This is a cool idea; I would take you up on it if I wasn't in New York. I especially like your web page but have to say that the light coloring makes some of the text a little hard to read.
I recently moved from Long Island to Boston. Would love to get coffee with you sometime when I am down there visiting family. I moved as the commute from LI to NYC was brutal and I felt there were better job opportunities in Boston. I'd love to pick your brain sometime about the status of the island and NYC.
Maybe it looks for a certain browser string and hides itself otherwise? I knew of Wordpress malware from last year that would never show to logged in users.
I like the website and if I weren't in DC I'd fill it out... But one doesn't need a fancy website to reach me. I pretty much always say yes to someone who wants to learn more about what we're working on. I bet that's true for a great many founders.
Nice thing about an in-person meeting is that it feels (to me) like a lot less effort than typing a bunch of stuff out. But feel free to ask me any questions.
I wonder if you could make a linkedin app that would not only show people in your area (city) but also show the 2nd and 3rd connections and who you should reach out to in order to get drinks with that person. Cool idea - love it!
It's an awesome idea, and you've done a great job of making it look sweet. I have actually been working on something similar so that I could connect with the local designers/coders in the Philadelphia area. I'll post it here when its ready :)
Depends on your role within the business of course, but I always file these kind of expenses under business expenses myself. In the end, the meetings help my professional life a lot.
This is a tangent, but the post reminded me of this.
I've done quite a bit of cold-emailing to reach new mentors and new clients.
One of the things I started doing a couple years ago was to offer buying someone I was cold-emailing a "virtual cup of coffee". I even played with using that in the subject of the email.
I'd say: I'm working on a new product and I wanted to see if it would be handy for them. If they have a chance to talk on the phone or Skype, I'll send over a gift certificate to Starbucks so they could get their favorite drink before the meeting.
Those emails got some nice hit rates in responses and meetings. And you can very easily buy a $5 gift cert. online from Starbucks and email it.
I agree. Tweet-a-beer (especially for a local brewery) has more of a community feel. Tweet-a-coffee (even though I end up at starbucks almost daily) feels more like giving to a faceless corporation.
Well, sure, they'd get business--that's the benefit.
But how easy is it to tie into twitter and a payment system? That'd be the cost.
Starbucks can distribute such costs (which may not be fixed, but certainly won't grow linearly) across a larger number of stores than your local brewhouse can.
Its not my area, so I don't know how easy it is to do, but I do think it could be a space for a third-party to step in. Someone figures out how to handle the twitter/payment side, reaches out to some local breweries/bars, takes a small cut of the money for each beer tweeted. Its not going to be a super profitable business, but it might be a fun sideproject for someone.
I forgot to add the 3rd benefit to the brewery is that I would assume, in general, when people stop in, they don't come alone, and they don't just have one beer and leave. Once they're in the door, they tend to spend more money.
While there may be issues with localized liquor laws, this is the greatest idea I've ever heard. Too bad you just missed the last YC batch! I'd be your first beta user.
I had a friend in new york ask if he could have a virtual lunch with me over skype to get my advice. He called up eat24 or something and ordered me food to have it delivered when our lunch meeting was scheduled to start. Totally surprised me, albeit pleasantly.
Something about the human instinct to pattern-match compels me to point out that this is the "reciprocity" principle of influence spelled out by Cialdini's 1984 book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion", http://www.amazon.com/dp/006124189X .
When people show up to networking meetings with a gift (book, chocolate, whatever) I know I'm being manipulated but I don't mind. I'm more likely to pass them on with a good reference because I know they'll behave well if I send them on. This is despite knowing that they're manipulating me.
True. But many times the networking comes from a junior person looking for help finding a job. I take those calls because everyone has to start somewhere. Usually I pick up the Starbucks because they're less likely to have any income yet, and the people taking care of me back in the day did the same thing. Though maybe I should pick up the Starbucks just to not get manipulated. :-)
Kindly disagree here. Many people simply "need a favor", and frame it as such, without any manipulation. While I'm requesting another person's time, I might as well bring a small token of appreciation.
When people show up to networking meetings with a gift (book, chocolate, whatever) I know I'm being manipulated but I don't mind
One could characterize it as "manipulation," which has a negative connotation, but it could also be conceptualized as dealing with a person who brings something to the table—that is, who understands that your time / effort is presumably valuable, and that they shouldn't expect something for nothing. Trying to pay outright would be overly expensive and too intrusive, but a small thing like coffee demonstrates that the person wants to differentiate themselves from most people, and that they have something at stake.
People treat "free" as very different than "not free," which Dan Ariely describes in Predictably Irrational, and people treat exchanges in a special way, as Lewis Hyde describes in The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.
Companies which write to me saying "we're using some open source code you wrote, thanks for doing that -- here's a free t-shirt" tend to get more help from me when they write back later to say that they're having trouble with something.
How meta! Not only are you bringing up the reciprocity principle to further analyze this phenomenon, but you're also offhandedly analyzing your actions as human instinct.
As an alternative to Skype, you could use "vLine link": https://vline.com.
The advantage over Skype with this use case is that you don't need to add them as a contact (especially if it turns out to be someone you decide you don't want to stay in contact with).
I used to organize something similar in Munich, Germany called NerdLunch. Meetings like this are great to enlarge your network and to not lunch in front of your machine every day.
Great to see someone made a website like this, I'll give it a try.
I'm not in a position of power and probably am not worth meeting, professionally speaking, but hey, if I were in San Francisco, I'd put in an application. :)
The input box's for email address wasnt exactly obvious to me either, do I ommit the @? Do I just put my name in the first part and email in the second? Do I split up my email address with the prefix before the @ in the first part, and the suffix in the second box? Do i need the '.com'? Or is the first box a subject line or something?
I think just putting an @ symbol between the two boxs would pretty much answer most of these questions.
I think it's more clear in it's current form than it would be with your suggested change. With the placeholders it's seems obvious to me how to use the form.
It's interesting though to see that something I think is quite clear isn't clear and could be improved to someone else. Shows how important testing this kind of thing is (although maybe not in the case of a small site like this).
Not to nitpick... ok actually to nitpick, sorry. Your page bugged my to run a media player, which when allowed, changed to a background that was hard for me to read over and then sat there "buffering" interminably.
After 10 minutes it had reached 15%. What happens at 100%?
Edit: Ah. It finally got moving. It was coffee pouring. As the background. I guess if I didn't have my browser set so I have to approve plugins and it wasn't being HN'd to slowness so it started right up, that would have been kind of cool. As you were then.
Hmm, it doesn't seem to work in Safari 7, but does in Chrome. Didn't think anything of it (it was just a orange background in Safari) before you asked. But, yeah, a coffee pouring.
In Firefox 26 (Linux x64), a cup of coffee briefly flashes up in the background then disappears. I was confused by the "footage from Beachfront B-Roll" notice at the bottom of the page.
Or at least any site with a <video> tag. It will be nice once the standard become ubiquitous. Until then <video> causes decidedly non-deterministic things to happen on the client.
I'd still like the ability to approve/disapprove a site that's about to play a 115meg video file as a background!
Would it be feasible to fall back to an animated gif, or even just a static image? It took so long to load that I was done reading the page, and was looking at the fine print when it started playing, and that was a little bit jarring. Moreover, the placeholder image you had already looked really good.
OP here. The background video is supposed to get pulled if it doesn't start playing right away (which is what happens in browsers that don't allow autoplay, like iOS. Not sure why that feature detection didn't work in your case.
It's definitely intended as a "background" - not supposed to detract from the site if it doesn't work.
I LOVE your idea. Since I live in Italy and not SF, I can't grab a coffee with you, but I will still honor your project by borrowing your idea and applying it here. (if that's ok with you)
I am going to be in SF in January (not for YC, haha) so I will contact your for an American coffee in a few months.
I'm a researcher at Lab#ID (auto-ID Laboratory) at Cattaneo University (LIUC) in Castellanza, 15km north of Milan.
If you want to grab coffee or lunch sometime I can show you around the uni.
Whenever you're in the area drop me a line: gcatalfamo (at) liuc.it
A friend was doing this in Philadelphia last year and has started doing it in SF http://tea.byankit.com/. Not sure if this idea was inspired by that or an independent discovery -- the design of the pages looks samey but I think basically all designs that have the same color palate from the same year look samey. It's just whatever's in that year.
Folks from companies I wanted to meet: Hobby electronics, robotics etc. Couldn't find any category related to those. Do they have any Denver/Boulder coffee shops in their database? Site seems pretty slow now.
I've been doing something like this with a slightly different angle for a while now (see http://tea.byankit.com + http://tea.byankit.com/penn). Would love to learn more about your inspiration and see what some of your thinking was behind the initiative. We should talk.
I cringe every time I see a 21 year old call themselves a CTO. Please stop doing that. Just say "founder". You're not a CTO and you won't know what being a CTO entails for another 10 years.
Just a reminder- Mark Zuck. was founder, but also CTO, CEO and what not at the age of 21, and of an almost billion $ company in the age of 23. Grow up, the world belongs to the young!
Even simply as a role, it doesn't even make sense in a dinky company. Chief technology officer? Does the company even have other people in that branch, or are you de-facto "chief" because you are the only one?
In the end it's just a title and we all take those titles with a grain of salt when it comes to startups anyway, right? The original purpose of those titles was for official company contracts anyway, so everybody involved (investors, stakeholders, clients) knows what's up and I agree that possibly 10 or 20 years ago being CEO or CTO had a stronger load in popular language. The fact that it's so easy to start a company anno 2013 makes the use of them way more common. From a practical point of view, CTO is also shorter than "Technical founder".
I'd say that being CTO of a small startup is worlds different than a large company (which is what I think you're saying here). It's not meant to be self-aggrandizing, more to simply show which side of the business I work on.
Ok, I said this in another post, but don't call yourself CTO then. Outside of the tech bubble, it comes across as self-aggrandizing even if you don't mean it to. Have some humility and use the title tech-founder or tech lead or something like that.
If you're company is < 10 people, you're not a CTO or CEO. Putting it down as your title only makes sense in the bay area. Outside of the bubble, it looks ridiculous.
Even _if_ CTO is "technically" your title, it comes across as pompus and immature. Have some humility. A better description is tech founder, tech lead, principal engineer, lead developer, etc.
This is creative. I just had a friend that moved to the DC -area from San Francisco. She works for the Federal Government and mentioned that she felt out of place in San Fran because nearly every one is working on a start up. This post makes it appear that it is really hard to stand out in a crowd.
In a public place like a coffee shop or something, probably safe.
Friend at work tells of a friend of hers meeting a date. The lady picked the bar in New St Station in Birmingham UK. At least 30 police within seconds of there always, and saturation CCTV, has to be the safest meet up place going.
I agree. I like both coffee and tea but even for someone who isn't a fan of brown/green tea I suggest some sort of hibiscus. Maybe I am just obsessed with Tazo's Passion blend right now, but I think people who really aren't into tea will still like this. It is tart and lightly fruity + will often be mixed with something like lemongrass to give it a bit of herbaceousness and/or a touch of tropical flavor.
I'd also suggest Gen Mai Cha as something which is common enough to be in supermarkets or coffehouses but which is a bit different too due to the toasted rice flavor. If you end up in Starbucks, last I went there was a berry-hibiscus "cooler" or something which was decent as well.
I think this is an awesome idea regardless of what comes of it.
My internal data nerd is dying for a follow-up post with a breakdown:
* How many site hits?
* How many of those turned into actual coffees?
* How many of those actually showed up? (as opposed to being no-shows)
http://coffeeme.in is Tinder for startup people. I've personally used it to meet like 50 people in the past 30 days. Obviously you don't have to meet so many if you don't want :)
It does make me wonder though... what does the "typical" startup person do to network in SF? It seems like a lot of people locate there (and accept the high cost of living) in order to cross-pollinate ideas and meet other cool people.
But how do you find those people? Are there popular hangouts or events? If so, how do the organizers stop them from sliding into the usual pool of desperate wannabe's pestering the popular people [pretend I insert a dating anecdote here]
My guess is that you hit up hackathons, [linux|ruby|whatever] User Groups, or meetup groups for whatever interests you (with the hope that you'll find others with the same vienn overlaps as you with one of the circles being "tehnology|startup|programming|business")
* How much advance notice do you need tg3? There's a good chance I'll be passing through SFO tomorrow (Wed Nov 6) or maybe Thu. I'd love to reciprocate coffees with you if you are located within reasonable distance to the airport (I'll need a cab or transit) and it fits your schedule. :)
Will post to your form when I finalize my plans.
There are a massive ton of events, pretty much if you wanted to, you can find one almost every day/night, any time of the year. There are TONS of meetups, conferences, hackathons, panels, private or smaller group events, and the list goes on and on. Additionally its a bit hard not to run into someone doing a startup, especially if you're in startup centric districts like SOMA in SF or University Ave in Palo Alto and the various other areas up and down the entire Bay.
On top of that, you have various things people engage in to meet other people (dinners, stuff like LetsLunch, etc...). The problem isn't really meeting people, its actually avoiding wasting time and going out too much that leads to non-quality eventful meetings.
This is a great concept. I've always had the intention of meeting people in SF for networking purposes, but it always ends up feeling like a means to an end - I'm a ____, I need a ____, are you the guy? This appears much more casual and open. Looking forward to grabbing coffee with you, sir.
I think the logical conclusion of this is going to have to be a weekly coffee event, sort of some sort of show or media format, where you podcast a video of the highlights of the week.
If you just opened up 'the coffee door' semi-persistently, I'm sure you'd meet a lot of people.
I'm thinking about doing something along these lines in college. I'd like to meet more cool people, so maybe I'll set up a table with a sign offering free coffee.
looks like an idea for a startup... thumbsup
Good one - can be called ice breaker oops coffee breaker
Nice!
Trey, love it! We're doing something similar...everyone on Treatings is open to being treated to coffee by a stranger:
https://treatings.co/activity
This is a cool idea; I would take you up on it if I wasn't in New York. I especially like your web page but have to say that the light coloring makes some of the text a little hard to read.
I think it's a cool idea too - I am in NYC wanna grab coffee/beer and chat tech?
After briefly checking out your blog, yes I do. Unfortunately my availability is limited. When and where were you thinking? I am on Long Island.
I recently moved from Long Island to Boston. Would love to get coffee with you sometime when I am down there visiting family. I moved as the commute from LI to NYC was brutal and I felt there were better job opportunities in Boston. I'd love to pick your brain sometime about the status of the island and NYC.
Looks like you got some spam on your blog
*actually, it looks like you've been compromised. There are spam links all over your home page.
http://www.johnmurch.com/projects/noteparse/
Thanks for the heads up but not seeing them. That link is a project I worked on, not spam.
Uhh, clear your cache? You've definitely been compromised - content all over your site has been replaced with spam content.
Hmm, I'm not seeing it on that page either. Tried Chrome and Curl, source code seems clean.
I'm also not seeing it. Wonder if @billmalarky is compromised?
Maybe it looks for a certain browser string and hides itself otherwise? I knew of Wordpress malware from last year that would never show to logged in users.
Doubtful, I was on my work network and PC when seeing it (during lunch, before anyone gets smart with me).
I'm also in NYC and would love to meet up with some HN'ers to talk shop and nerd out.
likewise, also in nyc. this sounds fun, let's organize something!
That's a novel idea, very brave also. There needs to be a blog post follow up to see how this went!
I like the website and if I weren't in DC I'd fill it out... But one doesn't need a fancy website to reach me. I pretty much always say yes to someone who wants to learn more about what we're working on. I bet that's true for a great many founders.
So, what are you working on?
Click my profile :)
Nice thing about an in-person meeting is that it feels (to me) like a lot less effort than typing a bunch of stuff out. But feel free to ask me any questions.
I wonder if you could make a linkedin app that would not only show people in your area (city) but also show the 2nd and 3rd connections and who you should reach out to in order to get drinks with that person. Cool idea - love it!
Make it not have anything to do with LinkedIn, and you've got an awesome idea!
It's an awesome idea, and you've done a great job of making it look sweet. I have actually been working on something similar so that I could connect with the local designers/coders in the Philadelphia area. I'll post it here when its ready :)
Not sure about the US, but could you file these under "business expenses" for taxes?
Depends on your role within the business of course, but I always file these kind of expenses under business expenses myself. In the end, the meetings help my professional life a lot.
If nothing else, it's 'employee benefit programs' which can include education and conferences.
Yes, business networking expenses can be written off.
AFAIK 50% of meals and entertainment expenses can be written off.
This is a tangent, but the post reminded me of this.
I've done quite a bit of cold-emailing to reach new mentors and new clients.
One of the things I started doing a couple years ago was to offer buying someone I was cold-emailing a "virtual cup of coffee". I even played with using that in the subject of the email.
I'd say: I'm working on a new product and I wanted to see if it would be handy for them. If they have a chance to talk on the phone or Skype, I'll send over a gift certificate to Starbucks so they could get their favorite drink before the meeting.
Those emails got some nice hit rates in responses and meetings. And you can very easily buy a $5 gift cert. online from Starbucks and email it.
That is a brilliant idea! I'll have to try that sometime
Even better -- you can now tweet them a $5 starbucks gift card. https://www.starbucks.com/tweet-a-coffee
I still want to see this implemented with some local breweries. I'd definitely use tweet-a-beer.
I agree. Tweet-a-beer (especially for a local brewery) has more of a community feel. Tweet-a-coffee (even though I end up at starbucks almost daily) feels more like giving to a faceless corporation.
done via Twitter and Chirpify http://tweet-a-beer.com
This just sends five bucks — it isn't tied to a specific drinking establishment or brewery, or even to beer. Totally not the same.
awesome
That would be pretty cool as a user (drinker?), but I don't see the ROI for the brewery.
You mean besides the business it would get?
Well, sure, they'd get business--that's the benefit.
But how easy is it to tie into twitter and a payment system? That'd be the cost.
Starbucks can distribute such costs (which may not be fixed, but certainly won't grow linearly) across a larger number of stores than your local brewhouse can.
For the brewery its the same benefits as gift cards: Not everyone that receives one will actually use the money. On top of that, free advertising.
And all you have to do to get these benefits is somehow integrate with twitter and a payment system. Which might be a tall order for a local brewery.
(Or is that easier to do than I think?)
Its not my area, so I don't know how easy it is to do, but I do think it could be a space for a third-party to step in. Someone figures out how to handle the twitter/payment side, reaches out to some local breweries/bars, takes a small cut of the money for each beer tweeted. Its not going to be a super profitable business, but it might be a fun sideproject for someone.
I forgot to add the 3rd benefit to the brewery is that I would assume, in general, when people stop in, they don't come alone, and they don't just have one beer and leave. Once they're in the door, they tend to spend more money.
The app could be TAB (as in open a bar tab) Badumm-cha!
While there may be issues with localized liquor laws, this is the greatest idea I've ever heard. Too bad you just missed the last YC batch! I'd be your first beta user.
I had a friend in new york ask if he could have a virtual lunch with me over skype to get my advice. He called up eat24 or something and ordered me food to have it delivered when our lunch meeting was scheduled to start. Totally surprised me, albeit pleasantly.
That's an aweseome idea!
Love that idea!
Something about the human instinct to pattern-match compels me to point out that this is the "reciprocity" principle of influence spelled out by Cialdini's 1984 book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion", http://www.amazon.com/dp/006124189X .
When people show up to networking meetings with a gift (book, chocolate, whatever) I know I'm being manipulated but I don't mind. I'm more likely to pass them on with a good reference because I know they'll behave well if I send them on. This is despite knowing that they're manipulating me.
You can tell pretty quickly whether it's manipulation or a kind gesture.
Manipulation: gift + nothing meaningful to share
Kind gesture: gift + something really meaningful to network about
True. But many times the networking comes from a junior person looking for help finding a job. I take those calls because everyone has to start somewhere. Usually I pick up the Starbucks because they're less likely to have any income yet, and the people taking care of me back in the day did the same thing. Though maybe I should pick up the Starbucks just to not get manipulated. :-)
One man's manipulation is another man's manners / ingenuity. Do you manipulate your parents by talking to them differently than to your friends?
Most definitely so! :-)
Kindly disagree here. Many people simply "need a favor", and frame it as such, without any manipulation. While I'm requesting another person's time, I might as well bring a small token of appreciation.
When people show up to networking meetings with a gift (book, chocolate, whatever) I know I'm being manipulated but I don't mind
One could characterize it as "manipulation," which has a negative connotation, but it could also be conceptualized as dealing with a person who brings something to the table—that is, who understands that your time / effort is presumably valuable, and that they shouldn't expect something for nothing. Trying to pay outright would be overly expensive and too intrusive, but a small thing like coffee demonstrates that the person wants to differentiate themselves from most people, and that they have something at stake.
People treat "free" as very different than "not free," which Dan Ariely describes in Predictably Irrational, and people treat exchanges in a special way, as Lewis Hyde describes in The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.
Companies which write to me saying "we're using some open source code you wrote, thanks for doing that -- here's a free t-shirt" tend to get more help from me when they write back later to say that they're having trouble with something.
Paying for favors in advance goes a long way. I like the saying, "Dig the well before you need it."
How meta! Not only are you bringing up the reciprocity principle to further analyze this phenomenon, but you're also offhandedly analyzing your actions as human instinct.
As an alternative to Skype, you could use "vLine link": https://vline.com.
The advantage over Skype with this use case is that you don't need to add them as a contact (especially if it turns out to be someone you decide you don't want to stay in contact with).
Disclaimer: I work for vLine.
Sounds like manufacturing obligation to me. I would be suspicious and slightly insulted.
I've done a few lunches in SF through http://letslunch.com/ which I'd recommend if you're looking for a "scalable" version of this.
I used to organize something similar in Munich, Germany called NerdLunch. Meetings like this are great to enlarge your network and to not lunch in front of your machine every day.
Great to see someone made a website like this, I'll give it a try.
I'm not in a position of power and probably am not worth meeting, professionally speaking, but hey, if I were in San Francisco, I'd put in an application. :)
Nice idea.
The contrast of the font-color/bg-color however is really bad.
The input box's for email address wasnt exactly obvious to me either, do I ommit the @? Do I just put my name in the first part and email in the second? Do I split up my email address with the prefix before the @ in the first part, and the suffix in the second box? Do i need the '.com'? Or is the first box a subject line or something?
I think just putting an @ symbol between the two boxs would pretty much answer most of these questions.
I think it's more clear in it's current form than it would be with your suggested change. With the placeholders it's seems obvious to me how to use the form.
It's interesting though to see that something I think is quite clear isn't clear and could be improved to someone else. Shows how important testing this kind of thing is (although maybe not in the case of a small site like this).
To make it clearer, the issue is on small resolutions. The white text is right over the white glare to the left of the cup.
For some reason, this came to mind first... :) http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hello-my-future-girlfriend
Jokes aside, it is a much more positive experience when you meet someone one on one, outside of some meetup event networking shuffle.
Not to nitpick... ok actually to nitpick, sorry. Your page bugged my to run a media player, which when allowed, changed to a background that was hard for me to read over and then sat there "buffering" interminably.
After 10 minutes it had reached 15%. What happens at 100%?
Edit: Ah. It finally got moving. It was coffee pouring. As the background. I guess if I didn't have my browser set so I have to approve plugins and it wasn't being HN'd to slowness so it started right up, that would have been kind of cool. As you were then.
Hmm, it doesn't seem to work in Safari 7, but does in Chrome. Didn't think anything of it (it was just a orange background in Safari) before you asked. But, yeah, a coffee pouring.
Ah, so there was supposed to be a video?
In Firefox 26 (Linux x64), a cup of coffee briefly flashes up in the background then disappears. I was confused by the "footage from Beachfront B-Roll" notice at the bottom of the page.
Yeah. I mean he's just using a regular ol' <video> tag. So you would presumably have that same issue with any site using HTML5 media tags.
Or at least any site with a <video> tag. It will be nice once the standard become ubiquitous. Until then <video> causes decidedly non-deterministic things to happen on the client.
I'd still like the ability to approve/disapprove a site that's about to play a 115meg video file as a background!
If your browser supports WebM, that version of the file is only 6.5MB. I include the MP4 as a backup.
Would it be feasible to fall back to an animated gif, or even just a static image? It took so long to load that I was done reading the page, and was looking at the fine print when it started playing, and that was a little bit jarring. Moreover, the placeholder image you had already looked really good.
(The video _was_ pretty cool, though.)
I just added a static image fallback instead of the brown background I had before. Keeps more in line with the intended look.
Isn't the New Web great?
It doesn't help the MP4 is 115 MB, maybe compress that
I thought the same thing. I mostly saw the stuttering buffer.
Is the effect really worth the risk of poor UX? Seems a nice background image would be effective enough.
(I also realize this is nitpicky, but still worth mentioning. Maybe the OP didn't realize some would have a poor UX.)
Heh, I just saw a brown background, no video at all here on Mac/Chrome.
OP here. The background video is supposed to get pulled if it doesn't start playing right away (which is what happens in browsers that don't allow autoplay, like iOS. Not sure why that feature detection didn't work in your case.
It's definitely intended as a "background" - not supposed to detract from the site if it doesn't work.
I LOVE your idea. Since I live in Italy and not SF, I can't grab a coffee with you, but I will still honor your project by borrowing your idea and applying it here. (if that's ok with you)
I am going to be in SF in January (not for YC, haha) so I will contact your for an American coffee in a few months.
Nice, I was thinking of doing the same, too. Plus coffee here is basically a given, so it feels very natural.
Where in Italy, if I may? Fellow transplanted milanese here.
I have a standing offer open to buy people a beer/spritz/whatever here in Padova if anyone is in the area.
I'll contact you if I happen to be in Padova!
I'm a researcher at Lab#ID (auto-ID Laboratory) at Cattaneo University (LIUC) in Castellanza, 15km north of Milan. If you want to grab coffee or lunch sometime I can show you around the uni. Whenever you're in the area drop me a line: gcatalfamo (at) liuc.it
I am Italian and live in San Francisco. Ping me when you arrive :)
You can count on it! My treat!
[I'm always amazed by the number of Italians I find every time I visit SF]
Nice idea, but… 115 MB video!?
A friend was doing this in Philadelphia last year and has started doing it in SF http://tea.byankit.com/. Not sure if this idea was inspired by that or an independent discovery -- the design of the pages looks samey but I think basically all designs that have the same color palate from the same year look samey. It's just whatever's in that year.
Folks from companies I wanted to meet: Hobby electronics, robotics etc. Couldn't find any category related to those. Do they have any Denver/Boulder coffee shops in their database? Site seems pretty slow now.
I love it - what a cool idea!
I've been doing something like this with a slightly different angle for a while now (see http://tea.byankit.com + http://tea.byankit.com/penn). Would love to learn more about your inspiration and see what some of your thinking was behind the initiative. We should talk.
Awesome webpage. Love to know if you get any good connections
I cringe every time I see a 21 year old call themselves a CTO. Please stop doing that. Just say "founder". You're not a CTO and you won't know what being a CTO entails for another 10 years.
Just a reminder- Mark Zuck. was founder, but also CTO, CEO and what not at the age of 21, and of an almost billion $ company in the age of 23. Grow up, the world belongs to the young!
The world belongs to everyone!
You're aware that CTO is a role and not an experience level, right?
Even simply as a role, it doesn't even make sense in a dinky company. Chief technology officer? Does the company even have other people in that branch, or are you de-facto "chief" because you are the only one?
In the end it's just a title and we all take those titles with a grain of salt when it comes to startups anyway, right? The original purpose of those titles was for official company contracts anyway, so everybody involved (investors, stakeholders, clients) knows what's up and I agree that possibly 10 or 20 years ago being CEO or CTO had a stronger load in popular language. The fact that it's so easy to start a company anno 2013 makes the use of them way more common. From a practical point of view, CTO is also shorter than "Technical founder".
I'd say that being CTO of a small startup is worlds different than a large company (which is what I think you're saying here). It's not meant to be self-aggrandizing, more to simply show which side of the business I work on.
PS - I'm 24. Only 7 years to go!
Ok, I said this in another post, but don't call yourself CTO then. Outside of the tech bubble, it comes across as self-aggrandizing even if you don't mean it to. Have some humility and use the title tech-founder or tech lead or something like that.
Thank you. I came here to say the same.
If you're company is < 10 people, you're not a CTO or CEO. Putting it down as your title only makes sense in the bay area. Outside of the bubble, it looks ridiculous.
Even _if_ CTO is "technically" your title, it comes across as pompus and immature. Have some humility. A better description is tech founder, tech lead, principal engineer, lead developer, etc.
Even in the bay area, to most normal people, it comes off as silly. It only seems 'reasonable' among startup founders younger than 30.
We tried building urbanvisitor.com for that purpose.
This is creative. I just had a friend that moved to the DC -area from San Francisco. She works for the Federal Government and mentioned that she felt out of place in San Fran because nearly every one is working on a start up. This post makes it appear that it is really hard to stand out in a crowd.
http://letslunch.com/
Either your looking for a job or your giving a job :)
Could it be possible that this guy is a kidnapper? I would never meet a stranger like this.
In a public place like a coffee shop or something, probably safe.
Friend at work tells of a friend of hers meeting a date. The lady picked the bar in New St Station in Birmingham UK. At least 30 police within seconds of there always, and saturation CCTV, has to be the safest meet up place going.
Someone needs to make this into a website that arranges coffee dates for people in major metro areas.
OkCupid?
coffeemeetsbagel ?
And get bought by Match.com
truffle.io ?
some schoolmates were working on http://coffeeon.me/ not sure if it's a full-fledged thing yet though
Meetup.com is a great way to connect with other entrepreneurs in your area.
#1? This guy might have to buy a lot of coffees!
try facebook dot com and setup an event - works better
I have an embarrassing sort of question for the wise folks in the community. If I don't drink coffee, what should I drink when I take you to coffee?
Anything you like. I'm not a coffee person, so I usually get a soda and a snack, something to fiddle with like stirring a coffee.
Tea. Decaf/herbal as desired.
I agree. I like both coffee and tea but even for someone who isn't a fan of brown/green tea I suggest some sort of hibiscus. Maybe I am just obsessed with Tazo's Passion blend right now, but I think people who really aren't into tea will still like this. It is tart and lightly fruity + will often be mixed with something like lemongrass to give it a bit of herbaceousness and/or a touch of tropical flavor.
I'd also suggest Gen Mai Cha as something which is common enough to be in supermarkets or coffehouses but which is a bit different too due to the toasted rice flavor. If you end up in Starbucks, last I went there was a berry-hibiscus "cooler" or something which was decent as well.
I think this is an awesome idea regardless of what comes of it.
My internal data nerd is dying for a follow-up post with a breakdown: * How many site hits? * How many of those turned into actual coffees? * How many of those actually showed up? (as opposed to being no-shows)
I plan on documenting all of that to satisfy my internal data nerd as well.
http://coffeeme.in is Tinder for startup people. I've personally used it to meet like 50 people in the past 30 days. Obviously you don't have to meet so many if you don't want :)
Disclosure: It's my startup.
Tried to "apply" and logged in through LinkedIn and it says "something went wrong."
Ugh. We've been having a lot of problems with Linkedin going down. Should be up now. I just tried it.
Open your console, you'll see:
looks like from coffeescript readme [0].
[0]: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/blob/master/READM...
No, I think it's this one http://www.ascii-art.de/ascii/c/coffee.txt
That's where I found the CoffeeScript one. Spot on.
I like this idea*
It does make me wonder though... what does the "typical" startup person do to network in SF? It seems like a lot of people locate there (and accept the high cost of living) in order to cross-pollinate ideas and meet other cool people.
But how do you find those people? Are there popular hangouts or events? If so, how do the organizers stop them from sliding into the usual pool of desperate wannabe's pestering the popular people [pretend I insert a dating anecdote here]
My guess is that you hit up hackathons, [linux|ruby|whatever] User Groups, or meetup groups for whatever interests you (with the hope that you'll find others with the same vienn overlaps as you with one of the circles being "tehnology|startup|programming|business")
* How much advance notice do you need tg3? There's a good chance I'll be passing through SFO tomorrow (Wed Nov 6) or maybe Thu. I'd love to reciprocate coffees with you if you are located within reasonable distance to the airport (I'll need a cab or transit) and it fits your schedule. :) Will post to your form when I finalize my plans.
There are a massive ton of events, pretty much if you wanted to, you can find one almost every day/night, any time of the year. There are TONS of meetups, conferences, hackathons, panels, private or smaller group events, and the list goes on and on. Additionally its a bit hard not to run into someone doing a startup, especially if you're in startup centric districts like SOMA in SF or University Ave in Palo Alto and the various other areas up and down the entire Bay.
On top of that, you have various things people engage in to meet other people (dinners, stuff like LetsLunch, etc...). The problem isn't really meeting people, its actually avoiding wasting time and going out too much that leads to non-quality eventful meetings.
This is a great concept. I've always had the intention of meeting people in SF for networking purposes, but it always ends up feeling like a means to an end - I'm a ____, I need a ____, are you the guy? This appears much more casual and open. Looking forward to grabbing coffee with you, sir.
Great, now I am thirsty for some coffee!
It'd be cool to do this on a city-by-city basis. Like a nano Meetup or something.
http://www.truffle.io/ is on similar lines but for dating among start up people. It's only launched in Seattle though.
Disclosure: It's my startup :)
I think the logical conclusion of this is going to have to be a weekly coffee event, sort of some sort of show or media format, where you podcast a video of the highlights of the week.
If you just opened up 'the coffee door' semi-persistently, I'm sure you'd meet a lot of people.
I'm a big believer in serendipity. I scheduled a coffee.
Brilliant.
I'm thinking about doing something along these lines in college. I'd like to meet more cool people, so maybe I'll set up a table with a sign offering free coffee.