
We’re Mozilla’s New Startup Incubator. AMA - lightninglu10
I&#x27;m Patrick, one of the 8 mentors &amp; founders of Mozilla&#x27;s new startup incubator: Mozilla Builders (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;builders.mozilla.community). We started this new incubator out of Mozilla in order to work with &amp; invest in developers, startups, and technology enthusiasts who are building things that will shape the internet and have a positive impact without needing to hyper focus on the bottom line. We call this our”fix-the-internet” incubator. This summer we’ll be investing $75k and $16k in teams for a summer cohort to help “fix-the-internet”.<p>Collectively we&#x27;ve built and sold companies, raised $$, and shipped many apps used by millions around the world. At our core we&#x27;re hackers, doers, and makers. We&#x27;ve also seen the side of business where employees are burned out solely for the pursuit of profit, where user data is a commodity and not your privacy, where &quot;growth at all costs&quot; costs companies everything. We believe there&#x27;s a better way!<p>We’ll be here to answer any questions people have on startups, give product feedback, advise people on how to get your first users, how to raise money, how to build for community inclusion, and in general just chat.<p>How would you “fix-the-internet”?
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mmayo
Hi folks, I'm the turbo nerd mentor. :) Systems biology and comp sci was a
weird combo in 1992, but it led me to working on cool systems like NFS,
FreeBSD, the Human Genome Project, IMAP, Solaris Containers, and eventually
browsers (Firefox). It's been fun and super satisfying to occasionally see
technology I had a hand in make new things possible for developers. At Joyent
I helped create an environment for Ryan and Isaac to build up the nascant
node.js community and that experience stuck with me as something to be
repeated. New things require space and time and support, and that's why I'm
here doing this new Mozilla incubator. Maybe we already have the next node.js
- hi deno! - but what about zero knowledge proofs deployed against the 1000
different places in the Internet where the landlords tax us today? Can't wait
to see what you all want to build. I'm around all day, ama!

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kathy-moz
Hi all! Kathy Pham here, another mentor and founder of Mozilla Builders.
Looking forward to answering questions and sharing ideas. I've built/worked at
products, organizations, companies, startups across private sector (Google,
IBM), government (White House), non-profits, startups, healthcare (Harris
Healthcare), AI, etc and Mozilla Builders Fix the Internet is one of the most
rewarding, energizing movements I have ever helped build. So thrilled to hang
out here with everyone. Currently a fellow at Mozilla, Harvard, teach a class
on product management, and spearheading Responsible Computer Science, and
Ethical Tech. My favorite Hackathon has been "Make the Breast Pump Not Suck"
at the MIT Media Lab! Love tinkering, building, going to the community,
designing for equity, and so much more. Ask us all the things, and then apply
and come join us!

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marialegre
Hi, I’m Maria, one of the mentors & founders of Mozilla Builders. I co-founded
Chartboost, raised $20M, and built a company that is loved by hundreds of
thousands of game developers.

Areas I can help with include: prototyping, mvp-ing, recruiting, fundraising,
building a culture, scaling, managing your time, communicating, guerrilla
marketing, pr, mobile user acquisition and monetization, international
expansion, hacking your way into silicon valley networks, building bridges
with other parts of the world, keeping mental health during it all and more.

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nbhartiya
Hi, I'm Neeharika and I've been mentoring Mozilla Builders for the last
several months. I'm a former engineer and serial entrepreneur with expertise
in product, customer success, and enterprise sales. Early last year my company
sold to a larger player and I decided to shift gears to helping other
entrepreneurs. It has been so incredible to see what teams around the world
are building to make the internet a more open and safer place! Here to answer
any questions you might have!

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bijmatic
Hiya: I'm Bijan Marashi one of the mentors and founders of Mozilla
Builders...I've built and exited search, email, and other deep tech companies
as well as coached 8+ M+A's and a dozen+ venture financings. Ask me about
creating new products + new startups, funding strategies for startups and
working with VC's, shopping for M+A's...

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marissajliu
Currently in the Mozilla MVP Spring Lab with our tool Neutral
([https://shopneutral.io/](https://shopneutral.io/)) and can personally attest
to the incredible mentorship and impact of this program. In just a few weeks,
we were able to build, launch, and hit the ground running with Neutral.

Really appreciate the end-to-end support we've received from the mentors and
Mozilla community. If anyone wants to learn more about our experience, feel
free to reach out!

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gabesaruhashi
Hey! I am Gabe and I am currently participating in Mozilla's MVP Lab as part
of Ameelio (www.ameelio.org). The mentors and program have been awesome so
far. Feel free to ping us if you have any questions.

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AndrejSafundzic
MOZILLA BUILDERS IS AMAZING. Great mentors and an unbelievable program. Apply
guys; they'll help you start off your company! I am part of Mozilla's Spring
Innovation Lab and it's been a blast.

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juwonlee1020
Really cool to see this here!

I’m currently a participant in the Mozilla Builders’ Spring MVP program
working on our recommendation-as-a-service platform www.chestnutai.com, and so
far, the experience has been amazing! Each week, we get half an hour of
dedicated mentoring session, and the mentors are super responsive on Slack as
well. They give you great, tailored advice on how to validate your idea, gain
tractions in the super early stage, and prioritize on what to build. Shout out
to our mentors Bart & Patrick for being so helpful!!

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Emmagray
Hi! My name is Emma and I am currently participating in Mozilla's Lab as a
member of Ameelio. Our mentors have been incredibly helpful and I highly
recommend joining this incubator.

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sylvain_kerkour
Hi, The programs looks great! I couldn't find on your website so I will ask
here: can we attend the program (MVP lab) remotely?

Also which channels of communication are used to communicate between the teams
and the mentors? Would you accommodate with a team using mostly asynchronous
communication (written, non-chat) channels, because according to our
experience it's the most effective way to communicate in a small software
company?

~~~
lightninglu10
Hey Sylvian, YES! The entire program is remote.

We communicate both synchronously AND asynchronously, i.e. we set up weekly or
biweekly -- depends on your preference -- meetings with teams and also are
available via email + slack.

Our methodology is to be as non intrusive as possible (it's your project!) but
we try to guide you in thinking about problems in the right way, and we've
found that a lot of value we add is when people are looking to onboard first
users.

We help a lot with messaging, cold email outreach, but much more!

~~~
sylvain_kerkour
Great, thank you!

Your program looks exactly what my project
([https://bloom.sh](https://bloom.sh)) need at this time!

You can count on my application :)

~~~
mmayo
Wow, big scope, but cool project. Any sense on what app will have the
strongest pull with early users? Seems like a "I came for email but stayed for
the notes" situation, but that's only me guessing.

looking forward to seeing your application!

~~~
sylvain_kerkour
When I launched the project as a webapp in 2019 it was the ability to stream
music directly from your Drive (think your private Spotify connected to your
Dropbox).

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cryogenicplanet
Currently in the Spring Open lab and truly loved it so far, the mentors are
great and it has been an awesome way to distract ourselves during COVID and
working on something cool. It is really cool that Mozilla is conducting this
program again in the summer.

Shameless plug of what we have been working on
[https://twittersourcebot.tech/](https://twittersourcebot.tech/)

~~~
rithvikm8
It really has been a great experience, props to the whole team of mentors for
creating this program!

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bartdecrem
hi guys, i’m one of the mentors (and staff) on this program. i worked on the
firefox 1.0 launch, other open source projects, built tap tap revenge (one of
the first app store hits). I’ll be here all day & more than happy to answer
any questions about the program, what we learned from all the projects people
kicked off this spring, what kinds of ideas we’re looking for etc.

~~~
billconan
I have built this in my spare time.
[https://epiphany.pub/post?refId=2684bc94f9fcb9ffe637ebfbeba2...](https://epiphany.pub/post?refId=2684bc94f9fcb9ffe637ebfbeba2af8c797c6ad9a66181026ee4bd3806b6f211)

I want to build a blogging/writing/learning experience with program-ability,
and collaboration (version control).

Is this the kind of idea you are looking for?

The long term goal is defining an interactive file format that is suitable for
data exploration and explanation.

~~~
lightninglu10
hey billconan, cool site!

yes these are definitely the projects we're looking for. one thing to note
would be: who is your target audience?

what we would like to see is a well defined target group and a product that
meets that groups needs.

~~~
billconan
there will be 2 groups of users.

Students can use this for their homework. It will be a better mathematics.

Programmers can use this as a knowledge community. similar to dev.to

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jatingupta
Hi! My name is Jatin and I am currently participating in Mozilla's Lab,
working on a product to improve the conditions of small businesses in India by
adding a source of income for them. Our mentors and folks from other teams
have been incredibly helpful and I highly recommend joining this incubator.

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steffe
yo!

Music has always been the voice of change and with this refreshing breeze of
_let 's fix the internet_ our team of musicians and devs have been able to set
full sail to reach new boarders in global artists collaboration. Creating
together, raising their voice with global narratives. ununu is a collaboration
tool for bedroom music producers.

Love the community and support we are fortunate to get from being part of the
MVP Lab and we'll surely apply for this incubator opportunity and stay active
in this ecosystem.

much love, se Germans

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shortlived
>> How would you “fix-the-internet”?

How can we do a better job teaching about the importance of privacy and
importance of having competition in the browser space and in the online tools
we use?

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akshayadinesh19
This is an awesome team of really talented mentors who will help bring your
ideas to reality. Being a part of the Spring MVP Lab was one of the best
decisions we made.

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marknadal
Hey, I'm Mark Nadal and I was accepted into Mozilla's "Fix the Internet"
program - it has been fantastic so far & huge respect to everyone at Mozilla
for putting this on.

Note: I doubt anyone will see this comment as HackerNews has shadow banned my
account because my Open Source project competes with some of YC's investments
(it undermines & destroys the need/market for some of their crypto-coin
scams).

I interviewed with YC a few years ago and their entire process was terribly
unprofessional - I've gone through 3 accelerator programs now, and interviewed
at many more. YC itself seems pretty awesome, but beware of the politics - if
a single person (HN mod in my case) feels like you are a threat to their
status, that person has enough marketing power to hurt you. Find the GOOD
people in YC and work with them, don't leave it to chance or you'll fall out
of good graces.

In contrast, look what Mozilla is doing! They're helping move the internet
(the world, the community) forward, and are a non-profit foundation. I highly
recommend applying to their program. They are GOOD people, doing good work.
Please please do everything you can to help them make this a success - the
internet depends on it.

~~~
dang
We banned you after many years of you promoting your product aggressively on
HN, using shady tactics such as voting rings and links to things that looked
unrelated but were in fact stealthy ways of promoting the exact same thing
over and over.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756777)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17000657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17000657)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8489651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8489651)

Users complained frequently about you spamming HN over all these years—there
are many more comments like these:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22730863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22730863)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21383815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21383815)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22499177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22499177)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16893429](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16893429)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16677493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16677493)

, but we gave you the benefit of the doubt and cut you slack until finally
enough was enough. We've banned countless users for far less.

This has nothing to do with YC; we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or its
startups are involved
([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment)),
but I don't see how that relates to this.

