
Tell HN: Kevin and I are doing HN office hours Friday from 11 am to 1 pm PDT - sama
Kevin and I are going to try doing online office hours on HN this Friday.<p>We&#x27;ll create a thread at 9 am PDT, and interested companies (or people) can submit a top-level comment with a brief overview of what they&#x27;re working on and a first question.  Then we&#x27;ll let HN vote on the projects, and do office hours via back-and-forth comments with the top 5 companies as of 11 am.<p>You can ask about anything you want related to your startup, but the way office hours work at YC is we try to identify the biggest problem you&#x27;re currently facing and then brainstorm things you can try.
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vonklaus
Having an open dialogue that can be referenced like this will provide an
amazing resource. This will help people outside of those companies facing
similar or tangential issues. Thanks!

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minimaxir
> _Then we 'll let HN vote on the projects_

You mean vote on the top-level comment submissions? That's not a good idea
because comment ranking is influenced heavily by time of submission (more
recent comments appear at top, so it would be smarter for startups to submit
later and also it means order will not correspond to upvotes), and, more
importantly, _comment scores are not visible._

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dang
We'll rank the thread by points, not time-based rank. We won't do that until
Sam and Kevin are ready to start, though. Otherwise it would be even more
time-sensitive.

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minimaxir
That works :) thanks!

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RobotCaleb
What is an office hour? I feel like this post wasn't meant for me.

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abhinai
A discussion and feedback session. Sometimes these sessions are held in public
to help others who are facing similar problems.

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RobotCaleb
I see. I've never heard that term (except as saying when a business is open).
Where does it originate in this context?

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GuiA
In US universities, where professors have to balance teaching and research,
they hold "office hours" \- hours during the day in which they're in their
office, with the door open, and students can come in to ask questions, request
help, etc.

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RobotCaleb
Ah, thanks! I've never been, so it was an unfamiliar concept.

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jordigg
I'm sure we'll see more pitches trying to get attention than real questions to
specific problems. Let's try to keep it useful for everyone! It's a great idea
and I want to thank you in advance for taking the time to help others even not
being part of YC. Another positive point against many other "top"
accelerators.

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dang
> I'm sure we'll see more pitches trying to get attention than real questions
> to specific problems.

Hopefully the community will take care of this, by upvoting real questions and
specific problems.

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logicallee
Wowwww... This is an insane level of commitment on a public forum like this.
(With its current levels of readership.) I'm impressed.

Especially since many interesting office hour questions and answers are the
kinds of things that anyone who isn't currently (or has never) run a startup
would kind of react negatively to seeing in public. (There are some prime
examples of people who have no experience with, but very strong opinions
about, startups.).

People's conceptions about startups are so different from what it's like to
actually build one, I almost suggest that other past and present founders
answer some of the the questions that get posed (i.e. others also reply to
comments) besides letting Kevin and Sam do so - not to dilute the signal, but
to increase it. I wonder if this could be made official, with mail to YC
companies that they are welcome to chime in!

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quadrature
I agree its really great of them, you can watch office hour sessions on
youtube from the Startup School that YC runs
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syoqjYLDs48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syoqjYLDs48)

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pavantalla
Hi Kevin, a great initiative. I am an entrepreneur from India, running the
portal www.Halla.in. The idea is to create a platform for individuals to
express their talent and emotions. We run photo contests on general themes
like rains, city street, back to school etc. and let users post their entries
to get voted as the best. Over the past 12 months, we have run over 100+
contests with an average of 70+ entries per contest and have over 7000
registered users. Being bootstrapped startup, the value of prizes are limited.
Customers adore our concept by giving good reviews and feedback.

Question:

We are trying to scale to next level, however we face challenges in getting
companies to sponsor these contests. How can we scale?

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workerdee
Is this only for technical startups or in industries that you and Kevin
specialize in?

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kevin
We'll do our best to help any startup.

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robot
Have you guys started?

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kevin
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9785533](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9785533)

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csentropy
We(tryfuel.com) are working on quantifying nutrition and personalizing it so
people can eat healthy and understand how their bodies respond to diet. We
have traction and very sticky product. We are raising our seed round.

The biggest problem we are having is finding angels who will not only lead
this round but help in future rounds with introductions to VCs and serve as
social proof. Any ideas on how to solve this?

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myth_buster

      We'll create a thread at 9 am PDT, and interested companies (or people) 
      can submit a top-level comment
    

Don't forget to add it to the open-office thread on friday.

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csentropy
Will do thank you.

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jbverschoor
I'm working on www.seeflo.com It still has some glitches but the start of the
application is there. My biggest problem right now is finding my audience.

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dang
Please post this in the thread on Friday. This one is just to let people know
we'll be doing this.

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jbverschoor
Ahh ok, will do

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shankysingh
We ( www.helpingfaceless.com ) are trying to help vulnerable children using
technology and create a viable business model around it.

Short term : Create basic infrastructure for data collection and reporting,
manage in cloud, and charge small subscription fee for it.

Long term : Combat child trafficking using face recognition technology and
data analytics.

we use B.O.T ( build operate transform ) process to build the infrastructure
for organizations and law enforcement agencies .

Biggest problems we are facing : 1\. Lack of impact investment 2\. Long Sales
cycle

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hluska
That's a neat idea and I'm always glad to see companies working on tech that
will protect little kids! Please don't forget to add this to the thread on
Friday morning - they will post it at 0900 PDT.

Good luck with your startup!

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shankysingh
Thanks man. Sorry I jumped the gun and posted way earlier :)

