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The Clear Divisions on Bitcoin

What does , , and have in common? They started gaining traction by tweeting to people. Buffer Blocks smartwatches Product Hunt Here is an idea. How about instead of pouring early money into Google or Facebook Ads start with something less scalable but far more effective — tweeting to people. Let’s be honest. Finding people that will be interested in buying your (unknown) product is the hardest thing to do in a startup. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a bad product — nowadays it is just not enough to build it and expect people to come. The key is to engage in genuine conversations with everyone that could be interested in your solution. How to start this process? Hmmm… If only there was a place to talk to them 1 on 1, present your offering and answer their questions. A place where it is welcomed to talk to strangers and brands. Where people are eager to discover new things and give feedback. I hope you follow… A little bird told me Joel Gascoigne was an avid Twitter user. He knew many tools that are useful in maintaining your Twitter presence. Yet he still needed a simple way to just schedule tweets ‘x times a day’ without choosing the exact date and time, and have the tweets spread out automatically. “What if scheduling a Tweet, could be as easy as sending it now?”. That is how was born. Buffer There were many substitutes for their product and a lot of people already knew other solutions. Those people had to be convinced that Buffer was a superior product. They decided to leverage their favorite social network — Twitter. And they did it in two ways. First step: influencers. Hardcore Twitter users that will spread the news about great new tools they’ve discovered. How to reach them? Well, Buffer didn’t do anything radical or super creative. They wrote a blog post titled and messaged people they mentioned in the article. “7 Twitter users worth following and why” They’ve always added a personal touch, their signatures and were honest in their opinion. Thanks to open nature of Twitter, a lot of followers saw the conversation and Buffer secured a lot of exposure (and first clients). Too sugar-sweet? Maybe. But it worked. Some of them even directly recommended Buffer: The second way involved contacting regular Twitter users. This time the campaign was a miss. Buffer wasn’t that precise in reaching people that might be interested in their product. The tweets weren’t exactly showing the value of Buffer and were somewhat random. Even though they secured some exposure Buffer admits that they could do it better. A different approach could yield better results. Be more… human. From 0 to $1 600 000 in five months October 2015. Smartwatches are a common gadget that many people buy. After Pebble (April 2012), Sony SmartWatch (July 2012), Samsung Gear (September 2013), LG G Watch (June 2014) or even iWatch (April 2015) it has become a really crowded market. Most people thought that the choice was diversified enough to fit all needs. But in October 2015, few months after iWatch was presented (and the iHype has started) an unknown team launched their Kickstarter campaign with a new kind of smartwatch. Could there be worst time ever to launch this kind of product? And yet Blocks turned out to be a big success raising over 1,600,000 dollars. How did they do it? From July to November 2015 thousands of people got tweets from Adam, Tony, Addy and Tom. “Technology should be personal” they wrote. “Is this Kickstarter worth backing?” they asked. And people were responding: “I’d love to see more” or “thanks so much for sharing this ! Awesome concept and a great step towards the world of Wearable tech ! Kudos to you guys !”. The product itself was, of course, important — it enabled each user to assemble their own watch from a variety of parts. But it wasn’t the only difference that set apart Blocks from other similar projects. They presented a unique approach to their customers. While promoting their product the Blocks crew tried to maintain personal and honest attitude. At first glance, you couldn’t tell that it was, in fact, a product advertisement. Real people were sending the tweets, they responded to feedback and personalized the message (they even sometimes made typing errors). They were friendly and genuine and that earned trust. Despite the fact that they sent thousands of tweets, the team tried to focues on precisely the people that were interested in technology and might need a new smartwatch. People received personalized tweets, went to the Kickstarter campaign, responded or retweeted. This approach made them exceed their initial goal 6 times over. Product Hunt goes hunting for first users Building a dedicated community may be even harder than “just” selling your product. In 2014, Nathan Bashaw who coded Product Hunt summed up the beginnings of this platform. In , he wrote, . It is the most important thing to remember while building a community. You have to aim to find people that will be genuinely excited about your product and willing to build it with you. How do you that? Well, you have to hand-pick your first users like did. his Medium article “we started out with a network that was big enough to be interesting, but small enough to be comfortable” Ryan Hoover Ryan personally emailed and tweeted at hundreds (possibly thousands) of people to make this work, and it would have been a lot harder if he didn’t put in a lot of work over the previous year building his online network through his blog. This tactic turned out to be really effective. First 20 Product Hunt users were prominent startup founders and tech people. The group grew thanks to Ryan’s constant actions and attention. The most amazing thing may be the way Product Hunt accelerated their growth. While building a community you can’t neglect your very first members. That is why Ryan did a simple yet insightful thing. He reached out to existing members asking if they knew someone that might like PH. He then approached those people relying on personal touch and active conversation. He managed to build a group of people that were actively using the platform, felt a sense of bond and had a common goal — finding the best and coolest products for others to use. Maybe your happy customers could share their experience and bring other people :) Get out of the building So I think that’s an important thing to do, and then also to really pay attention to negative feedback, and solicit it, particularly from friends. This may sound like simple advice, but hardly anyone does that, and it’s incredibly helpful. Elon Musk Initial feedback is a crucial thing for every startup. Your customers can tell you whether you are onto something or completely missed the point. In the beginning, you don’t have to spend large amounts of marketing money to reach them. A better approach is to actually talk/write to them. You get a chance to receive feedback or reach potential early adopters. You might even find people who will love the solution so much they become your evangelists. People on Twitter (if chosen wisely — spray and pray doesn’t work here!) are really eager to help you or even buy your product. From our experience (and other startup founders) they are intrigued that someone reached them personally. This is a huge advantage for startups — to show that there is a real person behind the Twitter account, that the relationship is human to human. In our startup Rarog, we have a similar goal. We want to help other companies reach exactly the people that are most likely to become their customers. Start a conversation and show your startup’s human side. Rarog uses the information about your target customer, creates a lead list and sends personalized messages to everyone of them. Our campaigns give you an opportunity to talk with real people, create an interest in your product and have proven to target potential customers really well. Our average CTR on all campaigns is around 46,4% and we are working to improve it even further. Try out Rarog’s hypertargeted Twitter campaigns and :) see for yourself

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Here’s why Twitter is the best place for startups to start selling

is a free summer coding camp, hosted by the web development company I work for, . It runs three days a week, two hours a day and lasts for two weeks. We’re constantly iterating and evolving our curriculum, materials, marketing, session length, and website design. Last year we had one long eight week session. Some students dropped out or sat in the back and played Minecraft. We showed Treehouse videos in class. It was a terrible idea. Treehouse is great for independent learning, but not for showing in front of a class. The year before we used Codecademy. The year before that we had eight students. This year we had over 60 and we used , heavily edited. . After our first 2 week session, we rewrote our entire JavaScript curriculum. BizStream Academy BizStream Girl Develop It’s curriculum Heavily As we continue to improve, we’re constantly learning. We’re learning about our students, about teaching, and learning things about coding we didn’t even know ourselves. It’s a cliche, but it’s true: we’re learning just as much as our students. People really want to learn this stuff Sign-ups this year went through the roof. Our first session reached capacity after just a few days. We had to start a waiting list. We’ve never done much advertising. The Academy has a . We mention it through BizStream’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. We bring it up at local industry events, and it was mentioned in the . Many of the students come from the nearby high school’s robotics team, which we sponsor as a company, or the school’s wrestling team, that BizStream’s owner coaches. Facebook page Grand Rapids Business Journal in 2014 We ask people on our sign-up form how they heard about us, and it’s mostly word-of-mouth. Sometimes they come through search engines or hear about us at conferences. They want something like this, and find . they us For the right person, I can see how BizStream Academy would be a dream come true. 12-year-old me, just getting on the internet and wanting to make a website of my own, would’ve given her eyeteeth for something like this instead of learning on my own from books and copying source code. Now that the web is a regular part of our lives, there’s even more interest, and it’s all ages. We have younger students who want to do this for a fun creative outlet. We have adults who are looking to change careers and think building for the web might be a solid possibility. We have seniors with some extra time on their hands now that they’ve retired who want to learn a new skill. The desire is . all over the place Computer literacy needs to be a thing At BizStream Academy we mostly teach beginning front-end development skills: HTML, basic CSS, and a little taste of JavaScript. We also give a tiny overview of how the internet works. (“A website is a folder of files, sitting on a server, displayed in your browser.”) We explain that a server is like your computer, but usually larger and more powerful, and only has one purpose: in our case, hosting a website. We know there’s more to it than that, but that’s all they need to know for the class, and it’s a starting point for learning more. The problem is, many of them don’t understand the concept of files and folders. We’ll have them create a folder for their project and create an index.html file in that folder. Somehow the index.html file ends up in their Documents folder. Or they download images into their Downloads folder and don’t understand why they don’t appear on the web page. One session we found several students had index.html.docx files in their folders. This problem particularly stumped us regarding our younger students. Aren’t these kids supposed to be technological wonders? What about all the memes where the tech savvy 3-year-old takes 2 minutes to bypass the iPad parental controls it took the hapless parent 2 hours to figure out how to setup? We spoke to one student (she’s the daughter of a BizStream employee so we felt more comfortable asking) to see what might be going on. She offered a suggestion: Chromebooks. Her school provides students with Chromebooks, and she explained the folder structure works differently than the Windows machine she was using for Academy. I’ve never used a Chromebook, so I don’t know how the folder structure works. I do think an understanding that computers are used to store files, and files live in folders, is an essential skill kids should be learning in school. Dare I say it? Yes, this is more important than learning to code. Most careers don’t require coding skills, but they do require computer literacy. Abstract, inapplicable concepts are frustrating In Session 1 this year we taught two classes of basic HTML and CSS before switching to JavaScript. I taught the first JavaScript class and went over variables, if statements, and functions. I’m happily teaching when a student has a question: “How does this actually relate to our websites?” The students have been using their skills to build a simple website. Suddenly we’re doing a bunch of console.logging and they don’t see the point. Fair enough. I explain that these are basic building blocks of a language that lets you do things like build mega menus and slideshows and annoying pop-up email subscription forms. Blank stares. This ends with me walking through creating a button that when clicked reveals some hidden text on the page, all in vanilla JavaScript. But that student who asked the question? She had a point. It’s hard to see how these abstract concepts relate to the HTML and CSS learned earlier. It’s hard to see how a programming language can relate to anything. This was why I wrote : it’s hard to learn to code when code feels so abstract and different. It’s hard to see how basic things like variables and functions can actually build something useful. my FastCompany piece a few years ago In the end, we scrapped basic vanilla JavaScript and went for jQuery. It was a hard decision for me, but in the end it made sense: it’s so much easier to add something cool to a website quickly with jQuery than teach enough JavaScript to get to that same point. We have them jump straight in with the plugin. Within the two hour class they have a working image slider on their site and many are itching to do more. I find it funny that we’re basically teaching JavaScript object syntax to students who don’t know what a variable is, but it works. If this sparks interest, we can point students to resources like Codecademy for learning the basics. Owl Carousel Teaching is really, really hard Before teaching at BizStream Academy, my mental image of how it would go looked like this: I’m standing up in front of the students, who are all listening attentively and laughing at all my jokes. They follow the code examples and instructions perfectly, and upon observing their working code in action, exclaim: “Wow, this is so cool!” Every school teacher everywhere is on the floor laughing right now. Here are some of the things I didn’t anticipate: So many different skill levels: some students have already made websites while others view their computers as light-up mystery boxes with a bunch of lettered buttons on them. Trying to explain how to do something on a Mac while working in Windows. Someone’s working on a problem that isn’t really relevant but you want to help them figure it out, and that ends up taking over half the class. Students who don’t show up and then expect to not be hopelessly behind. No one uploading their work to their Google Drive folder. Ever. Despite countless reminders. Younger students who don’t really want to be there, but their parents are dropping them off every day. So instead they sit in the back and play Minecraft. Trying to explain that no, jQuery can’t break your keyboard. I’ve yet to have someone explain to me the appeal of Minecraft. One of the other Academy mentors plays the game, and I just don’t get it. It looks terrible and it makes me feel old. Minecraft aside (athough Minecraft is partially responsible), teaching even a two hour academy class is exhausting. I’m convinced that teaching is the hardest job on the planet, and some people choose to do that every day as their career. Can we please treat teachers better, pay them more, and offer them some free quality therapy? I think they deserve it. Pointing people in the right direction can jumpstart a new career path BizStream hasn’t hired people straight out of BizStream Academy, but we have hired people who have gone through the Academy and used it as a starting off point for learning more and eventually getting the skills needed to work for a web development company. While we’ve focused the curriculum at a high school level, many adult students have gone through the program looking for a career change. For some, it’s been a success. Eight former students have gone on to find employment in the tech industry, and those are only the ones we know about. Any company can do this I keep hearing about this “lack of talent” in tech and I think, why not develop that talent? Sure, we’re not hiring our 14-year-old graduates, and a summer program isn’t going to spit out a senior developer with 8 years of experience, but it’s a start. If some of those 14-year-olds discover from the Academy that they love coding and keep learning, they’re priming themselves for success down the road. And many junior developers, particularly those passionate enough to take classes and code on their own and devour every morsel of knowledge available, eventually become senior developers. Look at your community. Is there an opening for something like this? If you think this is a fit for your community and organization, remember it’s okay to start small. You don’t need a fancy classroom, you can start with a few students in a conference room. Our first session in 2012 had only 8 students. Take a look at or . Have students go through or . You’ll be surprised and delighted by how much fun you’ll have, how valuable it is for the students, and how much you’ll learn in the process. our constantly evolving curriculum Girl Develop It Codecadmy Free Code Camp

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What I’ve Learned Leading a Free Coding Camp for Three Years

Joshi’s new address Joshi has an address He doesn’t need the municipal government to deliberate and reach consensus to pick one. He doesn’t need to add it to Google Maps, Openmaps or any other map provider. As a matter of fact, none of them will ever need to know about it, however, anyone can find it using any of these services. Minutes after having the address, Joshi sent it by SMS to his first patient, Pranav. Even though Pranav does not have Internet in the countryside , using only pen and paper he finds the exact location of Joshi’s new clinic. An instant address that doesn’t need internet and can be used with pen and paper, even when it does not appear on any map?. Welcome to the world of the algorithmic addresses. Algorithms are eating the world From the way we find out what grandma is up to in our Facebook timeline, to the way we learn to open a wine bottle with a shoe using a Youtube video, the show behind the scenes is run by algorithms. Lately algorithms have been in the basically for being black boxes that can be used for . spotlight shady purposes But what is really an algorithm? Cut a lemon in half →Squeeze the lemon →Add ice and sugar There you go: an algorithm to get lemon juice. An algorithm in its purest form is a series of steps to get something. So what does it have to do an algorithm with an Indian doctor moving to the countryside? Location, location, location (not for 4 billion people ) 75% of world population does not have a physical address According to the UN , more than 4 billion people do not have a physical address; that means, no way to call an ambulance, firefighters or police quickly, no easy way to deliver the mail, or pinpoint breaks in water systems, electricity or telephones, They are, in many ways, invisible. A lot of effort and investment is put in to solving the problem, from working to give a postal address to slums, to from the World Bank on how to tackle the challenge. NGO’s manuals Tech to the rescue Latitude and longitude are the unequivocal and precise ways to locate anything in earth, but using 20°06'33.5"N 79°18'58.3"E as an address is neither intuitive nor useful enough in the day to day interactions. Technology offers us a way to transform that location into an easier way of conveying the same information. For example: is a geocoding system invented by Gustavo Niemeyer and placed into the public domain. Geohash : Using geohashing to encode 20°06'33.5"N 79°18'58.3"E , it will give us effectively a shorter way to transmit the same information tg86kuu31q2f LICENSE: Free - Public domain. operated by the Mapcode Foundation, it is a code consisting of two groups of letters and digits, separated by a dot. It represents a location on the surface of the Earth, within the context of a separately specified country or territory. Mapcode: Encoding 20°06'33.5"N 79°18'58.3"E will give us two options: for the national code or for the international code, both also shorter than the original one. MH 9X3N.TX NQBHM.YKSF LICENSE: Free - Apache License Version 2.0. is a geocode system for identifying an area anywhere on the Earth. It was developed at Google’s Zurich engineering office, and released late October 2014. Open Location Codes are also referred to as “plus codes” Openlocationcode: Encoding 20°06'33.5"N 79°18'58.3"E will give us or another option with a shorter code 4858+PF Vadholi, 442404, Maharashtra 7JGX4858+PF LICENSE: Free - Opensource is a geocoding system for the simple communication of locations with a resolution of 3 m. What3words encodes geographic coordinates into 3 dictionary words. What3words: Encoding 20°06'33.5"N 79°18'58.3"E will give us adaptable.obstinately.bigwig LICENSE: Commercial - Patented addressing schema. Just in case anyone thinks that addressing is a problem not worth solving, What3words is a UK startup launched in 2013 , which to this date has raised more than from Intel Capital among others to commercialize its solution 13.5 million USD And national postal delivery service in addition to house numbers and street names. Mongolia’s will start using it The best things in life are free (and Opensource) This is Joshi’s Xaddress; latitude and longitude are encoded inside. We come back to Joshi, our rural doctor who got a new address. But this is no ordinary address, it was created by , the free, Opensource algorithm released in August 2016. Xaddress So yes, Xaddress will encode : 20°06'33.5"N 79°18'58.3"E into 1031 LOVED WORKS - Maharashtra, India Xaddress is an algorithm , a recipe that you can use in your App, Website, or internal service to encode and decode locations from latitude & longitude to a form that resembles a normal address. Xaddress was designed to be decoded using low tech, so you can know where is located using pen and paper ( and maybe a pocket calculator or even your phone calculator ). 1031 LOVED WORKS We say that algorithms these days have a bad reputation because they are obscure and you do not know what exactly they are doing, so how about showing exactly what Xaddres does, as Pranav did to decode Joshi’s address?. Decoding Joshi’s Xaddress step by step using pen and paper — Animated gif, reload to start again. You can to encode and decode a Xaddress by hand, or you can do it in . follow this guides the Xaddress website Xaddress is also: OFFLINE Xaddress can be used offline, so when Joshi created his Xaddress he didn’t need Internet access, neither did Pranav to get to Joshi’s location, most of the 4 billion in need for an address are also likely offline. VISUAL ERROR DETECTION Xaddress uses a image or “avatar” for every address created as a visual hash, so if you mistype the Xaddress it will show you another image. Any mistype will create a different image to alert you about the error When Joshi gives his Xaddress by phone he will say “ the image will be an atom” 1031 LOVED WORKS — Maharashtra, India SHORT ADDRESS Xaddress will additionally create a short address useful for storing or transmitting , for example CUKAKIK-GEFEJUJ MULTILANGUAGE Xaddresses can be created on any language, and can be used even when traditional addresses are available to to convey a location more easily. For example: Nándorfejérvári út 4 can be shared as “CRUEL RUN 4604 — Budapest, Hungary” for western readers. YOUR chance to have an impact on a global problem. Xaddress is YOUR tool. Never in the history of mankind, has knowledge been so available, and this knowledge can be used to change the reality and the . limitations of your environment Eager minds can defy imposed paradigms and have an impact on their community, country and the whole world. Sometimes all you need is a tool. Take Xaddress as yours, start hacking your way out of problems in your community. No investment needed, no need to ask for permission. Developers: create innovative solutions to global problems, and integrate existing services with Xaddress to create new products and services. Maps or service providers: supercharge the use of your services by incorporating 4 billion potential customers with Xaddress for free. Local goverments: use Xaddress to assign an instant address to manage repairs, taxes, shipping invoices, etc. The possibilities are endless, you are ready for the ride? Start playing with or try it in Xaddress on Github www.xaddress.org

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An Algorithm that can give an instant solution to 7 billion people

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive August 16th, 2016

The Clear Divisions on Bitcoin

@beautyon_
Beautyon

Here’s why Twitter is the best place for startups to start selling

@rarog_io
Rarog

What I’ve Learned Leading a Free Coding Camp for Three Years

@allirense
Alli Rense Treman

An Algorithm that can give an instant solution to 7 billion people

@roberdam
Rober Dam

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive August 16th, 2016

The Clear Divisions on Bitcoin

@beautyon_Beautyon

Here’s why Twitter is the best place for startups to start selling

@rarog_ioRarog

What I’ve Learned Leading a Free Coding Camp for Three Years

@allirenseAlli Rense Treman

An Algorithm that can give an instant solution to 7 billion people

@roberdamRober Dam

@beautyon_
Beautyon

@rarog_io
Rarog

@allirense
Alli Rense Treman

@roberdam
Rober Dam