Hachi Labs is looking for 2 solid coders. If you have the skills, confidence and heart to solve some complex database, search and algorithms related problems - do ping us!
We'd love to get feedback on our application as well, but we're not based in either of those places. Can any alum review it remotely? - over email, phone..?
If you're a technical founder, with some interest and understanding on how to create some buzz around your app and get in users - I'd say, you don't really need a business / non-technical founder early on. Though, at some stage when you start scaling up, you will need someone (could be technical or non-technical) who can help on the business side. Andrew Chen's recent post has some good points on this -
"What do geeks really need help with? It’s very simple- there’s a class of purely business-related stuff that adds value:
selling stuff and making money
getting partnerships and marketing/distribution of the product
funding the company
scalable marketing/monetization strategy (ad arb / viral / freemium / etc.)
team recruiting, particularly of other engineers and disciplines (not other MBAs please)
If you are an expert at any of the above and can show it, then there’s a lot more value. Very few business folks, particularly newly-minted MBAs (with the exception of Stanford folks) or industry-switchers can really deliver on these though, which is why they’re not bringing much to the table.
Then there’s a class of things that are much more product-oriented, and while it overlaps with the skillset of some engineers, if you have great skills in any of the following, they are clearly valuable too:
design, especially visual design
UI/frontend skills – HTML/CSS/JS – even if mediocre!
copywriting within the product for help text, marketing, etc
user research and customer development
usability testing."
I believe there's some discussion around Andrew Chen's post going on, on hacker news - wanted to share my thoughts over there...couldn't find it, so putting it up separately here.
With internet connectivity, you can travel to different cities and experience life there, rather than being based in only one city... just a suggestion.
Once you have decided on the city / cities where you want to stay while in India, for the accommodation, you can even post at HN google groups in India (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1885605) to see if any member can help suggest a good option for stay. And yeah, as someone suggested, check out airbnb as well.
It could be... my experience has been pretty good so far. I used Reliance USB even in smaller cities and it worked great... even in a moving train in the middle of nowhere when I was traveling.
I absolutely agree, both are incredibly great choices not only for seed capital but also the crucial guidance/advice/mentorship an early stage startup team needs. I'm just curious how the HN community thinks about the two.
