I initially tested out this idea by creating a simple form that asks users for their name, email and zipcode and manually pairing them up myself via email. I limited that to San Francisco zipcodes only, since I figured it not doing so would mean that I would have a bunch of users who may not have anyone nearby to get paired with.
A lot of people who weren't in SF actually emailed me and expressed their disappointment in not being able to try it out. So this time I'm opening it up to everyone.
If you are the only one in your city, you'll get a message telling you so and you'll be paired whenever a new user in your city signs up.
If anyone has any better ideas, I'm open to suggestions regarding this.
It seems like a good suggestion, since the app wouldn't be too useful until there's a least a few users nearby. Focusing my attention on one city would definitely help with that.
I'm still considering the best strategy, so if you have any advice, comment here or email me at [email protected]
I believe this would make the experience much more natural and fun.
Also it solves the problem, where a large number of users are only interested in having lunch with a few people (VIPs on LetsLunch).
I'm hoping this will make HackerLunch more about meeting interesting people and less about "networking".
Any thoughts or advice on HackerLunch? I'm sure you have a lot of interesting insights into the space since you guys have been doing it so long.
I am working on an iOS app that lets hackers meet up with each other and have lunch.
I moved to San Francisco from Bangladesh last year and found it tough to meet other hackers. Being rather introverted, tech meetups didn't really work for me. I felt that a one-on-one meetup would be ideal. So that's what I'm building.
I'm hoping to launch within a few weeks. If it sounds interesting to you, you can sign up for an email notification when I launch, just go to hackerlunch.com. I'll probably do a Show HN once I launch as well.