We wanted to make spontaneous meetups happen. However, our real world is not made for spontaneous meetups. You have to spam about 70 people to find some people to meet spontaneously. And if you only have 10 friends near you, chances are not good that a spontaneous meetup will happen.
* I'm pretty sure everyone agrees that customer-driven development is key, so who were you building this for and why were they interested?
* What are they doing to solve their problem at the moment and how is your solution better?
* What evidence did you have that this was a good idea?
* What evidence do you have now that this is a bad idea?
* Why does it have to be friends - can you facilitate spontaneous meetups with strangers (ideally with similar interests and values)?
* Why does it have to be spontaneous - could it connect people who will agree to meet [sometime today/this week/by the end of month]?
* Why do you "spam" people - why not have people collectively opt-in with a "I'm free" marker (with various [free to anyone|free to friends])? Bonus points if you can align calendars to suggest a free time (why Google doesn't do this I'm not sure).
* Is "spontaneous meetups" the right way to sell the idea? What about [coffee-with-interesting-people/speed-dating-in-your-lunch-hour/try-something-new-every-week/never-eat-alone-again/get-fit-with-strangers]?
Maybe you could create a kickstarter for meetups? Someone can schedule a meetup, and depending on how many people sign up the meetup either does or doesn't happen? It's very hard for my local subreddit to schedule meetups, but if people could just throw out dates then it would be much easier. I'm not sure what the monetization strategy would be, though.
Oh I didn't actually answer your question in my last post. At first we have to get our hands dirty to get the seekers to sign up for the list. Talk to people directly, ask for feedback in developer message boards etc. But if they like the convenience of the service it hopefully spreads.
One more thing. Maybe we shouldn't focus on job seekers.
Who else is there to focus on? Answer: People who have a job but want to have a better job. These people don't spend their time browsing job sites because they don't desperately need a job. But they may subscribe to our service because it requires no additional time.
Ours is a different approach that has some advantages and some drawbacks. As a job seeker, all you have to do is join the list and then you will get offers automatically. It's literally no work. But we don't know if it's gonna work. Depends much on your feedback.
Exactly. We started to work on our startup about 15 months ago and we still don't have a publicly launchable version. But we made a prototype and have 80+ test users. That kind of interaction with our users makes things easier and helps us to stay motivated.
I realize that HN doesn't represent the general population, but $6k/month puts you ahead of 70% of Americans. Relatively speaking, that's a very high income, not just for a college student.
Yes you are right. My two co-founders and me are still in college/university. We live - to some extend - in a college world and we face problems which may not be faced by folks already out there working at companies.
You might want to add that qualifier to your article. Startup founders and employees may be in different life phases; your advice is likely to be relevant only to college-aged founders.
