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Ask HN: I'm looking for personality.
I'm a non-technical founder, and I'm not interested in a 'ninja' or a 'rockstar.' We have the Teenage Mutants and Mick Jagger for those roles. I'm not interested in boring, insulting, or intimidating you with a list of "requirements" that reads something like "must know technologies a-z and ideally have experience in platforms 1-100."
I don't consider myself "too smart" or "too special" to tell real details of my life as a human entrepreneur (have you seen Air Bud or Dolphin Tale? Other creatures can make quite the paycheck). In other words, I won't say something like, "I've started and exited 5 top media companies and own the best startup in NYC.... but I won't say what it is because it's top secret that tech firms hire hackers, so e-mail me if you're serious.
Please.
My name is Victor. I recently graduated from the College of Business at Northeastern Univeristy, where I studied Marketing and Entrepreneurship. I've been fortunate enough to have worked in some really cool roles in the corporate world since I was 15 years old (I'm currently 24). My first job was at Majesco Entertainment, where I was a bug tester for games they released on XBOX, PS2 and Gamecube. Anyone ever play Bloodrayne, Advent Rising, or Psychonauts? These (very breakable) games were my summers.
A couple of licensing and marketing roles later, during my Junior year of college, I was accepted to participate in an executive run mentorship program and case competition at The Martin Agency (ad firm for GEICO) in Virginia. Wow. What an experience. Almost every employee there was a brilliant, genius individual. There's a reason why their campaigns are the most well known. This was one of the defining events in my young life.
At the time, I was interested in pursuing a career in advertising. By the end of the program, my mind was made up. The answer was no. I saw the flaw in the way traditional marketing (I call it 'interruption marketing' - others call it this too) handles today's world of consumers. I didn't know what the solution was, yet, but I began thinking about it and it never left my mind. I was set to see it through.
Today, 2 years out of college, I live in a humble section of Prospect Park, Brooklyn. I've been doing some freelance marketing consulting to pay the bills, and in the meantime, developing a tech startup that I truly believe is the 21st century marketing solution. Please understand me. I truly believe this. If you could see my face now, I'd be speaking wide-eyed and passionte. Okay, enough with creeping you out.
I've been working on the venture with two brilliant individuals who graduated from NYU, also non-technical (don't fret here from the thought of another two non-techies - these men are brilliant). It's an iPhone application. We've been working on the venture for about a year. Nailing down the concept, how it works, creating the mockups, revising and refining each iteration, speaking with potential business partners and reaching out to investors.
My partners and I have mockups of the application built, as well as angel investors (friends & family round) who are legitimately interested in providing us with the seed money to develop a working prototype, sign up businesses, gather customers and take the venture to the next step.
I won't list endless technologies.
We're looking for a hacker - cofounder or freelancer - who can help us build our iPhone application. It consists of a mobile client application for consumers and a web management system for businesses. If you can possibly be of help, I'm sure you know it. We can discuss the kinks of technologies, what you think is best and more personally. It's a reason to chat, if anything.
Please break through the ice and don't be shy. We're all human here (except for the robots taking over the world).
If you're in the NYC area and may be interested in hearing more about our service, share the meaningful events in our lives, and discuss the great work we can possibly do together, please reach out to me. My e-mail address is victor(mindlessspace)dweck(at)gmail(dot)com.
As a final note: I made sure to read the all of the guidelines and terms of Hacker News and did my best to respect all of the best practices. Please do let me know if I overstepped any boundaries in writing this post. If so, I will remove it immediately.
Looking forward to the future.
Best regards,
Victor
- coderdude 15y agoYou'll want to delete this post and re-post it tomorrow morning some time. Like 8am PST. There just aren't enough US users on right now to get a reaction. In the mean time fill out the "about" section in your profile with a short bio and list some places you can be contacted at outside of HN (Twitter, Facebook, a blog?). In the next post, try to talk a little more about the product. That's all we really care about. Don't worry about telling your idea to people. You've got the vision, the work done (mockups, think-time, etc.), and a head start. We're used to being approached by non-developers about work and they all have the next big idea so if you want to hook a passionate developer you should give us something to chew on. Good luck
- puresubstance 15y agoThank you! I will do exactly that. However, I won't be able I go into much detail about the project on the forum. I'll want to do that one-on-one, for a number of reasons I'm sure you understand. Any suggestions for a good thread title? The last thing I want to do is seem like heartless spam. Thanks, Victor
- md1515 15y agoI'm a non-technical founder too. One thing you have to realize and realize quick is that your idea means next to nothing. Few people who are good programmers are going to be interested enough to help you unless they know what it is you are doing. If your idea is that good then you can bet there are people already working on it. Sure, leave out the special sauce, but we need details and you are really cutting down your chances when you require one-on-one specifics. If you manage to get X views on HN you'll get X/2=Y who are interested and Y/3 who are willing to email you! That being said, I wish you the best of luck
- puresubstance 15y agoThanks for your advice. If there's a hacker who is truly interested in the possibility of great work, I believe he'll reach out. Best of luck to you, as well. Victor