ttruett

Appreciate it!

Great feedback, I'll work on the video ASAP. I intended to immediately create a follow-up video that steps through each component of a newly created decision, got distracted, never circled back.

This is a good nudge to choose the grammatically correct option, thank you.

I originally had "less meetings" before an LLM corrected me into using "fewer meetings". Then when talking about Orgtools to a couple people I heard them say "less meetings" and switched back thinking that sounds slightly more natural (but incorrect).

I'm building decision-making software: https://orgtools.com

Not sure what the market is for something like this but it's something I've been thinking a lot about since stepping down as CEO of my previous company.

My goal is two-fold:

1. Help teams make better, faster decisions with all context populating a source-of-truth.

2. Help leaders stay eyes-on, and circumstantially hands-on, without slowing everything down. What I'd hope to be an effective version of "Founder Mode".

If anybody wants to play around with it, here's a link to my staging environment:

https://staging.orgtools.com/magic-share-link/5a917388cf19ed...

For anybody that just wants to play around with my staging environment / try out the decision builder without any setup here's a link:

https://staging.orgtools.com/magic-share-link/5a917388cf19ed...

I co-founded Ambition (YC W14) and have spent the last 10 years serving as CEO before stepping down in December.

Upon hitting ~50 employees, started to think more about the push/pull between alignment and velocity. How can we maintain effective "founder mode" as we scale?

One of the first things to slow down was decision-making. Who should be involved? In what capacity? Is this worth a meeting? Turns out it's a painful process getting a start-up to even consider, let alone adopt, something like RASCI... even with growing frustration that things are taking too long.

So I decided to try and build decision-making software that might have helped, something that would have introduced incremental process in a more palatable way.

While there's certainly overlap with Slack, Notion, etc... in my head there's still a real need for something like this but I'm curious what you (and the market) think.

Thank you in advance for any thoughts, feedback, tough love.

Travis

Not knowing where you live / have lived... I think people in big cities forget how hard it is to find a taxi elsewhere.

I can remember a specific example several years ago in Nashville (which is quickly becoming a big city) where after waiting for 15+ minutes downtown I had to start calling companies telling them to send a car to my corner.

Before Uber came to Chattanooga (a decent-sized city) calling a taxi wasn't even a viable option unless it was for a scheduled 4AM airport pickup.

Ambition (YCW14) - Chattanooga, TN

We believe that life is too short for work to feel small. Our software helps metric-based employees have more fun, be more productive, and compete outside the walls of their own office and company. Our data helps management coach behavior and measure the correct things at the right levels (much easier said than done).

Our stack is Python/Django, Postgres, and Extjs/React. We're scaling with growth and looking to bring on the following positions:

- Front-End Engineer

- Data Visualization Engineer

- Sysadmin

- Sales

If interested feel free to reach out to careers@ambition.com with a brief description of yourself and why you are interested. Interviews generally consist of a small project using anonymized data and our open-source libraries.

#3 is a very interesting point to be made and something that I (as Ambition co-founder) think about a lot. We've tried to make our product powerful in a responsible way but there's definitely the fine-line of "what's best for the company" and "what's best for the person paying for the product". We receive requests every day from managers asking for the ability to manually manipulate the (objective) data that we're automatically pulling in from CRMs, Phone Systems, Spreadsheets.

I remember talking to PG a couple months ago about how Ambition could potentially decrease office politics and thus "optimize work". Maybe it's a fool's errand given a company of X size or Y age.

Ambition co-founder here, thanks for the interest and you're right that there are a lot of great projects/products/companies in this batch... it's been an incredible learning experience working alongside them for three months.

I'd love to tell you more about Ambition... I'll connect via email.

Just checked out InsightSquared, we're definitely similar.

While relatively subtle, the main difference seems to be that we're more of a motivational tool whereas they are more of an analytical tool.

We're trying to position Ambition to where it's primary purpose is to drive numbers, not just look at them. Yes transparency through reporting is part of that, it's just more passive and it's easy for people to become paralyzed by data.

Ambition co-founder here.

You're definitely right that sales teams are motivated by commission. What we've come to find out, both working in these teams and managing them, is that the most powerful drivers still are intrinsic. Recognition, camaraderie, purpose, being a part of something bigger than oneself...

I think sales teams get a bad reputation because of the lone-wolves, most people working these types of jobs might be more "alpha" than others but still want to feel like they are making an actual impact in something, even if it's just getting their team a "W" for the week.

As a fantasy football player turned programmer.. it's great to see posts like this and I completely agree with the OP. It's fun, surprisingly logical (thus easier when playing against emotional people), and great conversation starter (co-workers, family, fathers-in-law).

My friends and I actually created what has effectively become "fantasy football for sales organizations" where managers can choose/weight metrics for employee-formed teams to compete over across seasons. It's early but so far the results have been impressive. The demo is here if anybody wants to check it out: http://tryambition.com

By no means is Chattanooga anywhere close to Seattle when it comes to the tech scene (or a variety of scenes for that matter) but it's got a lot of promise and the startup scene is growing. Check out http://noogastartups.com to see the directory we recently threw together.

Thanks, I'm glad you think so. While we still have a tremendous amount of work to do automating our customer integration process we are very excited about what's next.

We see the future of Ambition being comparable to New Relic except where they focus on servers we focus on humans. We are already gaining significant market share in the transportation industry (3PL brokerages) and one of our goals is to provide anonymized indices and benchmarks across job functions, geographic locations, and seniority. In addition we are building in customizable triggers where managers can set notifications based on employee/team behavior and momentum. Less time in excel looking at yesterday's data, more time on the floor.

Overall, it's our belief that the majority of people spend the majority of their waking lives at work with the majority of their emotions ranging from apathy to misery... if we can incrementally make work more fun/engaging/inspiring than we've done our good deed, fortunately our "Fantasy Football" system seems to be doing just that.

Ambition | Chattanooga, TN | Full Time

Ambition is essentially "Fantasy Football for Sales Organizations" where managers can choose/weight metrics for employee-based teams to compete over across seasons. Increases employee productivity through competition and employer efficiency through automation. Demo is available here: http://tryambition.com

While we haven't officially launched (no time for marketing website and we still need to automate several processes) we are signing up customers, generating revenue, and currently have more organizations on our waiting list than we have integrated. We are a twelve person team and could easily put 5 engineers to work tomorrow. Python/Django devs, AWS sysadmins, C# devs, web devs needed.

Contact me at travis.truett@ambition.io if you are interested and would like to learn more. This is my third start-up experience and easily the most promising/exciting...

Website contributor here. Super basic website that still needs a lot of work to showcase the city, startups, and job opportunities but it's a start. Inspired to post when I saw the Started in Seattle website trend earlier today.

Ambition - Force.com Developer - Chattanooga, TN

Our product is 'Fantasy Football for Sales Organizations' where employers can select and weight metrics for employee-based teams to compete over across seasons. You can check out a demo here: http://tryambition.com

Our ideal candidate is somebody with extensive Force.com knowledge who also possesses familiarity with python/django. In addition they thrive in a less-traditional work environment where freedom and flexibility trump structure and hierarchy. They enjoy challenges, comraderie, and the occasional pedantic debate.

Responsibilities:

- Integrate Ambition with the SalesForce platform. We fully expect for this to be a tiered process starting with REST and iFrames eventually leading to native development. It is more important for us to learn and adapt to SalesForce specific use cases and customer needs over time than to simply 'crank out an app'.

- Help train an existing employee to provide platform redundancy, help hire a new employee to grow your platform team.

- Understand our stack, constraints, and roadmap. Speak up when you have opinions. Become an integral part of the team.

We will consider remote work for exceptional candidates but we strongly prefer that you can work alongside us in Chattanooga.

Feel free to send resumes and/or cover letters to: travis[dot]truett[at]ambition[dot]io

What we generally like to hear from candidates:

- Why working for Ambition interests you - Why you are the right person for the job - Any demo/product feedback

What we generally like to see from candidates:

- Side projects - Blog posts - Short, relevant resumes

Travis here, I'm the OP and also a co-founder of Fireplug, the service offering retroactive "credit" for your article history on Google Reader.

Our service isn't necessarily a replacement for Google Reader but a way to track what you read and more importantly what you learn online. It's kind of like last.fm's scrobbler except we can go a little more in-depth because it's relatively easier to analyze text over music. Our goal is to help users establish and build their online reputation and what better way to do that then leverage the dozens if not hundreds of articles they read every day.

Love to hear any comments/concerns/feedback you might have, feel free to comment here or email me directly at travis [at] getfireplug [dot] com and I'll be happy to help.

Travis here, I'm a co-founder of Fireplug, the service offering retroactive "credit" for your article history on Google Reader.

Our service isn't necessarily a replacement for Google Reader but a way to track what you read and more importantly what you learn online. It's kind of like last.fm's scrobbler except we can go a little more in-depth because it's relatively easier to analyze text over music. Our goal is to help users establish and build their online reputation and what better way to do that then leverage the dozens if not hundreds of articles they read every day.

Love to hear any comments/concerns/feedback you might have, feel free to comment here or email me directly at travis [at] getfireplug [dot] com and I'll be happy to help.

Ambition LLC

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Our company is creating 'fantasy football' for sales organizations to increase employee productivity through competition. We spend the majority of our waking life at work and most people don't like work... we are trying to make it incrementally more enjoyable which we believe to be a worthy cause.

Our product is currently in beta and will launch in a month. We have already established a foothold in the logistics industry and our initial three customers are $200m-$800m companies. Our current problems are very good problems to have.

Looking for strong python/django developers comfortable with full-stack development. Current stack is python, postgres, ext.js.

Looking for a sysadmin with 3+ years of experience. AWS experience preferred. Experience 'scaling' a product definitely a plus.

Looking for a designer with a portfolio of ground-up websites and applications. Mobile experience preferred.

If you are interested in this position (and are a developer) please email us answers to the following questions:

1. Why was your collegiate GPA what it was?

2. Why is Fizzbuzz an ineffective test of your knowledge?

3. How far have you made it through Project Euler?

4. How have you become so great at ____________?

5. What's the most challenging problem you've ever solved?

6. What's your favorite city in the world?

If you are a designer, a link to your portfolio will be great in addition to answering questions 1, 4, 5, 6.

jobs [at] akimbo [dot] io

Good to know, I've heard a lot about Rocklands and the video footage I've seen is pretty incredible. Atlanta has a direct flight to South Africa so it's relatively easy for me to get there without wasting 15+ hours connecting through Europe/Brazil.

- The weather is certainly humid but it does provide for year-round climbing, shady spots in the summer and sunny spots in the winter. The rain can be a factor but there is plenty of steep stuff that stays dry. What's nice about Chattanooga in particular is that you can live downtown (for cheap) and be a twenty-minute drive from really, really solid sport/trad climbing and bouldering. Boulder is the only place I can think of that is similar in terms of city-size and access but while the weather is drier in the summer it's much colder/snowier/windier in the winter.

- While Chattanooga and the "Deep South" might not be world-class food destinations we still have more to offer than catfish and possum. I mean squirrel is pretty good...

- US immigration is definitely frustrating, not arguing there.

- While I've never climbed in Cape Town I've been fortunate to climb across the US in addition to Europe. Out of curiosity, what are the top three reasons to climb in Cape Town over Thailand for instance? I'm always looking to travel/climb in new places.

I agree a product like Felt might never feel as authentic as the real thing, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem.

Some people prefer to hand-write letters and will probably do so until they die. Some occasions require hand-written letters and will probably do so for a very long time to come. (Felt technically is hand-writing so I guess I mean non-digital hand-writing... Do we need to invent a new term?)

I don't think Felt is necessarily trying to compete with the above, it's simply trying to offer a middle-ground between text messages and inked letters. If we look at how quickly communication has changed (some might say devolved) over the last twenty years... wouldn't a product like Felt be a step in the right direction?

I tested this app back in December and was blown away at how realistic the "handwritten" cards looked. Selling a Felt subscription to businesses with the value-add that their sales team could quickly and easily write cards to their customers could prove very lucrative.

Good to know, that will be a lot easier and I will fix that right now.

Expertise is definitely too strong of a word, especially for where we are at right now... we need to refine our copy.

Our goal is to eventually build in some testing mechanisms but right now we are primarily focused on testing out our tagging accuracy. We will probably roll out some form of time-on-site metric soon that will modify the tag's relevancy score to determine how much credit you should actually earn. In addition we've played around with some word-relationship stuff and it actually wouldn't be that hard for us to roll out some form of auto-generated quizzes. Again, a lot of this is very new and we are open to any feedback...

No worries, and definitely a good question. What we have now is largely a proof-of-concept as to how accurately we can tag articles. The thought is that it could be cool to keep track of everything you read and see insights into your knowledge progression, in a way it's like a scrobbler for your news intake. It's still very early on though and we definitely have to figure out a solid way to answer the question "why do I care about credit?"

Yea, one of our guys got a little excited and decided to post to HN a little prematurely. Right now we are just testing out our prototype and thus the .zip file. We will probably upload to the Chrome store next week. Definitely not trying to be shady...

The tipping point is getting closer but I would still recommend Python 2.X for the time being, primarily for third party support.