The team at Pioneer, a startup accelerator, posts about its tournament-style program, startup markets, and build challenges with cash prizes.
Commenters find the concept of using game mechanics to motivate project work interesting; one suggests it avoid venture capital and another says it needs design work.
Brilliant Idea! I hope you succeed wildly! Upvoted and Favorited!
(Now, as a side note, if funding decisions were up to me, I'd suggest not using VC, never using VC, staying as far away as you can from VC, treating VC as if it were a highly addictive and intoxicating substance, like alcohol is to some people: "When friends don't stop friends from using VC..." (you know, like those old Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) ads from the 1980's <g>)
"VC" above = "Venture Capital" (system) not "Venture Capitalist" (person).
(You know, like "Love the sinner, but hate the sin..." or more colloquially in recent times, "Don't hate the playa, hate the game..." <g>)
You might want to read the following articles:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/06/03/fixing-venture-capital/
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/07/foreword-to-8220eric-sink-on-the-business-of-software8221/
But let's say that despite this, you still want to garner some funding...
For whatever reason, after Googling, I can't seem to find a comprehensive list of the various types and tiers of startup financing capital that are available (for example, there are lists of VC's, lists of "Angel Investors", lists of Crowdfunding platforms, lists of ways to bootstrap a business, lists of financial institutions and interest rates for generic borrowing -- but nobody has really sought to unify all of these sources into a single spreadsheet showing an amount of capital borrowed, and what is owed to whom in return for…
Pioneer | REMOTE| Engineer | https://pioneer.app
Founder of Pioneer here.
We're building a fully remote online accelerator. A kind of YC-before-YC. We find people on the Internet that seem promising and give them "Silicon Valley", but on the Internet. It's a lot of gamification, Ruby software, Zoom, Slack, and fun. We've funded over 100 people around the world in 30+ countries. We direct them to YC once they graduate. (Tbc, we have no formal attachment to YC; just admiration. And a severe addiction to HN.)
We're looking for a competent software engineer that can do front and backend development. We're happy to take a bet on someone junior or senior. The interview process is much like the job: get a high level prompt, and then _make a thing_. That's it. Don't apply if you're looking to optimize tight C++ loops, we don't have that. Apply if you're interested in building products, end-to-end. Apply if you're energetic and excited about the idea. Apply if you can see this gig be a legitimate cornerstone of your career.
There's no formal ATS, it's a startup. Just email team@pioneer.app, mention this post.
Pioneer | Frontend, Full-stack, Data Science | Open Source | San Francisco | Full Time | https://pioneer.app
We’re building a community of creative young people working on interesting projects around the globe. We use software and ML to find people that lack opportunity but have great talent and ambition. We give them small grants to support their work and try to use various gamification techniques to keep them motivated on their project. Our goal is to be counterfactually significant in the creation of the next Albert Einstein, Marie Curie or Elon Musk.
In the short term our technical challenges are equal parts computer science and human psychology. How do you build a product that can identify greatness? How do you then motivate people to become the best version of themselves? If you were building the Harvard campus, but entirely online, could you make it work?
It requires great intuition and solid engineering. We work in Python, Ruby and Javascript.
Email us at jobs+hn@pioneer.app. Thanks!
I'm making a PaaS thingy / Docker Swarm GUI called Lunni. It helps startups, small businesses, and self-hosting enthusiasts deploy and manage apps on their own server: https://lunni.dev/
I've done a Show HN last month [1], but it didn't get any traction (well, apart from 4 upvotes!). Perhaps because I didn't really capture what the project is about. I've reached out to dang and he gave some really valuable feedback (thank you!) and encouraged me to try again, but I'm still overthinking stuff :')
I've also got an email from Rishi with Pioneer [2], saying I've got a fast track to their accelerator program. I'm still looking into that but I've tried their Tournament thing and got some nice and encouraging feedback from other founders.
Overall, I'm not sure where this project gets me but even if we don't get any revenue at all, the experience of working on a passion project full-time is really nice.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34068557
[2]: https://pioneer.app/
Location: Sacramento
Remote: OK
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: Python, Linux, machine learning (PyTorch), emphasis on computer vision, familiar with JS and HTML
Resume/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cRKBzaLXr3Zm4k2nUkPjWSIgjAJi-loJ/view?usp=sharing
Email: matthew (dot) kai (dot) christensen (at) gmail (dot) com
I am a highly motivated self-taught machine learning engineer who is looking to gain professional experience in the field. I recently won the Pioneer [1] tournament while writing my own PyTorch implementation [2] of a recent deep image matting research paper. I love deep learning, particularly anything related to image and video processing. I learn new skills very quickly and enjoy leveling up my skillset whenever possible.
[1]
https://pioneer.app
[2]
https://nomoregreenscreen.com (technical blog for the project)
this is a rad concept, thanks for sharing. sad that i can't play with it on my mac. from the screenshots, it definitely needs some design love, but it’s an interesting concept that really resonates with me.
i know it's too early, but do you have thoughts on monetizing it? i wonder if you could do something like pioneer [0] and broker funding rounds for the really promising ones — looks like you have some background there.
i’m working on designing something that is a bit like this, but for guiding the product building part [1]. it kind of papers over this idea validation step via a “wisdom of the crowd” voting system. do you see startizer only being focused on the initial idea validation part, or do you want teams to continue using it to iterate and build over time?
[0]: https://pioneer.app/
[1]: https://www.co-op-os.com/