keenahn

I'm actually very excited about this as an education tool where you can actually learn by coding.

Gotta be honest, I don't see the point of this app. As it is right now, it's useless to me. What benefit is it to me to see that someone "blacklisted" UPS? Guess what, I still have to ship packages occasionally, I'm still going to use them.

Complaints about airlines... I'm guessing all airlines will be "blacklisted" eventually because guess what, delays are part of flying.

It just looks like a slightly more organized version of what Twitter and the Internet already largely is: people complaining. There already exist the BBB, ripoffreport, yelp.

So... what value does your app provide? How will you make money?

Remap 1 to l, O to 0 and vice versa (but only one out of three times)

I've never checked references. The best test for a developer, after interviewing them, is to work with them, for pay, for a few days or a week. That should quickly reveal any character faults or inefficiencies with working with your team.

Hire slow, fire fast :)

My one comment would be, I wonder how the customer feels receiving a message from the Founder of the company. One of two possible reactions:

1) Wow I'm really special to receive personal attention from the founder.

2) This company must be small potatoes if the founder has time to be writing emails.

I wonder if you could follow up with an A/B test, same exact message from you and from a "Community Manager"

Thanks for the encouragement! Do you have any critical feedback for us? :)

Haha, thank you sir. That's what we were going for :). I had to sell magazine subscriptions and it suuuuuuuuuuucked. The funny thing is that kids are still using those tactics TODAY.

We are the only platform that is 100% focused on kids. Kids have challenges that are not being addressed by the other crowdfunding platforms.

1) Kids under 13 need stricter privacy controls and need to give parents access.

2) Kids oftentimes don't understand how best to tell their story and engage their audience. We help them with that.

3) Kickstarter is fantastic for pre-selling products. While we do have a few young entrepreneurs on our site, most of the kids are not selling anything. We encourage them to give low-cost, high emotional value gifts like signed photographs of their team.

4) We are one of the few platforms that is built from the ground up around teams. The team leader has special abilities to coordinate the team members and can poke them and motivate them.

5) Kids also need a bit more prodding than adults do, so we've built in a bit of light gamification to make it fun for them.

I do program at work, so I have logged many "flight hours" so to speak.

I learned CS basics over time, but I created my first webapp in two weeks, knowing nothing of web technologies before that. The education and tools are a lot better now, so I think someone trying to learn now would have everything they need to make a basic app in a month.

As for building something that other people want to use, well that is a separate question :) sounds like you are well on your way.

I feel bad for you son, but I can't completely blame the recruiter and the company in this case.

Complaint 1: The recruiter asked you questions you didn't find relevant. I have often asked "curveball" questions just to see how a potential hire thinks on his feet or perhaps to see how he handles a situation in which he doesn't know the answer to something (the correct way being "I don't know that off the top of my head, good thing for Google and Stack Overflow, right?"), so it's not really up to you to determine which questions are relevant. Then again, he could have just been a dick, but not necessarily.

Complaint 2: The company had to be prompted and prodded to respond to you Certainly, this isn't very professional, and it would also leave a bad taste in my mouth, but know this: the company doesn't owe you a damn thing. Silence = rejection, simple as that. If there was anything to follow up with, I would have emailed the company that day, and then promptly put them out of my mind until they replied and kept applying to other jobs.

Complaint 3: The company didn't get back to you in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, this is simple supply and demand. Or, the company is terribly incompetent. But it seems to me that they would prioritize reviewing candidates if they had a small number who were qualified. If there was already a week backlog of candidates, they were probably getting plenty of them already.

I understand the point of your piece, that you believe the recruiter failed the company by not properly interviewing you, and that you believe that the company shot itself in the foot by not giving you a real chance. OK. Then do you really want to work at a place like that?

A month to get started, years to master (and most never will master).

If you don't live in a "startup hub," it might be difficult but not impossible. Here in San Francisco, there are tons of tech meetups on meetup.com. If you can't find any tech meetups in your city, start one! A simple one to start is simply, "Shut up and code!" or something similar, where you literally just sit in a coffee shop, cowork, and talk to each other if you want to.

That reminds me, coworking spaces will usually give you a day pass or a few days. Check those out.

Good luck!

Best is if you know someone in San Francisco. Where are you located currently? It can be hard to find short term rentals in San Francisco unless they are horrid corporate housing apartments (stay away from any Trinity managed properties).

What problem are you solving? What stage are you at in development? Are you looking for basic validation of your idea or getting validation for potential features/tweaks?

If you are still early on, I would start with "What do you use currently to ________?" Where the blank is the problem you're trying to solve better than it is currently being solved.