I prefer the old adage of focus on what you're doing and ignore what others (including competitors) are doing. It takes away from your focus and spreads yourself thin. It is just as important to focus on a select few things you want to do well as it is to remove all other things that may come up. The more things you introduce may become more noise you have to deal with. In any given startup environment, there is already a LOT of stuff to do, probably more than you can keep up with much less add to that pie. That said, I'm sure your teammates keep up to date on a bunch of tech sites as well here and there.
Thanks. I am worried about noise, and this is definitely sound advice. I know I need to maintain focus, especially over the next few weeks, so I'll definitely do what you suggest.
I was conflicted because at my last internship, my ignorance in certain areas was sometimes of great benefit. By not having any built-in biases or frames of reference I could ask simple questions and come up with simple solutions that were overlooked because nobody had ever thought to ask.
Steve Jobs does have kids. I'm sure they're groomed from birth (kidding). All jokes aside, only time will tell if someone else has the chops and vision Steve Jobs does will step up to lead Apple on the same path or if it'll become stagnant. Speculating at this point doesn't really do anything or change anything.
1. There isn't a shortage of companies including startups looking for programming talent. They are everywhere.
2. Just because the above fact is true does not mean they will hire just anyone, degree or not. Having a CS degree is great, but that doesn't make you or anyone else a great programmer. People have graduated from CS with a high GPA no less and still can't program worth squat.
3. Not talking about large companies, startups in particular, look for more than just raw programming skills. They look for culture fit, are you a passionate hacker, fast learner with great potential for more than just writing code, etc... At the end of the day, there are TOO MANY FACTORS to consider beyond just the simple fact that you have a CS degree to determine whether or not you fit the position in which these companies are hiring for.
My best advice here is find out what you may not be seeing and keep trying. You will eventually find that programming position but you first must understand what it is you may not be seeing that's preventing you from landing that job.
Where are you located and what type of position you are looking for?
I assume current monetization is by in-app ads? I came to this assumption base on the fact that the app is free and I have yet to download it. Either that or you charge people to be in your app.
It's going to be difficult to find many places that have four bedrooms in that area much less affordable. Most in that area are two bedrooms with some three bedrooms. If you guys don't mind doing like a two two-bedrooms, the Avalon isn't too bad. They got like three buildings and all are in a row, across the street from the Caltrain for easy access to the Valley.
I don't have direct examples but as a long time marketer, I can tell you the elements on a page is more important than if the site looks pleasing. Ugly designs can convert extremely well as any good looking design. It's more a matter of the details in button shapes, color choices, etc etc that matters in my experience
Where are you guys pulling the business open hour data from? (I hope not Yelp since they're hours and filtering are all wrong in my experience).
This is something I've been trying to look for, for awhile now, especially late nights (not so much during the day for more obvious reasons but it does have some use during the day in some cases).
Few things to note. Since you have location and neighborhood set already, I would probably get rid of the request for location upon arriving. This will annoy a lot of people and you're only serving up SF to begin with, that doesn't seem like there is a need for that even if it maybe useful later.
The second is if you're planning to expand to other cities, why choose opennowSF (emphasis on the SF) in the domain name. Why not go with a more generic name to begin with rather than rebrand later?
The design isn't bad but I would maybe rethink the blue font for the results and have alternating background color for each result so its not blended so badly. I like that it displays how long before the business closes but I'd also like the business hours for the entire week listed so I can get a quick overview.
Also if the website has an online menu or website, include that. Not exactly sure if I'd use the share feature which btw I didn't even know was meant for sharing X restaurant was open till I clicked on it. First impression was I thought it was the twitter or facebook page for the restaurant. Also maybe have a simple sorting system such as sort by name (alphabetically) or by remaining business hours, etc.
Thanks, this is all really helpful! We're aiming to have more accurate hours information than anyone else and we're investing in several techniques to make that possible. And I completely agree about the domain name, that was just to get us started right away.
