I think the headline is misleading. This seems to be an alliance of startup-oriented folks. Hackers would generally avoid the weasel-words and centralization: "virtual incubator" and reliance on a site that presents itself as more or less a monolith. I also don't see where investment and sponsorship fall into hacking. Computers are cheap enough that neither is really necessary to do interesting work, even if new hardware is required.
My guess is they said "hackers" when they meant "Hacker News readers".
Word. It's nasty how HN is diluting the term "hacker" to include things like "an MBA dropout with an idea". The whole assumption that "if you're a hacker, of course you want to start a business" is just so far away from reality that it's silly.
The use of the word "hacker" itself should be considered ballsy. (Though 3rd parties have diluted it enough to weaken the conviction the phrase allegedly once held.) To put "hackers" in the organization name implies that all members are wizardly to some extent.
But a good magician demonstrates through magic tricks and sleight of hand.
Not trying to be argumentative, but I think you may be misreading what the headline is really saying. The idea is an 'alliance', which by definition requires more than one person. Multiple 'hackers', not just 'hacker'. Some of us 'hackers' would like to work with other 'hackers' in order to build things that we cannot build alone.
Perhaps our understanding of the word 'hacker' is evolving to the word 'hackers'. And given your presence and comment here, aren't you by definition a "Hacker News reader"? Just sayin'
Ease of implementation mainly. Plus one less email/password to have to worry about. And what founder doesn't have a twitter account, it's sort of as essential as email at this point.
We won't post tweets. We added write permission so we could help organize groups together. Twitter doesn't really make it easy to choose exactly what permission you want to pick. It's write all or nothing.
I've joined as part of the NRS12 batch and I can't wait to collaborate and share my progress with other founders.
Hopefully the community will graduate some awesome startups and will give the next batch some program klout.
My biggest worry is that this batch works well and a number of companies raise investment and we see thousands upon thousands of startups flooding the process the next batch.
I think the great thing about this is that it's scalable. It's purely a community driven effort - you host dinners at your own location, collaborate with other teams, get mentors. The benefit of nReduce isn't it's selection, like YC, it's the community. So, if this grew to thousands, that would be great, making everyone better off and more successful.
@nReduce I think this is a really nice approach and I´m pretty sure I will join the demo day. It´s a nice experiment and taking "self curing" patient communities into account, an evolutionary and self organized community can work really good.
Hint: The more you want to be like YC, the less you will be like YC. nR is nR, give it it´s own shape in the communication.
I run Startup Riot (startupriot.com) and we'll be in Seattle on August 8th for our event. I would love to figure out a way to have nReduce teams attend/participate/present at our event. Joe or whoever can hit me up if you guys are interested. @sanjay or hit the contact form on our site. I would have pinged you guys directly but there isn't an easy way to do that on your site. Regardless - good luck with the first class. More startups making progress can't be a bad thing.
Actually, the main motivation for me to start nReduce was so it would exist, and I could be part of it. I really wanted something like YC for my startup lizibot.com, and since YC wouldn't have us, we figured we'd try to solve our own problem.
I'm also thankful some great people (like Joe) have stepped up as partners and will be taking it over so I can focus on my startup.
I think this is a neat idea, and I'd love to try it. It seems a bit odd to hold meetings at a bar, but that's not necessarily a dealbreaker.
But sadly, due to random bad luck I can't do it: my Tuesday evenings are spoken for. (It's one of the very few times during the week that I have a fixed schedule. Let's call it a sanity preservation activity.) If nReduce was on, say, Wednesday evening (or Tuesday morning), I'd sign up.
If the expectation is for people to take a leave of absence (or quit) from their job, anyway, then I would have scheduled it during the day, as most extracurricular activities (IME) are in the evenings.
So how does this work for remote teams that would miss a (full) week? Just update the next week with what shipped?
I am planning on attending a conference at the end of July (BSides Las Vegas/DEFCON, for those wondering), which would probably take me completely out of the running for shipping anything that week.
I am still very interested, but have other responsibilities as well. How would this work?
Signed up, in St. Louis. I can get more teams signed up locally. I'd appreciate any input on how a team farther from the primary tech hubs should take advantage. I figure either we can host a dinner with a few other local teams casually and try to make it out to another Demo Day. Thoughts?
We have a whole system for remote teams. The are treated the same as teams with physical locations and will be meeting with their group mates via video conferencing, online tools etc.
I'm most curious about the role mentors will play in nReduce. From what I understand, mentorship is the secret sauce at YC and TechStars. It also seems like the hardest type of person to attract to a fledgling operation (compared to hackers and investors).
We've got some interesting ideas here. From the mentors we've talk to already, a lot of them love the fact that they can start by offering "micro-mentorship". Giving startups advice with just 1 hour a week time commitment (split into 15 min chunks per startup they help). And they can do it from the comfort of their home.
That'll require a bit of curation by the nReduce team so the mentors only see the valid, honest questions submitted. But we're working on a way to manage that workload (between the nReduce partners and moderators).
What mentors get out of it is being exposed to lots of early stage startups and possibly find some great teams that they enjoy working with and can step in as official advisory roles if there's a fit.
Registered from Bangalore, India. Haven't seen anyone from the subcontinent replying to this post.If there are any, we can start a group here or head down to Singapore once a month for the tuesday dinners. Tiger airways has cheap fares.
When you say "Ship every week " what does it mean ? Is it a feature ? Can a bug fix be considered a "ship for a week" ? . Are there any parameters on how you decide someone shipped this week
Application form doesn't seem to do anything (maybe it shut off the day before it starts?). Clicking "submit" just takes you to the top of the page. No contact form to complain to. :(
Just signed Curvio up for it. We're already launched, but we have a half dozen new features/products to launch this summer, so hopefully this helps us stay on track even better! :)
Interesting idea! But I can't understand the practical usage of it. We delivery what we do to our customers, and get feedback, why should we deliver it to bunch of hackers? :)
Great point! nReduce is not your customer. Your customers are your customers. nReduce is there to remind you and to motivate you to ship to your customers every week. Our goal is to motivate, plain and simple.
I just launched last week and still have lot more to do. Can you describe How it might work out with demoday, meetups etc with East coast or folks not in the valley.
[+] [-] gue5t|14 years ago|reply
My guess is they said "hackers" when they meant "Hacker News readers".
[+] [-] skrebbel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unimpressive|14 years ago|reply
But a good magician demonstrates through magic tricks and sleight of hand.
[+] [-] eragnew|14 years ago|reply
Perhaps our understanding of the word 'hacker' is evolving to the word 'hackers'. And given your presence and comment here, aren't you by definition a "Hacker News reader"? Just sayin'
[+] [-] railsjedi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lpolovets|14 years ago|reply
Email-based signup > Facebook-based >> Twitter-based
On top of that, the permissions indicate that nReduce wants to post Tweets for me. Um, no thanks.
[+] [-] railsjedi|14 years ago|reply
We won't post tweets. We added write permission so we could help organize groups together. Twitter doesn't really make it easy to choose exactly what permission you want to pick. It's write all or nothing.
[+] [-] mrkmcknz|14 years ago|reply
Hopefully the community will graduate some awesome startups and will give the next batch some program klout.
My biggest worry is that this batch works well and a number of companies raise investment and we see thousands upon thousands of startups flooding the process the next batch.
However I'm stoked to be part of this.
Manchester UK participant.
[+] [-] michael_fine|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jermaink|14 years ago|reply
Hint: The more you want to be like YC, the less you will be like YC. nR is nR, give it it´s own shape in the communication.
and... thank you for integrating the "Follow Discussion" Button. I just updated the git right here. https://github.com/jermaink/hnfollowbutton
Renamed from "Follow Discussion" from "View Discussion" which makes more sense. Also some compatibility issues solved.
[+] [-] railsjedi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sanjayparekh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joemellin|14 years ago|reply
Thanks for the note, I will DM you.
-Joe
[+] [-] eragnew|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] railsjedi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wamatt|14 years ago|reply
Not trying to be cynical I'd just like to know what the incentives are other than "let's just be awesome".
Apologies if it was explained somewhere, I did look but didn't see anything obvious.
[+] [-] railsjedi|14 years ago|reply
I'm also thankful some great people (like Joe) have stepped up as partners and will be taking it over so I can focus on my startup.
[+] [-] ken|14 years ago|reply
But sadly, due to random bad luck I can't do it: my Tuesday evenings are spoken for. (It's one of the very few times during the week that I have a fixed schedule. Let's call it a sanity preservation activity.) If nReduce was on, say, Wednesday evening (or Tuesday morning), I'd sign up.
If the expectation is for people to take a leave of absence (or quit) from their job, anyway, then I would have scheduled it during the day, as most extracurricular activities (IME) are in the evenings.
[+] [-] joemellin|14 years ago|reply
We are just scrappy guys putting this together, we needed a place that was open at night and that you could meet at : A Bar.
We have no expectations on whether you are employed or not, just if you can build great product.
Best, -Joe
[+] [-] david_shaw|14 years ago|reply
I am planning on attending a conference at the end of July (BSides Las Vegas/DEFCON, for those wondering), which would probably take me completely out of the running for shipping anything that week.
I am still very interested, but have other responsibilities as well. How would this work?
[+] [-] railsjedi|14 years ago|reply
Looking forward to having you!
[+] [-] joemellin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wildmXranat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] railsjedi|14 years ago|reply
We'll put up an RSVP page soon that shows what the counts are for each city.
[+] [-] vnchr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joemellin|14 years ago|reply
Please sign up, it is going to be awesome!
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] creamyhorror|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] odnamra|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] railsjedi|14 years ago|reply
That'll require a bit of curation by the nReduce team so the mentors only see the valid, honest questions submitted. But we're working on a way to manage that workload (between the nReduce partners and moderators).
What mentors get out of it is being exposed to lots of early stage startups and possibly find some great teams that they enjoy working with and can step in as official advisory roles if there's a fit.
[+] [-] deepGem|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] palguay|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvrossb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joemellin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] railsjedi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shaharris|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] joemellin|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] railsjedi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njx|14 years ago|reply