Levo is an API Observability and Security testing platform. Levo discovers, documents, inspects and tests your APIs continuously as early as possible in the SDLC. Levo is the DevSecOps platform for your applications. #apis #devsecops #shiftleft #apimanagement #apilifecycle

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Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 by Various, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . THE PRODUCTION OF FIRE. here THE PRODUCTION OF FIRE. In 1867 the Abbé Bourgeois found at Thenay, near Pont-levoy (Loir-et-Cher), in a marly bank belonging to the most ancient part of the middle Tertiary formation, fragments of silex which bore traces of the action of fire. This fire had not been lighted by accidental causes, for, says Mr. DeMortillet ( , p. 90), the causes of instantaneous conflagrations can be only volcanic fires, fermentations, and lightning. "Now, in the entire region there is no trace of volcanic action, and neither are there any traces of turfy or vegetable deposits capable of giving rise to spontaneous inflammations--phenomena that are always very rare and very exceptional, as are also conflagrations started by lightning. Well, in the Thenay marls, the pieces of silex that had undergone the action of fire were found disseminated at different levels, and this could not have been a simple accident, but was evidently something that had been done intentionally. There existed, then, during the Aquitanian epoch, a being who was acquainted with fire and knew how to produce it." Le Prehistorique Mr. De Mortillet supposes that this being was an animal intermediate between man and the monkey, which he calls the . anthropopithecus This precursor of man made use of fire for splitting silex and manufacturing from it instruments whose cutting edge he perfected by means of a series of retouchings produced by slight percussions upon one of the surfaces only. I shall not enter in this place upon a discussion as to the existence of an anthropopithecus or Tertiary man, whom every one does not as yet accept, but will confine myself to giving the facts as to the use of fire in the remotest epochs, incontestable proofs of which exist from the time at which Quaternary man made his appearance. How this was discovered is indicated, according to Aryan tradition, by the Vedic hymns. The ancestors of the Aryans, these tell us, had seen the lighting dart forth from the shock of black clouds. They had seen the spark that fired the forests issue from the friction of dry branches agitated by the storm. They took a branch of soft wood, , and passing a thong around a branch of hard wood, , they caused it to revolve rapidly in a cavity in the , and thus evoked the god , whom they nourished with libations of clarified butter, . arani pramontha arani Agni soma The , became the of the Greeks, the Titan who stole the fire, and it is from the Sanscrit that is derived the Latin , "fire," and the Greek Αγνος, "pure," and the of the Christians, who purifies all. Pramontha Prometheus Agni Ignis Agnus Dei Orientalists generally agree that the sign which is seen under the forms , , or , on a large number of objects of Aryan origin is a sort of sacred hieroglyphic, representing the or , formed of two pieces of soft wood fixed by four pins in such a way as not to revolve under the pressure of the Pramontha. arani svastika This process of producing fire is also found among a host of more or less savage peoples, and especially in India, where, during the last month of the great feast of sacrifices, the sacred fire must always be kindled three hundred and sixty times a day with nine different kinds of wood that are prescribed by the rite. Fig. 1 shows the arrangement in use among the Eskimos, and Fig. 2 that employed by the Indians of North America. In 1828 there still existed at Essen, in Hanover, an analogous apparatus designed to produce an alarm fire. This was a large, horizontal, round wooden bar whose extremities pivoted in two apertures formed in vertical posts, and which was provided with a cord that was wound around it several times. Several persons, by pulling on the ends of this cord, caused the bar to revolve alternately in one direction and the other, and the heat developed by the friction lighted some tow that had previously been inserted in one of the apertures in the post. It is certain that the alternate motion must have been produced directly by hand before being effected by cords. This simpler process is still in use in Tasmania, Australia, Polynesia, Kamtschatka, Thibet, Mexico, and among the Guanches of the Canary Isles, who are supposed to be the last representatives of the inhabitants of Atlantis, which sank under the waters at the close of the Quaternary epoch. Chamisso, who accompanied Kotzebue in his voyage, describes it as follows: "In the Caroline Islands, they rest a vertical piece of roundish wood, terminating in a point, and about a foot and a half in length and one inch in diameter, upon a second one fixed in the ground, and then give it a rotary motion by acting with the palms of the hands. This motion, which is at first slow and measured, is at length accelerated, while at the same time the pressure becomes stronger, whereupon the dust from the wood which has formed by friction and accumulated around the point of the movable piece begins to carbonize. This dust, which, after a fashion, constitutes a match, soon bursts into flame. The women of Eap are wonderfully dexterous in their use of this process." Fig. 3 shows another manner of obtaining fire by rotation which is employed by the Guachos, a half savage, pastoral people who inhabit the pampas of South America. Longitudinal friction must have preceded that obtained by rotation. It is still in use in most of the islands of Oceanica (Fig. 4), and especially in Tahiti and in the Sandwich Islands. In these latter, says again Chamisso, upon the fixed piece of wood they place another piece of the same kind, about the length of the palm, and press it obliquely at an angle of about 30 degrees. The extremity that touches the fixed piece is blunt, and the other extremity is held with the two hands, the two thumbs downward, in order to allow of a surer pressure. The piece is given an alternating motion, and in such a way that it shall always remain in the same plane inclined at an angle of 30 degrees, and form, through friction, a small groove from six to eight centimeters in length. When the dust thus produced begins to carbonize, the pressure and velocity are increased. Wood of a homogeneous texture, neither too hard nor too soft, is the best for the purpose. The Malays operate as follows: A dry bamboo rod, about a foot in length, is split longitudinally, and the pith which lines the inside is scraped off, pressed, and made into a small ball which is afterward placed in the center of the cavity of one of the halves of the tube. This latter half is then fixed to the ground in such a way that the cavity and ball face downward. The operator next fashions the other half of the tube into a straight cutting instrument like a knife-blade, which he applies transversely to the fixed half and gives an alternating motion so as to produce a sort of sawing. After a certain length of time, a groove, and finally a hole, is produced. The cutting edge of the instrument is then so hot that it sets on fire the ball with which it has come in contact. Some peoples, the Fuegians especially, procure fire by striking together two flints. In the Aleutian Islands these latter, having been previously covered with sulphur, are struck against each other over a small saucer of dry moss dusted with sulphur. The Eskimos employ for this purpose pieces of quartz and iron pyrites. In the Sandwich Islands recourse is had to a process that necessitates much skill. There is arranged in a large dry leaf, rolled into the shape of a funnel, a certain number of flints along with some easily combustible twigs. On attaching the leaf to the end of a rod, and revolving the latter rapidly, it is said that fire is produced. Processes that are based upon the clashing of two flint stones must be much more inconvenient of application than we would be led to suppose. We are, in fact, accustomed to see the flint and steel used, but here the spark is a bit of iron raised to red heat through a mechanical action that has violently detached it from the mass under the form of a small sliver. In the case of two flint stones, the light that is perceived is of an entirely different nature, for it is a phosphorescence which is produced, even by a very slight friction, not only between two pieces of silex, but also between two pieces of quartz, porcelain, or sugar; and that the heat developed is but slight is proved by the fact that the phenomenon may occur under water. Of course, fragments of stones may be raised to a red heat through percussion; but this does not often occur, so for this reason the Fuegians keep up with the greatest care the fires that they have lighted, and it is this very peculiarity that has given their country a characteristic aspect and caused it to be named Terra del Fuego (land of fire). When they change their residence they always carry with them a few lighted embers which rest in their canoes upon a bed of pebbles or ashes. The same thing occurs, moreover, among the Australians and Tasmanians, who employ, as we have just seen, the rotary process. There are women among these peoples whose special mission it is to carry day and night lighted torches or cones made of a substance that burns slowly like punk. When, through accident, the fire happens to get extinguished in a tribe, these people often prefer to undertake a long voyage in order to obtain another light from a neighboring tribe rather than have recourse to a direct production of it. We can understand from what is still taking place in these distant countries why the worship of fire should have existed among our ancestors, and why sacerdotal associations, such as the Brahmins of India, the Guebers of Persia, the Vestals of Rome, the priests of Baal in Chaldea and Phenicia should have been specially instituted for producing and preserving it. Plutarch narrates (Numa, chap. ii.) that when the sacred fire happened to go out, there was employed for relighting it a brass mirror that had the form of a cone generated by the hypothenuse of an isosceles rectangular triangle revolving around one of the sides of the right angle. In a poem upon stones attributed to Orpheus, it is said that the sacred fire was also lighted by a bit of crystal which concentrated the rays of the sun upon the material to be inflamed. This process must have been the one that was most usually employed before fire became common. In fact, a plano-convex crystal lens has been found among the ruins of Nineveh. Aristophanes, in the , puts on the stage a coarse personage named Strepsiades, who points out to Socrates how he must manage so as not to pay his debts: Clouds "Streps.--Hast thou seen among druggists that beautiful transparent stone that they employ for lighting a fire? "Socr.--Thou meanest glass. "Streps.--Yes. "Socr.--Well! what wouldst thou do with it? "Streps.--When the registrar shall have made out his summons against me, I will take the glass, and, placing myself thus in the sun, will cause his writing to melt." As well known, writing was then traced on waxen tablets. Servius (in ., xii., 200) affirms that men of ancient times, instead of lighting fire upon the altar themselves, in their sacrifices, caused it to descend from heaven. He adds, according to Pliny, Titus Livius, and several old Latin historians, that Numa, who was initiated into all the wisdom of Etruria, practiced this art with success, but that Tullius Hostilius, having desired to repeat the evocation, guided only by the books of Numa, did not accomplish all the formalities prescribed by the rite and was struck dead by lightning. Æn Is it not curious that twenty-four centuries afterward, in 1753, the physicist Reichman was killed by lightning in trying to repeat Franklin's experiment? This coincidence, however, is not the only one. Pliny (ii., 53) recounts that lightning was evoked by King Porsenna at the time when a monster named , who was ravaging the country, was directing himself toward the capital, Volsinies. Volta If we return to the Vedas, who had the habit of personifying all phenomena, we shall find that the fire Agni was the son of the carpenter who had manufactured the instrument by which it was produced, and of (magic). He took the name of Akta (anointed, [Greek: christos]) when, nourished by libations of butter, he had acquired his full development. The Persians attributed likewise to Zoroaster the power of causing fire to descend from heaven through magic. Saint Clement of Alexandria ( ., lib. iv.) and Gregory of Tours ( , i., 5) speak of this. However this may be, the marvelous art was lost at an early date, for it was at such a date that priests began to have recourse to tricks that were more or less ingenious for lighting their sacred fireplaces in an apparently supernatural manner.-- . Maya Recog Hist. de Fr. A. De Rochas, in La Nature About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various (2005). Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8742/pg8742-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

THE PRODUCTION OF FIRE

Inside Earth: The Journey of Conru

Topographical Notes

Testing a Clean Architecture in a Frontend Application - Does It Make Sense?

একটি ফ্রন্টএন্ড অ্যাপ্লিকেশনে একটি পরিষ্কার আর্কিটেকচার পরীক্ষা করা - এটি কি অর্থপূর্ণ?

Testen einer sauberen Architektur in einer Frontend-Anwendung – ist das sinnvoll?

Probar una arquitectura limpia en una aplicación frontend: ¿tiene sentido?

Tester une architecture propre dans une application frontale - Cela a-t-il un sens ?

एक दृश्यपटल अनुप्रयोग में एक स्वच्छ वास्तुकला का परीक्षण - क्या यह समझ में आता है?

フロントエンド アプリケーションでクリーンなアーキテクチャをテストする - 意味があるか?

프런트엔드 애플리케이션에서 클린 아키텍처 테스트 - 말이 되나요?

Testando uma arquitetura limpa em um aplicativo front-end - faz sentido?

Bir Ön Uç Uygulamasında Temiz Bir Mimariyi Test Etmek - Mantıklı mı?

Thử nghiệm một kiến trúc sạch trong một ứng dụng giao diện người dùng - Điều đó có hợp lý không?

在前端应用程序中测试干净的架构 - 它有意义吗？

Metla is a new platform that makes managing crypto way easier for users. It offers an impressive suite of tools and features that make it a go-to solution for anyone seeking to streamline their day-to-day crypto management needs. Vested Interest Disclosure: The author is an independent contributor publishing via our brand-as-author program. Be it through direct compensation, media partnerships, or networking, the author has a vested interest in the company/ies mentioned in this story. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR The platform offers a range of features that are designed to support the development and use of blockchain technology. Here are some of the key features: Asset tracking Metla allows tracking of all tokens, NFTs and De-FI asssets and activities. Everything associated with the wallet can be explored through Metla’s interface. Powerful Crypto search In Metla users can search for anything crypto, be it NFTs, tokens, specific transactions or wallet data. Metla’s search is the most powerful crypto search out there. Security The platform offers enterprise-grade security tools to help users keep their assets safe Users can run background security checks on wallets, check check if NFT is a spam or counterfeit, keep their wallet token allowances under control and so much more. 4. NFTs With Metla’s NFT section not only users can see all the NFTs they own and all the associated transactions, but also can mint NFTs and NFT collections without leaving the interface. Another cool feature is NFT galleries - users can showcase the NFT they own on Metla’s short links or even their custom domains! 5. De-Fi activities De-Fi tracking is becoming increasingly important as more people turn to decentralized finance for investment and income-generating opportunities. Metla is a platform that enables users to track their De-Fi activities, including staking, borrowing, and lending etc. 6. User-friendly Interface A user-friendly interface is a crucial component of any successful platform, and Metla recognizes this. Metla has been designed with a simple and intuitive interface, making it easy for users to navigate the platform and manage their crypto assets. Metla's interface has been designed to cater to both experienced cryptocurrency traders and newcomers to the market. The platform's user-friendly interface ensures that users can quickly understand how to use the platform and start trading with minimal hassle. Levon Terteryan, the founder of Zeroqode, is the driving force behind the development of Metla. He’s an individual with a passion for both technology and personal wellness. Terteryan believes that technology should not only make our lives easier but also support our well-being and personal growth. With Metla, he has created a platform that not only simplifies the management of crypto assets but also empowers users to track their financial activity, gain insights into their portfolio, and engage with the growing world of crypto and NFTs. Overall, Metla is an excellent solution for anyone looking to manage their cryptocurrency easily and safely. Its features and user-friendly interface make it a go-to platform for managing crypto assets, while its support for NFT transactions adds to its appeal. With its launch, Metla is set to become a comprehensive solution for crypto enthusiasts looking to streamline their management needs.

Introducing Metla: The Ultimate Cryptocurrency Management Platform

Presentamos Metla: la plataforma de gestión de criptomonedas definitiva

Présentation de Metla : la plateforme de gestion de crypto-monnaie ultime

पेश है मेटला: अल्टीमेट क्रिप्टोक्यूरेंसी मैनेजमेंट प्लेटफॉर्म

Metla の紹介: 究極の暗号通貨管理プラットフォーム

Apresentando o Metla: a melhor plataforma de gerenciamento de criptomoedas

Giới thiệu Metla: Nền tảng quản lý tiền điện tử tối ưu

介绍 Metla：终极加密货币管理平台

THE VALUATION OF SEXUAL LOVE

Melhore a obsevabilidade da sua Stack Elastic, baseado em fatos reais A utilização do Dead Letter Queue ajuda ainda mais na obsevabilidade de dados que não foram entregues para Elasticsearch. Como cheguei até aqui Estava realizando testes com um componente de comunicação com o Logstash e por coincidência solicitei a criação de um Indíce no Elasticsearch com caractere em caixa alta (Teste). E adivinha o que o ElasticSearch me retornou? Could not index event to Elasticsearch. status: 400, action: [“index”, {:_id=>nil, :_index=>” Teste -2020.07.08", :routing=>nil, :_type=>”_doc”}, #<LogStash::Event:0x5ad6965c>] , response: {“index”=>{“_index”=>”Teste-2020.07.08", “_type”=>”_doc”, “_id”=>nil, “status”=>400, “error”=>{“type”=>”invalid_index_name_exception”, “reason”=>”Invalid index name [Teste-2020.07.08], must be lowercase ”, “index_uuid”=>”_na_”, “index”=>”Teste-2020.07.08"}}} ! Isso mesmo, ele não aceitou a criação do indíce e a mensagem não foi entregue. SIM E agora? Assim como este erro ocorreu podem ocorrer outros erros que eu nem mesmo tenho conhecimento. Como farei para tratar esta exceções? Ai que entra em ação a (quase) fantástica funcionalidade do Elastic Stack, (vou tomar a liberade de chamá-lo de DLQ). Na seção ‘Não é bala de prata’ vocês entenderão por que uso o termo (quase) fantástica funcionalidade. Dead Letter Queue Como funciona? O DLQ é um componente configurável no Logstash que fará o papel de monitor de falhas sobre algum pipeline dentro do Logstash, uma vez que este pipeline falhar terá outro pipeline que fará uma nova tratativa de envio destes dados. Como configurei meu ambiente para o DLQ? Hey, eu utilizo o CentOS Server 7, OK?! Ativação da funcionalidade DLQ Editei o arquivo de configuração do Logstash, no meu ambiente ele está em /etc/logstash/logstash.yml. A a alteração ficará (simplesmente) como abaixo # ------------ Dead-Letter Queue Settings --------------
# Flag to turn on dead-letter queue.
#
dead_letter_queue.enable: true Criação de novo arquivo que conterá o pipeline do DLQ Criei o arquivo o arquivo logstash_dlq.conf em /etc/logstash/conf.d/ input{
        dead_letter_queue{
                id => deadletter
                path => commit_offsets => pipeline_id => }
}
filter {
        mutate {
                add_field => { => => => => }
        }
}
output {
        elasticsearch{
                id => cluster1
                hosts => [ , , ]
                user => password => index => }
} "/var/lib/logstash/dead_letter_queue" true "main" "reason" "%{[@metadata][dead_letter_queue][reason]}" "plugin_id" "%{[@metadata][dead_letter_queue][plugin_id]}" "plugin_type" "%{[@metadata][dead_letter_queue][plugin_type]}" "entry_time" "%{[@metadata][dead_letter_queue][entry_time]}" "serveElasticsearch01" "serveElasticsearch02" "serveElasticsearch03" "${ES_USR}" "${ES_PWD}" "dead-letter-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}" Apontamento do Logstash para o pipeline O apontamento dos pipelines ficaram conforme o arquivo de configuração abaixo. Arquivo localizado em /etc/logstash/pipelines.yml # This file is where you define your pipelines. You can define multiple.
# For more information on multiple pipelines, see the documentation:
#   https: - pipeline.id: main
  path.config: - pipeline.id: deadletter
  path.config: //www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/multiple-pipelines.html "/etc/logstash/conf.d/logstash.conf" "/etc/logstash/conf.d/logstash_dlq.conf" Por fim basta reiniciar o Logstash. . [Farei um post futuramente explicando os motivos que me levou esta abordagem e como fazemos para realizar a gestão de falhas no dia a dia] Após isso o Logstash criará índices no ElasticSearch no padrão ‘dead-letter-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}’ Não é bala de prata Mágico não é?! Vamos devagar pessoal, realmente a funcionalidade é muito válida e interessante, mas vale resaltar alguns pontos que devemos ter conhecimento para não nos surpreendermos depois que estiver com tudo em produção. DLQ trata erros que são retornos com códigos . HTTP 400 e 404 DLQ faz apenas uma nova tentativa por mensagem, se ocorrer o erro novamente a mensagem não será tratada. DLQ gera arquivos de controle da fila que não são apagados automaticamente, caso observar grande consumo de disco remova os arquivos de logs antigos, arquivos em /var/lib/logstash/dead_letter_queue. E por fim… Esta post foi feito com base em um caso real sobre a versão 7.7.1 da Stack Elastic.Estes links podem apoiar nos estudos sobre o tema: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/dead-letter-queues.html https://discuss.elastic.co/t/full-pipeline-logstash-with-dead-letter-queue/239855/3 https://www.hostinger.com.br/tutoriais/o-que-e-http-error-e-principais-codigos-http/ Caso ainda tenham dúvidas podem contar comigo.

Dead Letter Queue no Elastic Stack

During my own preparation for Winter 2018 class interviews, I’ve reviewed every public resource on the topic and did over 20 practice interviews with Y Combinator alums. Everything I’ve learned is summarized below. This guide is my personal take and doesn’t represent an official position of YC. Along with this guide, you can also read and reuse our YC interview answers . To get more help, join a chat community of startups applying to YC . Answers development The core of your preparation process is writing a document with all anticipated questions and your answers to them. Start with the items below, then expand by adding answers to new questions asked at your practice interviews. Answers document. Your first sentence in the interview is either a solution description or value proposition. It should be 4–8 words long and pass the “mom’s test”, i.e. your parents should be able to repeat it back to you. Opening description. Define 3 core strength points in advance. Steer conversation to hit them all, sometimes even regardless of questions.Types of strength: revenue/growth/traction, domain expertise/done this before, insight aka “a-ha moment”, market size.Consider repeating or rephrasing your top three points when you aren’t sure they landed well the first time.Test your strength points: Will someone be excited about your company if she/he only hears the one-line description and three strength points? Strength points. Those are anecdotes, quotes, or factoids that receive consistent “a-ha” and “hmm.. interesting” reactions during your practice runs. Insights. Know your 2–3 key weakness areas and prepare short, crisp answers to most common concerns.For every question that you don’t answer with a strength point or an insight, limit yourself to one sentence. You want to maximize the time for strength discussion, not secondary issues. If you use the second sentence, it should go back to strengths or insights. Defense. How to write strong answers Use a lot of factoids and numbers. Your answers document should have at least 20–30 answers with numbers. Whenever possible, eliminate verbs from answers. E.g. “What’s your go-to-market?” — “A, then B, then C”.Use simple words and examples, avoid buzzwords or abstract concepts. For questions on weakness areas, acknowledge or defend it in one sentence, then go back to strengths in the second. Use examples and facts over forward-looking plans. “In the past, we’ve solved it by X with results Y”.Explain implications: “if we achieve X (hard, but possible technical achievement), then we will get Y (major business win)”. Whenever possible, use primary data from customers instead of analogies. Generally, YCombinator doesn’t see analogy-based arguments as reliable or strong.Avoid top-down market sizing. Either do bottom-up or close comparables. “Sell your co-founder”, be ready to tell why your partner is great. Practice runs Schedule at least 10–20 practice runs. For mock interviews, ask investors and founders you already know, YC alums from your city / country / university, YC alums in your industry or with a similar business model, and YC alums who volunteer to do practice interviews on Twitter. You don’t need an intro. Ask early, at least 7–10 days before your interview day. Take notes and rewrite your answers after each practice run. Do a debrief with each mock interviewer. Ask which answers were clear and strong, and which ones were not. Discuss how to improve your individual answers. Iterate on your top strength points, unique insights/anecdotes, and defense answers. Additionally, watch YC’s public office hours (links below) to get a feel of YC interview format. Interview day Arrive early, identify your room and learn who is on your panel, research panel partners in the remaining time. Make new friends with fellow applicants. Have the demo ready on the laptop with all important screens in multiple tabs. Don’t rely on YC WiFi.Assume that YC partners have no prior knowledge. Review partner’s bios in advance, identify partners who can become supporters due to their personal interest in your space. From YC’s standpoint, the purpose of the interview is to extract as much info as possible in 10min. At least one of YC partners will look closely for body language and nonverbal signals. Expect 40–80 questions in 10 minutes, 8–12 seconds per question-and-answer round. Be ready for constant interruptions (even after the first 2–3 words of response). Be ready for unique questions outside of your list. Be ready for parallel interview with multiple co-founders (not very common). Be ready for a narrow and deep drill on a single question, most likely related to your biggest weakness. Logistics and expectations. Talk fast, but not super fast. Feel happy, high-energy, and excited to pursue the opportunity. Be casual and friendly, maintain eye contact. Be confident, yet humble. Confident and concise = formidable. A few weak answers are ok. A long weak answer is much worse than a short acknowledgment like “I don’t know” or “we plan to work on this”. Don’t be too defensive, show coachability. Consider repeating or rephrasing your top three points, if they weren’t well received the first time. Most answers should be one sentence, some can be two sentences. Limit yourself to only 2–3 longer replies throughout the interview. Don’t interrupt each other, don’t argue on unexpected questions. Instead, say “yes and …” or “and I’ll add to this…” to continue after your co-founder. When disagreeing with YC partner’s statement, either give counter-facts or accept it as a hypothesis to test. Don’t make straight deflections. Answer the question asked, before changing direction. When challenged on critical hypotheses for your business, be ready to push back with crisp defense and facts. When the conversation goes sideways, try to steer it back to strengths, e.g. “and I want to make sure you hear this…”. Interview time. Interesting problem. Ideally, unique or novel. Otherwise, a new insight or approach. Compelling value proposition. Clear and concise solution description. Clarity on how the hard parts of the solution work. Inspiring mission. Market size and dynamics. A small but rapidly growing market is always compelling. Insightful ideas for overcoming market-specific concerns. Activation of “spidey sense” i.e. “hmm… something interesting should happen in this space” feeling. Team with deep relevant expertise and domain knowledge. Strong communication skills: crisp, short, clear answers. Competitive landscape fluency. Proven rapid pace of making progress. Energy and resourcefulness, “get things done” attitude. Coachability, being good at taking feedback constructively. Determined, yet flexible. Original thinking and learning ability. Unconventional points of view and insights directly from customers. Positive team dynamics, no interruptions or arguing, alignment on vision. Low chance of founder conflict. Good English and easy-to-understand accent, no language barriers in communication. Ability to inspire and recruit star team. Make YC partners want to work for you. Can grow into “forces of nature”. Direct path to building momentum by the end of YC program aka “become a hot seed deal”. Direct path to hitting high revenue in 2–3 years aka “getting big”. Expected YC evaluation criteria. Y Combinator Interview Resources , , , , . Official resources: list of partners preparation advice preparation advice video old advice Michael Seibel’s 7 points , , , , , , , , , , , , . Advice from alums: Quora thread Kwindla Hultman Kramer Henrik Zillmer Tristan Zier Barak Ben Ezer Scott Wheeler David Rusenko Sumon Sadhu Robby Walker Natalie Bartlett Fabrizio Buzeto GetAccept Gareth MacLeod , , , , . Question collections: PG Simulator Aptible Brad Flora TechCrunch QZ , , , , , , , , , . Public office hours: SS 2011 SS 2013 SS 2014 SS 2014 NYC TNW 2014 SS 2016 SS 2016 SC17–1 SC17–2 SC17–3 Acknowledgments I am forever grateful to everyone who helped us through the process: Hrachik Adjamian, Daniel Ahmadizadeh, Andrew Arruda, Delian Asparouhov, Chas Ballew, Kirill Belov, Eva Breitenbach, Matt Brezina, Tom Broderick, Levon Brutyan, Jeremy Cai, Dan Carroll, Deepak Chhugani, Nick DeMonner, Dmitry Dumik, Evan Farrell, Herbie Fu, Jim Gibbs, Anton Gladkoborodov, Allan Grant, Vlad Gurgov, Chetan Jhaveri, Ryan Johnson, Dave Kim, Alexander Kim, Kwindla Hultman Kramer, Sam Lang, Clarence Leung, Bowen Lu, Max Musing, Ivan Novikov, Thomas Pun, Roberto Riccio, Wen Sang, Boris Silver, Preston Silverman, Zac Townsend, Brett Van Zuiden, James Vaughan, Praveen Venkatesan, Tracy Young, Diana Zink. Good luck! To get more help, join a . I am frequently there to help with any preparation questions you might have. chat community of startups applying to YCombinator

The Ultimate Guide to YCombinator Interview Preparation

IEO Platforms Are Quickly Replacing Old-Fashioned ICOs We’ve recently witnessed a transformation of the global ICO market from a dying model of projects issuing and selling tokens directly, to a completely new model whereby tokens are sold by exchanges which immediately list the tokens at the sale’s conclusion. This model has fittingly been called an Initial Exchange Offering (IEO), and although the first cases took place back in 2017 (Bread, Gifto) the trend didn’t really take off until the beginning of 2019. Essentially, an IEO is the same crowdfunding process as an ICO is, except that the project which issues the tokens and desires to raise capital relies on exchange to perform crowdsale rather than doing it themselves. Binance pioneered this tokensale method with multiple huge successes on Binance Launchpad, inspiring other market participants to begin developing their own IEO platforms as a result. At the present time we can count at least 15 exchanges which have either started supporting IEOs or announced that they are developing an IEO concept. So let’s go ahead and look at Comprehensive list of exchanges with IEO platforms/launchpads: 1. Binance Launchpad Binance Launchpad The pioneering IEO platform, started operation in 2017 and became mainstream in 2019. A lot of successful cases including , , , , and one upcoming called . Bread Gifto Bittorent Celer Fetch Maric 2. Huobi Prime Huobi Prime Huobi was actually the next major exchange after Binance which managed to perform successful . They completed their first selective token sale event in a matter of seconds, with token prices surging by 250% immediately afterwards. IEO with the TOP Network project 3. OKEx Jumpsmart OKEx Jumpsmart As one of the leading exchanges by trade volume, it’s no surprise that OKEx doesn’t want to be left out of the IEO trend. To ensure that they stay relevant, they’ve their own IEO platform, called . So far there isn’t any public information about upcoming projects, but we can be sure that they are looking closely for new prospective projects to work with. announced OK Jumpsmart 4. Coineal Launchpad Coineal Launchpad Coineal is quite a big exchange with almost $700M daily trading volume and they’ve already jumped on the IEO train with their own Launchpad. Among already completed cases they have , , and . Another sale which is ongoing is . IPW Token Levolution Kizuna Global Token Rebglo Token 5. ZBG Launchpad ZBG Launchpad ZBG Exchange is a side project of another major exchange, ZB.com, which was a newcomer in 2018 but quickly reached the Top 10 on CoinMarketCap. Although they have been of faking their trade volumes, nevertheless, ZBG has completed two IEOs on their own launchpad with and projects. accused V Systems Kamari 6. BW Launchpad BW.com Launchpad BW.com is a core strategic partner of ZB.com exchange, a deeply-rooted crypto-exchange in the Asian market. BW Tokens Launchpad has supported three IEO projects to date, with two of them completed in the end of March 2019 ( and ) and one still ongoing ( ). Blockbuster V Systems Grabity 7. Coinbene Coinbene Launchpad Coinbene was noticed talking about their own IEO platform already in 2018, but the first IEO launch was officially in March 2019. Since Coinbene is often listed among the Top 10 exchanges and has a big community, we might expect another successful case in IEO field from them. announced 8. BGOGO Apollo BGOGO Apollo BGOGO is the first digital asset exchange with supernode listing authority. Now they are launching Apollo (IEO Launchpad) and have two tokensale events for and projects. announced ARM X-Block 9. IDAX Foundation IDAX Foundation IDAX is a global digital financial service platform focusing on the needs of bitcoin traders with high daily trading volumes. IDAX has their first IEO for project, which will take place in April 2019. announced ZeroBank 10. BitMax Launchpad BitMax Launchpad Bitmax is a relatively new exchange complete with a new platform for token sales. Their first IEO project called hasn’t done much to excite the community, and already there’s a sense that these projects may struggle to sustain their price once exchange listed. It’s early days for Bitmax Launchpad though, which may yet produce some winners. DOS Network 11. Bittrex International Bittrex International The long-established and popular exchange, Bittrex, announced their first IEO in February 2019. But the first and so far only IEO — for project — was cancelled. Nevertheless, Bittrex is expected to pursue another IEO in the near future. RAID 12. Probit Launchpad Probit Launchpad Probit is not one of the major exchanges by trade volume, but they are seeking to distinguish themselves from other small-scale exchanges proliferating the market with their IEO support. There have been quite a few IEO cases hosted on their website already, but they were completed without nearly as much buzz as the Binance cases had. Among them: , , , and others. Spin Protocol CharS Wegen Steemhunt 13. Latoken Launchpad Latoken Launchpad Latoken started their IEO launchpad a long time ago back in 2018 and have actively promotedthe projects listed on their platform. Just recently they a new IEO for the project. announced 7Eleven 14. KuCoin Spotlight KuCoin Spotlight KuCoin is a former Top 10 exchange which have lost their position due to decreased trading volume of late. Nevertheless, they remain one of the best-known exchanges worldwide. Recently they their first IEO for the project on their brand new platform, called Spotlight, which will take place in April 2019. announced MultiVac 15. Exmarkets Launchpad Exmarkets Launchpad ExMarkets platform is a new generation crypto-exchange providing thick order books and deep liquidity thanks to a backend framework. Exmarkets has 4 completed and 4 ongoing IEOs on their website. However, they have not published any results of the completed IEOs on their platform. 16. Cobinhood Cobnihood Unlike other exchanges and market players which use the IEO term and perform tokensales through separate platforms/launchpads, Cobinhood remained loyal to the traditional ICO term and offers ICO services for the projects as a turnkey solution including business model optimization, tokenization, marketing and PR. So far there have been two completed cases — their own tokensale of the Cobinhood token and another project called CyberMiles. This list is assembled after studying IEO market during recent months and will be expanding with time. If you would like to recommend an IEO platform which is not in the list please share it in comment section. If you enjoyed this compilation, please clap👏 and share to help others find it. Feel free to leave a comment below.

Ultimate list of IEO Platforms/Launchpads: TOP 15+ Exchanges

Machines That Play (Post Deep Blue)

Machines That Play (Building Chess Machines)

Machines That Play (Deep Blue)

Image Credit, CoinStrategy.io PubNub , our weekly sponsor, empowers you to build immersive, interactive apps. Chat, maps, dashboards, smart device control — powered by APIs, delivered through global infrastructure. Learn more. Heyo Reader, want to know more about how Hacker Noon runs? I did a with , where I talk about the future of Hacker Noon, bootstrapping my business, upbringing, inspirations, a little bit of hoops, and what’s next in tech: . 5k+ word interview (24 min read) Pirate Beachbum Where There’s Smooke There’s Fire: Interview With David Smooke Founder of Hacker Noon And onto this week’s top 33 tech stories: by [11 min read] Blockchain 101: Ledger to HyperLedger Aayush Joglekar by [10 min read] Build the Right Things — A 5 Step Plan to a Rock-Solid Product Roadmap Eric Weiss by [7 min read] Building a serverless contact form with AWS Lambda and AWS SES Adnan Rahić by [53 min read] ContractPedia: An Encyclopedia of 40 Smart Contract Platforms vasa by [5 min read] Crypto Network Effects Tobias A. Huber by [10 min read] Crypto’s Role in the Age of Autonomization Jake Ryan by [6 min read] Elastic Stack — A Brief Introduction Urfeena Elahi by [31 min read] How Distributed Ledger Technologies are set to disrupt the world’s monetary system Alexandre Juncker & Thomas Bouquet by [29 min read] How Does Blockchain Technology Work? Taylor Pearson by [6 min read] How I added awesome multi-threaded features to Express JS Steve Konves by [12 min read] How I Built a Company With a $130M Valuation Howard Marks by [8 min read] How I got hired by Google, why I left, and why I chose to join OKCoin Alex Feinberg by [11 min read] How to build a roadmap in 3½ steps Momčilo Dakić by [5 min read] How to Start a Software Company as a Non-Technical Entrepreneur Andrew Gazdecki by [7 min read] Is coding becoming obsolete? (Part I) Levon by [4 min read] More NEO: the Rolls Royce of crypto-tokens (and that’s a bad thing) David Gilbertson crypto adventures. by [9 min read} 9 Things You Need To Know About Mesh Networks Lara De Schutter - HypeLabs by [5 min read] Prediction markets are hot AF right now. Igor Feerer by [7 min read] Quantum Computing is Schrödinger’s Opportunity azeem by [8 min read] Reacting to React.js Puyan Wei by [5 min read] So, You Want to Be a PM, but You Aren’t Technical. Read This. Stephen Cognetta by [9 min read] Tensorflow Vs Keras? — Comparison by building a model for image classification. DataTurks: Data Annotations Made Super Easy by [4 min read] The Market Vs. The Frontier Founder Collective by [3 min read] The over-eager programmer Adam Zachary Wasserman by [4 min read] Things to Avoid While Accessing the Deep Web Hardik Patel by [9 min read]. Get votes on your twitter polls via Twitter Data Hacking: A Recipe to Yield Better Startup Insight Kenny Li AMIpolls.com by [15 min read] Understanding promises in Javascript Gokul N K by [8 min read] Using Pa11y CI and Drone as accessibility testing gatekeepers Dominic Fraser by [9 min read] Where is the money for mobile app developers in blockchain? Hammad Tariq by [9 min read] Why I left San Francisco to build my new startup while traveling the world Ariel Camus by [8 mind read] Why is Python so slow? Anthony Shaw by [6 min read] Why Your “Soft Skills” Matter in Building a Culture of Success Erik P.M. Vermeulen by [10 min read] You’re not even criticising Scrum Chris Cooney Hope you enjoy this 6 hours and 7 minutes of . Hacker Noon reading Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted. Kind Regards [ ] David Smooke 24 min read P.S. PubNub , our weekly sponsor, empowers you to build immersive, interactive apps. Chat, maps, dashboards, smart device control — powered by APIs, delivered through global infrastructure. Learn more.

Hacker Noon Founder Interview, & More Top Tech Stories This Week

Zenify Kid Character IN THE BEGINNING My name is Levon Terteryan, I’m the founder of … well… many things. But, in 2012 I decided to take time off from running multiple businesses, shut everything down and set off traveling — first to India and then to other countries. My passive income from renting real estate allowed me to enjoy being a nomad and doing nothing for quite a while (almost 2 years to be precise). Then, I started having that itch of wanting to do something again. Since I was a lot about meditation at that time and dedicating several hours per day to the practice, I wanted to build something useful for others to join the path. One day, I was on the beach reading “Fast Company” about a startup that was tracking people’s sleep. I thought “hey, wouldn’t it be cool to track how conscious or aware people are?” Few people know that we spend most of our awake time not being awake at all. While on auto-pilot, we act unconsciously — rarely fully aware of the things we are doing, often wandering in thoughts, memories or time travel to the . The idea seemed interesting to me, but I didn’t have a clue how it could be possible to measure one’s level of consciousness except mounting portable neuro scanners (I own a set by the way 😀) to someone’s head. But I thought at least I can create a tool to keep someone aware and conscious by sending reminders and meditation assignments during the day to return users’ attention from what they are doing to themselves. So that they would check in to their physical and emotional states, and return to the present moment. The idea seemed simple to me, just compose a list of assignments and reminders and send them to the user. I had put together 70 short meditative assignments that would be sent to users asking them to focus on their emotional, physical or mental states, engaging them through one of the 6 senses or through feeling and thinking. I’ve also composed a handful of awareness reminders just to alert users to be here and now at random intervals throughout their day. learning future LET’S GET IT STARTED I reached out to a developer in Moldova and they quoted me $5,000 for an iOS & Android app + backend + landing page and promised the development would take no more than a couple of months. The budget seemed fine to me and I thought I can afford losing that much money to validate the idea. Needless to say, I ended up spending much more money and time trying to build the app. All kinds of hurdles kept coming my way, development kept being delayed, bugs were popping up and the contractor just didn’t seem to be able to fix everything. Also, not familiar with lean startup methodology and the concept of MVP, I was trying to do everything right, ordering an explainer video, all kinds of marketing materials. Worst of all, when the app was almost finished, I showed the product to a consultant and decided to modify significant parts of it before launching. The redesigns took another 5 months! At the same time, I was paying a marketing consultant to find the right name (it’s called Zenify by the way 😀), to write the script for the animation video and for a whole lot of other things, like trademark registration and making screenshots for the app store, etc. (stuff I would never pay for today 😀). FINALLY When two years and $50K later I finally launched the product, I didn’t realize the most difficult part of running a startup was yet to come — marketing and promotion. I had no idea how to promote apps or online businesses and was just taking random shots in the dark — from Facebook ads, to price drops and other tricks I would come to learn. One day, Buzzfeed decided to write a review of meditation apps and included Zenify on the second spot of that list 😀! This gave us a huge spike of new users, which unfortunately didn’t last long. Some time later, I learned that launching on is a big thing (nowadays, we launch a new product there every week 😀) and so that’s what I did. It gave us another big spike of traffic, which we unfortunately couldn’t sustain either. I translated the app into the 10 most spoken languages (including Chinese, Korean and Japanese), covering about 80–90% of entire possible audience. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t promote the app well enough to generate substantial revenue. At its peak, the app generated about $1,000 in monthly income. Later, revenue dropped to $500/month and now is averaging $300-$400/month. The great thing, though, is I’m not required to do anything except answer occasional support emails 😀. Product Hunt Explainer video for Zenify MOVING ON Emotionally exhausted and disappointed of this project, I was looking for other ways to generate income as my passive one was declining due to devaluation of the local currency. I moved on to found and later , focusing on no-code products and services. We build no-code templates, plugins and provide no-code development services to those who want to build “ ” web and mobile apps fast and at a fraction of the cost. I learned the hard way (as it turned out later, most of the newbies in the field go through something similar) about the dangers of lengthy and costly development procedures. I was quite sure there was something wrong about the way apps were built. Therefore, over the last couple of years, I have been focusing on simplifying the web and mobile app development process. About two weeks ago, we learned about Telegram’s plans to launch their ICO and introduce their own currency, “Gram,” later this year. We recognized the messaging app will be growing fast and started exploring possibilities of building something interesting for it. Bubblewits Zeroqode codeless EPIPHANY Suddenly, we realized Zenify could be a perfect fit for a Telegram Bot — it would send daily assignments and reminders to users. Since I promised myself to never build anything through conventional development again, I looked into the possibility of building the bot on a platform we use, called . With some experimenting, I built the bot myself in 2 weeks. The landing page and the user profile page were built and without spending a dime. without code Bubble without code Today, we are launching Zenify Telegram Bot and if we receive positive feedback from users we’ll do the same for Slack! Check out our updated web-site here zenifyapp.com

How I spent $50K and 2 years building a meditation app and then pivoted to a telegram bot in 2…

We already learned the No-Code Revolution is here to stay (read more about the No-Code Revolution in ). No-Code development is gradually growing, becoming increasingly advanced and attractive to enterprises, small businesses and entrepreneurial individuals. Every day, visual programing platforms enable non-geeks all over the world to build beautiful and functional web applications without writing a single line of code. At the same time, the No-Code revolution is creating new markets for businesses to explore. ( ) But, what is the purpose of this movement and is it really making code obsolete? Part I of Is Coding Becoming Obsolete? Learn how our company, Zeroqode , was built and bootstrapped in the No-Code industry growing to a team of 20 in just 2 years . SPOILER ALERT: We don’t believe the art/skill of writing code is becoming obsolete. Nor do we believe developers will lose their jobs anytime soon. What we do believe is that No-Code is revolutionizing the way Founders, Designers, and Developers build software, by leveraging the power and simplicity of the tools offered, saving time, money and a bunch of headache on the way. And by the way things look like right now — one can only expect this to improve in the years to come. The No-Code Impact Software is ubiquitous and the demand for building web and mobile applications is overwhelming. There are just not enough developers to keep up with the demand. When digging into the history of web development and the appearance of the need of No-Code, we learned that No-Code platforms grew from the limited access of entrepreneurs to skilled and affordable web developers. Also, looking into the future, we see that entrepreneurial individuals or small businesses that previously were unable to unleash their ideas now flood the world with an explosion of creativity. We see three main target groups impacted by the No-Code revolution. First are the Founders who are now able to let their ideas see the world, then the Designers who truly care about both — the visual and functional parts of their creation, and last but not least, the Developers, who love tinkering with code. Let’s look into each group and see how they would benefit from this revolution. Founders The development of successful startups is often a result of from lots of failure. The classic mindset is to write a long term business plan before taking action. The problem is it rarely actually works, because as soon as you launch the product you start noticing and learning that it has issues. learning The Lean Methodology (which we covered briefly on in our ) has a different strategy. You get a feeling about what customer problem(s) you’d like to solve. Then, you build a simple and inexpensive (read: “imperfect”) solution to test your idea. As you collect real user feedback, you learn what you are missing in your product and what customers are truly looking for. Listen, learn, make changes then do it all over again, until your product invokes a “Wow!” reaction from your customers. The road to success is built by failing fast, cheap and often. Don’t get us wrong, we are not encouraging founders to constantly fail. What we are encouraging is constant validation and testing of new hypotheses every step of the way in the real world, not in theory. Startup How to Build an MVP without a technical co-founder and without code You may be wondering how this relates to the No-Code Revolution. Simple — in the most direct way possible! No-Code development platforms are currently so advanced, they enable you to build your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in no time (ok, this is an exaggeration, you totally need to put some time in, but it is much less then when writing code from scratch :) ). Time is not the only thing founders are saving, they are also saving money (if you have been around startups for long, you know time and money are not to be wasted). One of the issues lots of founders are facing today is finding a skilled technical co-founder, or putting together a budget to hire a technical team. The permanent search for that trustworthy technical buddy or financing to build the product takes time away from running a company. No-Code development platforms do not require traditional developer skills. What they do require is a clear vision of the goal, a little time to learn the platform’s interface, and a whole lot of enthusiasm to begin implementing this vision. At this point, No-Code technologies are an ideal option for a startup without a technical co-founder or team to start testing hypothesis, launch an MVP, learn from the feedback and continue improving or pivoting the product until it becomes what the customer wants and is ready to pay for. Designers Articles with a subject lines such as “Why Designers Should Code” are constantly showing up in designers’ news feeds. When reading the authors’ recommendations, the arguments can be convincing. However, designers are practicing design for a reason. If they truly wanted to code, then they would have probably studied development instead. But, how often are designers misunderstood by developers and vice versa? All. The. Time. In the argument, we assume all the designers would want is to be able to do it themselves, without having to explain their creative mind to someone too technical. No-Code development platforms give designers the solution to save them from this headache. Exactly the same time and effort they used to spend sketching in Photoshop on static designs, they can now spend building a fully functional app instead. The creative masterminds can achieve pixel-perfect responsive designs, animations and other visual effects, just like they envisioned it. The best part is that now Designers will maintain the power to do it all by themselves. No “code” needs to be written, no developers involved. It is just about the designer, their project and the functionality behind their design. Developers The most skeptical about the No-Code movement are developers, and this is not surprising anyone. We all know developers are extremely passionate when it comes to their code and have no interest in giving it up. Nor should they. Instead, developers should add No-Code skills to their toolset. We are convinced the No-Code approach could have a positive and exciting impact on developers efficiency. Their algorithmic mindset remains hugely valuable with No-Code platforms, enabling developers to build intricate software and leverage the platform’s capabilities on a whole new level compared to other users. Additionally, No-Code platforms promise developers to save them from the hassle of worrying about hosting or server and database maintenance. Instead, they can focus all their time and energy on defining the app’s architecture and underlying algorithms, coding the parts which they would want to achieve using the code (yep, you can do that too) and using plugin builders SDK to create their own visual elements and workflows both, for sale on the marketplace and personal use. For a lot of developer the “true calling” is to find digital solutions to important problems, and code is just one of the tools they use to fulfill that calling. If we have the possibility to automate a process, there should be no regret in doing so. Just like various pure code-based tools, like IDEs, Testing Kits, Knowledge resources and a bunch of others, No-Code platforms provide the means that allow developers to build solutions faster. The beauty is that they can use the combined power of best of the bost worlds — Code and No-Code (in fact- that’s all parts of one Software Development world in the end the day) to get way more important stuff done. As an inevitable result the developer can save more time and make more money, with their new superhero efficiency. Now, take a moment and think about that beloved code. Isn’t it great? Now think about that one bug hidden somewhere in the lines of code. You now have to painstakingly search the entire codebase to spot it. The frustration a developer experiences in such a situation is endless. When bug hunting on No-Code software, you check the human readable workflow sequences using the inbuilt debuggers and inspect tools — not the entire app structure. If that is not saving you time, we don’t know what will. In a conversation with Emmanuel Straschnov, Founder of , to the question: “ ?” He answered: “ ” Bubble What are currently the greatest barriers inhibiting people from building websites and applications The biggest barrier is the cultural issue people have with visual programming tools. Whether they’re technical or not, people tend to think that if it’s not code it’s not real. There is a cultural shift that needs to be done here. The way to remove barriers is by showing real things can be built and can scale on visual tools. Bubble is doing his part here, as we have a few customers who got into YCombinator, raised money and are working on developing their startups. Looking Ahead: Authors will continue writing articles encouraging more adults and children to learn how to write code. And, we hope some readers will respond positively, becoming the next generation of coders who push the boundaries of technology as we know it. However, not everyone is meant to write code. That’s where No-Code platforms come in to empower the makers of the future. The future we envision is one where software and technology is built seamlessly into human experience. As Jeff Atwood, a software developer, noticed: “When I hear: ‘Everyone must learn to program’ what I hear is: ‘we’re going back in time to a place where you have to be a programmer to do things on the computer.’” One of the biggest strengths of No-Code is allowing us to take advantage of the human potential to solve problems, as it removes coding as the barrier to implementing solutions. No-Code amplifies the potential of humans to innovate. At the same time, let’s not overestimate the revolution. No-Code was not built to replace the work of traditional developers. Instead, No-Code is meant to empower both — those who can and cannot write code, but have bright ideas to share with the world. The progression of coding languages did not end where No-Code started. Instead they are both flourishing in parallel, and there is space for both in the software development, all thanks to the Coders who were not afraid to let the rest of the world step in and taste the awesomeness of programming, with or without code.

Is coding becoming obsolete? (Part II)

Let’s face it, with the speed the tech world is growing at the moment, it’s hard to predict how the art of coding will evolve. What we know is that code sits at the root of all . technology When we reflect on the subject of whether coding is becoming obsolete, opinions vary. Some say machine will replace the need to manually write code, because computers will be trained to code themselves. Others believe that because coding can be tedious, developers will be able to use their analytical skills in more enjoyable ways than writing code. learning We believe the art of coding remains necessary, yet The ability to build a website or application is becoming available to regular people — not just the coding masterminds, by using very powerful, but simple tools. This will very soon change the face of business, technology, and culture. Read the impact of this change in “ ”. web development and programming as a whole is facing a revolution. How I spent $50K in 2 years then pivoted in 2 weeks for $0 History & Overview Before we get to talking about the No-Code Revolution and how this will influence development, let’s stop and reflect on history. Specifically, let’s look at the similarity between software engineers today and telegraph operators in the 19th century. When Samuel Morse developed the telegraph in the 1830s, his invention revolutionized communication. Morse Code was developed, which allowed complex messages to be transmitted through basic inputs. Yet, in order to send or receive a message, you had to have a skilled telegraph operator on each end. The telegraph is not used anymore as a main communication tool, but it stays at the root of other inventions that appeared in 21st century, such as the telephone, fax machine, internet, and smartphones. In order to send a message electronically back in the 19th century, you either had to be capable of writing Morse Code or hiring a telegraph operator to help you send and receive the message. If we draw a parallel, it relates to web development today. If you are looking to build a web or native application, you either have to be capable of writing code or hiring a developer to do it for you. Both telegraph operators then and web developers now had rare skills and experienced good pay. However, for telegraph operators, this comfort and fortune all came to an end once the next evolution of technology rendered their skills obsolete. Could a similar change be quickly approaching web developers? When further considering this subject, the same parallel applies to other events in the history of technology. Сo-founder of , Emmanuel Straschnov, compares the impact visual programming will have on society to the impact word processing applications have made. The average person — heck, the average seven-year-old — who sits at a computer, can now compose and send an electronic document in minutes. Prior to Word processors, this would have required specific skills and considerably more time. (Read more on this subject in this ) Bubble article Similarly, visual programming will make digital creation accessible to the masses. Many have been sitting on ideas for years, but feel constrained by their ability to finance their dream. Visual Programing will provide to such people a powerful social and economic platform that democratizes their ability to maintain an online presence. We’re entering a new age, and it’s going to be beautiful. The Rise of Personal Computing Back in 1880, the U.S. population had grown so large, it took over seven years to tabulate the U.S. census. The government found a faster way to do it by utilizing punch-card based computers, which filled entire rooms. In 1941, computers began storing information on their main memory. In 1946, computers were sold for business and government applications, then the first programing language was invented in 1953, which is now known as COBOL. In 1964, the first prototype of the PC was showcased, and in 1974 a number of PCs hit the market. However, it was not until 1977 when, for the first time, those who could not write code were able to make any use of a personal computer. This timeline provides us perspective into the likely future of web development. Until recently, only coding masterminds were able to build web or native applications. Now, web development is accessible to anyone with access to internet. Soon, advancements in technology will make even the most complex development challenges achievable for the average user. The No-Code Revolution The No-Code Revolution began with the increased popularity of the first visual programing languages. Users were offered the possibility to build a website without the need of writing code, hiring agencies or managing freelancers. Only by dragging and dropping “code blocks” into place, a simple and functional website could be built. But, before we get into the details of the No-Code Revolution, here are some definitions. No-Code development platforms are visually integrated development environments, which allow users to drag-and-drop the components they wish to include in their application, connect them in a logical order and launch a mobile or web application. Such platforms unleash the imagination and creativity of any user — regardless of previous knowledge of traditional programing languages. A user-friendly visual interface allows components and third-party applications to be integrated and tested to make the application look and function as planned. The growth of No-Code Platforms first emerged from the limited access of entrepreneurs to skilled and affordable web developers. Likewise, some development companies felt the need to reduce project turnaround time and release or iterate products more quickly. The movement is gradually growing and analysts at estimate the No-Code/Low-Code market will reach $15 billion by 2020. Forrester Research Together with the creation of Bubble in 2012, it became possible to build not only simple landing pages or blogs, but also web applications with complex logic and functionality. Traditionally, No-Code development platforms allow minor flexibility on the front and back ends. Bubble, however, enables fine tuning down to the pixel and can define how the application reacts to any input. Let’s look at an example. Say you are intending to build a web application with similar functionality to Airbnb or Indiegogo. Due to the rudimentary lack of functionality in traditional No-Code development platforms, building complex web applications would be close to impossible. On Bubble, with a clear idea and time to work on it, nearly anything is possible. Define the data structure, build the visual part and make it live by interconnecting those with the powerful workflows! Learn . How a startup can build an MVP using No-Code Due to the growth and evolution of No-Code development platforms and the vast potential the technology holds to disrupt markets — businesses supporting the No-Code Revolution were created. One such company is — a one-stop-shop for codeless creation. Zeroqode offers complex web app templates, all built on the advanced visual programing platform of Bubble. With their robust, functional and beautiful templates, Zeroqode is ushering us into the No-Code Revolution (read what ). Zeroqode TechCrunch has to say about this In Conclusion As enterprises endure a digital transformation, they become software-driven organizations. The need to hire software development talent has become an unfortunate bottleneck inhibiting the growth of small, medium, and large companies around the globe. No-Code platforms have the ability to disrupt entire industries, as entrepreneurial individuals or small businesses that previously were unable to unleash their ideas now flood the world with an explosion of creativity. As explained by E. Scott Menter, Chief Strategy Officer at BP Logix, “No-Code is here, and it doesn’t care about making your IT organization more efficient, its only purpose is to turn your business into a digitally integrated, audit-defying, silo-resistant object of their customers’ desire.” Web developers are and will remain useful for the foreseeable future. However, it’s clear the No-Code Revolution has arrived, making app and web development accessible to everyday people. P.S. Enjoyed this article? Continue reading about the No-Code Impact and our final conclusions on the future of code in Is Coding Becoming Obsolete? Part II !

Is coding becoming obsolete? (Part I)

TL;DR This article is about how we bootstrapped in an absolutely new niche of No-Code web development. Using DIYs, wide community support, super efficient and affordable marketing we built our development shop from 3 people into a company of 20. The article tells how we are running 2 parallel brands of No-Code Services and No-Code Products. How we became global leaders in the no-code web development niche in less than 2 years, and what we learned along the way. Zeroqode Background From the age of 21 until 32 I was running multiple businesses, most of which were offline. At 32, I decided to take one year off, which in fact stretched over a few years. During this time I spent most of my energy on self growth and oriental practices, after which I decided it was time for me to do something real again :) . In 2015, I had an idea for a niche social but went on building what seemed to me a simpler product — a meditation app. I’ve spent about $50K building it with very little payback (read more about this ). Because of this bad experience, I never wanted to hire developers again in order to implement a idea. network here startup How the Idea was Born One day, I received a newsletter from Product Hunt which featured — an easy to use no-code app building platform. I was intrigued and decided to give Bubble a try. At first, I was put off by their high price. At the time, Bubble was charging per number of visitors. I thought to myself, if the app I intend to build becomes very popular, my monthly overhead will grow far too high. When I checked back a few month later they changed the pricing strategy. Their charging model was now per workflow and it became much more affordable. (Recently, Bubble changed their pricing again and now their monthly plans start only at $14/month.) Bubble This is when I really started to learn the platform. I quickly went through all their basic tutorials and found the builder to be very easy to use. I completed my app in only one week, and most of the time I was polishing the UI rather than building the core functionality. In doing this, I realised I was more excited about the process of building rather than the application itself. This is where the idea crossed my mind — it would be cool to build applications without code for others! I was surprised to find out there were no other companies specializing on building apps without code. I reached out to (co-founder of ) and asked if they would be interested for us to become a Bubble partner and offer no-code web development services based on their platform. It turned out they were, in fact, going to launch their partner program shortly and it was the right time for me to approach Emmanuel. Emmanuel Straschnov Bubble I decided to build a landing page and, because my design skills were lousy (still are to be honest), I found a freelance designer who produced the drafts at the cost of $200. I consider this to be the only investment I put into this business (well, plus the domain name). I called the company because I wanted to reiterate that we focus on web development using Bubble — I figured this would give a “newbie” company more credibility in the eyes of potential clients. Bubblewits I started Bubblewits alone, but about 7 months later Vlad Larin joined me. We met at a coworking space we were residents of. Vlad and I were sharing a desk. In my previous businesses I never had co-founders, preferring the one-man shows. This time, I learned it is great to have a partner you can rely on and share the responsibilities with. At the beginning, we were focused on custom development services and only a few months later we built and published our first no-code app template, which became the foundation for . Zeroqode Getting customers was a whole process within itself and we had to come up with innovative and inexpensive ways to find them. Here is where the official partnership with Bubble came in handy. A significant amount of our clients were referred to us from Bubble’s partner page. Also, we were always very active on Bubble Forum. We were helping other users by posting hacks and solutions for things that were complicated to build on Bubble and we were publishing updates about new products we built, like template and plugins. We branched Zeroqode from Bubblewits out of the need for a better way to promote our products. Before Zeroqode, Bubble Template Marketplace page was the only place to show our products. As more templates were published by other users, the page became too crowded and therefore not structured to our benefit. We were looking for a better way to reach out to our customers and explain how the product works and why it is useful. We launched Zeroqode by featuring our templates, then step by step more products (like , and ) were added to our portfolio. Later on, we started featuring that teach how to build on Bubble. plugins no-code backends web-to-native solutions curated resources All our products are built to help our customers develop their applications up to 10X times faster. No-code app Templates, for instance, are easy to set-up and affordable, they come with built-in functionality and reliable updates.These are not simply design mockups but finished, fully functional, responsive web applications, mostly recreating the functionality of well-known and proven websites or apps. The templates can be modified without code to launch any product faster and with way less costs involved. We have already published dozens of templates and keep building more — from templates that are similar to AirBNB, Linkedin, Instagram, Trello to Backend and Telegram Bots. The goal is to make Zeroqode for complex web applications what Themeforest/Wordpress have become for simpler websites. Bootstrapping Effect on Zeroqode Bootstrapping was never a planned approach. In our case, it was more like a circumstance — it happened naturally. When I thought about resources needed to start the company (landing page and domain name), I realised I only needed a couple hundred dollars and I knew I could afford the costs myself. I wasn’t sure the whole idea would work, so it was just an experiment which turned out to be very successful. None of my previous business were bootstrapped. My first startup was an IT company selling computers and providing IT services. In order to finance the operations, I got a loan from my parents and later a bigger one from a local bank. My other two businesses were related to long distance calling provider through callback and clothing retail operations. For both, I went through the same process. So bootstrapping is new to me. Bootstrapping allowed us more flexibility and freedom in the decision making process. We were able to focus on taking the company toward the goals we set together as a team. When raising funds, often investors will blurr your goal with their own vision for business. your Bootstrapping was an effective way to satisfy our hunger for doing business right. It pushed us to come up with quick and innovative ways for efficiency. It motivated us to get good at what we are doing in a minimal amount of time. We had no extra resources to waste on mistakes. When we failed, we learned so much more out of it just because it was way more painful. For instance, when you receive investment, you have enough funds to hire a team almost immediately. We hired the first employee only 3 months after launching, in May 2016. Our first employee was Anna — a great designer who never did any programming or coding. She learned the platform quickly and is now one of our most proficient Bubble designers/developers. We were the first company in the world (and still are) who train designers to build functional apps without code. In this way, one person can build everything — design, database structure, workflows, APIs, etc.. We hire very carefully and only when we can afford it, but as our business has grown, we’ve been able to grow from a team of 2 to a team of 20. Another relevant example is marketing. The main challenge of any startup nowadays is marketing and promotion. Startups that get financing can allocate significant marketing budgets. Since we couldn’t afford it, we had to look into guerilla marketing alternatives that wouldn’t cost us much. Our Guerilla Marketing Strategy They say you need to spend money to make money, and in most cases this is true. But when you make a decision to bootstrap your startup, there is often a very limited budget to spend or spending money on marketing might not be an option at all. With this being our case we were pushed to be creative and come up with efficient and on budget marketing solutions. When I was working on building Zenify — the meditation application, I learned launching on was a very significant source of traffic and new users. So, we launched Zeroqode on Product Hunt as well. The launch was successful and we got the #3 Product of the Day badge, which gave us significant traffic boost (read more about ). We also launched our new templates and side projects on Product Hunt to gather feedback and let the community know about our news. One of the most successful side project we’ve built was which is the biggest library of API collections for Postman tool. This project was built on our in 2 weeks only. We also launched our new products on and for extra traction. Product Hunt How we got 800+ upvotes on Product Hunt Postman Collections Product Hunt clone template Designer News Hacker News To focus our audience’s attention even more, we launched two “Best Startup Idea” Competitions, where we gave away templates for first, second and third place. We announced the competition on platforms like , , and . Indie Hackers Reddit HackerNews our forum Showcasing your startup in an international conference is also a great way to let the world know about yourself. We were able to get sponsored by a local support organisation to exhibit at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin. At the conference we won an award called “Wild Card” which gave us the opportunity to get interviewed for TechCrunch’s news portal and get worldwide exposure (read what and learn more about ). TechCrunch wrote about us How We Won Wild Card at TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin Another conference we attended is STEP in Dubai, which allowed us to enlarge our audience even more, and connect with potential clients and partners from a totally new and unique region. Future of Zeroqode Development When analyzing where the company should go moving forward, we decided to stay committed to bootstrapping. We do not require big budgets, unless we choose to spend a lot of money on marketing. Fortunately, our guerilla strategy is working well for us. At the moment, raising investment would distract us from running the business, forcing us to deal with all the formalities and procedures required to get funded. Also, we don’t want to release control of the company and decision making process. Yet, we will be revising our business strategy when we reach the next level, and make new decisions based on the situation at that moment in time. Lessons Learned Bootstrapping is not applicable for every startup out there. The decision to bootstrap does not have to be the only way and there is no ideal capitalization structure for growing a company. Some companies start off bootstrapping and later fundraise. Some never raise funds, while others don’t stand a chance without investment. If you have a huge opportunity of disrupting the industry and fast execution and capital are core to your possibility of success, then seeking investment is probably the only way. Bootstrapping fits the opposite. While determining whether to bootstrap or seek investment, consider your priorities, opportunities, and your market dynamics. Then, make an educated choice that fits your scenario. We made ours, and it has been working great for us so far. 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How We Bootstrapped Our No-Code Web Development Startup to a Team of 20 in 2 Years

How many times have you had an idea for a , but stopped yourself from actually doing it because you had no technical co-founder and didn’t have the skills to build it yourself? I know, a lot of us have been there. startup The great news is you no longer need to have technical skills, or a technical co-founder to build your product. In this article, I will walk you through the process of building an MVP without writing a single line of code. What’s an MVP? Let’s put first things first — “MVP” is short for “Minimum Viable Product”. The concept of building and quickly testing the first version of your product is at the heart of the Lean Startup movement, started by Steve Blank and Eric Ries. Lean Startup revolutionized the manner and speed at which entrepreneurs launch their startups (no longer does one write an infinitely long business plan, spend years on research and development, and launch the product once it feels 100% ready). The “Lean Startup” way of thinking tells us to develop the minimum amount of features in a product to sufficiently deliver the core value proposition, launch it, then measure and learn how to develop from there. Continuous testing and improvement of your app is meant to enable you to move from a first version to a final version as efficiently and accurately as possible. The term “Minimum Viable Product” became widely popularised by Eric Ries with the launch of The Lean Startup book in 2011. Eric Ries describes a minimum viable product as: “[the] version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated about customers with the least effort”. Think of the MVP as a prototype, which has the sole purpose of validating whether or not your customers are willing to pay for your solution. By using an MVP to quickly validate your ability to satisfy customers and their ability to pay, you reduce the immense cost and risk of building the product. learning wrong 5 ways to build your MVP on your own So, how can you build an MVP without a technical co-founder? If you join an accelerator or startup support program, expect the first recommendation you’ll hear to be “find yourself a technical co-founder.” Having technical talent in the founding team is like having a partner in crime, comes with a load of benefits. For instance, there is always someone responsible for developing and updating the product. Someone just as dedicated to the startup as you are, who will be involved not only in the technical aspects, but in business strategy and marketing as well. Unfortunately, finding a co-founder like this can be a real challenge by itself. Outsourcing technical development requires a budget, and sadly most early stage startups are unable to afford this. Hire freelance technical talent. I know, it’s hard and time consuming! But think about it — what a great way to enhance your skill set! You have full control over the development process. Building an MVP by yourself will take longer if you don’t have any technical background or understanding of coding. Yet, the internet is full of great free and paid for resources to teach yourself build your own product with and without code. Do it yourself (DIY). . In a lot of cases (more than one would think) a well-built template that is a close match to your idea is all you need to get started. Usually, templates provide the baseline functionality you can then customize to suit your needs. It is true, templates on platforms such as Wordpress sometimes limit your website’s flexibility. But there are other platform-based templates that don’t have that limitation! More on that in the point #5! Use a template . If you have the financial capability, you may hire a team of professionals to build your product for you. This is a relatively costly option compared to the previous three. Prices vary depending on the time needed to build your product, the complexity of your requirements and on the framework used to build your product. Hire an agency For most startups, this is hands-down the fastest and most efficient way to build, test and launch an MVP. No-code building platforms like give a founder with no technical background the opportunity to build a web or native application simply by dragging and dropping around the elements of the app. It is faster and way easier than learning how to code. Building on no-code app building platforms provides complete control over your development process, leading to less effort invested in the product and the ability to quickly pivot and iterate. No-code app building platforms. Bubble It just so happens that provides you with a range of no-code tools and templates. can build the app for you without code with lightning speed and efficiency. :) Zeroqode Bubblewits Either way you go, you’re guaranteed to save money and time, and launch your MVP as quickly as possible. What’s next? You are the best judge to decide which of the above options is best for you. A lot of ideas for the products and services that passionate people are coming up with have the potential to be real game-changers in their industries. If you choose not to implement it just because you have no technical skills or someone said you can not be successful without a technical co-founder, the world may miss out big time. Looking for No-Code Templates that fit your startup idea? Check out Zeroqode for inspiration! ! In need of a team to build the product for you? Reach out to us here Bubblewits

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