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Show HN: Meeting Cost Calculator shows teams the cost of their meeting time

https://www.meetingcostcalculator.com/

It all started with a LinkedIn post that said, "These days it's harder to expense a Twix from a hotel mini bar than it is to call a meeting that costs $20,000 of other people's time."With that in mind, our team came up with Meeting Cost Calculator, an application designed to help teams understand the cost implications of their meeting culture. Since we began building, Shopify has created quite...

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If you've ever run — or tried to plan — a Design Sprint, you're probably aware that one of the biggest challenges is coordinating schedules and convincing stakeholders that the process is a valuable use of (roughly a week of) the team's time.

To help teams get the most out of a Design Sprint based on their goals and availability, we created the Design Sprint Builder. Answer a few questions about your goal, team, and availability, and it returns a fully vetted Sprint schedule outlining each exercise over the allotted time period to help you make the most of your team's time — from half a day up to the full, 5-day shebang.

We'd love to know if you find it helpful...

Re:Show HN: “You know you work at a startup when” on Saturday March 21, 2015 @10:48AM (#9242851)
Thanks for the feedback. I agree, the text needs to drop down a hint in mobile. And yes, the same quotes come up too often. Will have to work on that in the future (though it may be an condition of not having too many in the db yet).
Re:Show HN: “You know you work at a startup when” on Friday March 20, 2015 @10:42AM (#9237979)
A place to share insights and humorous moments from working in the startup world.

This is my first dev project (and just for fun), so there's bound to be some mistakes or things I could have done better. Next steps include tweeting each submission and adding a Twitter share button (preferably that shares a photo card of the current quote). Feedback welcomed.

Big thanks for the input from everyone. Very helpful to see where we're on and off track. Thank you!
Good point. I suppose my hesitation is in the notion of turning a relationship into a monopoly board, but with the right achievements, etc. it might be an interesting proposition. I think we'd we'd to achieve personalization (location, interest, etc.) first, but down the line it's definitely worth a thought.
Interesting thought. Do you have a moment to expand on it further?

We've considered the possibility, but for the time being at least, we're aiming for this to be a tool between two people in a couple (or for a single person to use as an "angel on the shoulder"). Gamification requires pitting couple vs. couple within the ecosystem which might be odd for something that's designed to foster healthy relationships.

Or maybe we just haven't hit on the right idea for it yet...

@lsiunsuex

Thanks for the feedback. The things you've mentioned are definitely a huge part of what we have planned. The email reminders will include Date Night ideas of the type you're recommending.

In the near term, recommendations will be either NYC specific OR general enough to work for people anywhere. However, our goal is to become extremely geo-specific once we've built the technology to a point where we can gather that information (as well as interests) easily. Promotions are also part of the idea; we're working on building partnerships right now to make that part of the offering possible.

Thanks for the feedback; it's great to see that our ideas and the things you're recommending are in line.

In a relationship? We'd love your thoughts on our new venture...

Hi everyone, I'm Danny. I'm one of the co-founders of Date Night Is... (http://www.datenight.is). We're a newly launched NYC-based startup that's aiming to help couples keep date night on their calendars without going stale. We're completely bootstrapped and launched our MVP recently.Right now, our primary product is an email based reminder that offers up date night ideas (the first email...

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I think a lot of that depends on how much time you have. If you're posting this FROM a hackathon, where presumably you need to get to work NOW, then some basic research online is probably the best you can accomplish.

- Is there a need for it? Are people asking for something like this publicly? - If you or someone on your team has a substantial social following, try kicking a quick question or survey out to the world and see what kind of responses you can get quickly.

If you have more time, then building a test page (even something as simple as a launchrock page) and seeing what kind of response you can generate would be a smart first move in validating. We did something similar to test a couple of our assumptions for our newly-launched product. We created a sign-up form that had 2 ways to sign up (allowed us to test one vs. the other) and then followed that with a one question survey that allowed users to respond as to which features seemed important to them.

Re:Ask HN: Who wrote your website? on Saturday June 01, 2013 @09:54AM (#5803948)
I've written all of the copy for my projects (latest is www.datenight.is) as well, though I have a background in design and creative development.
Re:Ask HN: How can I sell a service to your startup? on Tuesday May 14, 2013 @10:55AM (#5705235)
I'll add a slightly different take: know your audience. We get so many people contacting us assuming they have something we need, when in fact it's not even remotely relevant. It's a total time waster and really annoying.

Do a little research ahead of time and find out if the company is even in a position to want your perk. And each time you find a happy customer, ask them for the name of 3 other folks worth contacting...

Re:Ask HN Air or Pro? on Tuesday April 16, 2013 @08:04AM (#5557584)
I've worked solely on a MBA (plus external monitor) for 3+ years now. I started with a 13" and then moved down to an 11". Doing a variety of design work, etc. and I love the simplicity of a smaller machine that I can throw in my bag without worrying about weight. Hook it up to a monitor and you're good for serious stuff too. I'd go for the MBA!
Re:Ask HN: How Many Startups/Projects Have You Failed At? on Tuesday March 26, 2013 @08:27AM (#5442730)
Failed at the first one (it's still alive and used, but it's not a success). Working on a second right now that I'm approaching completely differently and I'm really excited about.
It's been said below, but the first thing we did was throw up a 1-page "sign up" site that included a 1 question survey as part of the process. It has told us a TON. The data we've been able to capture has given us all the direction we need to figure out where to go next. We're now working on getting v1 up and running based on what we learned. And then we'll do it all again.