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Show HN: A platform to find people to jam on side projects with
I have always found it funny how challenging it can be to find people to jam on side projects with.
There are literally entire sub-Reddits where people post looking for someone to work on a project with. That is super inefficient. There are also newsletters for this (also pretty inefficient).
Let's Jam is my attempt to solve this.
This is NOT a cofounder matching platform. The idea is to connect people with ideas and skills so they can jam on them together. If they end up becoming cofounders, cool, but that is up to them. This is also NOT a place for freelancers to hunt job opportunities. Again, the platform is for people who have an idea or a skill and want to work on something together.
How it works:
> You either a) find a project and request to jam on it with that person, b) post a project and wait for someone to request to jam on it with you, c) claim an idea and wait for someone to request to jam on it with you.
> Once someone requests to jam with you, you'll get an email, and you can vet them via LinkedIn or their past work. If you think they'll be a good fit then accept their request and they'll reach out to you.
> That's it. Simple.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
- rajveerb 4mo agoReminds me of Travis Kalanick's apartment called "Jam pad". I was talking to a friend about the same issue and I randomly clicked the new tab to find this at the top :) I will ask my friend to take a look at this.
- itsmechase 4mo agoAwesome! Great timing. Thank you for passing it along!
- maryamshafaqat 4mo agoThis actually makes more sense than traditional cofounder matching. Most people just want someone to build with first.
- itsmechase 4mo agoExactly! Doesn't need to be complicated.
- johnfink8 4mo agoLove the idea (and ideas). Nice clean look, simple navigation, no clutter. These are going to sound nitpicky, but I'm a dev myself and I know they're easy fixes for high UX gain. Navigation is a bit annoying, back button drops you at the top of the previous page so you have to scroll down again. Probably the (unnecessary?) loading state, you could just maintain a ref to the clicked-item and scroll it into view on first render. It says it thinks I'm in Philadelphia, which is about 500 miles off target.
- itsmechase 4mo agoThanks for the feedback! Just fixed the navigation issue :) I'm looking into the Philly issue.
- jabeer 4mo agothat's pretty cool will definitely use it!!
- itsmechase 4mo agoAwesome, thank you! Please let me know if you have any issues at all. I am in full-on dev mode making updates to the platform to make it better. You can reach out here or when you sign up just respond to the welcome email. That goes directly to me :)
- adrianwaj 4mo agoHow about a way to signup without Google or LinkedIn? Maybe HN-linked profiles? Also, I think a domain-name section is a good idea. Some ideas/projects may have them and some won't. Some people may have unused ones to offer. Others may see a domain name and get ideas just from seeing it. Also, unused social handles would be interesting.
- itsmechase 4mo agoThanks for the feedback! HN-linked profiles would be really interesting. Let me think about that one. Domain-name is also interesting. So essentially a hub where people who have a great domain name but haven't started building anything with it yet?
- adrianwaj 4mo agoyeah - for example, I've got tinkeriDOTng and left some comments about it... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47879268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47879268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47685678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47685678 I don't even mind redirecting to the site if it helps - that would prove that I actually owned it. Another idea would be to have pledging.. people send crypto to an address and if a certain amount is reached, it is released to the owner. Well, maybe that is too complex/risky.. and too similar to crowdfunding, so just have people enter an amount, but don't make it binding. That would be good for people who want to jam, but have little to offer except for $. I think a lot of altcoin owners would contribute to an ecosystem if they thought it'd help their position. So put a large disclaimer that any funds sent are ultimately entirely at the sender's risk - they may get/see nothing in return. Reputation-building and transparency is important here - but a crypto address could be monitored. One problem is people sending funds to themselves. see: https://www.mysociety.org/2015/02/24/the-story-of-pledgebank/ https://www.mysociety.org/2015/02/24/the-story-of-pledgebank... "Jam pledges and donations" could begin well but end up enshi##ified with scams eventually - even by users who build themselves up to be legit... until their very last project when they bail early with funds. At least with crypto, funds can be returned efficiently. That's important too. Best of luck with it all regardless.
- nickbroom98 4mo agoLooks great, will definetly take a look!
- itsmechase 4mo agoThank you very much! Please let me know if you experience any issues at all. I want to make sure it's a super smooth experience.
- atmanactive 4mo agoYeah, not joining unless I can use my own email and password.
- itsmechase 4mo agoWhy's that? Don't use Google auth typically?
- atmanactive 4mo agoExactly. Don't need Google nor LinkedIn as gatekeepers for my life on the internet.
- rogulia 4mo ago[flagged]
- markbarnett3 4mo ago[flagged]
- hashmifarhan 4mo agoReally interesting idea. I wonder if stronger personalization or topic-based navigation could help reduce the “where do I start?” feeling for new users.
- itsmechase 4mo agoThanks! And great point. I've been kicking this around a bit. I was thinking that I probably didn't have enough post volume to justify that yet, but I think you could make a case for it on the Ideas tab. What questions do you think would help determine preference? I'm thinking Software/Hardware and Skills would be the low hanging fruit.
- hashmifarhan 4mo agoYeah, Skills feels like the obvious first step. I could also see tags around intent/goals helping — like people wanting to brainstorm vs people actively looking to build something.