Startup mentors

[amrithk]

I am working with two other people on a website. Despite our hectic jobs, we managed to a launch a preliminary version of our site a few days ago. You can check it out at www.pollbag.com.

We did not know anything about web-programming a few months ago but we taught ourselves through guide books and helpful resources on the web. However, we realize there is still a lot to know and the problem is, we don't really know what we don't know.

It would be really helpful if we could find someone who can review our code and comment on it from a design perspective, and advise us on managing the development process more effectively. Does anyone know of any mentor networks that provide this kind of advice? Or any informal networks that help developers out etc?

[dottertrotter]

For determining the quality of your UI, you need to first determine who you want your primary user base is going to be. Once you have determined that, seek people out who fit into that demographic and then show them your design, because ultimately they're the ones who have to like it.

[ivankirigin]

I would seek other web developers at any number of public forums like OReilly Ignite, BarCamp, DevHouse, etc.

For informal UI testing, you can even go to any coffee shop, show people your work, and ask them what they think. Often you can benefit by seeing a virgin user who didn't understand that action X lead to result Y.

You could also quantitatively test your choices by pushing a different UI on some small percentage of users, and see how it affects performance or things like signing up active users.

Certainly rely on your peers, but the best mentor is need. Solving a problem teaches so much.

[amrithk → ivankirigin]

Thanks for the reply. I'll check out those public forums as well. But the idea of testing the UI out informally is also pretty good.

[eru]

"Or any informal networks that help developers out etc?"

news.YC might be a good place to look at.

Something more serious: Have you thought about what you can offer a potential mentor in return for guiding you? This does not have to be a tangible thing like equity - perhaps just giving them a good conscience might be enough. But in my humble opinion you can only profit from finding an answer to that question.

[misham]

Try Yahoo groups too. Though I don't know if you want to protect your IP at all, through an NDA or something analogous and that might pose a problem.

I work mostly in embedded world but I do some web development on my own. If you want, I can look over what you're doing, give you my thoughts and point to some tools. My email is mishamanulis at gmail dot com.

[david927]

I'm in the same boat. It would be great to have someone who would be available for the occasional question, to look at the business plan, etc. Is there are place where a startup could match up with a mentor?

[danw]

Try open source projects or joinging an existing company.

[eru → danw]

Sorry, I was going to down-vone this in a knee-jerk reaction. But I found that I was not hubristic enough to dismiss joining an existing company outright. Any way you'd better select your new host carefully.