

Treat strangers to coffee - osetinsky
https://treatings.co
My best friend and I disliked our jobs and wanted a non-awkward way to reach out to people whose work interested us.<p>We finally quit our jobs, moved into bunkbeds (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;instagram.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;WOPgf-rcFB&#x2F;), and learned to code in order to build a community of people open to meeting strangers whose work interests them, over coffee.<p>We&#x27;re now talking to companies who will be featuring their employees as &quot;ambassadors&quot; offering coffee meetings (&quot;treatings&quot;) to individuals interested in working at their company. We think job sites suck and that networking&#x2F;job seeking should work like online dating. Would love peoples&#x27; feedback, and an upvote!
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yaddayadda
If the idea is to share conversation over a coffee (or presumably another
beverage), isn't location important? (It is for me.) So why no option to
search by location?

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golergka
This. Not living in US, I'm used to be treated as an outsider by majority of
services and startups showing up on HN, but this particular service would be
painfully easy to make convenient for users around the world.

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osetinsky
Totally understand and sorry about that. We're trying to open elsewhere as
soon as possible. We thought it would help us to focus on New York and then
open in other cities after we formed small bases of people there, ~100 people.
Where are you golergka?

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joshaidan
I wonder if it would be possible to make some kind of API, or way to make it
possible for apps to launch worldwide instead of just locally. I know there
are challenges for launching for a large area when starting up, but I wonder
if there's a way to make it easier for startups.

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osetinsky
It's just easier to focus locally at first to work out the kinks. But we
probably are missing out on potential learning experiences by staying open in
certain areas. Plan is to open elsewhere soon.

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tansey
It's a great idea, but the site is really tough to use and when I first signed
up, the app crashed. It seems really focused on NYC-- I couldn't add any
coffee shops here in Austin.

Also, how do I browse through people in my city? After I signed up, it showed
me thumbnails of people in Austin, but I couldn't click on them for profile
details or anything.

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osetinsky
Thanks so much. Checking out why the app crashed. We'd like to have only
people in your city show up by default (but give you the option to change your
city if necessary).

I've gotta get down to Austin ASAP - only hear awesome things!

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ryanthejuggler
Pretty nice! Honestly after reading the "Let's have coffee" link submitted I
considered building my own.

Problem with the autocomplete, though; it doesn't always seem to work, and so
I'm having a lot of trouble adding new skills or favorite restaurants.
(Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101
Firefox/24.0)

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osetinsky
Thanks Ryan - I'm on it. Have you tried on Chrome? It also should be working
on iPhone iOS 5+

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ryanthejuggler
I figured out that the arrow keys worked as intended :)

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mscottmcbee
You might want to do some moderation on tags. Looking up "Android" brings up
"Android", "Android Development", and "Android App Development". Looking up
"Golang" returns "golang" and "Golang".

I wonder how much people are going to miss out on connections if they pick one
of three terms for what's probably the same idea.

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osetinsky
Yes, we definitely need to clean those tags up. Thanks for pointing it out.

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personlurking
Any plans to change the intent to include non-work related meetups? Ex, I want
to learn a particular language, I can therefore connect to someone who also
wants to learn it (and is near me) so we can study together or perhaps someone
who already knows it and wants to learn my language.

Far from the intended goal of your biz, I know, but thought I'd ask.

~~~
osetinsky
We really like that. I think the biggest pain point for people, at least when
it comes to giving them reason to reach out to strangers, is usually work
related. But there's definitely something there. The goal is to facilitate
conversations that are mutually beneficial.

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jonathanjaeger
Hayden (howillia on HackerNews) has been blogging on PandoDaily every week
about the trials and tribulations of bootstrapping Treatings. I read it every
week, it's well-written and interesting. You can find his blog here where all
the articles are accessible: [http://howillia.com/](http://howillia.com/)

~~~
osetinsky
They're always a great and funny read. You've gotta check them out if you have
a chance!

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dbalatero
The FourSquare API calls seemed to fail in the Chrome dev console when
selecting a coffee shop. I got a bunch of domain origin errors, and one 403
Forbidden. Actually, you should really check the dev console in general –
there's a lot of warnings, 404s, etc. that might be important to you.

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osetinsky
Thanks so much. Checking it out now. If you don't mind me asking, were you
logged in? And are you around New York? Really appreciate it.

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jc4p
I'm getting the same error, seems to be a rate limiting issue:

    
    
        {"meta":{"code":403,"errorType":"rate_limit_exceeded","errorDetail":"Quotaexceeded"},"response":{}}
    

Screenshot: [http://i.imgur.com/RtdaFrg.png](http://i.imgur.com/RtdaFrg.png)

Great idea though, I'm excited to use the site :)

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osetinsky
Perfect - this is very helpful. Thanks jc4p, really appreciate it

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osetinsky
I'd love to hear peoples' feedback - what they want in a service that helps
them connect with people they've never met before, but whose work is
interesting to them. Features people would be interested in, things they
_wouldn 't_ want to see, etc. Thanks!

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amzuko
So it looks like your privacy policy 403's.

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41603296/treatings_priva...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41603296/treatings_privacy_policy.pdf)

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osetinsky
Thanks amzuko - fixing that now. Appreciate the feedback.

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osetinsky
This is my first web application. It's built on Rails. I'd really appreciate
any pointers about things to look out for as we try to build our user base and
scale, as I'm completely new to this. Thanks so much!

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alexmarcy
Would be nice to be able to be able to find out info on the two other contacts
in my city that show up during the sign up process, I'd reach out to them but
there isn't an easy way to find out who they are.

~~~
osetinsky
So people you've already met, but perhaps don't know really well?

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howillia
I'm curious what would make people more willing to reach out to strangers
through Treatings...what information would you want to know about them that
you might not find on a standard resume or LinkedIn profile?

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osetinsky
An in-person interaction can tell you a lot about someone that you can't glean
from a resume. It's also provides a potential foundation from which to start a
relationship (collaboration, job, etc.). We're speaking with companies now who
are interested in featuring their employees as offering periodic coffee
meetings to outsiders interested in the company (almost like soft interviews).

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csdrane
I first learned about your project while talking to you guys at a mixer in
DUMBO. Cool to see your site evolve with time and I wish you guys good luck in
the future! Hitting the front page of HN should help.

~~~
osetinsky
Thanks so much! I'm trying to think of which one that was. We're certainly
learning about what can break when your site experiences traffic. But we're
getting tons of great feedback.

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rrhoover
Also take a look at [http://CoffeeMe.in](http://CoffeeMe.in). It's like
"tinder for startup folk" and just launched in SF.

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osetinsky
Yes we've seen them and love what they're doing. The one-click expression of
interest is something we have in common and really excited about. There's
definitely something job sites/hiring can glean from online dating...we're
just trying to figure out exactly how to execute it.

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osetinsky
Anyone trying out the web app on their iPhone browser (safari/chrome)? I'd be
grateful for any feedback if so.

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dc_ploy
Based on the front image, this is about men having coffee with men.

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osetinsky
We need a few new illustrations. Some women expressed concern about having a
male<>female illustration, saying it immediately seemed like a dating site.
Not sure what the right answer is there.

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jlebrech
and that's why women struggle in the industry.

If you meet up for a geek chat, it's a geek chat.

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robodale
Force me to sign in with my LinkedIn account? LOL die now.

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mcv
Someone should make something like this, but with tea.

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osetinsky
Coffee/tea/drinks. "Coffee meetings" are something most people can relate to,
so we've stuck with coffee for now. But we intend for it to be drinks of any
kind really. The copy part is hard.

