

Notifo (YC W10) gets a Co-Founder... Me - PStamatiou
http://paulstamatiou.com/notifo-yc-w2010-gets-a-co-founder-me

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d0m
By digging in, I understood what Notifo was about, but it wasn't really clear
at first. On the main page, you say "What is notifo" with two paragraphes, one
for user and one for services. I think it might be better if you seperate
those two horizontally with a nice subtitle such as:

USERS -------------- SERVICE

And honestly, the "push notification" isn't really easy to understand because
it really can means lot of thing for a developer like me, and absolutely
nothing for someone like my girlfriend.

I think a good example is needed for the new user to truly get what notifo is.
And also, a good example of why a developer would want to link to a service
like notifo. I mean, I understand now what Notifo is about and I think it's
great; however, as I said, I needed to read a lot.

~~~
jazzychad
This is great feedback, and I agree it needs to be improved. Since Paul is a
great writer, hopefully he will be able to help in this regard.

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christonog
Sorry if I missed this in your post, but what are you currently doing with
Skribit? The Skribit website (as well as your HN profile info) still has you
listed prominently.

~~~
jackowayed
He's leaving it running and supporting it a little, but not spending much time
on development, probably even less than he planned now that he's a cofounder
at a startup instead of just an employee somewhere.

From [http://paulstamatiou.com/exploring-san-francisco-silicon-
val...](http://paulstamatiou.com/exploring-san-francisco-silicon-valley) :

> _Skribit is a niche product that serves a small market well and it is with
> that in mind that development will continue, but in a part-time manner. Some
> changes will be taking place around the site to focus more heavily on
> converting users to paid Pro accounts (and pay off our convertible note)
> rather than building out certain community features that require much
> upkeep; making Skribit more of a tool than a destination. Ultimately, I need
> to land a paying job and focus on paying off my out-of-state tuition, which
> is still a six figure number._

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rjett
So before this, was Notifo a one-man YC-funded startup?

~~~
jazzychad
yes, it was... YC definitely set me up on several "cofounder dates" during the
course of YC... some of them looked promising, but ultimately none worked out.
Eventually I had to just bear down and prepare for launch/demo day. As soon as
I stopped looking, the right person came along :)

~~~
rjett
Cool! I'd be interested to hear your experience with 1) getting into YC as a
single founder and 2) working alone in the ensuing months. That's quite a
feat.

~~~
jazzychad
I've been considering writing a post about my experience to this effect.

Basically it boiled down to sheer ignorance. I didn't know that being a
single-founder was such a big deal (in a negative sense), so I didn't know I
should have been worried/nervous about it when applying/interviewing.

As for working alone... I had done so many personal projects at
nights/weekends after work at my day job that working alone was just natural
(again, ignorance was bliss). I was also able to draw from each of the
previous projects to piece together what I needed to build Notifo very
quickly.

This is the advantage of working on a bunch of different small projects all
the time. The criteria I used for starting a new project was that I had to do
at least one thing I had never done before which required me to learn a new
language/technology/framework/API/etc.... after a dozen projects or so, this
built up to a huge arsenal of skills to throw at new projects. Never stop
learning.

That said, having had a co-founder for about a week, there has been an obvious
increase in productivity, so for that I am truly thankful.

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gaborcselle
Congrats Paul! Hope you guys can continue to keep burn low by eating
essentially every one of your meals at the Googleplex.

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jl
Congrats Jazzy & Stammy!

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geezgod
i've used this service and i think it's great! I'm a huge google voice sms
user and I hated the fact that i couldn't get PUSH notifications when new
messages would come in. Notifo solved the problem and it works great. Yes
there were other options like boxcar but that required me to leave my computer
on all day while Notifo didnt. BIG PLUS!

Only downside is whenever i try to open the app on my ipod touch - it always
crashes - even when installing the new update. But it's not a huge issue
because i still get notifications coming in.

~~~
jazzychad
contact me (email in profile) with your Notifo username, and we'll fix the
crashing issue for you.

~~~
frossie
Interesting service.

I was thinking the other day, what I want is geolocation push notifications to
my iPhone. For a trivial example, I have been meaning to ask my coffee shop if
I could have some of their empty ice cream tubs. Every day I pull up at their
drive through caffeine-deprived, pick up my coffee... and forget to ask.

Sure would be great if, while I was sitting there waiting for my drink, my
phone blipped "Ask them about the damn tubs already" :-)

~~~
Splines
You could probably roll your own, using IP geolocation on a push email server.

The hard part is setting up the notification in the first place. You might be
able to wire up something to Google Maps that lets you put pins down that can
be queried by your server.

Or something like that, anyway. Sounds like a neat idea :)

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ErrantX
I keep meaning to add a few features to WP-Notifo.

If you want to collaborate on it or hack around drop me a line and I can add
you to the plugin page as a commiter :)

(by the way - the code you used in the thread, it is in WP-Notifo but I am
pretty sure it originally came from another example, can't find the source
though)

ps: congrats :D

~~~
PStamatiou
I've been meaning to get in touch - would love to get added as a committer. :)
I'll email you at the address listed in your profile.

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ajaimk
So, whats gonna happen to skribt?

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nanexcool
Like I said in an email to jazzychad last week, Notifo is my favorite YC
company. It's an amazingly simple service that does exactly what I need
without much setup. Congratulations!

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sdbluesman
striking resemblance to notify.me which came out several years ago...

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Splines
I love Notifo :). I wrote a plugin for GfW so I can get notified of machine
events on my iPhone.

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andrewhyde
Congrats Stammy! Great news. I'm looking forward to using the product.

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dmor
congrats - so jealous you get to work with @jazzychad

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jasonwilk
Congrats Chad. Glad you finally found the right match, Paul, you found a
winner. Chad is a great dude/connector/hacker

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samratjp
Congrats to the both of you and on closing the angel round! Hope you guys
_push_ the envelope in this space ;-)

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shiftb
Awesome for both of them. In a related note: can someone reply to my comment
so I can test Notifo's HN integration?

~~~
PStamatiou
hi :)

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iamelgringo
Cheers, Paul. I'm really glad that things worked out for you. Welcome to
Silicon Valley, enjoy the ride. :)

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allantyoung
Congrats to Jazzy - looks like a great talent addition!

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johns
Congrats to Chad and Paul! Looking forward to v2

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lyime
Congrats Paul!

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jayair
congrats jazzychad & paul!

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rokhayakebe
Can someone explain how can I use Notifo?

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jazzychad
There is all sorts of info at <http://notifo.com/> \- but if you have other
questions, feel free to email us: contact at notifo daught com

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codemechanic
Congrats paul & jazzy

