
Show HN: FreePizza.io – free pizza for usergroups, meetups, hackathons, talks - andrewstuart
https://www.freepizza.io
======
andrewstuart
Hi folks - OP here.

FreePizza.io connects those who want pizza for tech meetups, usergroups,
hackathons and tech talks with those who wish to sponsor the pizza - typically
recruiters, consulting firms and software companies. In return, the sponsor
gets a promotional message opportunity at the event.

Background is I noticed that tech meetups, usergroups, hackathons and tech
talks often have pizza and drinks for attendees for dinner.

And I thought "Who pays for the pizza?"

I'm both a programmer and a recruiter, and I know that recruiters want to
connect with those tech communities. So I figured, hey maybe I should connect
those who need pizza with those who want to sponsor the pizza.

FreePizza.io is the fully built implementation of an MVP idea I had previously
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063747)
\- which was nothing more than a Google spreadsheet.

Andrew andrew.stuart@freepizza.io

~~~
Kagerjay
This is a great idea.

I know most of the organizers for tech meetups in my area. They all tend to
handle the case of food differently

\- One takes donations through patreon, which has worked fairly well. They
have an actual board of directors, so it's very legit. I'm not sure if other
cities have anything remotely close to this though.

\- For popular technology meetups (react, .NET, etc), usually a recruiting
firm will sponsor the pizza. They contact the organizer generally. Usually
they will do a 2 minute blurb at the start of the meeting

\- For meetups that are part of a larger organization, they tend to get funds
straight from corporate. E.g. CodeForAmerica, GoogleDeveloperGroups, etc.

\------------------------------------------------------------------

As a side note, I kind of wish it wasn't only just pizza. Some healthier
options would nice. Some meetups use jimmyjohns or chickfil-a instead, which
are nice alternatives.

~~~
ryan-c
Chick-fil-a is an _awful_ alternative - they fund LGBTQ oppression.

[https://thinkprogress.org/chick-fil-a-still-anti-
gay-970f079...](https://thinkprogress.org/chick-fil-a-still-anti-
gay-970f079bf85/)

~~~
thoughtexplorer
That's an awfully dishonest way to describe and frame their donations.

If you've ever donated to the Salvation Army, you too "fund LGBTQ oppression".

~~~
sincerely
I mean, that's true as well. How is it (in your eyes) dishonest?

~~~
prepend
To me, it’s dishonest because it presents a small aspect as a primary driver
without giving proper context. So it was frustrating to me because I had to
spend time researching the potential issue to learn it is a very insignificant
aspect that I don’t think was worthy of my time.

It’s like posting “Don’t eat ground beef as it is full of rat feces.” any time
someone posts about hamburgers.

It’s true that the FDA allows a small amount of fat feces in ground beef, and
all food [0].

But it’s really insignificant and almost always irrelevant to the
conversation.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Defect_Action_Levels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Defect_Action_Levels)

------
sureaboutthis
I've been a restaurant owner for decades. It will be interesting to see if
this works. Has it ever?

The reason I ask is because, at my places, we occasionally give free food to
organizations in our neighborhood because they are in our neighborhood with
the attendees also from my neighborhood and it's similar to advertising. They
see our napkins and included flyers or coupons and, hopefully, we'll make some
of them a regular customer. At these events, however, wouldn't most of the
attendees not be from our neighborhood?

Most pizza joints are franchise or personally owned. That means this would be
an out of pocket expense for the owner. You may find someone to do this once
but I don't see how he would benefit once he finds out no one from his
neighborhood is coming in.

This is just my initial reaction to seeing this.

~~~
greglindahl
The intent is for recruiters/vendors who want to market to the people at the
event to pay the pizza place. But I totally agree that that's not very visible
on the website right now.

~~~
sureaboutthis
Then that's even stranger. Why can't they just contact the event organizers
and offer to do that? Then call a local pizza place and place the order.

~~~
ricardobeat
Companies don't usually go hunting for random events to deliver pizza to.
Event organizers will run around to find sponsors (cash or otherwise), this
site serves as a quick middleman for one specific kind of sponsorship.

~~~
sureaboutthis
But companies would go hunting this web site for random events to deliver
pizza to? Again, why does someone need a middle man for this?

~~~
saluki
y, cool idea. When we have an event we are organizing we contact potential
sponsors and they give us a check ahead of time or bring a check as they
usually want to give a pitch at the event and we use it to purchase drinks,
pay for the pizza or other food, plates, etc and sometimes give-a-ways. This
could be easier, but usually we purchase more than just food with the
sponsor's money and usually the sponsor is attending the event.

------
CobrastanJorji
I like the simplicity. It would be very tempting to make a more general-
purpose "we need a sponsor for $X worth of Y", but by laser focusing on "we
need pizza for N people," it makes things immediately understandable for
everyone involved.

The downside is that there are probably lots of organizations left out by
that, but for a really small tool looking for its first audience, that's
probably a trade they're more than willing to make.

~~~
andrewstuart
You are correct - this is exactly the thought process I went through.

In fact you can see here my original idea
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063747)

I called it "EatUp Sponsors" \- a terrible name, but fine for the MVP.

When thinking about a better name I gave alot of thought to a more generalised
brand, but then it came to me that every single meetup I ever went to only
ever had pizza, and that there would be value in being, as you say, laser
focused.

------
zadler
Nice innovation, but i do wish that junk food wasn’t the norm at tech events.

~~~
3KQgt0Cl
In what regards is pizza a junk food?

It depends on how you make it and how much you eat of it (calories).

It also depends if you reguraly workout and how many calories you burn.

~~~
portal_narlish
It's starch, dairy and processed/cured meat regardless how you make it.
Usually meetups serve from counter takeout chains which makes it even worse.
There is no argument for pizza not being a junk food.

~~~
TeMPOraL
If that's your definition of junk food, then so is half of the stuff you can
order in regular, expensive restaurants.

~~~
eV6ahne6bei
It's possible to make very healthy pizza but the big chains make it pumped
full of oil, sugar and meat.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Again, if your definition of "unhealthy" contains "meat", then half+ of the
regular food is out.

Also, "healthy" pizzas and tasty pizzas as sets have little to no
intersection. Which is fine for food you don't eat day in, day out.

------
benmanns
Cool! Signed up. A couple notes:

• Seems weird to use Google Authenticator as a single factor for
authentication

• I found it annoying to have to do a captcha to fill out my profile details

• I probably won't think to check back. Can you set up alerts to e.g. email me
when a sponsorship opportunity comes up in SF or NYC?

• Your verification email went to spam. I marked as not spam - hope that
helps!

~~~
andrewstuart
Hi there.

I like your idea to get notifications for sponsorship opportunities in your
city - I'll implement that.

You can currently get notification of new events for any given group (a group
is the equivalent of a meetup or usergroup) - for example on this page
[https://www.freepizza.io/group/melbourne-prolog-users-
group/...](https://www.freepizza.io/group/melbourne-prolog-users-group/view/)
push the "follow group" button.

I'll switch off captcha for profile details.

>> Seems weird to use Google Authenticator as a single factor for
authentication

Yeah there's historical somewhat uninteresting reasons I did that, probably I
should have gone with straight username/passwords.

thanks for the feedback.

------
sparrish
Tried to sign up but I'm not a Google Authenticator fan. You should consider
other auth methods... like good ol' passwords.

~~~
ravenstine
I've had success with the "password less" approach of sending a magic link in
an email.

~~~
czbond
Question: When you implement this, at what point (if any) do you have a user
create a password?

~~~
thaumasiotes
There are companies so freaked out by the idea of leaking user passwords that
they just don't use any auth method other than a link sent to the user's email
address.

A couple major considerations if you're using that approach:

\- When do those links expire?

\- Do you keep logs of the pages that people request from your server?

An unexpired link compromises the user just as much as a password leak would
have, since those links _are_ the user passwords. But server logs generally
aren't tied down as tightly as a more obviously sensitive password database
would be.

The nightmare scenario here is "every time the user needs to log in, we
generate a new password for them, and every password stays valid forever.
Whenever anyone actually does log in, we record their password in our server
logs, available at www.ourcompany.com/debug/ . Then we send it to a dozen
different third-party analytics providers."

~~~
ravenstine
Ideally, you'd want those links to expire after one use or after a few
minutes, and you'd have some means of preventing replay-attacks. (a temporary
token stored on the client that gets sent to the server during the email
dispatch) Assuming every channel is encrypted, an unexpired link isn't as
easily compromised as a password.

------
eagsalazar2
You appear to need a moderation function.

------
mattjenner
Simple and clever. I hope it works. Also; how about FreeSalad, you know,
something for the health conscious? ;)

------
nitemice
Found a bug: If you select a country from the drop-down, then navigate to a
different back, and then go back to the events list, the country is still
selected, but all events are listed.

~~~
andrewstuart
Thanks for the pickup. Would you believe it's the only bug I had on my list
and you've found it! I'll attend to it.

------
tvalentius
Interesting Idea! , but i have a couple of feedback :

\- Don't restrict meetup to only cities. (For example, i used to run a
Javascript community in Bali, called BaliJS and limiting our presence to only
1 city is limiting our impact, since Bali is relatively small and we have
initiate activity not only in Denpasar)

\- Using Google Authenticator is a little bit annoying, i think you can offer
some other auth method like using Github or FB OAuth for example

Cheers,

------
hathawsh
Fun idea, but I suggest I would be much more inclined to go to meetups if
there were free salad instead of free pizza. :-)

~~~
TeMPOraL
For the record, it's the exact reverse for me - I avoid (and complain about)
events that decide to ditch pizza and start serving "healthy food".

Not saying it (just) to be opposite, just to highlight that there are (at
least) two populations with strong and incompatible preferences :). Or in
other words, a space for products catering to each individually.

------
croce
Thanks for this. Trying to create an event but won't accept the location.
Keeps coming up with an error that location is entered in a wrong way and
should use the drop-down menu instead, even though that's what I was trying to
do.

------
hamslamwich
Motion to update your site copy to : "this site uses cookies (and pizza)"

------
objektif
Why is everyone saying pizza is junk food? Are you taking about American pizza
which is loaded with fake cheese, monsanto soy flour, and tomato sauce
fortified with acid? Then may be I aggree.

~~~
LitFan
Even with real ingredients, a pizza is primarily flour, tomato, and cheese.
Add some cured meats, and maybe some vegetables. It is nutritionally lacking,
ergo - junk food.

------
brynet
Soo, how about individual OpenBSD hackers who just really like free pizza? :]

[https://brynet.biz.tm/wallofpizza.html](https://brynet.biz.tm/wallofpizza.html)

 _cough_

------
philip1209
Ohio State University used to have a student group that organized to go to
events with free pizza :-)

~~~
CobrastanJorji
There was some proselytizing group at my school that skipped the middle man by
giving out spaghetti and pie weekly in various locations. Your spaghetti just
came with some literature about whatever their religion was. I showed up
several times. The oreo pie was amazing.

------
erfgh
As all junk food, pizza is pretty cheap, so there is little point in this.

Also, offering free junk food should be restricted in the same way that
offering free cigarettes is restricted.

~~~
qeternity
> As all junk food, pizza is pretty cheap, so there is little point in this.

Great, since it's so cheap, can I send you my address and you'll pay for my
pizza please?

> Also, offering free junk food should be restricted in the same way that
> offering free cigarettes is restricted.

Junk food is only "bad" because it's calorie dense and most people 1) are
sedentary and 2) don't properly portion food. Otherwise, aside from extreme
nutrient imbalance or vitamin deficiency, it's just calories in calories out.
It's possible to live off pizza and be very healthy. This is very different
from cigarettes which are unhealthy in any quantity irrespective of lifestyle.

------
fenwick67
I love this UI

~~~
craftyguy
I agree. It appears to be completely usable with exactly 0 javascripts
enabled.

Edit: Nope, recaptcha requires JS. Oh well, at least browsing the rest of the
site doesn't require it AFAIK.

~~~
andrewstuart
There's a little bit of JavaScript for certain things like location
identification, recaptcha, country selection.

------
rubatuga
What's with the "Incels 4 Trump" event??

~~~
purrcat259
Trolls rolling in

------
choot
Do you offer Branded Pizza? for example, we want to add our logo on the pizza
or piza box.

~~~
andrewstuart
Interesting idea.

Really all we are doing is connecting community with sponsors. You can
negotiate with the community to do any sort of sponsorship that makes sense.

