Got fired? Ready to start a startup/new project?

53 points by meisterbrendan 5 years ago | 42 comments
With all the layoffs from Uber, Lyft, AirBnB and others, I'm guessing a lot of great people are about to build new projects and startups.

Want to post below what you're working on and ask for the help you need? This is about finding collaborators/cofounders, not jobs/employees.

I'm also starting a list of people who are working on new things & want collaborators/cofounders, or people who are ready to build but are casting about for what to work on. Post your projects and ideas and email/chat/Zoom with the people you find interesting.

I'm putting it behind a form so that recruiters don't jump on and spam message everyone. If you wanna get on the list, sign up here: https://bmac-design.typeform.com/to/RbA4JL

  • smichel17 5 years ago
    Snowdrift.coop is a crowdfunding platform specifically for free/libre/open (FLO) public goods -- freely-licensed software, music, journalism, research, etc. It's based on a new funding mechanism we call Crowdmatching, where patrons pledge to support projects with a monthly donation proportional to the number of others making the same pledge ($1 per 1000 patrons).

    We operate as a non-profit cooperative. The site itself is free software, written in Haskell (yesod) and we've also tried to stick with FLO tooling whenever possible, although we made an exception for hosting our source code, which is at https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/snowdrift

    Of course, as a free software project, we suffer from the same funding issues we're trying to solve. The project is currently a 100% volunteer effort, and we're making slow (but nonzero!) progress towards our initial launch, when we start hosting our first outside projects.

    One of our biggest bottlenecks right now is developer bandwidth. We have a handful of updated designs that address UX issues with the live site, and need to get them implemented -- if you know css, haskell, or both, we'd appreciate help!

    I'm heading to bed now but will check in with this thread in the morning; you can also reach out on our discourse forum (<https://community.snowdrift.coop>), irc/matrix (#snowdrift on freenode; #snowdrift:matrix.org), or gitlab.

    • meisterbrendan 5 years ago
      Damn! Sounds super worthy. Wish I could help--rock on!
    • k00b 5 years ago
      I'm building https://choremate.co with a working tagline of 'The Best Chore Chart in the World.' Living with other people tends to suck and I know it can be better.

      I'm also working on Crisp https://github.com/huumn/crisp which is a cryptocurrency written is Lisp. It's currently a toy meant for exploring, but what I want to do is have the transaction language be designed around spawning subchains. A blockchain for creating blockchains.

      For Choremate, I definitely need help around marketing and UX flow. For Crisp, it'd be nice to just have someone to talk about it with, find other maintainers, etc.

      • meisterbrendan 5 years ago
        Yo I'm a UX designer. Hit me up I advise early stage people on flows all the time.
      • planert41 5 years ago
        Legit - Twitch for Foodies

        Legit helps you find, curate and share your favorite food/restaurant recommendations with friends using your mobile food photos.

        Have a map of all the ramen your friends have tried and vouch for (pinned with photos, ratings and captions) when you visit Tokyo.

        See all the restaurants your friends' have tried nearby, wherever you are, with a feed of all your friends' food photos, sortable by distance with a tap.

        Imagine having a map of all the restaurants Anthony Bourdain has tried around the world.

        We believe that when it comes to looking for good food, Friend-sourcing > Crowd-sourcing, because your friends share a similar taste in food with you.

        People are already taking too many photos of their food, but those photos usually just sit in your photo album doing nothing. We want you to harness the data (and meta-data) from your food photos, to journal and curate all your favorite culinary experiences, so that you can share them with the people you love.

        I'm the IOS dev building this out with some non-technical friends. We are currently in private beta with friends and family. We are potentially looking for someone to help with the Android/Web version, ideally someone who wants to work with Flutter.

        We will be launching through several Foodie Facebook groups soon and plan to eventually work with food/travel content producers. We think that foodies and food/travel content producers are currently underserved by Instagram and YouTube.

        Please reach out if anyone is interested in downloading the beta app or learning more about Legit. We are super excited to build the new Twitch for Foodies.

        weizouang@gmail.com

        • meisterbrendan 5 years ago
          I'm a designer here in SF. I'm VERY EARLY in exploring an idea. The problem: calls where I'm trying to catch up with more than 5 or so friends aren't great. If you think about an actual house party, there's a room with music playing where you hang out and don't talk so much, but there are also other spaces, like talking by the food table or going to get a drink and striking up a conversation. None of those constructs, where the space dictates the interaction, exist in video apps that I'm aware of. Basically I'm interested in making large, remote video events feel intimate and think that the concept of "rooms" that you can move into or out of, while still being part of the main event, are pretty key. Right now just starting with some user research. Any smart designers/engineers/product people--even if you just want to noodle about the problem for 15 min--are most welcome to reach out.
          • propogandist 5 years ago
            • meisterbrendan 5 years ago
              So the Zoom feature is cool. It's made for task-oriented things, like an activity divided into small groups and the person organizing it is the organizer of the event. It's highly structured. The analog version of what zoom has is a breakout session at a corporate retreat. The organizer of the event is in control and you retain your groups.

              What I want to see is a user navigating rooms herself. The interactions I imagine are pretty different even though the functionality is superficially similar. This is early, I'm sure my thinking will change a lot. Thanks for the link though!

            • eschutte2 5 years ago
              Does Sococo do something like this? https://www.sococo.com/why-sococo/
              • kls 5 years ago
                So one of the remote contracts I worked used this tool, when I first saw and used it, I thought it was the dumbest idea ever. After using it for a while, I think it is one of the most brilliant remote collaboration tools out there. My only gripe was when someone leave your room, the app should notify you after a short period of time, that you have left your mic on. I did not like the idea of it being easy to leave a hot mic on.
                • meisterbrendan 5 years ago
                  Very cool! Wasn't familiar with them before. Thanks for the link! Same general space but I'm thinking about it from a social angle more than a work angle... might be the same problem and might not need separate tools. We'll see!
                • tomrohlf 5 years ago
                  This sounds super interesting, I've found the same thing in my interactions with various remote social apps. I'll DM
                  • cody3222 5 years ago
                    I had this same concept in my mind when using the Houseparty app and thinking about what I'd actually wish it did!
                  • lksslr 5 years ago
                    Similar idea, early stage, but already a working concept: We are working on https://laptopsinspace.neesh.de

                    Edit: no mobile support yet

                    • meisterbrendan 5 years ago
                      super cool. what are you doing with it? what are you trying to make?
                      • lksslr 5 years ago
                        Thanks :) we have a couple of features lined up specifically targeted at (music) events, but are also putting some energy into making it suitable for artist talks and panels.
                    • gwehrli 5 years ago
                      Discord has all of this. You can even use a bot like Groovy for Music.
                      • sjg007 5 years ago
                        You're not the only one working on this.
                        • ejanus 5 years ago
                          I would like to get involved.
                        • pyepye 5 years ago
                          PKG Deploy (https://www.pkgdeploy.com) - More than a few times I have wanted to create either RPM or DEB packages but the barrier to entry always seemed rather high.

                          Then while conducting interviews with what recruiters were calling senior engineers it became quite apparent that many people will still manually deploying code using a bunch of manual commands. Something packages are good for.

                          So I decided to start creating a way to make Linux packaging easier. I'm not sure if the idea has legs as people move more and more towards containers and serverless architecture but it's been refreshing to build something for myself.

                          • johntash 5 years ago
                            It's been a long time since I've used it, but you may be interested in https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm if you haven't seen it before.
                            • freedomben 5 years ago
                              Also been a long time since I used it, but it was amazing for one project and incredibly frustrating for another. Worth a look for sure, but if you run into issues don't spin your wheels.
                            • mindentropy 5 years ago
                              This is good for IoT devices etc. There is a lot of major/minor upgrades that need to be done and such a tool can be helpful.
                            • econcon 5 years ago
                              Converting Plastic Waste into 3d printer filament

                              Project: https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho...

                              Hopefully, this will reduce the use of virgin plastic for creating art pieces in 3d printing community and you might be able to create beautiful and useful things out of waste plastic while cleaning plastic waste from the environment.

                              It's a profitable business.

                              I worked on this in my free time during quarantine.

                              I want to make the project more accessible so people around the world can develop local recycling unit. There is lots of work which needs to be done including making parts more standardized, demonstrating how parts fight together in a visual way and also have a microcontroller firmware to control diameter of filament.

                              I need help from someone who can write Arduino code, mostly includes reading diameter from a guage and then change the motor speed of puller roller so that it stretches the filament if filament diameter is more than target and slows down the stretch if filament diameter is less than the target diameter. This needs PID control.

                              Telegram: alexfromtokyo

                              • braunshedd 5 years ago
                                I'm curious about how you're tackling some of the problems I've seen with prior recycled-plastic-to-filament projects. IIRC printer filament is very sensitive to moisture and impurities, which are hard to control for when using recycled materials (even when mixing with a proportion of virgin plastic)
                                • econcon 5 years ago
                                  I buy shredded waste plastic.

                                  Which means = they take car dashboard, wash it with water/solvent then shred it into very tiny pieces.

                                  I take it and dry it in oven then I put that in an airtight jar, and let it cool to room temperature over next 24 hours.

                                  I mix it with some virgin plastic (also dried and stored in airtight container)

                                  Then I pour the plastic into hopper and extrude it into filament.

                                  This filament is made from recycled blue ABS: https://youtu.be/Xirli3qDJlU

                                • ejanus 5 years ago
                                  I will like to participate. You will hear from me soon.
                                • mrjivraj 5 years ago
                                  I'm obsessed with the stock market, so I started writing about stocks last summer: https://playingfordoubles.substack.com

                                  +Would love to discuss/co-author interesting investment ideas

                                  +Would love to collab with eng/marketing to help grow readership

                                  +Would love to chat about some data visualization ideas if that's something you're good at

                                  Thanks!

                                  • Aura369 5 years ago
                                    I'm planning a launch for a digital marketing agency for funded start-ups with a focus on tech/medical/IT/saas. Along with paying clients, also take on a couple of probono projects; innovative ideas which have intent to change the economy by putting an emphasis on strengthening communities and education. All based on a strategy of positioning which is - New Marketing vs the old (no one wants to be marketed anything right now). I'm located in Israel, but looking for great thinkers in every industry all over, with new ideas - emphasis on new vs old.

                                    If anyone is interested, and is a constant student of analytics, marketing and never assumes they know all there is to know - reach out and let's connect. auramge369@gmail

                                    • bsldld 5 years ago
                                      I was not fired, but still like to post it here:

                                      Attempting an opensource non-profit moonshot project to reduce student debt and increase salary of everyone involved in that student's education. It is at a very early stage. Trying to get as much inputs from everyone who matters. Details are here: https://gitlab.com/bsldld/s/-/blob/master/README.md

                                      Everyone is welcome to join.

                                      • 3ra 5 years ago
                                        Smartlights

                                        A network of connected IoT-type stoplights that use sensors to read traffic patterns and most optimally direct traffic based on math

                                        :)

                                        • meisterbrendan 5 years ago
                                          That sounds dope! Need help with it? What kind?
                                        • WesternStar 5 years ago
                                          Unless my interviews go better than I expect them to I'm working on a prober that automatically updates probes for data systems where the read path can be fairly heterogenous like SQL where the result size and the query time can vary fairly widely.
                                          • imvetri 5 years ago
                                            https://github.com/imvetri/ui-editor

                                            Building this to stop frontend from getting overcomplicated

                                            • Antoninus 5 years ago
                                              Recently laid off, looking for TS/Go projects.
                                              • nocubicles 5 years ago
                                                hei, hit me up to discuss TS/Go projects.
                                              • matthewfelgate 5 years ago
                                                I'm ready to do something.
                                              • Jordantanjunwen 5 years ago
                                                I will sign up for this