I'm one of the co-founders of PowWow. We're a lot like GoInstant — in fact their demo video does an even better job than ours does of explaining the concept to a layperson. It's interesting that while their product and ours have very similar use cases, the technology stack is completely different. They have a browser-within-the-browser, while we have an interaction layer over the OS — and we both do crazy hacks to make multiple-mouse live collaboration work. We've met the GoInstant guys, and they're an awesome team with a great product, and we're definitely fans of theirs.
That's great hacking guys.
I am waiting for the Windows version, where i think you'll have a hard time escaping the "only one window has focus" dogma.
Btw, if you need beta testers i am here.
I'm a business student and I feel ashamed the rise of non-technical people in the startup field acting like they've got incredibly valuable skills. I learned more in introductory compsci classes than all the BS in my business classes combined.
In regards to startups, technical people are so much more valuable than non-technical people. Non-technical people keep on perpetuating this: http://whartoniteseekscodemonkey.tumblr.com/ -esque mentality by saying things like this:
>"I am the nontechnical founder of several great startup ideas (I didn’t say startups) sometimes very poorly executed."
The founder of an idea? That doesn't mean much in my mind (then again, I don't know much about the author at all, nor could I did up much). Execution is key to a startup - and technical people are largely the ones that get the important shit done.
Non-technical people can add value for sure - but I think only a small margin of them have valuable skills that rival technical talent in a startup setting.
I think it's a mistake to equate all "non technical people" as "idea people" which is what I seem to be reading in your post. There are people who are just "idea people" who have no particular skills in terms of technology OR business.
But real "business people* provide a TON of value. Someone who understands marketing, distribution, sales, fundraising and all of those things? Tremendously valuable to startups (at least some classes of startups). Find me somebody who can construct and execute a solid marketing strategy, craft a good "core story", do market research, develop solid positioning, and who understands PR and how to get stories placed, someone with an extensive personal contacts list which includes the kind of customers you're looking for, someone who understands the fundraising process and has connections with investors, someone who can cold call a customer, get a meeting, make a presentation and close a sale.... find me that person and I'll offer them a significant equity stake in my startup, to join up as a non-technical co-founder, even if they've never written a line of code in their life, and have no interest in doing so.
While the design seems fairly nice, the idea is nothing new.
Rypple, founded in 2008, started out with an anonymous feedback application built for the enterprise (albeit, I don't think the messaging was quite as forward as it is for this service, I think it required the manager opting in). Rypple eventually pivoted into a performance management cum next-gen performance review app, but the anonymous feedback feature is still a component. It was acquired by Salesforce.com last year.
I love the idea of anonymous feedback, it's one of the aspects of Rypple that initially attracted me to work at the company (I used to work at Rypple).
However, I'm not even sure Rypple was the first mover in the corporate anonymous feedback space, there's been quite a few similar services over the years. I think an app with just this feature, given how there's been consolidation in the HCM industry and providers now often offer a full suite of HR/performance management tools nowadays, is unlikely to achieve major success. That said, there's still a ton of small startups in the space that have similar ideas to Happiily.
We're not laying claim to being first. Anonymous Feedback is nothing new. 'Anonymous' suggestion boxes been around for a long time.
By the sounds of it, you're aware of our enterprise product (i.e. has to be activated by a manager or leadership team) product called happiily which is also our company name. Part of our motivation in building this new product was to provide smaller companies and teams a product to collect feedback quickly.
As well, we wanted to build a product that could provide value without first being activated by a manager. That's really the crux of the experiment here at Tell Your Boss Anything.
And yes, there are lots of startups seeking to improve the way people work. And that's a good thing.
It's not the built in functions they're trying to replace, it's using python instead of VBA to make macros.
While Excel functions are relatively robust, doing more complex operations that impact more than one cell typically require macros. I was attempting to process 50,000 cells and I tried making a function, but it was a pain in the ass given how complex it was. Since, I didn't know VBA, but did know Python, I used Ironspread to use write a script to do the job. I was impressed, it's pretty smooth to use.
Had an uncle in the industry (with wall street experience who was (re)starting an algorithmic shop for the first time in the late 90s). Sometimes I think I would've saved more time if I had stayed in the Bay Area and not gone into HFT (in Chicago), but I definitely appreciate the rigorousness of some of the mentors I had there.
I didn't go right into writing backend matching engines for HFT though. Took time. Maybe not ten years, but maybe something like five years to come across good mentors that insisted I relearn everything (and get into the thick of HFT).
One mentor I had used to say he was going to crucify me at my desk, etc. (somewhat jokingly) in response to code reviews. It's a little bit annoying, but good practice.
I definitely still make mistakes (I am somewhat absent-minded). But I've learned to build protection around code, and to make checks and elegantly scale in things like test cases as unobtrusively and quickly (but as carefully) as possible. So maybe I make a bit fewer mistakes than some of my colleagues without that background.
Pretty much all custom. On the trading client side, a lot of firms used to tie into TT (Trading Technologies), etc. Then usually they rewrite with their own order gateways / price servers, and if they have enough resources, develop their own trading clients, etc.
I've been at firms that are all Java and use command-line terminals for most of the trading feedback (while having other clients to view the market depth). I've been at firms that are all C++ and C, and have their own trading GUIs.
Generally speaking though performance is key and at some point one ends up just rewriting things in-house (and tying into the exchanges or markets directly).
But there are a lot of different types of trades, etc. A lot of different ways to go, some of which (as zedshaw was mentioning) might involve Visual Basic.
But yeah, most of my experience was with C + a very limited subset of C++ on Linux. I still probably can't say too much more than that (though it's been two-three years, etc., since I was active with it).
I can probably say though that the fun for me was rewriting the backend services and trying to make them as fast (and as stable and redundant) as possible. A lot of it is translation of different market sources, etc. I experimented with a lot of languages at the time (Haskell, OCAML, etc., a la Jane Street), but at the end of the day did most of our stuff in C on Linux (i.e., with vim and makefiles).
If I'd make one bit more of advice (and I advised/mentored maybe two or three younger developers while in Chicago -- so I'm no expert) -- but it would be that if you have the interest, a lot of this stuff gets really easy with time. I suppose that's like most fields. But yeah, the productivity I had when I started, and when I left, was very, very different. And part of that had to do with writing everything 'bespoke' / custom, when there was time. Anyway, I go on...
