Collectively we've built and sold companies, raised $$, and shipped many apps used by millions around the world. At our core we're hackers, doers, and makers. We've also seen the side of business where employees are burned out solely for the pursuit of profit, where user data is a commodity and not your privacy, where "growth at all costs" costs companies everything. We believe there's a better way!
We’ll be here to answer any questions people have on startups, give product feedback, advise people on how to get your first users, how to raise money, how to build for community inclusion, and in general just chat.
How would you “fix-the-internet”?
Areas I can help with include: prototyping, mvp-ing, recruiting, fundraising, building a culture, scaling, managing your time, communicating, guerrilla marketing, pr, mobile user acquisition and monetization, international expansion, hacking your way into silicon valley networks, building bridges with other parts of the world, keeping mental health during it all and more.
Really appreciate the end-to-end support we've received from the mentors and Mozilla community. If anyone wants to learn more about our experience, feel free to reach out!
I’m currently a participant in the Mozilla Builders’ Spring MVP program working on our recommendation-as-a-service platform www.chestnutai.com, and so far, the experience has been amazing! Each week, we get half an hour of dedicated mentoring session, and the mentors are super responsive on Slack as well. They give you great, tailored advice on how to validate your idea, gain tractions in the super early stage, and prioritize on what to build. Shout out to our mentors Bart & Patrick for being so helpful!!
Also which channels of communication are used to communicate between the teams and the mentors? Would you accommodate with a team using mostly asynchronous communication (written, non-chat) channels, because according to our experience it's the most effective way to communicate in a small software company?
We communicate both synchronously AND asynchronously, i.e. we set up weekly or biweekly -- depends on your preference -- meetings with teams and also are available via email + slack.
Our methodology is to be as non intrusive as possible (it's your project!) but we try to guide you in thinking about problems in the right way, and we've found that a lot of value we add is when people are looking to onboard first users.
We help a lot with messaging, cold email outreach, but much more!
Your program looks exactly what my project (https://bloom.sh) need at this time!
You can count on my application :)
Shameless plug of what we have been working on https://twittersourcebot.tech/
I want to build a blogging/writing/learning experience with program-ability, and collaboration (version control).
Is this the kind of idea you are looking for?
The long term goal is defining an interactive file format that is suitable for data exploration and explanation.
yes these are definitely the projects we're looking for. one thing to note would be: who is your target audience?
what we would like to see is a well defined target group and a product that meets that groups needs.
Music has always been the voice of change and with this refreshing breeze of let's fix the internet our team of musicians and devs have been able to set full sail to reach new boarders in global artists collaboration. Creating together, raising their voice with global narratives. ununu is a collaboration tool for bedroom music producers.
Love the community and support we are fortunate to get from being part of the MVP Lab and we'll surely apply for this incubator opportunity and stay active in this ecosystem.
much love, se Germans
How can we do a better job teaching about the importance of privacy and importance of having competition in the browser space and in the online tools we use?
Note: I doubt anyone will see this comment as HackerNews has shadow banned my account because my Open Source project competes with some of YC's investments (it undermines & destroys the need/market for some of their crypto-coin scams).
I interviewed with YC a few years ago and their entire process was terribly unprofessional - I've gone through 3 accelerator programs now, and interviewed at many more. YC itself seems pretty awesome, but beware of the politics - if a single person (HN mod in my case) feels like you are a threat to their status, that person has enough marketing power to hurt you. Find the GOOD people in YC and work with them, don't leave it to chance or you'll fall out of good graces.
In contrast, look what Mozilla is doing! They're helping move the internet (the world, the community) forward, and are a non-profit foundation. I highly recommend applying to their program. They are GOOD people, doing good work. Please please do everything you can to help them make this a success - the internet depends on it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756777
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17000657
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8489651
Users complained frequently about you spamming HN over all these years—there are many more comments like these:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22730863
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21383815
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22499177
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16893429
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16677493
, but we gave you the benefit of the doubt and cut you slack until finally enough was enough. We've banned countless users for far less.
We moderate HN less when YC or YC startups are involved (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), but I don't see how that relates to this.
