediately.
Looking forward to the future.
Best regards,
Victor