Though Its Network Of Mentors, HackHands Offers Live Help for New Programmers

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/17/though-its-network-of-mentors-hackhands-offers-live-help-for-new-programmers/

by herval • 12 years ago

33 11 12 years ago

techcrunch.com

baddox• 12 years ago

Is that a typo in the first word of the headline, or am I failing to parse the headline correctly?

MSM• 12 years ago

I belive it should be 'Through'

herval2• 12 years ago

yes, it's a typo (on the original headline) - it was edited by HN after I submitted it, can't correct it anymore :-(

jkresner4• 12 years ago

Welcome to our space! This looks very similar to AirPair.com (my startup), Wizpert, Codementor, Sudonow.com, anyfu.com, googleHelpouts, onscreenexpert.com

Would love to know how you guys differentiate?

In case you're customer that needs help, if you don't want to wait through the hackhands private beta and request an invite, you can get help in the next hour like hundreds of other folks that have been doing this for a year now:

http://www.google.com/+AirPair

If you need rails specifically (seem hackhands only support rails right now?). Have a look through some of our experts:

http://airpair.com/ruby-on-rails

lquist• 12 years ago

Any idea why this is such a crowded space? Doesn't seem to be a huge market to me, but maybe I'm missing something?

jkresner4• 12 years ago

I believe most people start ideas because they feel the pain and think they can solve it.

Whilst it's yet to be seen how big the monetizable market for this concept is... the pain people experience is all over the world everyday.

jkresner4• 12 years ago

To give you an idea of response times, here's a live AirPair going on now from someone that saw the hackhands post this morning and followed through to get Rails help with AirPair:

http://youtu.be/1Tp9_nFUhLQ

herval2• 12 years ago

Let's hope they're less spammy than airplay :) hijacking news to blindly advertise your product on HN (and everywhere else, like the comments section on the article itself) is not the greatest tactics, IMHO.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated to hackhands in any way, just met the founders in NY, at a coworking space, and found them pretty nice folks.

Tyrant505• 12 years ago

What ever happened to IRC?

jkresner4• 12 years ago

IRC is a different use case. There are no gaurantees that your needs will be addressed. Help through IM had less benefits for "learning". Also IRC particularly shines for niche frameworks where the knowledge is limited to a few that really want to share it into a support community. But for something like Rails, you're better off following tutorials and blogs. But then you can get overwhelmed and connect the dots wrong. So guidance through pairing can fast track learning on time and resource sensitive projects.

sanderjd• 12 years ago

In my experience, IRC rooms tend to converge on a state where they are really useful to a largish coterie of experts that frequent them and know each other, and frightening, off-putting, or actively hostile to the newbies that this project is targeting.

Though Its Network Of Mentors, HackHands Offers Live Help for New Programmers

Related Stories