

Can any startup accept me as a volunteer for three days? - samzhao

Hey startup founders! I'd like to volunteer for your startup either in office or remotely for 3 days. I live in Vancouver Canada, and I'm currently a university student at SFU; so when I can't commute, I'll work for you at home.<p>I do web development, including design and programming (HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby on Rails). And I also play music and have performed in numerous contests and competitions (live looping; beatbox and guitar).<p>Email me at zhao6518[at]gmail.com if you are interested.<p>Thanks!
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hayksaakian
You would probably get more out of working on an open source project rather
than helping a startup.

My 2¢

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samzhao
I agree. I'll do that to improve my programming and problem solving skills.
But for skills to run a business, or more specifically a startup, I think
helping one is the way to go. Thanks for your suggestion though :)

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norswap
I'm curious, why for three days? I can't imagine you could accomplish much in
three days (at least, I couldn't) since you need to setup your environment,
get accesses, familiarize yourself with the release system, etc...

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yskchu
Probably means 3 days a week

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samzhao
When I said 3 days, I meant 3 days only. I think it'll make the founders think
about the most important things they need to improve on, which can also be
handed to someone with little credibility, kind of similar to the idea of
contributing to open source projects.

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sangupta
Pick up your favorite framework in the open-source community and contribute to
that - either via code, tests, documentation or helping users. This you can
continue for weeks and will help you in the long run.

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samzhao
Thanks a lot for your suggestion! I agree with you that this will help me in a
long run for my programming skills. However, what I'm actually looking for is
experience at running a business/startup.

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sangupta
I agree with Anu here.

You won't be able to learn too much in 3 days, and also none of the guys at a
startup will take a lot of interest making you understand things considering
the short tenure.

Pick up a small idea - some pain point that you see in your daily workflow.
There are so many possibilities with free infrastructure today, Heroku, Google
App Engine, and of course Amazon WebServices.

Start contacting people to see if they are interested and go through the
proper way how someone seeds a startup. This will help you learn something
that no experience ever will.

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samzhao
I believe 3 days is enough. A new marketing idea can be implemented in 3 days;
a new UI mockup can be done in 3 days. To me, I'll be learning things, but to
the founders they can actually benefit from my ideas or executions. It's free
after all, and they can definitely take it further after the 3 days (maybe
hire me something).

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sangupta
I assume when one says for 3 days, he/she knows that they won't have time
after that - or else, they would have agreed for a week/two or so on. What if
the idea/mockup was not completed in 3 days, and the trainee was not willing
to spend more time...

From a founder's perspective they lost the time. Probably for mitigation they
would have someone else implement the idea too... which would indicate that
they might not provide the same attention to your implementation.

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tectonic
Not a startup, but open source. I'd love to have you hack on Huginn for a
couple of days! <https://github.com/cantino/huginn>

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samzhao
Looks cool! I'll try to contribute.

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tempestn
Hey, I own www.searchtempest.com and www.autotempest.com. And we're actually
in Victoria, BC! I expect I could find something for you to do for a day or
three if you're interested. Could even have lunch or something if you want to
take the ferry over. Feel free to email me through one of our sites' contact
pages.

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mtimjones
Why would they? From their perspective, you're a risk, a leak, and a time-
sink.

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samzhao
But if I can help them with marketing, UI/UX or wireframing or anything,
that'll not be a waste of time for both the companies and me

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nayefc
Doesn't it take three days to understand the code base?

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samzhao
The point is not to only work on the technical aspect of the business -
there's way more than just code to a startup/business.

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nayefc
Other aspects also take time to learn. You also listed programming languages,
hinting at a developer position.

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jjkmk
Hey there im the owner of sultansolutions.com and co owner of solaropia. Ill
send you an email first thing tomorrow - Samer Sultan

