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josem

698 karma · joined March 30, 2011

I write regularly at josem.co
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josem··on Google Playground: Create and play custom games
This reminds me of https://antics.gg/make-a-game
josem··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
Yes! It can change your life, and it's very addictive :)
josem··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
I'm building https://matgoat.com/en/

A way for BJJ and martial arts academy owners to manage attendance, payments, class schedules, and student progress.

I train BJJ myself and saw how much time instructors lose to admin work, so I wanted something simpler and more focused than the generic gym software out there and have been having a lot of fun building it with feedback from real academies.

josem··on AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late
I think the problem is precisely that for some books there are not too many copies around like you described and if they destroy them we might eventually lose access to them directly. It might sound too extreme, but I understand the fear behind this.
josem··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
MatGoat (https://matgoat.com/en/): a software for managing BJJ and martial arts academies that it's both easy to use and have everything they need like assistance tracking, payments, communications, etc.

It's going quite well so far with growing MRR each month.

Lately, I've been trying to focus more on marketing, and sales. I might try ads soon as well.

josem··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)
A software for managing BJJ and martial arts academies that it's both easy to use and have everything they need like assistance tracking, payments, communications, etc.

It's called MatGoat[1], and it's going quite well so far. Nowadays I'm working more on the marketing/sales side.

[1] https://matgoat.com/en/

josem··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)
Keep working on MatGoat (https://matgoat.com/en/) - management software for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and other martial arts' academies.

I train BJJ and kept hearing the same pain points from academy owners regarding attendance tracking, communications, missing payments, etc.

So I built a tool for martial arts academies in 2024 with belts progression, automated payments, attendance tracking, and a tablet check-in system. Nowadays I'm still onboarding new academies every week and working a bit more on the marketing side to keep growing.

josem··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
https://josem.co/
josem··on Show HN: An iOS budget app I've been maintaining since 2011
Amazing to see such a long tenure in that competitive market. Thanks for sharing!

I wonder, apart from the normal exposure/distribution on App Store, what are the main strategies you've used for marketing?

josem··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (January 2026)
Building MatGoat (https://matgoat.com) - management software for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and other martial arts' academies.

I train BJJ and kept hearing the same complaints from academy owners regarding attendance tracking, comms, missing payments, etc.

So I'm building a tool for student tracking with belts progression, automated payments, attendance-based promotion criteria, and a tablet check-in system.

Focusing on Spanish-speaking markets first since it's completely underserved. Currently onboarding early academies, and will market it in the US/UK soon.

josem··on Why parenting makes you human
Author here :)

I’m sorry this article felt that way. My intention was not so much saying that you cannot be in touch with that human side if you’re not a parent. It was more about celebrating the good parts of parenting when it comes to how they change you.

That said, I can understand how this could be seen how you shared it, thank you for your thoughts!

josem··on Why parenting makes you human
Author here :)

No, it's not AI-generated. I write for fun, and I don't see the point of using AI to do it.

The image, like many others I use to illustrate my articles, was obtained from pexels.com.

Thank you for the feedback!

josem··on Obvious to you, amazing to others
Thank you! :)
josem··on Creation happens in silence
Thank you, you’ve made my day with this comment!
josem··on Creation happens in silence
Hey!

Author here :)

It was more a metaphor from that moment when I was writing in fact in silence and the lack of any external input / voice telling me whether something I'm doing is good or bad but I know what you mean, perhaps using "isolation" would have made the article clearer, thanks!

josem··on Creating a side project when you don't need the money
Thank you!

I built a basic first version that a company started to use in 6 months during weekends and early mornings and then another 6 months to get to the current version.

I think it could be done faster but I also have a family so I took my time :)

josem··on Creating a side project when you don't need the money
Hey, I'm Jose, the author of the article.

Thanks so much for this comment. Let me know if I can answer any questions.

Finding the time is hard, yes. In my case it was important to have small goals I could accomplish each week so I wasn't overwhelmed with all the things I needed to do.

josem··on Elevating Your Craft
A lot of Jiro's values are in Japanese society too, so you can get an idea of those ancient values that define that society from the documentary. That was what I was trying to emphasize with my comment.

But yes, I agree, the circumstances were very important and without them Jiro wouldn't be the way he is.

Thanks for the response!

josem··on Elevating Your Craft
I have watched the documentary, and I strongly recommend it. It shows some values in Japan that are being loosing in new generations there and in other countries.

That said, Jiro is an example of many things in their craft but his life also have a lot of drawbacks, like he barely saw his sons when they were children and if a social event comes up he tries to spend as less time as possible to get back to work.

josem··on PlaceHold.it A simple image placeholder service
Yes, same here. I haven't created the service, but I discovered it while I was checking the code of a prototype made with Foundation (http://zurb.net/zurbwired2011/projects/zurbwired2011/frame/p...) and I thought it could be useful.

Glad to help!

josem··on 15 year-old needs your advice
Self-discipline is a must, it doesn't matter the project you are working on, the motivation goes down from time to time.

Anyway I think you are young, really young actually, so keep starting projects, one way to keep them interesting is to see those projects as solutions to problems and if that helps you out with something real that would be perfect (like a to-do lists manager).

If you can't keep working on the same project for too long, well, don't worry, you've learnt english and you are smart enough to know some things at 15 (many proffesional developers didn't know how to program at that age, and even later). So try to study more, learn new things and eventually you'll start to create things.

To be more productive try to exercise, that will help you to be more self-disciplined and it'll give you more energy.

josem··on 15 year-old needs your advice
I think most contributions to open source projects come from a necessity, so you can start to create web apps, a todo list, a chat, whatever you want, and eventually when you start to use open source projects (usually gems if you use RoR) to build something you'll probably see some features that would be cool to have.

Even some whole open source projects are created because someone needed something and after googled it didn't find it.

If you can make money and/or help someone while you are building those real projects would be awesome, if not, create new things from scratch, and eventually you'll create your open source projects or at least you'll make pull requests because you needed something for that project.

I hope this helps, thanks for sharing your story :)