strimp099

I think you’re asking the wrong question. Startups (and companies in general) exist to solve a need. AI is a tool that solves a set of problems. Ymif you can solve a wide population’s problems without AI, then do it.

An algorithmic trading hedge fund. We can outperform the benchmark while keeping fees bare minimum because all our admin is outsourced to LLMs and agents. What a world we live in.

One of the most successful quant traders in history, Jim Simons studied topology in the 60s. It’s rumored he used deep neural networks in his trading before they were cool. This post really brought the two together for me in a way I didn’t understand before.

According to Perplexity, Perplexity is lying about its user agent: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/According-to-this-QpoXEZ_AS...

I typically work within Jupyter Notebooks since it’s easier to build tutorials with text and markdown. But I agree: even looking at the code output I can tell almost immediately it’s made up.

I think spending the money adds an urgency to ship. If not it's "just" your time.

Let me ask him

There’s a risk. I’ve certainly been burned many times in the past. However I’ve learned and spot some issues up front.

It helps to go through referrals too.

This is definitely true.

My plan was to brining in freelancers just to get the thing built - because I couldn't get it done.

I've since brought on two technical co-founders with a stake in the project to avoid what you're describing.

I was only able to bring them in because I had a product launched.

All very, very true.

Going through a trusted source is best.

It was a very sudden mind shift for me. All of the sudden one day I said f* it. If I want this thing to exist, I need to focus on shipping. Not building.

The next day I hired up the freelance team.

Some people just like to build. Others want to run a product.

Either is cool. Just don't get them mixed up.

This story was about getting the first iteration of my product launched (somewhere beyond MVP but still rough).

I had a fractional CTO / project manager / React dev + backend dev + devops + designer. All between 50% and 100% for 8 weeks. I also heavily participated in backend work.

Total cost came in a little over US20k.

I did not stipulate milestones and I was lucky because everything worked out (except documentation).

I definitely suggest stipulating milestones.

I'm comfortable I had a market. What I had to do to get there is a story for another post :)

I looked for experience in my niche (trading/investing), got a few references, and saw some of their work.

I was never 100% comfortable going through Upwork etc because you never really know. But I spent a lot of time writing up the requirements and talking to people to get a feel.

For better or worse, in the end I went with the marketing agency that was the most transparent.

I met a top notch designer through someone I DMed on Twitter. (If you're not on Twitter talking to people - go there.) He's EUR50/hour.

If you go through an agency, then yea closer to 10k.

I did a short stint with a fractional CTO / front end type for US$1k per day. I had a backend developer from Vietnam for US200 / day. I'm currently working with a product designer for EUR50 / hour.

I created a set of slides which introduced the project and created a doc with my expectations. I posted a very detailed job spec on Upwork, shortlisted 20 companies, and interviewed 10.

I picked the one I did because they were most transparent with what they would actually deliver. For me it was about a pre-launch strategy, what to do at launch, and how to systematize/scale post launch.

Just Juniper Media out of London.

They were more than somewhat effective. That said, they absolutely helped me frame the marketing effort.

You want to DM me on Twitter? I'll send it to you @jasonstrimpel or email jason.strimpel [at] gmail [dot] com.

I was in the same position. Always justifying delays to "I learned something new". Totally forgetting the goal: ship a product. Actually putting money at stake (instead of just time) finally shook me out of that.

They built a marketing strategy for me. It breaks the effort into pre-launch/awareness, launch, and post-launch/systematize. They gave me insight into what to do when. They'll do the work or I can outsource. I've done a mix of both.

Yes, I've been running a simple site where people grab stock price data. Folks often donate to me. That was the group that I started speaking to. I now have ca. 250 email addresses on the waitlist. I've done a few surveys and had 1:1s with many people.

Priority items (I think):

1. Work through some of the business logic and wire it up to APIs/views in a way I can deploy. I have a clunky long running process that really should be a fast one I need to reason about.

2. Best way to upload, validate and insert user transaction data. I have a first pass which works ok but need another set of eyes and a cleaner UI/UX.

3. Deployment strategy. I had it all working on AWS Fargate but the run costs will be prohibitive. I want to run it on Lambdas. I would use a DO Droplet except I’m using Celery to run the long tasks async etc.

Can I DM you on Twitter or something?

I work at AWS. It is true we have a peculiar culture around writing. It goes much deeper than this post implies. There are several hour long training courses on writing, leaders are critiqued on their writing and those that can write the Amazon way move quickly through the org. Imagine having to make a decision and you have a concise, well written, data heavy document to read with your peers. It’s one of the many reasons we move so fast.