The great firewall of China: Xi Jinping’s internet shutdown
26 by nwrk | 1 comments on Hacker News.
Saturday, 30 June 2018
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Trump says Dems will be "beaten so badly" if they campaign on abolishing ICE
06/30/18 1:37 PM
Trump says Dems will be "beaten so badly" if they campaign on abolishing ICE
06/30/18 1:37 PM
New top story on Hacker News: Old CS lecturer looking for advice from current and recent students
Old CS lecturer looking for advice from current and recent students
5 by geophile | 2 comments on Hacker News.
I am 61, with an academic background in computer science, and many years in industry, mostly startups. I taught many years ago, and have resumed teaching, a database course: data modeling, relational algebra, SQL, application programming and architecture (e.g. 2-tier vs. 3-tier, web & mobile), database internals. Student evaluations were pretty good for the most part, but quite a few students found the presentation a bit dry: I prepared every lecture as HTML ahead of time, made it available online, and presented it in class. A couple of times, I would do interactive things, e.g. tuning queries using EXPLAIN and playing with indexes. That proved pretty popular, but of course, it's difficult to capture this material, (I recorded a log of the session, but extemperaneous discussion was not captured). Looking for advice on how to balance prepared material and more spontaneous things. Also, any other advice on how to make material of this sort (theory + practice) easier to absorb.
5 by geophile | 2 comments on Hacker News.
I am 61, with an academic background in computer science, and many years in industry, mostly startups. I taught many years ago, and have resumed teaching, a database course: data modeling, relational algebra, SQL, application programming and architecture (e.g. 2-tier vs. 3-tier, web & mobile), database internals. Student evaluations were pretty good for the most part, but quite a few students found the presentation a bit dry: I prepared every lecture as HTML ahead of time, made it available online, and presented it in class. A couple of times, I would do interactive things, e.g. tuning queries using EXPLAIN and playing with indexes. That proved pretty popular, but of course, it's difficult to capture this material, (I recorded a log of the session, but extemperaneous discussion was not captured). Looking for advice on how to balance prepared material and more spontaneous things. Also, any other advice on how to make material of this sort (theory + practice) easier to absorb.
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Hundreds of thousands rally across US for illegal immigrant families separated at border
06/30/18 11:35 AM
Hundreds of thousands rally across US for illegal immigrant families separated at border
06/30/18 11:35 AM
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Smart Fruit – A Python schema-based machine learning library
Show HN: Smart Fruit – A Python schema-based machine learning library
31 by madman_bob | 4 comments on Hacker News.
I've made a small Python library, designed for quick-and-easy prototyping of machine learning models. It's built on top of scikit-learn, to serialize and deserialize data from the forms you're likely to have, to the format used in scikit-learn. https://ift.tt/2IC2PBO It's pretty bare-bones at the moment, but I thought I'd see if there was any interest before spending too much time on it. Let me know what you think.
31 by madman_bob | 4 comments on Hacker News.
I've made a small Python library, designed for quick-and-easy prototyping of machine learning models. It's built on top of scikit-learn, to serialize and deserialize data from the forms you're likely to have, to the format used in scikit-learn. https://ift.tt/2IC2PBO It's pretty bare-bones at the moment, but I thought I'd see if there was any interest before spending too much time on it. Let me know what you think.
New best story on Hacker News: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
563 by ScottAaronson | 282 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, We recently recorded a podcast (https://ift.tt/2Mwp3Hz) where I discussed my research, AI, and advice for nerds in general or people who want careers in science. We covered many but not all of the questions submitted over the internet so AMA!
563 by ScottAaronson | 282 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, We recently recorded a podcast (https://ift.tt/2Mwp3Hz) where I discussed my research, AI, and advice for nerds in general or people who want careers in science. We covered many but not all of the questions submitted over the internet so AMA!
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Supreme Court Justice nominee coming July 9, Trump says
06/29/18 5:41 PM
Supreme Court Justice nominee coming July 9, Trump says
06/29/18 5:41 PM
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What's the best way to handle internal tech support?
Ask HN: What's the best way to handle internal tech support?
3 by underyx | 3 comments on Hacker News.
My company has around 1000 CS reps and 200 engineers. The CS reps very often need to ask the engineers questions, report bugs heard about from customers, etc. Us engineers also get bug reports about the internal tools we've developed for CS. Currently, all this is handled via a simple Slack channel. This is actually great, since there's no bureaucratic cost to getting in touch, unlike with a proper ticketing system, and having actual public conversations is the fastest way to resolve issues. But of course, we started seeing inefficiencies in other aspects. The same questions keep being asked over and over again. There's an FAQ linked in the channel topic and it's automatically posted in the channel every 12 hours, but it's still not enough, we still get tons of questions that could be self-solved without engineers' intervention. So, that made me curious, how are other companies handling this? Could we somehow maybe auto-respond to Slack messages with the correct answer with some bot, or just come up with something that actually makes people check the FAQs before posting? Or is there some way better solution to replace all this?
3 by underyx | 3 comments on Hacker News.
My company has around 1000 CS reps and 200 engineers. The CS reps very often need to ask the engineers questions, report bugs heard about from customers, etc. Us engineers also get bug reports about the internal tools we've developed for CS. Currently, all this is handled via a simple Slack channel. This is actually great, since there's no bureaucratic cost to getting in touch, unlike with a proper ticketing system, and having actual public conversations is the fastest way to resolve issues. But of course, we started seeing inefficiencies in other aspects. The same questions keep being asked over and over again. There's an FAQ linked in the channel topic and it's automatically posted in the channel every 12 hours, but it's still not enough, we still get tons of questions that could be self-solved without engineers' intervention. So, that made me curious, how are other companies handling this? Could we somehow maybe auto-respond to Slack messages with the correct answer with some bot, or just come up with something that actually makes people check the FAQs before posting? Or is there some way better solution to replace all this?
Friday, 29 June 2018
New top story on Hacker News: Announcing an Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
Announcing an Easier Way to Build Alexa Skills Using Python
4 by happy-go-lucky | 0 comments on Hacker News.
4 by happy-go-lucky | 0 comments on Hacker News.
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: How do Google's iOS apps track your identity even after reinstalling?
Ask HN: How do Google's iOS apps track your identity even after reinstalling?
2 by krishanath | 1 comments on Hacker News.
I uninstalled all Google's apps from my iPhone and reinstalled them. Even after re-installation, Google Maps still knows the Google account you previously signed into. How do they persist identity on your device? Doesn't iOS remove data when you delete the app? How can you force-remove the sticky identity whether or not an app allows you to?
2 by krishanath | 1 comments on Hacker News.
I uninstalled all Google's apps from my iPhone and reinstalled them. Even after re-installation, Google Maps still knows the Google account you previously signed into. How do they persist identity on your device? Doesn't iOS remove data when you delete the app? How can you force-remove the sticky identity whether or not an app allows you to?
New top story on Hacker News: Eight low-tech ways to keep cool in a heatwave (2013)
Eight low-tech ways to keep cool in a heatwave (2013)
5 by vanilla-almond | 0 comments on Hacker News.
5 by vanilla-almond | 0 comments on Hacker News.
New top story on Hacker News: I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA
10 by ScottAaronson | 1 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, We recently recorded a podcast (https://ift.tt/2Mwp3Hz) where I discussed my research, AI, and advice for nerds in general or people who want careers in science. We covered many but not all of the questions submitted over the internet so AMA!
10 by ScottAaronson | 1 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, We recently recorded a podcast (https://ift.tt/2Mwp3Hz) where I discussed my research, AI, and advice for nerds in general or people who want careers in science. We covered many but not all of the questions submitted over the internet so AMA!
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Capital Gazette shooting suspect blocked staffers from escaping rampage: official
06/29/18 12:05 PM
Capital Gazette shooting suspect blocked staffers from escaping rampage: official
06/29/18 12:05 PM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
New mugshot released of alleged Capital Gazette gunman
06/29/18 8:05 AM
New mugshot released of alleged Capital Gazette gunman
06/29/18 8:05 AM
New best story on Hacker News: Twitter Will Show Who Pays for Ads and How Much They Spend
Twitter Will Show Who Pays for Ads and How Much They Spend
298 by champagnepapi | 59 comments on Hacker News.
298 by champagnepapi | 59 comments on Hacker News.
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Suspect in Capital Gazette killings charged with 5 counts of first-degree murder
06/29/18 6:04 AM
Suspect in Capital Gazette killings charged with 5 counts of first-degree murder
06/29/18 6:04 AM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Annapolis newspaper shooting suspect ID'd as Jarrod W. Ramos, AP reports
06/28/18 10:15 PM
Annapolis newspaper shooting suspect ID'd as Jarrod W. Ramos, AP reports
06/28/18 10:15 PM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Programming Alert: Fox News’ Florida GOP gubernatorial debate at 6:30 pm ET
06/28/18 6:04 PM
Programming Alert: Fox News’ Florida GOP gubernatorial debate at 6:30 pm ET
06/28/18 6:04 PM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
At least 5 dead in shooting at Annapolis newsroom, officials say
06/28/18 4:54 PM
At least 5 dead in shooting at Annapolis newsroom, officials say
06/28/18 4:54 PM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
'Multiple' deaths, suspect caught after reports of shots fired outside Maryland newspaper office, sheriff says
06/28/18 3:16 PM
'Multiple' deaths, suspect caught after reports of shots fired outside Maryland newspaper office, sheriff says
06/28/18 3:16 PM
New top story on Hacker News: Classic 1984 video game Robot Odyssey available online
Classic 1984 video game Robot Odyssey available online
39 by PeterMikhailov | 7 comments on Hacker News.
39 by PeterMikhailov | 7 comments on Hacker News.
New top story on Hacker News: Twitter Will Show Who Pays for Ads and How Much They Spend
Twitter Will Show Who Pays for Ads and How Much They Spend
254 by champagnepapi | 47 comments on Hacker News.
254 by champagnepapi | 47 comments on Hacker News.
New top story on Hacker News: How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware
How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware
222 by dvfjsdhgfv | 51 comments on Hacker News.
222 by dvfjsdhgfv | 51 comments on Hacker News.
New top story on Hacker News: Launch HN: Brex (YC W17) – Corporate Credit Card for Startups
Launch HN: Brex (YC W17) – Corporate Credit Card for Startups
153 by hdubugras | 95 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN – We are Henrique and Pedro of Brex ( https://brex.com/ ). We've built a corporate credit card for startups that has high limits, an instant online application and no personal guarantees. Pedro and I built our first payments business in Brazil, Pagar.me, when we were teenagers. We came to the U.S. to attend Stanford. We joined YC W17 and realized quickly – even with a seed round in the millions – that we could not get a corporate credit card. We are Brazilian, young, and do not have U.S. credit. Even if we did have credit – we know that personally guaranteeing a credit card makes no sense for a business (more on that later). In Brazil, we raised $300K initially (when we were 16) from an investor that was willing to take a chance on us. In Brazil, even though there are 200 million people, there is very little venture capital financing and limited startup infrastructure (accelerators, resources, technical talent, executives experienced with high growth). We knew that $300K was all we were getting, so we had to find a business that could be cash flow positive quickly. It was easier to do that accepting payments online (which naturally generates cash), but it was an operational challenge for sure. We were able to grow quickly in Brazil because we hit the market at the right time, as ecommerce was transitioning to online payments and because we, better than any of the foreign competitors, understood the nuance of Brazil. Specifically on that point, in Brazil the consumer has the option to pay for any card transaction in installments, and that requires a cash outflow for the merchant. Pagar.me figured out how to productize that best to the online market there. When we got to the U.S., we assumed that the payments system here would be significantly more mature and sophisticated than it was in Brazil, however that was not the case. Particularly on the issuing side (banks extending credit cards), there has been very little innovation or using technology to innovate on features. That is how Brex was born. Over the past year we’ve been incubating and improving and just launched with an online self-signup that lets you get access to a virtual card in minutes. We waited to launch until we had this feature, as we know how much of a pain it is to go through the back and forth of online and paper-based applications. Brex underwrites by connecting directly with your bank account, which means we can offer higher limits than other cards, often 10x-20x more. From a software perspective, we rebuilt all of the payments tech from scratch, which we learned how to do in our last business. Even then, to build Brex it was still grueling having to deal with the obscure regulations surrounding Know Your Customer (KYC), heavy oversight from banking partners, and complexities associated with interacting directly with Visa. In doing so, we built awesome features like instant virtual cards issued to you and your team and we solved something this time that has been bugging us forever – the fact that you can never tell what a credit card charge is on your statement! We changed the data to give you the actual merchant / vendor and a link to the website. When we did this, we also realized we could do something really unique with receipts – because we know the actual vendor / merchant, we can match any receipt sent to us via SMS or email to your transaction immediately. No need to save receipts or deal with other integrations that have a huge delay between matching a receipt to a transaction, we do it in real time. Interestingly, from a technical standpoint, we did all this in Elixir. We thought it would be a good choice (and so far we are happy with our decision) because of the distributed nature of the systems that we built and we could rely on the Erlang VM to provide that infrastructure out-of-the-box. Our domain knowledge from Pagar.me allowed us to anticipate the system boundaries and therefore we could build our backend as a distributed system from day one. Another unusual feature about the Brex launch is that we are launching relatively late in our history and with a pretty significant amount of capital from our Series B. We launched the business at YC, but based on our background with Pagar.me and that we were focused on payments again, we raised a ~$7M seed round in Spring 2017. That round was led by Ribbit Capital – which we liked given our connection to Micky there and their expertise in Fintech. YC Continuity led our Series B. In both rounds, for us, it’s all about the relationship with the partner and firm, and we have been huge beneficiaries of the YC ecosystem. On a personal note, for us the non-personal guarantee aspect of our product is most salient. As I mentioned, we are foreign entrepreneurs who don’t have access to banking products in the U.S. It was demoralizing to come to the U.S. after being successful in Brazil and not be able to get a card – especially given how much activity, particularly online, requires a credit card. Personal guarantees mean an entrepreneur who has already taken a ton of risk has to further put their personal financials on the line, which even if the company pays on time, can hurt his or her credit. One aspect of the product that we’d love HN feedback on is the signup flow. We gathered great feedback from our beta, and we waited to launch until we had an instant signup product. In financial services, signup flows have meaningfully more constraints than do many consumer signup flows – particularly compared to those with freemium models. For example, we need to collect business information to comply with regulations around anti-money laundering and Know Your Customer standards, as well as ensure the customer’s ability to pay and set up autopay. These constraints mean not only a longer signup flow, but also one that integrates many third party vendors to do compliance, fraud and credit checks. The more integrations and data to handle, the more edge cases we need to be able to support seamlessly. It took a ton of engineering effort to get here, plus a lot of time enhancing our compliance processes and credit framework. In light of those constraints, we’re specifically looking for user feedback on whether or not the flow feels logical, intuitive and simple – and if there are adjustments to the order, text or design that could improve the UI. But we're interested to hear any of your ideas and experiences and discuss the Fintech space generally too. Thanks for taking the time to read this, we’re really happy to be posting here :) Henrique and Pedro
153 by hdubugras | 95 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN – We are Henrique and Pedro of Brex ( https://brex.com/ ). We've built a corporate credit card for startups that has high limits, an instant online application and no personal guarantees. Pedro and I built our first payments business in Brazil, Pagar.me, when we were teenagers. We came to the U.S. to attend Stanford. We joined YC W17 and realized quickly – even with a seed round in the millions – that we could not get a corporate credit card. We are Brazilian, young, and do not have U.S. credit. Even if we did have credit – we know that personally guaranteeing a credit card makes no sense for a business (more on that later). In Brazil, we raised $300K initially (when we were 16) from an investor that was willing to take a chance on us. In Brazil, even though there are 200 million people, there is very little venture capital financing and limited startup infrastructure (accelerators, resources, technical talent, executives experienced with high growth). We knew that $300K was all we were getting, so we had to find a business that could be cash flow positive quickly. It was easier to do that accepting payments online (which naturally generates cash), but it was an operational challenge for sure. We were able to grow quickly in Brazil because we hit the market at the right time, as ecommerce was transitioning to online payments and because we, better than any of the foreign competitors, understood the nuance of Brazil. Specifically on that point, in Brazil the consumer has the option to pay for any card transaction in installments, and that requires a cash outflow for the merchant. Pagar.me figured out how to productize that best to the online market there. When we got to the U.S., we assumed that the payments system here would be significantly more mature and sophisticated than it was in Brazil, however that was not the case. Particularly on the issuing side (banks extending credit cards), there has been very little innovation or using technology to innovate on features. That is how Brex was born. Over the past year we’ve been incubating and improving and just launched with an online self-signup that lets you get access to a virtual card in minutes. We waited to launch until we had this feature, as we know how much of a pain it is to go through the back and forth of online and paper-based applications. Brex underwrites by connecting directly with your bank account, which means we can offer higher limits than other cards, often 10x-20x more. From a software perspective, we rebuilt all of the payments tech from scratch, which we learned how to do in our last business. Even then, to build Brex it was still grueling having to deal with the obscure regulations surrounding Know Your Customer (KYC), heavy oversight from banking partners, and complexities associated with interacting directly with Visa. In doing so, we built awesome features like instant virtual cards issued to you and your team and we solved something this time that has been bugging us forever – the fact that you can never tell what a credit card charge is on your statement! We changed the data to give you the actual merchant / vendor and a link to the website. When we did this, we also realized we could do something really unique with receipts – because we know the actual vendor / merchant, we can match any receipt sent to us via SMS or email to your transaction immediately. No need to save receipts or deal with other integrations that have a huge delay between matching a receipt to a transaction, we do it in real time. Interestingly, from a technical standpoint, we did all this in Elixir. We thought it would be a good choice (and so far we are happy with our decision) because of the distributed nature of the systems that we built and we could rely on the Erlang VM to provide that infrastructure out-of-the-box. Our domain knowledge from Pagar.me allowed us to anticipate the system boundaries and therefore we could build our backend as a distributed system from day one. Another unusual feature about the Brex launch is that we are launching relatively late in our history and with a pretty significant amount of capital from our Series B. We launched the business at YC, but based on our background with Pagar.me and that we were focused on payments again, we raised a ~$7M seed round in Spring 2017. That round was led by Ribbit Capital – which we liked given our connection to Micky there and their expertise in Fintech. YC Continuity led our Series B. In both rounds, for us, it’s all about the relationship with the partner and firm, and we have been huge beneficiaries of the YC ecosystem. On a personal note, for us the non-personal guarantee aspect of our product is most salient. As I mentioned, we are foreign entrepreneurs who don’t have access to banking products in the U.S. It was demoralizing to come to the U.S. after being successful in Brazil and not be able to get a card – especially given how much activity, particularly online, requires a credit card. Personal guarantees mean an entrepreneur who has already taken a ton of risk has to further put their personal financials on the line, which even if the company pays on time, can hurt his or her credit. One aspect of the product that we’d love HN feedback on is the signup flow. We gathered great feedback from our beta, and we waited to launch until we had an instant signup product. In financial services, signup flows have meaningfully more constraints than do many consumer signup flows – particularly compared to those with freemium models. For example, we need to collect business information to comply with regulations around anti-money laundering and Know Your Customer standards, as well as ensure the customer’s ability to pay and set up autopay. These constraints mean not only a longer signup flow, but also one that integrates many third party vendors to do compliance, fraud and credit checks. The more integrations and data to handle, the more edge cases we need to be able to support seamlessly. It took a ton of engineering effort to get here, plus a lot of time enhancing our compliance processes and credit framework. In light of those constraints, we’re specifically looking for user feedback on whether or not the flow feels logical, intuitive and simple – and if there are adjustments to the order, text or design that could improve the UI. But we're interested to hear any of your ideas and experiences and discuss the Fintech space generally too. Thanks for taking the time to read this, we’re really happy to be posting here :) Henrique and Pedro
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: DeepSpeech based automated transcription service
Show HN: DeepSpeech based automated transcription service
34 by braindead_in | 14 comments on Hacker News.
We have been building a DeepSpeech model with our data for the past year and we have recently hit 95% accuracy on the LibriSpeech dataset. That puts us close to the published results for DeepSpeech 2. However our dataset is conversational audio and we do much better with our own internal dataset compared to PaddlePaddle. Here's a blog post on the method we followed to build our models. https://ift.tt/2N5qCNK... We have been using this internally in our service and it saves a ton of time and effort during the typing stage. It is nowhere near to the accuracy which our transcribers can achieve, but we are getting close. We are offering automated transcripts free for a limited time. Please do try it out. https://ift.tt/2yCZLpi Thanks in advance!
34 by braindead_in | 14 comments on Hacker News.
We have been building a DeepSpeech model with our data for the past year and we have recently hit 95% accuracy on the LibriSpeech dataset. That puts us close to the published results for DeepSpeech 2. However our dataset is conversational audio and we do much better with our own internal dataset compared to PaddlePaddle. Here's a blog post on the method we followed to build our models. https://ift.tt/2N5qCNK... We have been using this internally in our service and it saves a ton of time and effort during the typing stage. It is nowhere near to the accuracy which our transcribers can achieve, but we are getting close. We are offering automated transcripts free for a limited time. Please do try it out. https://ift.tt/2yCZLpi Thanks in advance!
Thursday, 28 June 2018
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Trump and Putin to meet in Helsinki, Finland on July 16, White House says
06/28/18 8:11 AM
Trump and Putin to meet in Helsinki, Finland on July 16, White House says
06/28/18 8:11 AM
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What should we consider when moving to a service mesh architecture?
Ask HN: What should we consider when moving to a service mesh architecture?
4 by ciguy | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I work for a company that's been looking at moving to a service mesh style architecture. They run a few dozen micro-services which are currently Dockerized and deployed on an ECS cluster. We are considering moving to Kubernetes, as ECS has a lot of limitations in the deployment/resiliency area that come more or less standard with Kube. As part of this move we are looking at using a service mesh to enable easier cross region routing on AWS and more dynamic load on various clusters. We were looking into Linkerd as a possible solution, but just noticed that Consul latest release has a service mesh feature now. So for those who've run a service mesh before, what sort of things should I be considering as we evaluate our options? Pros/Cons of specific tools, or service mesh in general are welcome.
4 by ciguy | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I work for a company that's been looking at moving to a service mesh style architecture. They run a few dozen micro-services which are currently Dockerized and deployed on an ECS cluster. We are considering moving to Kubernetes, as ECS has a lot of limitations in the deployment/resiliency area that come more or less standard with Kube. As part of this move we are looking at using a service mesh to enable easier cross region routing on AWS and more dynamic load on various clusters. We were looking into Linkerd as a possible solution, but just noticed that Consul latest release has a service mesh feature now. So for those who've run a service mesh before, what sort of things should I be considering as we evaluate our options? Pros/Cons of specific tools, or service mesh in general are welcome.
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Trump to speak at rally in North Dakota
06/27/18 7:30 PM
Trump to speak at rally in North Dakota
06/27/18 7:30 PM
New top story on Hacker News: AT&T raises most customers' fees by $1.23, adding $800M revenue
AT&T raises most customers' fees by $1.23, adding $800M revenue
126 by aaronbrethorst | 63 comments on Hacker News.
126 by aaronbrethorst | 63 comments on Hacker News.
New top story on Hacker News: Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
Launch HN: The Lobby (YC W18) – 1-on-1 calls with company insiders to get hired
184 by dchhugani | 143 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN! I’m Deepak, founder of The Lobby, from YC’s W18 batch. We’re building a marketplace where you can buy mock interviews, resume reviews, and coaching calls from company insiders, starting with top finance roles. ( https://ift.tt/2zsXADZ ) I went to a school where the big banks, consulting shops, and tech companies didn’t come to recruit on campus. As a result, it was really hard not only to get interviews and job offers, but also to figure out what these companies were looking for in candidates in the first place. I got lucky and landed jobs at big banks and it was always because I somehow found someone on the inside who was willing to coach and mentor me in a very personalized way. I used that experience to help 50+ friends from similar backgrounds land jobs at top firms, and that’s what inspired the idea for The Lobby. We have some incredibly happy users who’ve already landed jobs, and a very high repeat purchase rate both amongst students and career switchers because of the value in speaking to people in the specific teams and companies they're interested in vs. generic company-wide advice. It has, however, been challenging to get everyone receptive to our new approach. Even though people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on college (to ultimately land a good job), it's controversial to build a recruiting-focused company that charges job seekers instead of just the companies. We’ve had 2 schools buy packages of calls where they subsidize the costs for their students, and are thinking through ideas to pass the cost away from students, even though this service is not just meant for college (our best users are career switchers). We’ve also received a lot of interest from companies who are interested in getting access to our best-rated candidates because they’ve been pre-screened by real humans who’ve done the job, vs. recruiters who have not. Any feedback and ideas from the HN community on how to convey the cost/benefit of what we’re offering to students, recent grads, career switchers, parents, and even schools is much appreciated.
184 by dchhugani | 143 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN! I’m Deepak, founder of The Lobby, from YC’s W18 batch. We’re building a marketplace where you can buy mock interviews, resume reviews, and coaching calls from company insiders, starting with top finance roles. ( https://ift.tt/2zsXADZ ) I went to a school where the big banks, consulting shops, and tech companies didn’t come to recruit on campus. As a result, it was really hard not only to get interviews and job offers, but also to figure out what these companies were looking for in candidates in the first place. I got lucky and landed jobs at big banks and it was always because I somehow found someone on the inside who was willing to coach and mentor me in a very personalized way. I used that experience to help 50+ friends from similar backgrounds land jobs at top firms, and that’s what inspired the idea for The Lobby. We have some incredibly happy users who’ve already landed jobs, and a very high repeat purchase rate both amongst students and career switchers because of the value in speaking to people in the specific teams and companies they're interested in vs. generic company-wide advice. It has, however, been challenging to get everyone receptive to our new approach. Even though people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on college (to ultimately land a good job), it's controversial to build a recruiting-focused company that charges job seekers instead of just the companies. We’ve had 2 schools buy packages of calls where they subsidize the costs for their students, and are thinking through ideas to pass the cost away from students, even though this service is not just meant for college (our best users are career switchers). We’ve also received a lot of interest from companies who are interested in getting access to our best-rated candidates because they’ve been pre-screened by real humans who’ve done the job, vs. recruiters who have not. Any feedback and ideas from the HN community on how to convey the cost/benefit of what we’re offering to students, recent grads, career switchers, parents, and even schools is much appreciated.
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy to retire
06/27/18 2:06 PM
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy to retire
06/27/18 2:06 PM
