Hacker News Reader

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

We also only charge the employer for benefits the employees actually use.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

It gets better with time. I'd really recommend getting something out there as soon as possible, so you can breathe a sigh of relief.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Thank you!

We're bootstrapped for now. I have had some previous exits with TypeFrag and Carbonmade, so financially I haven't had to work another job while bootstrapping Uncover. Mike and Jason have been doing contract work to pay their bills while working on Uncover.

Happy to go into it more privately (email in my profile) or I can potentially write a bigger blog post on it.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Well, AnyPerk and similar services are discount based. From our what we believe section: "Discounts aren't effective. There's a difference between "here's a discount" and offering something special."

With Uncover, you can provide both ongoing perks as well as individual recognition. We call those two products "Benefits" and "Rewards".

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Not my intention. I'll follow up with more how I learned to program posts. I have some from a few months ago. See http://spencerfry.com/why-and-when-to-learn-to-program for example.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Not familiar with Subsonic. Are they on Rdio or Spotify?

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Thanks a lot. Seeing that feedback a lot in the comment thread here. I think we'll definitely give it a shot.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Correct. We've been in beta for about four weeks. Only went public about two hours ago.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

You can see them here:

https://www.uncover.com/how-it-works

Scroll over the top left image.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Thanks! I'll shoot you an email to make the connection, but I think we're still a bit of a ways away from doing so as we just launched and are still iterating.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Thanks for your feedback. We'll definitely work on making the product message clearer now that we have more eyeballs to our homepage.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

This is not how Uncover works. The employer is only charged for the benefits the employee uses.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

This is not how Uncover works. We specifically designed it to avoid this. The company is only charged for benefits that the employee uses. Therefore, if an employee doesn't care to use one or more benefits then the company is not charged for them.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

What's behind the company name is the idea of uncovering your company/employees potential. We are working toward helping you do just that, but you have to start somewhere and we have a lot still to learn.

I love your idea of creating an API to integrate into their existing systems.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Thank you, muster!

Happy to answer your questions.

1. I've dabbled in web design for a longtime, although I did not design Uncover's marketing site. jakeprzespo.com did that. I did work with my partner Mike to design the internal pages of the site.

2. I started learning to program in February, 2012 and have gotten progressively better since then. I launched the original version of Uncover completely on my own at the end of last year.

3. I wrote a blog post on what I used to learn to program: http://spencerfry.com/programming-resources

4. Definitely feel a sense of accomplishment. I couldn't have done it without the other two folks I've been working on Uncover with: Mike and Jason. We've all worked very well together and done awesome work to get Uncover out in such a short period of time. None of us believe in waiting for that "perfect moment".

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Thank you. Why we chose to rotate reasons was to project the fact that Uncover can be used for many different things and that you can customize it for your company. You can't really get that across to the user by just displaying one example. That's just our thinking anyway.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Fair point. You think hovering over them blocks you from seeing what's there? We also wanted to make them wiggle slightly when you first load the page so you know that there's a hover on rollover.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Sure. I wrote a little bit about it here http://spencerfry.com/why-and-when-to-learn-to-program and I'll write more about that on my blog in the near future. We're using Ruby on Rails as our backend code and mainly picked that because that's what most of my friends were good in and I knew that I could go to them with any questions.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

That's a really neat idea.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Haha. Maybe if you come by our office I'll set something up. :)

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

That's no good!

Does this help? https://www.uncover.com/how-it-works

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Fair point and good catch. We'll swap out Game of Thrones for a different streaming title.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Thank you. We hope so.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Hah. You're the second person to think we help you learn to roll sushi! Totally valid feedback. I think we need to experiment in shifting the sign up to the left and presenting what we do a lot clearer.

As to being able to breakdown benefits/rewards into Groups of employees, that's on our roadmap. You can currently reward one or more people for going the extra mile, but we'd like to do more.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Hah. You bring up a good point. We'll definitely do some A/B testing as we begin to have more visitors to our website. As we only went live an hour ago, we didn't accumulate enough homepage data to begin testing our assumptions.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Thank you. I really appreciate it.

That's a very interesting idea. We've had some similar thoughts that I think we'll begin to start incorporating over the next few months. We want employees to have more involvement in the benefits, but at the same time make sure that the employer can customize Uncover for the type of culture they want to create. For example, we have some beta customers that have books clubs at their company and are now using Uncover to facilitate that.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

I'll follow up with a more detailed post, but here's one from a few months ago:

http://spencerfry.com/why-and-when-to-learn-to-program

I started learning to code in February, 2012 and have been going at it ever since. I've had great mentors and it's taken what feels like a long time to get to where I am.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Thank you. We have a Rewards feature where you can send a gift and a personal message to one or more employees for going the extra mile.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

We'd love to work with non-startups and non-online clients. I think that'll be a big part of our market as we continue to grow. During our beta it was only online startups. We only launched publicly within the past hour.

spencerfryon Show HN: I learned to code to launch my new startup

Definitely. Now that we're seeing some traffic. Time to start some 'ol A/B tests.