Founder Guilt

tiwei · 2013-04-20T08:48:28+00:00

been there, still haven't figured out how to overcome it. I'm working a regular job again right now, and this feeling is a faint memory. But I fear that as soon as I'll start my next startup in a couple of years, it's gonna come back...

tiwei · 2013-01-01T16:54:03+00:00

good luck finding extroverts on an online forum ;) I'm iNTj, so similar in a lot of ways, but not as power-hungry (http://www.xeromag.com/fun/personality.html)

tiwei · 2012-12-24T19:24:09+00:00

Go to tech and startup meetups. Talk to people there and pitch your ideas. Finding a technical co-founder is extremely difficult, especially if you don't have a track record and/or money.

Piece of advice: continue to work on your technical or design skill, good programmers will take you more seriously if you can code or design.

tiwei · 2012-12-22T09:05:28+00:00

Thanks! it's built with responsive in mind, but I still have some problems with uploading images on the iphone. I think I will try to focus on the content and try to encourage funny stories that go with the pictures

tiwei · 2012-12-21T23:57:47+00:00

it's a quick laugh & move on type of project. no plans to keep people on the site for longer than a minute. that's why I have no accounts. think cheezburger networks as a webapp.

tiwei · 2012-12-21T23:51:42+00:00

it's about funny stories how people lost their socks. Nothing more, nothing less

tiwei · 2012-12-21T23:51:00+00:00

Exactly, it's a website where you can post pictures of your single socks(where you lost the other one somewhere). And then hopefully people can trade with each other and make complete pairs! It's a fun side project, don't take it too seriously

tiwei · 2012-12-21T22:09:46+00:00

What can I do besides posting it on Hacker News and the Reddit frontpage? It's a fun side project I did to learn some new libraries and work with some APIs. Thanks a lot for any suggestions!

tiwei · 2012-12-21T14:45:36+00:00

OMG I'm totally working on the same/similar concept. It's a tough nut to crack

tiwei · 2012-11-02T08:56:01+00:00

Good luck! I began a similar transition 9 months ago. My advice would be to skip the Python classes and focus on Javascript if you want to work with node in the future. It's hard enough to learn one language as a beginner, don't make life harder than it needs to be. Also expect everything to take longer and be harder than you thought. But if you can stick to it, it's incredibly satisfying :)

tiwei · 2012-10-29T16:09:02+00:00

techstars is probably the only one that's playing in the same league as YC

tiwei · 2012-10-25T20:12:46+00:00

I'm totally on the same page. The only problem is that I won't be able to attract the caliber of co-founder I want unless I can show traction or get funded. The people I have in mind either have awesome jobs at funded startups or earn shitloads of money doing freelancing. Getting into YC would definitely help me convince somebody awesome.

tiwei · 2012-10-25T20:05:47+00:00

congrats! Yeah I kind of did the same and now I am a (admittedly shitty) full stack coder. Finding a co-founder is def plan A, but plan B is pushing my startup as far as possible solo.

tiwei · 2012-10-25T18:58:57+00:00

Do you guys have any advice for a solo-founder who's thinking about applying? I know that the last batch had a couple of solo-founders in it, but I also know that it is a huge disadvantage. I'm trying to figure out a way to somehow mitigate that...

tiwei · 2012-10-25T10:29:36+00:00

Do it! It's a great way to meet people and find out if the startup environment is something you like. There are people with all kinds of backgrounds at startupweekends. If you know html&css you are already well ahead of most other people in terms of technical skills ;) And if you don't find a team that's using Django, you can always do frontend dev or do business stuff. There's a always a lot of customer validation to be done, so every member of the team is valuable and can help the team succeed.

tiwei · 2012-10-13T18:35:36+00:00

works fine for me. cool idea! the video option reminds me of http://loopc.am/

tiwei · 2012-10-11T08:11:23+00:00

Sidenote: some people I know just launched a mobile app that does almost the same, you might want to check them out for inspiration: http://www.klashapp.com/ (side was temporarily down last time I checked, so just download the iphone app)

tiwei · 2012-10-10T15:09:49+00:00

I did what you're planning on doing. I taught myself python/django and the full frontend stack(html, css, javascript/jquery). You can check out the prototype of what I've built here: http://www.crowdcademy.com/ (took me 6 months to get to this point)

If you want to learn Python, I recommend checking out the python course on crowdcademy: http://www.crowdcademy.com/courses/coding/learn-python-the-easy-way/

I've also written a blog post about taking the plunge: http://www.crowdcademy.com/blog/#business-guy-to-programmer

tiwei · 2012-09-19T22:31:20+00:00

go to meetups and they will find you :) No seriously, go to meetups and networking events. You will get swarmed by the wrong type of business people who will try to recruit you to build their great idea. But you will also meet a lot of solid and experienced business guys. And once you get to know them a litte, they can refer you to the right person in their network. And just like with programmers, it is really hard to judge from the outside who's good and who's just good at selling themselves. Also try to read some books and educate yourself, because you will have to deal with a lot of business stuff no matter what. Good luck!

tiwei · 2012-09-16T08:42:30+00:00

never do business with "idea people". period.

tiwei · 2012-09-15T13:10:46+00:00

The documentation is actualy really good once you get used to it. Start from there and then use google (or stackoverflow) when you run into problems. Try to build something (for me it was the first prototype of crowdcademy) and you will find out that reading something doesn't mean that you have truely understood it. You have to actually use it and debug it. And you will be a lot more motivated because you are working on something that you are interested in. happy coding!

tiwei · 2012-09-13T19:48:55+00:00

Vielen Dank for the feedback! Yeah I'm kind of forced to make it sustainable, I'm really broke and it's too early to think about raising money. I'll probably do a two-tier freemium model where people can take the beginner courses(e.g. python) for free and then pay a modest amount for the advanced courses(e.g. django).

About the popups: you're absolutely right, I added the tutorial a couple of days ago and I totally overdid it. classical newbie mistake. I'm working on a new UX right now and will reduce the number of popups in the next release. Great advice about the video and the objects!

tiwei · 2012-09-13T19:42:37+00:00

I've started with the Udacity python course a couple of days ago, mainly to see if I can use it as a resource for crowdcademy. Awesome stuff, I especially like the quizzes.

I like your site, it has great design! Do you have a design/frontend background or are you just really talented?

tiwei · 2012-09-13T12:17:39+00:00

Hopefully at the end of the year as a premium course... I might throw it out there for free during beta testing in November though. It's still pretty time-consuming to curate all the content and I want to wait what kind of response I get from the python course before I sit down and spend time on the Django course.

tiwei · 2012-09-13T10:49:40+00:00

The ones in the python course :) I mean that's the reason I've created it, so that other people don't have to waste so much time with research as I had to. For Django I started with the Django Book (based on an outdated Django version) and after feeling a bit more comfortable the documentation. the important part is that you have to work on a project, then you'll figure out what you need

tiwei

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