mirthlab

Hobnob | Honolulu, HI (Hawaii) | Fulltime | Onsite / Possibly Remote

Contact us here: https://hobnob.io

We do mobile-first event invitations via text message (but honestly, way cooler than that sounds). We're pioneering the "invisible-app" movement. (We're funded.)

Looking for a senior full-stack engineer that's interested in:

- Elixir and Phoenix (Or Erlang)

- Ruby and Rails

- Node.js and React

- React Native

The fictitious event is a great idea. I'll share it with our team. :)

I completely agree about the first install experience. It needs to be better. We have several ideas to improve it. One thing we're toying with is using it as a way to showcase some great flyer designs in order to inspire new users to create their first invite.

Thanks for the feedback!

Hi, thanks for the comment! We're a small team of 4 people working part time. On the engineering side it took about 6 months to get to a closed beta with two devs; one web dev (me) and one contract iOS dev.

We spent a lot of time reworking pieces of the UI/UX though so it's tough for me to nail down how long the product in its current form actually took to build. It was kind of a windy road to get where we ended up. :)

Exactly! We're hoping to make even the smallest meetup something fun by using Hobnob.

Wow, thank you so much! Your comment made my day!

It's great to hear that our design decisions resonated with you. We worked really hard to make this great for the people using it. We tried to put the user experience ahead of the almighty download. Thanks again for the encouraging comment!

Hi all, long time lurker but first time poster here.

We built Hobnob because we were tired of evite and FB events. We wanted something fast, beautiful and mobile friendly. We also wanted something where our guests wouldn't have to download or install anything to RSVP.

With Hobnob you can create and send a great invite in 30 seconds. Your guests can reply with Y or N to RSVP. Simple and easy.

Would love to hear your feedback!

Maybe for the phone number you can wait until they hit the "Send me a Text Message" button, then ask for it there. Since it's something they want to do at that moment it makes sense. Then you can attach the number to their account. They might be more apt to do it if it's obvious why you need the number.

I'm based out of Honolulu, Hawaii but I'm also in California every few months for work. Feel free to hit me up anytime: mark [at] mirthlab.com.

This is actually eerily similar to a site I launched a couple of months ago called Aptly: http://apt.ly/

I've described it to people as "Instapaper for Apps" but it seems like AppQuu may even fit that description better than Aptly. (I haven't finished the companion iPhone app yet, but feel free to try it. I'd love to hear what you think.)

I really like how simple and elegant AppQuu is. Being able to send the user an SMS is a great idea. It makes it feel a little magical. (Though, it's a little strange that I can't get to the list just by browsing to the site on my phone.)

I was definitely hesitant about putting in my phone number. That's actually why I went with email instead of phone numbers for login on Aptly. Talking with people made me realize it was a huge barrier of entry. I guess emails feel less valuable and are more commonly used for signing up with sites that you're not sure about.

How do you find or determine the app on the page? What happens if there are multiple apps linked on the page? Does it just add all of them? Also, what happens if someone enters a number that isn't theirs? Maybe you could send a confirmation SMS that requires the user to respond in order to verify their account.

Also, I'd love your feedback on Aptly since it's such a similar concept, but with a completely different execution. Well done!

P.s. Let me know if you have any questions. I've probably run across a few of the same ones myself. Cheers!