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Ask HN: Can I visit your startup in SF?
94 points by maxcameron on Oct 12, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 83 comments
Hi there,

My name is Max, I'm a cofounder at Kera, and we're from Toronto. We started Kera to teach the world how to use software.

Cameron (one of my cofounders) and I are coming to SF the week after next (Oct 22-26) so we can make new friends and learn how companies like yours are educating and onboarding new users. We're also looking for advice about building our startup. If you're doing something interesting, have an awesome company culture, or just like hanging with Canadians, we'd love to meet you.

Any referrals or introductions are more than welcome.

You can find out more about Kera here (http://kera.io), and we can be found at @maxcameron & @camwest on twitter.

Thanks in advance,

Max

edit: my email is max@kera.io




I find this entire approach fascinating.

That someone can post this on HN and get a bunch of invites back.

Does doing something like this scale? What if everybody just decided to post "hey I'm coming to SF is there a place for me to crash" or "hey I'm coming to NYC anyone want to have coffee?" or "I have a problem writing perl..."

Since there are companies that you are trying to reach, and you must have some idea of the type of company you want to reach, why not put some effort into doing something other than the obvious easiest thing which is to post an "Ask HN" and see who bites?

(For the record I wouldn't feel the same way if a top commenter who spends much time on HN made a similar request because at least they have put time and effort into HN (and I don't consider my karma as anywhere near that point for the record.)


Why not congratulate OP for his initiative. The fact that som many people are responding so positively gives new members of the community (like myself) a wonderful impression of how helpful people are here. Look how many people are pitching in to help this person without any expectation of return.

Also, this is yet one community. You have no idea who all else this guy knows and by meeting with whoever responds here, they will gain from it.

I'd like to point you to a Reid Hoffman article which discusses the power of connecting with people from various networks:

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/01/24/reid-hoffman-linkedin... (special attention to the bit on "The diversity of weak ties"

The fact that he's not a top commenter is even more inspiring. It shows that if someone has a good concept, takes initiative and quells any fear that "oh I'm not a big guy/girl on HN,I can't be that audacious" - well that person will get results.

Reminds me of Geothe's timeless words, "...boldness has genius, power and magic in it".


This is definitely valid and I don't think our approach scales. It was something a friend recommended and we tried it. HN has an upvote system for a reason.


I'm reminded of a story about pablo picasso. It ended something like...

“My dear lady, it took me 30 years to do that.”


well, looks like this just got bumped off from the frontpage.


There have been quite a few threads like this on HN over the years (including one I made :-)). I wonder if there's some way of formalizing or aggregating the concept of visiting other companies, it seems there's an audience for it.


"Some way of formalizing or aggregating the concept"... like StartupCrawl? :-) http://startupcrawl.com/ (My startup, Sauce Labs, participated in the crawl in 2009 -- it coincided with RubyConf that year, so there was a lot of flow-over traffic from RubyConf go-ers.)


Hmm perhaps if this were more than once a year?


I worked in high-end restaurants for a number of years where where there is a practice known as staging. Many restaurants allow cooks to come work for a few days to a few months, generally without pay. One of the biggest advantages of this system is that cooks can gain high-level experience from a restaurant they might be unqualified to work in. It would be cool to this kind of casual system in this industry.


Yeah, that'd be awesome to do a placement at a scaling startup.


Peter, aren't you exactly the type of man for this job? =)


;-) I have an "OK" level of connections but I imagine something like this would be SF/SV focused and I have no real feet on the ground there. Thanks for the vote of confidence though!


In New York, there's WalkAboutNYC. They organize events frequently enough. http://walkaboutnyc.com/


Hm. I'd be interested in helping with this if anyone else would want to brainstorm. Having it be formalized is important as most companies aren't that interested in having random people wander in every day - even with appointments.


I'd be in too. I wonder if that's necessarily true, startups in SF seem to be relatively open to devs wandering in, but I think you have a good point.


Yeah no kidding. We're already staying at one of our customer's houses while we're there. So there's a ton of support for visiting startups.


Didn't there used to be a tour thing after every Startup School?


>used to be a tour thing

There has been a YC distributed open house at least each of the past couple of years. Haven't heard if there will be one this year or not.


#DisruptDatIndustry


Kera looks great! Is it currently an idea that you're trying to validate or are you currently coding it up and waiting to launch?


We've done a lot of validation and have a bunch of people doing experiments with it. We can chat more about it if you want to reach out cameron@kera.io


great - i'll shoot you an email.


Hi Max. My Name is Robert Reiz. I am the founder of http://www.versioneye.com. That is my second Start-Up. I am coming at the same time to San Francisco, from Germany. I like your product, I like Canadians and of course I like Beer :-) I will contact you.


Hey Robert. That's awesome. Looking forward to hearing from you.


Checkout http://openco.us/, they are doing a kickoff today where you can spend an hour visiting a startup in their list, from airbnb to zynga and beyond


Looks like we're missing it :( Bummer.


Drop by whitetruffle ( https://www.whitetruffle.com/ ). We're located in Rocketspace coworking space. @froseph or joseph@whitetruffle.com


Hey Joseph,

Thank you so much. I hear Rocketspace has some wicked things going on.

I'll email you!


Come stop by. http://www.appdirect.com

We're based in San Francisco but founded by two Canadians.


Want me to bring you a bottle of CC or a double double or some ketchup chips? No joke.


Our CEO says CC!

Drop by anyways :)


Love the Ketchup chips. <3

Edit:

From Vancover...


Done and done.


Very, very cool startup.

For us non-technical folk, you might wish to add a section to your how-to explaining how Kera.io would interact with proprietary data; for example, if our app happens to be financial, would you be able to see any of it? Or is the script hosted on our end?

(This may be obvious to a dev, but not to me, and therefore caused me to send this to our devs to ask)


The script is hosted on your end and data is pulled from our servers to yours, we don't store any personal information or anything on our side.

Edit: I'll update the FAQ


Your software is really cool. Just wondering why you haven't completed your website yet. The "how it works" just takes you to a google doc. Anyway, best of luck. If you want to venture to Lake Tahoe, I'd be happy to grab a beer.


Well to be honest we were building our marketing website and realized that we were better off to just put it in a Google Doc since we can iterate faster on it. We literally update it in realtime while users watch which is a lot better than the marketing site refine/deploy process. Once things stabilize a little more we'll extract the information into a great marketing website. Probably in the next 6 weeks.


Will you be bringing poutine?


If you need it, I will bring it.


This is exactly the tool I've been waiting for; great work and good luck!


Thanks for the kind words. Are you in SF?


Portland, sorry.


You're welcome to join us for lunch at ZeroCater. Email in profile.


Awesome - i'll email you this weekend. How is zerocater not in Toronto yet?


I miss you guys. You where awesome office neighbors.


We are a ZeroCater client. They are awesome.


Come visit Startup House (5th and Harrison) to meet us (http://attico.us) and various other startups.


Sounds good! I'll be there.


Hey Max - we'd love to meet you guys in person and have you check out our sweet office and awesome company (ReTargeter). How about Friday the 26th?


Whatup Brian - for sure I want to meet up. I heard Taige's talking with Samir and making things happen. I'm leaving on Friday afternoon - so Thursday would be better. I'll reach out via email.


Awesome company, and awesome dude, I'll attest.

Hey Brian!


yeah, Brian's awesome. He signed up for Kera a few months ago so we've been chatting for some time.


Originally from Toronto myself. Part of a startup called Insight (YC). We're based in Palo Alto. Happy to grab a coffee when you guys are here.


That would be awesome. What's a good way to get ahold of you?


We do payments (https://www.ribbon.co) and would love to show you our offices in SOMA.

hany@ribbon.co


Thanks so much Hany, I really appreciate it. I'll email you asap.


Max, Kera.io looks awesome, congratulations.

Happy to have you guys visit, and we'd love to talk about using the product too.

We're in SOMA. stefano ]a-t[ betable.com


Thank you so much for the kind words. I'll follow up with an email shortly.

Max


Max, I'll shoot you an email, PagerDuty is originally a YYZ startup too and we're at 2nd and Bryant in SOMA.


Looking forward to hearing from you. Lemme know if you need anything from up here. Ketchup chips etc.


Hey Max, stop by Gigwalk when you're down here, we're over on 4th and Bryant. I'll pop you an email. -Matt


I'll gigwalk myself over to your office no problem. Talk soon Matt.


[deleted]


I am from Atlanta and I dont even know most of the startups around here.

Seems like there might be a need for the startup map.


Wish we could stop by in Atlanta - it's not too far from Toronto.


Wow, great product. Any examples of companies using it or are you still in the early stages?


Hey,

The short answer is: yes.

Feel free to check out http://verold.com, http://ptable.com, and http://happytables.com to see Kera in production.

We also have some really cool case studies in the works with more "high profile" startups in Toronto. That being said, we're still a very early-stage company.


Not California, but if you find yourself in Denver/Boulder I'd love to show you around:)


Max is going to be in Boulder for Defrag. Are you going?


FullContact will be at Defrag, we could probably finagle something if you wanted to visit. :)


That would be amazing. Can you email me at max@kera.io?


Come hang out with us (me?) at Livefyre. 3rd/Market downtown. ben@livefyre.com


Hey Ben - thanks so much. I'll send you an email shortly.

Max


Definitely welcome to come visit LaunchRock. I'm jameson@launchrock.com.


And really dig Kera by the way. Could be interesting for us.


That would be amazing. Emailing you now.


We'd love to see you at CrowdFlower. Email forthcoming.


This is an awesome tool. How did I not know about it?!


It isn't really something people search for. It's going to be word of mouth until our category solidifies.

What are you working on these days?

Max


where do i sign up to invest?


If you're up for a coffee, let me know. max@kera.io


Ummm email money transfer cameron@kera.io? =)


good luck guys!


Thanks Taige!




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