MateuszMucha
MateuszMucha on Hacker News
Posted by
MateuszMucha on Friday November 25, 2016 @11:26AM
from the blog.omnicalculator.com dept.
Posted by
MateuszMucha on Monday February 15, 2016 @12:01PM
from the netguru.co dept.
That's exactly what I'm thinking now. And what smart people have been advising me all along... it took me a while to hear them, though.
Yeah, simple percentage, tip & discount calculators are the most used.
Feature request come from markup/profit margin and "trader's" calculator users. And they have more serious needs (and they never want the same thing...).
I agree with most things and that's been the general sentiment in our accelerator, too. However, I don't consider it a waste of time. Pitching is great in a way that it forces you to have a clear vision of what you want to do. And boy, I needed it. Every time I pitched, I got questions I knew I didn't have good answers to. These were the biggest holes in my business plan and pitching alone made me think harder about them.
As for the demo day, we were told early on that it's a big thing, but it's unlikely that we'll be discovered then. I got in touch with a pretty great investor who's kinda interested, but I think they're way out of our league now (series A/B level), so we'll wait. Also, on that day we initiated a B2B deal which just might turn out to be what we need at this stage (we're building a prototype now).
I love the Berlin-SV comparison and your conclusion!
I'd love to hear about your experiences, too. Hope you can change your mind.
CPLX, the whole point is I don't think I should. And yes, we want to make it a big thing, just wait and see :-)
@zura: yes, it's running on Cordova, but we'll move to React Native as soon as we're comfortable with it (we're using React right now, although the iOS version is still on Angular).
@ohquu: people calculate craploads of things on a daily basis. More often than not they're using calculators that look pretty much the same as those in the 70's. I want to make it easier, faster and more pleasant. I want people to be able to calculate things that right now they can't and aren't willing to learn how to.
"Much bigger" doesn't need to mean we're gonna send people to Mars. Solving even small problems for tens or hundreds of millions of people qualifies as "much bigger" for me.
Thanks. While I agree for the most part, I do think that raising money is an important validation. Often you hear about a project you wouldn't even consider interesting, but when it's accompanied by "raised X MM from Y", your perception changes.
Also, it's that head-turning thing. They say "we raised X" and you start listening. I had something similar with my downloads count. Honestly, I didn't think 1 million is all that special, but over time I learned I should start most of my pitches with. People just start to listen.
afandian,
This app is just an MVP, the future hopefully is much bigger. On of the reasons is "because it's what startups do" and "everybody thinks that's the next step". I do have needs (development, content creation and in-house marketing team), but none of them are a must-have, I can do it a bit slower with whatever means I have at my disposal.
It's a bit embarasing, but I'm not sure. I released it in June or July and didn't notice it for a long time (wasn't an iOS user). Then we've been working on a complete rewrite for a long time. The new release awaits App Store review.
There's more than a few companies and projects with "omni" in their names. It's a pretty generic word. If I called it "Awesome Calculator" or something like that we'd surely find a lot of similarl names, too.
The decision is far from undisputable, I'd love to hear what you think.
Posted by
MateuszMucha on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @09:58AM
from the blog.omnicalculator.com dept.
These were my thoughts exactly. The guy cannot draw conclusions from the traffic and CPC numbers alone. The content's changed, the traffic sources probably changed (the sudden surge had to come from somewhere), the time has changed. I earn money on mobile app's ads. December is by far the most profitable month and I imagine it's purely because people buy more crap before Christmas, which drives up the demand for ad traffic.
Keith, thanks. You mean I should e-mail one of YC partners and ask for a quicker evaluation?
Posted by
MateuszMucha on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @08:12AM
from the ask-hn dept.
Hi,Quick one: the application deadline was yesterday. How long does it take for YC to make a decision and send out invitations and "we're sorry" e-mails? (I was told they send them all at once).I'm signing a shareholder's agreement with another accelerator next week unless I'm invited to YC's meeting and I'd like to be able to give them a date when I'll know for sure (I don't want to be an ass).
Thank you. So I think that I can build what I want in 3-4 months, but most likely will not be able to support that operation just yet. And I will not want to scale down just because my MVP is done.
Posted by
MateuszMucha on Monday October 13, 2014 @10:06AM
from the ask-hn dept.
It's a bit weird situation. I got accepted into an accelerator, will go with them unless there's something I like more and there's just ~10 days left before I have to sign the papers.I just finished an initial Skype call with two guys from a really nice VC fund (made of people who have created successful startups themselves). They like my startup and are willing to work under this unusual time...
Come on, IMO the guy had the right to assume this lectures are made by cool people who won't mind. And if they do, he'll take it down.
He created some value for a few people. Probably wrote a 5-lines-long bash script to download the youtube video, pull the audio out of it, add the mp3 to a repo, commit and push. He's done something nice, so that others won't have to.
You're asking him to ask a few dozen people for permission. Suddenly this becomes a project. And what if one person doesn't see the e-mail, forgets to reply, or it ends up in spam folder? The repo becomes incomplete and far less useful.
I won't use it myself, but I can see why somebody would. When I listen to something on Youtube on my phone and hit the power button to turn off the screen, it pauses the video. It doesn't pause the audio in pretty much any music player app.
Thank you... I'm arriving at the same conclusion. Most of all I want to move forward with the product and Axel Springer's programme is what makes it easier.
I'm not dismissing the value of mentoring that easily. Just because I don't go to the Ivy League school doesn't mean it's irrelevant which university I pick. I've spend most of the past 2 months going around and talking to as many smart people I could and it had a tremendous value for me. I greatly improved my business plans, my pitching skills and pretty much everything about my project (everything but the product itself).
I am applying, but so are 4000 other startups. I love what I do and I feel confident about the project itself, but I am realistic.
OK, so in more general terms - how do I know that an accelerator is class A/B/C?
Posted by
MateuszMucha on Sunday September 28, 2014 @06:26AM
from the ask-hn dept.
I have applied to 3 different accelerators and got accepted to 2 and I'm quite close to being accepted into the 3rd. I decided against going with the first one (multiple reasons).The 2nd one is http://www.axelspringerplugandplay.com/ . Axel Springer is this huge publishing house (the largest in Europe), they have numerous big newspapers (Bild, for example). I'd spend 3 months in Berlin working...
It would be a half a year deal.