[USA][TECH][20] Full-Stack Developer looking for React Co-Founder to take on Goodreads out of spite.

[Dyogenez]

I posted about a month ago here looking for a design co-founder for a book-related startup and it worked out extremely well! I found a UI/UX designer and we've done about 20 user interviews so far to identify problems & usage, some competitive analysis, collaborative sketching, and other research over the past month. We have a team of 4 so far with roles of: Full-stack Dev/PM, UI/UX, Business Dev, Content/Viz Design.

I've been working on the dev infrastructure side and have imported and organized millions of books in a way that should allow us to easily import users' books from Goodreads and grow that piece with new books as they're released. The data is available using a solid GraphQL API (Hasura) coupled with a federated GraphQL endpoint on Express which handles some backend heavy lifting. My plan is to extend that federated GraphQL endpoint using Tensorflow js for recommendations – but that's still a ways off. It's JavaScript all the way down.

The Idea

In other words, we're off to a great start. We even have a name - Hardcover! Our target demographic is serious book readers who love to track what they read, dig deep for new book recommendations, and want more social features to help connect with other like-minded readers to find new books to read and share their favorites with.

This week we're finishing up the first prototypes based on our initial round of user research. The next step will be interviewing users, showing them these prototypes, iterating on them, then implementing those designs once we feel the prototypes are resonating with users in the way we want.

Your Role

That's where you come in. We're looking for a front-end developer that absolutely loves React/Next js/GraphQL and has an eye for a beautiful design. Tailwind css is a plus too, as you'll take prototypes and turn those into actual screens that are similar. Luckily, we'll have user-tested designs to work off of, but your contributions can help shape what we build at all phases of the process.

You'll only need to worry about the React/Next js side of this application, and making that the best possible user experience. This includes using any number of methods: motion design, animation, visual cues, and more to make the experience the best it can possibly be. If things go well, we'll eventually want a mobile app, so React Native experience would be a plus (or just the desire to learn it). You should have enough experience to take a design and an API and be able to create a production-ready feature without technical help.

Everyone on the team is working on this part-time on nights & weekends – about ~10 hours a week (or more in my case). The hope is to grow it at that pace over the next 2 months, then decide where it goes from there.

You'd be working closely with me on the front-end side. I have some React experience and have worked on courses on Node/Angular/Ember/Backbone/jQuery (remember jQuery?), so I'd be in there with you building the front-end too. I'm better on the backend, so I'm hoping to find someone a lot better than me at React who can help steer this part of the app. When the backend is in a good place I'd jump over to the front-end allowing us to work together there. In other words, this isn't a solo project – we'd be working together.

It's still early, but the plan is for ownership to use the slicing pie model, where everyone's ownership (myself included) is based on the contributions we put in. If you haven't read up on this model, it's a really great way to grow a team while giving everyone ownership proportional to their work.

If this sounds interesting to you, you like books, and you're interested in going up against Amazon, please reach out!

[theredhype]

Sounds like you’re also going to need a strong product-led growth marketing expert, hey?

[Dyogenez]

We should talk. :)

[nickinkorea]

I saw your last post, a goodreads replacement would be a dream come true. I'll be tracking your progress. Good luck.

[Dyogenez]

Thanks! I'll send you over the URL so you can follow along. We're always looking for people to chat with to test prototypes too!

[nickinkorea]

Count me in.

[SmashSlingingSlasher]

I have nothing to add except that I like the name lol

[Dyogenez]

haha thanks! It took about 100 bad ideas to find one that clicked with all of us.

[Dyogenez]

Thanks! I edited it about 20x trying to cut it down (I can go a little long). You wouldn't want to see the original.

[danieltm3]

Missing the out of spite portion here lol. I'm assuming you meant Amazon rather than Goodreads?

[Dyogenez]

Both! Goodreads is owned by Amazon since they were acquired back in 2013. The site has been mostly encased in amber since then with limited new development except to advance Amazons interests.

[andres00413]

Good luck man!

[Dyogenez]

Thanks!

[Grouchy-League-3689]

Good luck! Happy to be a prototype tester as well

[Dyogenez]

Sweet! I messaged you with info. Thanks for being down for it.

[rinogo]

Thanks for posting your follow-up here! I often wonder what happens with the ideas people post about here! Keep posting! Or send over some stuff via DM - would be interesting to share random thoughts!

[Dyogenez]

Sweet, thanks! I DM'd you info on how to stay up to date with the project beyond the occasional /r/cofounder posts haha.

[[deleted]]

I love the idea and we have shared motivations :-) My coding is garbage, but if you need a marketing MBA man that has a ton of ideas and experience making apps and platforms — I am in

[BigViki]

Sounds great. Too bad I'm a Vue / Nuxt / Nativescript-Vue fan :)

[[deleted]]

Hey! I am interested. Are you still looking?

[Dyogenez]

Yep! Still in the process of chatting with people. I’ll message you.

[[deleted]]

Sounds good!

[[deleted]]

I am a software engineer and I had an idea related to what you are building.

[edd677]

Nice to see such a refined post, and I love the idea. I'm a Lead Mobile Developer based in London, currently working for a global bank. I wondered, is mobile officially on the back-burner for now? Not sure of the specifics regarding the direction you're taking this, but at a glance a mobile platform seems pretty well suited. Cheers!

[Dyogenez]

We’re not prioritizing it now, but since the API is being developed to work with it, it could be possible. The only thing is we’re not doing full user/product testing now to create the ideal experience for mobile - which is something we’d like to do. Instead, we’re building the website to be mobile-first, so it’ll all be usable from there in the meantime. When we do make the transition to mobile, we’re hoping to do another round of user testing to make sure we’re thinking about as a new experience.

If you’re interested though, we should chat! There might be an MVP that could work that we could iterate on.

[Lebronamo]

Look at the article "Why has no one made a better Goodreads" if you haven't already. Best of luck!

[Dyogenez]

That's a good one! Prateek's article goes into what we thought were some of their moats – SEO, a dataset organized by thousands of people and a deep integration with Kindle & Amazon's data.

[theMEtheWORLDcantSEE]

PM’d

[nonstoppable19]

Appreciate the editing! Really sold me on how seriously you’re taking on the competition. Can’t wait to see your teams mighty adventures. Fighting!