ryanmickle

How did they know it was you? Maybe change the name and remove any links to you and the project.

And, fwiw, I'd start charging for it... that way if it takes off, and you make millions, and you do get disciplined, you probably won't care that much.

Also agree with the suggestion to study the rulebook; perhaps there's a compromise version where it doesn't violate school policy but is still incredibly useful. From the school's position, I imagine AI-enabled study apps are basically an extinction level event for the school's "services," which are basically minting a degree proving that you learned what their brand assures you did. I imagine there's hundreds or thousands of apps that enable cheating, as defined by its current rules. I imagine education will eventually evolve, but first they'll fight the many projects like yours.

Context: 3x startup founder/CEO, focusing more on impact than constant work

- Things (♥) and Reminders for todos (the latter for location based reminders or when I need to use Siri to set them), to put reminders so they are captured

- Notes end up in Dropbox Paper (for work), Mac Notes (for home, sharable within, iMessage users), Notion for specific projects

- Polymail for inbox zero, on iOS and Desktop (I'm biased, but Superhuman never stuck for me and Gmail isn't as effective, feels distracting and unintentionally designed)

- Fantastical for calendar (home, work, although I'd like to break these up more so that I can share them by project/team)

- Openphone for throwaway cell phone for orders, 2fa, etc.

- Arc for web browser

- 1Password both for work and private passwords

- News Feed Eradicator to remove/limit feed distractions on my laptop, Screen Time on iOS

- Turned off all notifications except calendar on Apple Watch

- Slack for work chat, but intentionally been spending less time here for more deep work time. Conversations seem to get more efficient if forced to happen on SMS and phone calls.

- Just bought a Remarkable, which I intend to finally use to replace carrying around paper journals for notes and journaling

- Google Suite (surprised by this, but I no longer need the MS Office Suite any more)

- Google Meet (some people make me use Zoom, but GMeet has gotten much better, no software downloads or updates, it just works and the quality is far better than it was when they launched)

- Like @ggwp99, I also plan my week either Sunday evenings or Monday mornings (I intentionally ignore email Monday mornings since people seem to volley their problems, which may not be correlated with my priorities)

- Start every day by asking the question, "what one thing would make a massive impact on my day or week or month," and start there. It's usually the thing I don't want to do.

- Workout classes 5-6 times a week, 7:30am, pick your poison... F45, Barry's whatever motivates you to leave soaked in sweat. I fought this for years since I didn't care about the superficial reasons for working out. Now I find that I am 100% energy at 9am, flushed with endorphins, and I feel better with 6 hours of sleep than I did with 9.

I feel your pain. Life seems to get more completed over time, especially when you’re managing properties, businesses, etc.

I scan everything with ScannerPro on my iPhone (which OCRs text to make it searchable) as items come in via mail etc. or print to PDF if I see myself needing something later. Scanned docs sync to Dropbox, and I move them to their appropriate Dropbox folder (e.g. property, taxes by year, biz, etc.) when I sit down at my laptop. It’s worked pretty well. I think the key is focus on the new docs, and you’ll eventually stop needing to refer to the old paper docs in your old folders (rather than trying to scan literally everything, which seems like a daunting task).

Another way around this is to not apply for the job. Find the hiring manager and ask them for advice/feedback on your experience/resume, that you value feedback more than consideration for any role. In YC we always reminded ourselves that if you ask for money, you get advice. Ask for advice, and you get money. I think this applies here. Get the feedback via email or writing so you can read it more than once or even share it with other people and have them help you interpret it for maximum growth. Ask people who you admire for advice and to look at your resume, experience, application, and invite them to be honest. And if you don’t have friends you admire (because as they say we’re the average of the 5 people with whom we spend the most time), expand your circle, finding ways to give to others with no expectation of anything in return.

You’ve started a great dialog with yourself. Congrats, and keep it going.

It’s hard to argue with your market.

If you look at any value-centered or “conscious” business that is successful (there are many, I used to run a blog on conscious business), they are successful because they offer a competitive product or service (e.g. Method home products, which filled a gap in design centric, non-toxic cleaning products, then landed distribution through Target). The values and org structure exist to support the founders’ or owners’ vision and its operations, but it never creates competitive advantage.

You’re absolutely right. I’m an investor but I’d have said exactly what I did either way. Part of my being opinionated about the subject stems from having built Founderkit, which compiled terrible reviews of SVB, batch after batch. I hated seeing YC companies join just for the brand or “network” then end up completely let down by the service.

When I switched away from conventional banks (Wells Fargo in my case), I was surprised how many edge cases there are in banking, so while I love the idea of positioning a new product as a new thing, there seem to be many features and cases when I’d simply want the best bank, period, run by a team whose livelihood depends on serving me so my team, investors, and customers are never left hanging.

On the YC point, it’s none of my business why the founders didn’t do YC again. The CEO was a partner so he very likely was given the option. Since the YC deal can vary with more experienced founders or later stage companies, it simply comes down to the deal offered to your startup. And if you have great relationships with VCs and the tech community already, perhaps it’s an option you’d forgo. And while YC companies are typically excited to try a service that came out of YC, in my experience that has to do with the continued involvement of the founder(s) with with YC (on the forum, offering deals, speaking, etc.). YC founders are smart, and they’re going to choose the best tools for their business every time. But the do YC again question is for the founders to have decided, and I’m sure they considered the option deeply. Anyway, appreciate the thoughtful reply to my comment.

If anyone is interested in a bank built for startups, also worth a mention is Mercury.co. Been using them since their alpha, and I'll never use SVB or Wells Fargo or any of the traditional banks again. They have obsessively good support, do everything you need them to do without having to go into a branch, are backwards compatible for everything you need from a bank account, you basically just set it and forget it, and best of all it's completely free.

Or this whole thing was a stunt. And a successful one that cost less than any equivalent in paid ads.

The best thing I can possibly recommend is doing user research. Nothing uncovers UX issues more effectively. And it’ll be painful to watch (and not guide) if it needs fixing.

When Ian and I built Founderkit, we wanted to give founders tools to save time, make fewer mistakes. One of the things in YC that was always helpful was credits for services like Heroku, to help get started. We wanted to give this edge to more founders, so when companies reached out to us after launching, we asked them to help our founders get started by adding a deal. This is just a tiny start, and look out for a Heroku deal shortly, but we'd love feedback and suggestions.

Updated title, thanks for that

It's no secret that YC services are commonly used by YC founders, especially since founders of the big startups are often super generous with credits, to help founders just starting out. Nothing weird happening here, there are several categories where the commonly assumed best YC solution isn't #1, or even close. That made us realize we had something.

Hi sixQuarks, genuinely appreciate the feedback, and the additional comments that came in here while I was writing.

In our experience, actionable feedback comes from founders who have used a product, not those who just spend a lot of time researching. That's precisely the problem with Gartner, Forrester (who basically get paid by both vendors AND buyers to make decisions for companies, with zero interest in the best tool for the job). If you want to throw darts at a product, theirs are world class targets.

While it's easy to throw darts at a handful of short reviews from founders who are so busy they can barely keep up with email, we hear from Founderkit users daily that they find tools and are able to make decisions immediately. Don't read too much into the short reviews. There's a lot more going on here.

Hey lowglow, it actually started/was tested by YC founders, but we just onboarded several new founder networks in the weeks leading to launch, including First Round, Slow Ventures, Social Capital, Fuel Capital. There are many, many brilliant founders contributing (also note that ratings are hidden while written reviews show by whom they are posted).

There's a surprising number of very insightful reviews. Founders are busy, so short reviews are still incredible signal compared to everything else out there. We're totally open to suggestions. This is a huge problem for founders, one that wastes days, weeks, or months of indecision or rework.

Signing up shows you all of the reviews. Appreciate the feedback, no deception intended.

So much life is about the intersection of preparation and timing. What Ali fails to mention is how his startup prepared him and supplied perspective for the lifestyle approach he is now taking. You rarely go from corporate job to traversing beaches with wi-fi access.

Love this way of thinking. Why not charge something, anything, like even $1 a year to cover server costs? While it may not seem worthwhile perhaps it would protect this promise by ensuring that the service at least pays for itself.

May I ask who this was?

Snark aside, I ask because I've met some who seriously seemed to care about what I was interested in, and not to push. One was Barry Kwok (Scribd, Airbnb, Coinbase), and the other was Hong Quan (worked with Thiel Foundation). I'm sure there are some great ones out there.

Just bought a pair. Can't wait to see them in person!

I think the most sensational aspect of your Show HN is your story, so I'll focus my comments there (seems like you're getting a lot of critical feedback on the product, mine is just that I don't know how to use it). I've done exactly what you have, betting everything, and then put the fruits of my work out to the universe. I've racked up $80k in credit card debt. One mentor once told me that if I was to start my own company, to be completely prepared for $100k in debt and divorce.

But every single time it's been worth it, and I learned and grew in ways I may not have anticipated. Maybe the product will succeed, maybe it won't, but usually there's a great opportunity (consulting, job offer, realizations that lead to the next thing, acquisition, friendships, other learnings, etc.) that comes from building something you know is great. I expect that this will be your story, so I just wanted to say congrats on your journey from a YC founder, 34, and forever at it.

Might you have said the same thing about YouTube?

Turned out gorgeous, really well done, Anand.

The other problem is that it's founders who invest time to support portfolio companies, not shareholders/employees of the company, so the incentive seems appropriate and aligned IMHO. I can personally speak to the fact that the best support, in my experience, seems to come from founders currently operating their own company, currently in the trenches, and they usually have the least time to offer.

Hi, Ryan from FOBO here. There's actually an advantage inherent to local selling in that you're able to inspect the item before the seller is paid (when you confirm that you've received the item in the app, transferring payment to the seller).

You bet, it's still got a passionate community of 250k users across America. We started fresh because we saw an opportunity to build something really different which we thought had potential to realize the original vision that got us started at a larger scale... something crazy effective, fun for a community of individual sellers, like the old days of eBay.

I used to think press/hype was equal to success... now I know better. We know we have great lengths still to go; this is just the start. And by that, I mean this is our second product (our first is Yardsale, which was funded by YC in the S11 batch), after years of working insatiably to solve a problem we all have. Anyway, thanks for the perspective guys.

On broken stuff, one of the benefits of a local marketplace like FOBO is that you get to see the items before the seller is paid. On eBay, the quality varies widely, and sellers seem to take advantage of that often. Hopefully FOBO is a big step forward.

Hey Ryan, Ryan from FOBO here. Totally agree with the hot commodity that is a MB Air (they are followed by 700 users already in SF). This said, you may be surprised by the results. We had a MacBook Pro Retina sell for 170% of what we guaranteed for it the other day, just while in beta.

Um, Craigslist is a .org, not a .com.