brianmwang

Eaze (http://eaze.com) | Multiple Positions | Full Time | San Francisco, CA

We're the fastest growing cannabis on-demand delivery company in the space and growth is only accelerating. With state laws increasingly legalizing marijuana and cultural attitudes rapidly shifting away from the old days of D.A.R.E. education, there is a major tectonic shift happening that the company is well positioned to leverage.

Hiring for:

- Senior Android Engineer - Senior iOS Engineer - Senior Back End Engineer - Senior DevOps Engineer - Data Analyst - Data Engineer - Data Scientist - Growth Engineer - Senior Product Engineer

More info can be found here: https://www.eaze.com/careers

Please email bwang@eaze.com with CV if interested.

This advice also applies to business development, fundraising, and generally closing deals. It's easy to stew and agonize over an email draft for days and even easier for the recipient to ignore or blow past your key message once you've sent it. Just pick up the damn phone and close the deal.

Spot on. Reaching out to your earliest users directly - and not via a canned email - is really effective for building trust and loyalty in a community. Communities are often a reflection of the founder him/herself and this sort of grassroots outreach goes a long way toward attracting others.

New York, NY - Fitocracy (http://fitocracy.com)

Web Developer

We are looking for exceptional software developers to help us take Fitocracy to the next level. Our team is solving really tough problems all set behind an awesome user experience that needs to scale to millions of users. You must kick ass at Python, Django, and Javascript as well as be biased toward shipping code and product. Since we are a small team, you will work not only on product development but pretty much any other challenge we can throw your way.

We are offering a competitive salary and equity ownership. This is for a full time position in New York. And yes, we will help you relocate to the best city on Earth :)

What You'll Be Doing - Work closely with the rest of the Fitocracy team and deliver new features using Python, Django, and Javascript - Help manage the servers and services we use: AWS, Linux, MySQL, nginx, uwsgi, redis, git, and Celery - Communicate constantly with both the team and the Fitocracy community - Track user feedback and continuously iterate on it - Test, release, and maintain your code - Make sure the user experience is consistently awesome

We especially want to talk to you if... - You have any experience with machine learning - You're strong in statistical analysis and/or AB testing

About Us Fitocracy is a social network that empowers everyone to reach their next level of fitness. Nearly a million people use our web and mobile apps to track their progress, compete against their friends, and get real world results. We are building a world where fitness is possible for everyone. Enough of the useless crap that's polluting the market these days. We're setting out to change everything. We are an 8 person team based out of NYC that recently raised money from a variety of VCs and angels, including 500 Startups, Eniac Ventures, folks from Zynga/Google/Greylock. The founders, having gone through significant fitness transformations in their own personal lives, originally started Fitocracy in late 2010 as a way to marry their love of fitness with their years growing up playing classic role playing games like Final Fantasy and Everquest.

Contact Email me at brian@fitocracy.com

"...how much more it makes you tax your own body. When you're at the gym, you don't push yourself."

Says who? This seems like a false premise to me.

This tip also worked for me. Snagged a 16GB long after I thought hope was lost. Thanks for sharing :)

Hi, one of the cofounders behind Fitocracy here.

While much of the discussion here is focused on tracking activity, I want to mention that we at Fitocracy consider tracking secondary to the social experience the app and site provide. We believe that the key to long term success isn't about numbers on a screen but rather, making fitness a part of your identity and every day life through spending time with people and communities just like you. I highly recommend you check out the social aspects of the experience if you download the app :)

Congratulations on the jump, Emile :)

New York, NY - Fitocracy (http://fitocracy.com)

Web Developer

We are looking for exceptional software developers to help us take Fitocracy to the next level. Our team is solving really tough problems all set behind an awesome user experience that needs to scale to millions of users. You must kick ass at Python, Django, and Javascript as well as be biased toward shipping code and product. Since we are a small team, you will work not only on product development but pretty much any other challenge we can throw your way.

We are offering a competitive salary and equity ownership. This is for a full time position in New York. And yes, we will help you relocate to the best city on Earth :)

What You'll Be Doing

- Work closely with the rest of the Fitocracy team and deliver new features using Python, Django, and Javascript - Help manage the servers and services we use: AWS, Linux, MySQL, nginx, uwsgi, redis, git, and Celery - Communicate constantly with both the team and the Fitocracy community - Track user feedback and continuously iterate on it - Test, release, and maintain your code - Make sure the user experience is consistently awesome

About Us

Fitocracy is a social network that empowers everyone to reach their next level of fitness. Over half a million people use our web and mobile apps to track their progress, compete against their friends, and get real world results. We are building a world where fitness is possible for everyone. Enough of the useless crap that's polluting the market these days. We're setting out to change everything.

We are an 8 person team based out of NYC that recently raised money from a variety of VCs and angels, including 500 Startups and Eniac Ventures. The founders, having gone through significant fitness transformations in their own personal lives, originally started Fitocracy in late 2010 as a way to marry their love of fitness with their years growing up playing classic role playing games like Final Fantasy and Everquest.

Contact

Email me at brian@fitocracy.com

You may want to look into iDoneThis: https://idonethis.com/

Disclaimer: I'm friends with the founders.

New York, NY - Fitocracy (http://fitocracy.com)

iOS Developer

Who We're Looking For

- Considerable experience building and shipping iOS apps.

- You are obsessed with delivering a great user experience.

- You work well with small, tight-knit teams.

- You prioritize strong communication above all else. A team that stays in sync is a team that gets shit done.

About Us

Fitocracy is a social network that empowers everyone to reach their next level of fitness. Nearly half a million people use our web and mobile apps to track their progress, compete against their friends, and get real world results. We turn life into the ultimate RPG where you are the hero that levels up, beats quests, and finds the best version of yourself.

We aim to connect you to a community that provide the motivation, information, and inspiration needed necessary to "re-wire" people's brains so they make sustainable, impactful changes in their lives.

We are a small, 6-person team based out of NYC that recently raised money from a variety of VCs and angels, including 500 Startups and Eniac Ventures. The founders, having gone through significant fitness transformations in their own personal lives, originally started Fitocracy in late 2010 as a way to marry their love of fitness with their years growing up playing classic role playing games like Final Fantasy and Everquest.

We put a lot of time into making sure our iPhone app was beautifully designed and fun to use. We've received thousands of rave reviews in 3 months and we aim to continue building the app into the best social fitness experience available. Download it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fitocracy-fitness-social-netw...

Contact

Email me at brian@fitocracy.com

New York, NY - Fitocracy (http://fitocracy.com)

iOS Developer

Who We're Looking For - Considerable experience building and shipping iOS apps.

- You are obsessed with delivering a great user experience.

- You work well with small, tight-knit teams.

- You prioritize strong communication above all else. A team that stays in sync is a team that gets shit done.

About Us Fitocracy is a fitness social network powered by game mechanics to make exercise a more addictive, accessible experience for all. Nearly half a million people use our web and mobile apps to track their progress, compete against their friends, and get real world results. We turn life into the ultimate RPG where you are the hero that levels up, beats quests, and finds the best version of yourself.

We aim to provide the motivation, information, and community necessary to "re-wire" people's brains so they make sustainable, impactful changes in their lives.

We are a small, 6-person team based out of NYC that recently raised money from a variety of VCs and angels, including 500 Startups and Eniac Ventures. The founders, having gone through significant fitness transformations in their own personal lives, originally started Fitocracy in late 2010 as a way to marry their love of fitness with their years growing up playing classic role playing games like Final Fantasy and Everquest.

Contact

Email me at brian@fitocracy.com

My comment on the article, which is still awaiting moderator approval:

“Get your heart rate up to your target zone and try to keep it up for 20-30 minutes. Pick a few exercises and do them in circuits with little or no rest between exercises (and a short rest between sets), at high intensity. Lean towards workouts that work large groups of muscles, for example doing push ups (or better yet, burpees) instead of bench press.”

There are a few problems with this advice:

1. The arbitrary goal of increasing your heart rate for 20-30 minutes completely ignores the most important question: what are you trying to accomplish?

2. Circuit training is only appropriate for particular goals. We shouldn’t be prescribing it without the proper context.

3. Implying that push ups or burpees are superior to the bench press, especially in the context of working large muscle groups, again ignores the question of what you are trying to accomplish. If we are talking about strength training in general, then the bench press is superior to push-ups and burpees are almost completely irrelevant. If we’re talking about calorie burning and conditioning, then burpees are superior. But again, without proper context and asking the right questions, this sort of advice isn’t particularly helpful.

I hate to nitpick, but I can't stand this persistent meme that eating in the morning boosts your metabolism, or some such nonsense. It doesn't[1]. This idea needs to die.

1. http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debun...

Fitocracy (http://fitocracy.com) - New York, NY (Full Time/Intern, no remote, no H1B)

Web Developer (http://fitocracy.com/jobs/)

About Us

Fitocracy is a fitness social network powered by game mechanics to make exercise a more addictive, accessible experience for all. Hundreds of thousands of people use our web and mobile apps to track their progress, compete against their friends, and get real world results. We turn life into the ultimate RPG where you are the hero that levels up, beats quests, and finds the best version of yourself.

Our mission is to turn fitness into a more fun, addictive, and accessible experience for everyone. We aim to provide the motivation, information, and community necessary to "re-wire" people's brains so they make sustainable, impactful changes in their lives.

We are a small, 5-person team based out of NYC that recently raised money from a variety of VCs and angels, including 500 Startups and Eniac Ventures. The founders, having gone through significant fitness transformations in their own personal lives, originally started Fitocracy in late 2010 as a way to marry their love of fitness with their years growing up playing classic role playing games like Final Fantasy and Everquest.

Our Stack

Django, Ubuntu Linux, MySQL, nginx, AWS, redis, git, Celery, and Javascript. Expect to use/learn these all.

Who We're Looking For

- Experience with Python and Django - You can traverse across the web development stack and you're quick to pick up new technologies - You are obsessed with delivering a great user experience - You work well with small, tight-knit teams and communicate well

Bonus Points

- Sysadmin experience a huge plus - Interest in health & fitness a huge plus

Contact

Email me at brian@fitocracy.com

Hey Joe,

Great to hear from you. A coaching feature is most certainly planned on our roadmap.

It should be no surprise, but one of our key learnings has been that when a user signs up for Fitocracy and has little to no experience with exercise, they are incredibly likely to drop off. However, if they stick around long enough to start interacting with the community, the story completely changes. So our core belief is that minimizing the friction to get to that point is key, and that will most likely involve greasing the wheels by providing easy-to-follow starter plans for new users.

One of the problems I have with what are essentially glorified pedometers is that while tracking your steps / "activity level" throughout the day is a good first step, it is grossly insufficient for inciting the sorts of changes that are necessary for most folks to reach their particular goals.

Hi, co-founder/CEO of Fitocracy chiming in here.

I'm incredibly curious about how the HN community views devices like the Fitbit and similar products commonly associated with the so-called Quantified Self movement. Not counting the folks who simply want to track their behaviors for data geekery's sake, I assume that many people who use these devices do so for the purposes of weight loss, improved health and fitness, better body composition, etc.

Assuming that that's the case, I wonder how effective these devices really are for the average person?

Fitocracy has both a website and an app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fitocracy/id509253726?mt=8

I agree that satiety from your macronutrient breakdown is a huge factor here. But some go so far as to claim you can eat FAR beyond your daily caloric burn in protein and fat and still lose weight. I have yet to meet anyone who can credibly back up that statement.

It's ridiculous to claim that you can eat as much protein and fat as you desire and not gain weight.

P90X is an ok program, but it's ridiculously inefficient. If you learn basic barbell training, I guarantee that you won't have to wait much, if at all, at the gym. Most folks shy away from barbells and that's an advantage to the person who knows what they're doing.

You should see his Muta Baneling combo as well. Terrifying.

I rarely engage in shameless self promotion, but this seems like an appropriate moment. My startup, Fitocracy, is built around the notion of loosely mapping the MMORPG experience to exercise and fitness. We've been getting fairly popular with the early adopter crowd and we've even been featured in XKCD and Penny-Arcade.

You can create a private beta account using this link: http://ftcy.co/jMSLsG

SEEKING FREELANCER - Mountain View, CA / Remote

Fitocracy is seeking an iOS freelancer to help build our iPhone app.

WHAT WE'RE WORKING ON:

Fitocracy is a fitness social network that turns working out into a more addictive, social experience. We take all the addictive qualities of games like Everquest and World of Warcraft and use them to motivate users to exercise more. Fitocracy users earn XP, level up, unlock achievements, and beat quests, all by tracking their workouts. Our vision is to turn fitness into the most addictive, social experience possible.

We've bootstrapped our way to over 110,000 users in 8 months. We're projected to surpass 200k users by the end of 2011/early 2012. Our users spent over 5.3 million minutes on site last month.

We are part of Dave McClure's 500 Startups and just raised an angel round so we're ready to add some fuel to the fire.

WHY WE'RE AWESOME:

We've been skyrocketing in popularity because we've hit on a pretty powerful idea: getting out of shape geeks fit by offering them something they already know - video game thinking. We've been featured on XKCD (http://xkcd.com/940/), Penny Arcade (http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/10/28), and CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/14/health/video-gamers-bodybuilde...).

Our team is small and nimble - decisions are made quickly and we stay incredibly well connected to our community. You'll have a huge impact on a lot of users from the first day our mobile app is released.

WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR:

We're looking for an iOS developer who can take full ownership of building our iPhone app. You'll be working closely with the team to ensure the app jives with the rest of the Fitocracy product, collect user feedback, and iterate as necessary.

You should have experience shipping awesome iOS apps that actually get used. You should have an obsession with providing an awesome user experience. You ideally work well with teams and communicate quickly and constantly.

COMPENSATION:

We're offering highly competitive rates for this project. There's also the good chance we'll hire you full time if you kick ass and work well with the team.

CONTACT:

jobs@fitocracy.com

And that's not even factoring in the cost of car ownership, which is at least 4-5x what you pay for a monthly subway pass.

We experienced something very similar when drumming up interest in my startup, Fitocracy, on the r/fitness section of Reddit. The key here, which should be quite obvious, is to find your target audience and then get your message to them.

If you want free music, particularly on your own terms, why not just use Grooveshark? Finding free music on the internet hasn't been a problem for a long while.

To be clear, I'm not the post's author. I just know the guy!

I'm genuinely curious to hear why you're so obstinate in your refusal to exercise.