rachnaspace

thanks!

Bangalore, India.

Hachi Labs is looking for 2 solid coders. If you have the skills, confidence and heart to solve some complex database, search and algorithms related problems - do ping us!

More details about our requirement - http://jobs.hasgeek.com/view/e607q

We'd love to get feedback on our application as well, but we're not based in either of those places. Can any alum review it remotely? - over email, phone..?

If you're a technical founder, with some interest and understanding on how to create some buzz around your app and get in users - I'd say, you don't really need a business / non-technical founder early on. Though, at some stage when you start scaling up, you will need someone (could be technical or non-technical) who can help on the business side. Andrew Chen's recent post has some good points on this -

http://andrewchenblog.com/2011/02/05/stanford-cs-major-seeks...

"What do geeks really need help with? It’s very simple- there’s a class of purely business-related stuff that adds value:

selling stuff and making money getting partnerships and marketing/distribution of the product funding the company scalable marketing/monetization strategy (ad arb / viral / freemium / etc.) team recruiting, particularly of other engineers and disciplines (not other MBAs please) If you are an expert at any of the above and can show it, then there’s a lot more value. Very few business folks, particularly newly-minted MBAs (with the exception of Stanford folks) or industry-switchers can really deliver on these though, which is why they’re not bringing much to the table.

Then there’s a class of things that are much more product-oriented, and while it overlaps with the skillset of some engineers, if you have great skills in any of the following, they are clearly valuable too:

design, especially visual design UI/frontend skills – HTML/CSS/JS – even if mediocre! copywriting within the product for help text, marketing, etc user research and customer development usability testing."

I believe there's some discussion around Andrew Chen's post going on, on hacker news - wanted to share my thoughts over there...couldn't find it, so putting it up separately here.

>Big companies will still be there if you fail, why live with the regret?>>

Totally agree!

It could be... my experience has been pretty good so far. I used Reliance USB even in smaller cities and it worked great... even in a moving train in the middle of nowhere when I was traveling.

Internet should not be a problem anywhere you travel within India. There are internet USB cards available with pretty decent speed & connectivity. Here are a few - http://www.reliancenetconnect.co.in/ http://www.tataphoton.com/

With internet connectivity, you can travel to different cities and experience life there, rather than being based in only one city... just a suggestion.

Once you have decided on the city / cities where you want to stay while in India, for the accommodation, you can even post at HN google groups in India (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1885605) to see if any member can help suggest a good option for stay. And yeah, as someone suggested, check out airbnb as well.

Safe & fun travels!

I agree, very simple to use and allows for A/B testing too.

Thanks for sharing your perspective Dave! Looking forward to 500startups' program.

I absolutely agree, both are incredibly great choices not only for seed capital but also the crucial guidance/advice/mentorship an early stage startup team needs. I'm just curious how the HN community thinks about the two.

Incorporation in US would cost between $200 - $400.

The other stuff you mentioned come under Formation Services package (fixed fee) offered by most startup law firms - the fee for this generally ranges between $3K - $5K. And you can negotiate to defer this fee with most of the law firms, until one of these triggers occur - funding, or revenue, or exit.

Thanks everybody! I'm going to start with Python. Will post my progress on HN after a while :)

thanks!

Thanks jeebusroxors! Python seems a good choice from the comments here.

What do you mean by 'language philosophies'? can you pls explain a bit?

Thanks dkersten! I'll check out Python.

What do you think of PHP? Some folks were suggesting that, but I haven't yet checked it out.

I don't have a specific app idea in mind for which I want to learn programming. Mostly, I like consumer web apps, and which may require integration with facebook, twitter APIs.

I'm not looking to build a full blown app myself - rather a quick prototype to test it out with users and if there's traction, then it would make sense for me to team up with engineers and build it out.

Regarding Javascript - as you say, I too have heard that it's not that simple. Some folks were suggesting to start with PHP. I though of checking with HN community on what they recommend.

good luck! and I hope you can negotiate a good salary with them :)

I just saw your profile. You work with Jackbe? I've known their bay area team for 4 years.. awesome guys!

If you've just graduated, I'd say your first criteria should be the job profile - the work that you'll be doing, and the opportunity for you to learn and grow there. Also, make sure you negotiate a salary that can cover your expenses and you can live decently. Beyond that, don't stress too much on how others will judge you based on the salary you get - many people do that, but think about it like this, if right now you focus on doing things that you enjoy and that provide you opportunity to grow, you're likely to do well in such an environment...and in the long run (say in the next 4-5 years), you'll be in a much better & happier position as compared to your other friends who took up a job based more on the salary.

From exit and revenue generation perspective, my vote goes to -

- Dropbox: Great product. Awesome team. Good market with revenue possibilities.

- Hipmunk: User experience in flight travel search has sucked for a very long time. But, users are now getting spoilt by ridiculously awesome user experience provided by companies in a lot of different areas. So they will start expecting the same for travel search too. Hipmunk could totally revolutionize travel search and make it exceedingly simple and pleasant experience - their team has potential to make it happen. And, travel search is a huge opportunity from revenue perspective.