Dash and the two ton connected device [interview]

I sat down with Brian Langel recently. Brian’s worked for some diverse companies over his career, including HBO, McGraw-Hill, and Union Pacific Railroad. He has the distinction of being the only startup founder I know to work for a railroad.

Brian is the co-founder of Dash. Dash’s software turns your car into a connected device. Your jalopy won’t turn into a 2-ton iPhone, but it’s closer than you think. Read ahead to find out exactly how.

What is Dash?

Dash is a connected car platform. We build software to connect your phone to your car. You purchase an OBD dongle, plug it into your car, and it pairs via Bluetooth to your smart phone.

While you drive, it gathers statistics from car sensors and provides feedback about any car issues as well as your driving habits and behavior. This is all to improve fuel efficiency and safety.

What inspired you and your co-founder Jamyn Edis to start Dash in the first place?

A while back, we started working on a boxing project for HBO together. We taped a device under the boxer’s glove to measure punch speed and force.

One day, we drove to the Mohegan Sun for a boxing match to test it. During the drive, we kept talking about vehicles and vehicle safety. There are so many computers and sensors inside of a car that nobody was leveraging. All the data was ephemeral. No one was applying big data processes that could measure driving habits and behaviors. We asked “Is there any way for us to improve driving via data?”

We started looking, found out about the OBD port, and saw it was universal. That became our entry point into car sensors and allowed us to build Dash.

So there are a couple competitors in this space, i.e. Automatic. What differentiates Dash from your other competitors?

We’re a software company. There are already a bunch of OBD reader hardware manufacturers building high quality devices. We leverage existing hardware. We don’t mandate that you purchase an OBD dongle that we created.

Automatic is a hardware company. Their software is only compatible to their hardware. We think we can expose Dash and the sensors of your vehicle to more people by leveraging existing off-the-shelf hardware.

Can you talk a little bit about the OBD port? 

Dash/iOS compliant OBD dongle

The OBD port was mandated by the US government for emissions testing. Through it, the government verifies in an over-the-top way that car manufacturers are meeting the standards Congress sets. It’s also a way for mechanics to identify issues and repair vehicles.

OBD has a long history with many phases. It was really solidified in the early 90’s. OBD-II is in all cars manufactured from 1996 and on. It standardizes how you get data from your car and how to connect a physical device. That’s how Dash is compatible with any car in the US from 1996 and after.

What are the most popular use cases for Dash? I’ve heard you talk about parents using it to monitor their child’s driving. I love that. What else besides?

People use it for fuel efficiency. Since Dash gives you real time information via auditory alert on your driving, you can tweak your driving and save money every day.

And you’re right, parents may be wary of giving keys to their 16 year old. But many of them feel better if those keys come with Dash. They can be alerted if their child is speeding or driving recklessly. That sparks a conversation which makes the road safer for everyone.

Then often times, something goes wrong with your vehicle. A lot of people have no idea about what happens under the hood of their vehicle. The check engine light normally only has an on or off switch. So, do you as a driver need to pull over right away? Is the car going to break down? Dash will give you that information in real time without going to a mechanic immediately. We can tell you if your current issue impacts gas mileage or actually, it’s critical. Get it fixed right away.

Then there are a lot of users that really like seeing information from their vehicle. We can give you information to say your battery is draining. Perhaps we’ve plotted over time that your voltage is decreasing. Check it out, it can be indicative of another problem. Or your coolant is low. It lets you be proactive. Instead of you pulling oil levels, engine temperature, or battery levels, we can push it to you.

People are busy and they don’t have time to always check up on their car. So having Dash helps them identify and solve problems before they become real issues.

How different is the data analysis between electric cars versus traditional gasoline powered vehicles?

The OBD-II reader is only mandated for vehicles that produce emissions. Fully electric vehicles like the Tesla aren’t required to have it. But besides Tesla, all other vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf, do have the OBD-II port. They’re made by companies who have existing architecture.

We still haven’t figured out fully electrical vehicles. The energy consumption, it’s not just fuel, comes from a number of different factors. That’s something we still have to focus on, but it’s an engaging and interesting conversation we have internally.

Right now, we give the state of their battery level, but we still have to dive deeper for electric vehicles.

Can you relay the story about how you collected the car code meanings and then relevant repair costs? It’s a great hack.

When we set out for Dash, we knew that there were engine light issues. When a mechanic reads it, they see an esoteric code, something like P0100. The mechanic knows what that means, how to fix the issue, and what rates to charge.

We wanted to go a step further. We didn’t want to just say, “Hey, here’s P0100, and it means X” because X is often mechanic-speak. We wanted to translate it to something meaningful for users.

We know one mechanic who teaches at the Henry Ford Institute in Detroit. He teaches what these codes means to future mechanics. He agreed to use a website we built as a teaching tool. For homework, these future mechanics would log into the website and fill out what each code means and costs. We basically crowdsourced the whole thing.

I read the dongle can allow you to remotely control some aspects of your car. How far can you take the car as a connected device?

Depending upon your vehicle and the dongle that you purchased, you can control many aspects of your car. For instance, all Dash users can clear their check engine light so long as it’s not for a severe issue. Through the dongle, we physically control the car and turn off the light. That’s all we currently allow for all vehicles.

In the future, we want to expand that. Some of that will require purchasing proprietary information from the car manufacturers. For instance, the ability to turn off the headlights of your vehicle can be accessed through this OBD-II port. So with your phone, you can say “Hey, make sure my headlights are off” or “Make sure my car is locked.” We’re working on some of these advanced features now and you’ll see them more frequently in the next 5-10 years.

So you were part of 2013 Techstars class, can you tell me about that experience?

It gave us exposure to tons of mentors, investors, and journalists that we wouldn’t have otherwise had access to. They really helped hone our pitch and our business strategy. They also gave us some resources to develop the product further.

Being a Techstars alum continues to be valuable today, especially in networking. We still meet with other CEO’s and CTO’s of Techstars companies and bounce ideas off them. When we’re looking to move into another country or hire for a certain role, we draw on their experience.

I saw on Github that you built a command line interface tool for Trello. Can you talk to me about it?

Though Dash has a hardware component and I’ve done other hardware things in my career, I’m really a software guy. Trello is a great tool, but as a developer I’m often in the command line. I’m always building and compiling code. I don’t like to interrupt my flow by switching to the browser and getting out the mouse. Developers are most productive in the command line.

There was no command line interface for Trello so I went out and wrote it. It was a great project and it was fun to do. I hope others can benefit from it.

Let’s talk jobs! What positions are you hiring for at Dash right now?

We’re looking for senior level Android and iOS developers, a junior level data scientist, and a backend engineer. We hired after a seed round of funding and built out the team. But now we’re looking to expand. I think within the next couple of months, we’ll really push and hire those roles.

Last question. What’s your favorite connected device besides your car?

A little while back, it was my Nest. I really enjoyed that. I have the Nest and their smoke detector. Those gave me piece of mind. We see Dash in a similar light. We bring new technology and analytics to something old that may have been a black box before.

Now I have this wearable watch and I’m really enjoying it. This is the LG. I got it at Google IO. I’m getting the Moto soon. I can get my emails and reply to them. It has voice recognition and lets me text away. I find it very useful.

Africa & the Best Mobile Payments Platform I’ve Seen to Date

No fancy app here, nope. Not at all.

It’s been too long. The last two months of my life have been very hectic. We’ve planned a wedding, got married, had a parade down 6th Avenue to our reception (and made Instagram’s discover tab in the process), went to Africa for 3 weeks, and I just got back from Vegas after 1 week hanging with the Downtown Las Vegas Project people. Where to begin?

Meg and I are now married. The wedding was incredible. We were surrounded by friends and family. We’ve never had so much fun in our lives and wish we could relive it everyday. Thanks to everyone who supported us. We felt loved indeed.

We went on our honeymoon. Tanzania was otherworldly. I kept a written journal while we traveled (which.. I admit I must still finish). I’m no Hemingway, but it’s still my Green Hills of Africa. Moishe, Arusha, Karatu, Stone Town, Zanzibar Town, the national parks and conservatories, tribes, and wildlife are permanently seared in my memory. Pleasant weather and friendly Tanzanians greeted us wherever we traveled. That and poverty. Tanzania is poor. Dirt poor. Poorer than any community I’ve seen before. So imagine my surprise when I came across the best mobile payments system implementation I’ve seen so far.

I learned about M-Pesa before we traveled but that still didn’t prepare me. Born in Kenya, it’s spread across Africa. It’s numbers are impressive (19,671 active Kenyan users in 2007, to over 18mm in 10 countries and counting . M-Pesa has rolled out with telecom providers, like Safaricom and Vodacom, and works within the area’s technological constraints. Smartphones haven’t proliferated and I can’t imagine there’s LTE readily available. So they built the system on SMS.

The phone has a very simple menu (pictured up top), inviting you to do things like check your M-Pesa deposit balance. It acts as your mobile bank. You can send money to family or friends or pay bills. M-pesa just checks your account to ensure you have a balance and generates a unique code for your counterpart to deposit and immediately access the funds. I didn’t see the merchant on-boarding process, but it’s got to be a breeze. Tribal regions far removed from cities and towns had small pharmacies and bars with big signs stating “M-Pesa accepted here!” Funny enough, the signage typically covered by Coke advertisemnets. Tanzania has more Coke advertisements than gazelle. 

Competition is minimal. Zanzibar had an alternate version that looked to be a carbon copy of it, regrettably I can’t find its name. Fraud must exist, especially since merchant “banking” seems so easy to sign up for. The only requirements are a national ID card or passport. But these frauds haven’t been big enough to take down the system evidently. Mostly it’s phishing, but there must be criminal implications too. Here’s a Quartz article about exactly that. Incredibly, the unbanked are being banked.

This solution doesn’t work in the US. There are too many entrenched interests trying to come up with too many competing solutions. You’ve got your startups like Dwolla, banks and their proprietary/closed off systems like Chase and their lovely QuickPay, eBay’s PayPal, the telecom’s and their failed attempt with Isis (conveniently rebranded due to another more infamous ISIS). Yet somehow, these guys pulled it off with phones that are years behind ours in capability and people who wouldn’t have ever been eligible for banks before. It’s quite amazing.

And now, I’m home and back to work. it’s good to be back in the New York Groove.

Take ’em away Ace!

Fancy Hands’ Terms Of Service Sucks

I was going to write about my Up24 fitness tracker today but I’m pissed off.

I signed up for Fancy Hands a few months back. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a cool concept. It’s similar to Task Rabbit, except instead of hiring people on a per-job basis, you purchase a certain number of requests to be fulfilled digitally. For example, I asked Fancy Hands to research various photography classes. The answer I got back was very acceptable.

I got an email from them Monday that my original request-purchase would auto-renew next week. This is when I realized they hit me up for the past few months without my knowing. As a business owner, sweet! Money! I feel less than enthusiastic about it. I clearly need to read my email more closely.

I reached out to customer support asking to disable auto-renew. Their response:

Hi, Thanks for your message! Per our Terms of Service, all Fancy Hands subscriptions are automatically recurring, so there is not a way to turn off the “auto-renew.” If you’d like, you can cancel your subscription and then you can resubscribe when you’re ready to come back. Please let me know how you’d like to proceed! Take care, Lindsay F.

That’s kind of a shitty answer. But fine, you ONLY allow auto-renewing subscriptions. To be fair to Fancy Hands, this policy is laid out clearly in the purchase section online. So I’ll just cancel the subscriptions and use my remaining requests over time. Right? Wrong.

Hi, If you cancel, you will have your remaining requests to use until 5/11/14 at which point your tasks will expire. Please let me know if you have any other questions! Regards, Lindsay F.

Shittier answer.

C’mon. If Fancy Hands wants to use auto-renew, I won’t fault them. But to wipe out my remaining requests solely because I don’t want to buy anymore? That’s not treating your customer right.

Lindsay F., I don’t blame you. I just wish your management had better answers to my questions.

So now I have a dilemma. Do I take a $25 hit next week and get more requests that I’m free to use over time? Or do I tell them piss off and try to use what I can before Sunday?

And my internal debate rages.

 

Competitive intelligence in a mobile-centric environment

You’re working on a new idea. Would you like to know if your space is over-crowded? Or if there isn’t as much direct competition as you thought? Maybe seeing what your competition is up to would cause you to revisit your original hypotheses. Or worst, maybe someone’s already doing what you’re doing. Wouldn’t you like to know what’s going on in your space?

More broadly speaking, how do you keep up with everything that happens in your business category? How about “download each new app in that category and try them out every day?” In today’s mobile-centric world: yep, that works.

This is a powerful but easy idea. You better know your competition. Each competitor does something slightly different (UI/UX, features, focus, etc.). This downloading strategy isn’t about stealing or mimicking someone else’s business. It’s about learning. That learning takes time. You try 10’s or 100’s of apps and gain an intuitive feel for what works or what doesn’t. Don’t copy those businesses, but do get inspired by them. All the while, you can sort through the best ones and strive to understand them better.

Here’s a concrete way this helps you even if you’re beyond initial idea formation. An investor asks about your competitive landscape. Previously, you took a quick mental inventory or walked through a slide. Instead of telling her, now you can show. Bring out your mobile device, pull out the travel folder, show the 5 most competitive apps. What differentiates them from each other? What are they doing well? Why are you serving that space better? Talk about the other companies that you’ve watched fail, show you understand why and why you’re different. Impress her by showing.

Competitive intelligence is a crucial. Thanks to the iTunes App Store and various Android stores, you  now have a funnel directing information to you. You should be thinking mobile anyways. Start using this.

h/t Jack McCloy

Startup Rock Climbing Redux

Last month I started something called Startup Rock Climbing. It went well. There were 10 of us. People who never climbed before learned, people who had climbed got right to it, and we all got to meet in friendly circumstances (and with free/discounted drinks after).

It went so well I’m doing it again. Here’s the Eventbrite page and here’s the details right below. We have 20 sign-ups already.

When: January 22nd, 7-9 climbing, drinks after

What: Rock Climbing for a few hours, networking, and a free drink

How much: $19 (gets you a day pass, rentals, free drink, and happy hour specials all night)

Where: Brooklyn Boulders @ 575 Degraw Street // Sheep Station @ 4th Avenue & Douglas

Who: Anyone who’s interested in rock climbing, startups, technology, and non-traditional networking

I hope you can make it.

Startup Rock Climbing

I’ve written about Meetup Problems before. Amusemi is one answer, Startup Rock Climbing is my attempt.

Traditional meetups follow a basic formula. Show up, grab some pizza and beer along with a name tag. Make small talk with some people you know or strangers. Take a seat, listen to a panel, or watch demos. After, grab drinks at a local pub.

There’s an absolute need for these. It’s a great way to hear domain experts wax poetic on their topics. But it leaves much to be desired for networking purposes. It can all feel forced.

So why Startup Rock Climbing? I think there’s a natural overlap between startup and rock climbing communities, in both people and attitude. Both are friendly, open, and helpful. Rock climbing, although it’s a solitary activity, still promotes teamwork. People on the ground and on the wall solve problems together. Sports are a great way to network and meet people, plus it’s exercise. How often does that get overlooked? After a few hours climbing, we’ll head around the corner to a watering hole (location: to be determined) and network the next most effective way: over alcoholic beverages.

My first crack at this is 7pm on December 18th. It takes place at Brooklyn Boulders and costs $19 if you need a pass and gear (normally $36). Otherwise: free to attend if you’ve got a punch pass or membership. It doesn’t matter if it’s your first time climbing or you’ve been doing it for years. Rock climbing is completely enjoyable regardless of skill level.

Buy your ticket here and try it out. See you there.

Versatility of the Hackathon Model

StrategyHack had its 3rd event on November 9th. Peter Crysdale founded it on a simple assumption, the hackathon model is portable. Hackathons are caffeine and pizza-fueled events, often lasting a weekend, where developers form teams and take an idea from concept to demonstration. Crash courses in product creation. StrategyHack is a crash course in marketing for early stage startups. Its most effective when the company’s products are already in the market. For a few hundred dollars, they receive free consulting from a cobbled-together team of marketers and brand experts. It’s a no brainer. Around 100 people showed up on a Saturday night for the event’s conclusion. It was a great community turnout and fantastic event. I support StrategyHack and I suggest you should as well.

After the event, I spoke with a few participating companies and they loved it. After some chatter, we asked where else could a hackathon model apply? InvestorHack seems like a good idea. It’s out there in demo day and accelerator forms, but they have different incentives attached. Demo days companies get pitching coaches and other assistance for some small fee. Accelerators are more intensive programs typically lasting months, costing a piece of equity. InvestorHack could be over a weekend. Actual investors get together to review the pitch deck, executive summary, play with product, meet the team. Each investor’s different, but they have some idea of what ideas can be valuable and fundable. They can talk over business models. Understand competitive environments and take the correct strategic tack.

SalesHack. Pair startups with experienced sales personnel from other early stage companies familiar with their business model, i.e. SaaS with SaaS, people who know those customer types. It’s about experimenting on sales strategies and finding one that’s repeatable.

HR-Hack. BizDev Hack. I don’t see why it can’t be applied to all verticals. Many of these conversations occur organically over a startup’s life or read in books. Companies like General Assembly offer classroom courses. Hackathons, meanwhile, introduce competitive and presentation elements. They also let startups build relationships with multiple experts in their field of need. I’d be happy to support one of them too.

h/t Rob Rattray for hack-thoughts

Volunteering Some Time to Make Great Connections

Doing VC means staying on the cutting bleeding bloody edge of technology. To do so, I meet new startups constantly, and luckily I love that. If I wrote my job description, finding companies would be first on my responsibilities. We at Pilot Mountain Ventures have a variety of ways to find great startups. I’ve written about some before, but here’s one more for today: volunteering.

Ultra Light Startups appears on this blog a few times. It’s a simple format. Eight to ten companies show up, present a short pitch, do Q&A with an investor panel, and the panel responds with actionable advice and feedback at the end. Panelists love it because they can show they’re smart. Startups love it because of the feedback, press, and potential prizes. I’ve been to a number of ULS events dating back to 2012. The group’s grown in size and stature since, moving from NYU’s classrooms to Microsoft’s offices. Some past alums have floundered, others are doing well (ie Handybook). ULS even focuses events now, like the Bitcoin investor feedback or the recent devs only presentation (with a devs only panel).

As a spectator it’s fun. Startups ranging from great to good to okay pitch (sometimes) new ideas. Panelists ask incisive questions, founders answer competently or not, and differences of opinion break out. I’ve liked it enough that I decided to start volunteering three events back.

Volunteering is not a complicated task. Arrive early. Fold programs. Check people’s names off in the lobby and give them elevator access. Check people into the event. Make sure they have a program. Make sure they paid. Have all panelists talk to Mike Simmons (ULS coordinator). Have all presenters talk to Mike. Set up the pizza. Set up the water and sodas. Watch most of the presentations. Clean up. Chat. Maybe head out for a beer after.

But it’s more than that. No matter what I’m a touch point for everyone walking into the event. If I see a company or a name I’m interested in, I have a much easier path to follow up. I have a much more organic conversation with my fellow volunteers (many of whom I’ve worked with multiple times). It’s no longer “Hello I’m Tim,” but follow up questions to Ike about how the app store approval process is going. Or talking to Mike about how the last event went in SV. Peter from StrategyHack was there last week. Now I’m going to the all-day event on November 9th. I’ve grabbed coffee with folks, gotten introductions, and I’ve been able to put my own effort behind an organization that I support.

Obviously this isn’t fully altruistic. I like ULS. I definitely get great networking out of it. Frankly, I’d love a panelist spot at a future event or perhaps hosting since Graham’s stepping back on that effort. But that’s in the future. In the meantime I look forward to strengthening my relationship with the ULS team, volunteers, and everyone else that I meet there.

Four Ways to Make Life Hackable

3D printing plastic prototypes, 3D printing electronic boards, Arduinos, and Raspberry Pi. Founders for all these companies, plus an expert on hardware supply chain and manufacturing, got me excited enough to run home and put a few hundred bucks in my Amazon wish list last night. Consider this post a summation of the evening and a brief primer for a some hardware technologies.

Matt Turck of FirstMark Capital hosted the 3rd Hardwired NYC meetup at kbs+ Ventures last night. It’s my first Hardwired meetup. The groundswell of support plus the quality of presenters was impressive. With just organic word of mouth growth, over 800 people joined the group and 265 registered to attend. The place was filled, tickets were free, and they gave away pizza and beer.

My previous post was about how meetups don’t engender great relationships. This post is about how Hardwired got me geekily excited to keep coming back for more. Like Web 2.0 or the Sharing Economy, the Internet of Things is a big buzz word in tech. It means a lot and nothing at the same time. It’s the intersection of hardware, manufacturing, software, and engineering. And while the title inventor applies to software technologists and others, these founders most closely resemble the inventors of our past.

Jeff McAlvay runs Tempo Automation. He has a 3D printing solution. 3D printing is where a device takes a 3D software/graphical representation and renders it, typically in plastic. Watch a Makerbot Replicator create Yoda in this timelaspse video:

Besides Yoda, people are making ornaments, iPhone cases, spare parts. People have 3D printed using other materials, Here’s NASA trying to figure out how to print pizza in space. I mean, FOOD PRINTING. It enables rapid prototyping for manufacturers and small batch manufacturing runs (when traditionally you’d rent out machines in a larger factory with burdensome costs unless you ran large batches).

I had never heard of 3D printing electronic circuit boards until Jeff started talking. It’s the same principle. Using software, a design is created. His robot takes a blank electronic board and assembles it with resistors or whatever other components the design calls for. Instead of waiting weeks to iterate your boards, you print in hours. It’s in a prototype phase and they’re working towards crowdfunding.

Sam Cervantes presented a more classic plastics printing approach with Solidoodle. Like MakerBot and other competitors, you’re prototyping small plastic objects and wireframes. Sam built the first 20 printers in his tiny Brooklyn kitchen and expanded from there. When pressed about competition and the MakerBot acquisition, Sam demurred. He doesn’t believe Solidoodle targets the same user due to their price points and convenience of us. Unrelated anecdote ahead. One time he had a customer print a full Aston Martin made of 6 inch 3D printed parts.  Now, one 3D printing sticking point is software (this is second hand, I’ve never gone from design to print). I’d have liked to hear more on that from both Sam and Jeff.

Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino, sat down with Matt to talk about where Arduino has been and where it’s going. Arduino is open source hardware and software (firmware too). There are many different components and peripherals that combine to do very different things. You can build a remote and change a neighbor’s TV from across the street. Get an LED light to flash every time you get an email. Create a pressure sensor. It can  be connected to bluetooth low energy devices to route information online. At WeWork, we met with someone creating an Arduino sensor to measure when the keg’s empty. It is truly depressing when you get to the 4th floor only to discover a plastic cup resting on the tap.

Arduino was created by academics, engineers, and others to promote low cost electrical engineering and testing. The company is open source, so someone creates a component that lives up to Arduino specifications, pays them a licensing fee, and sells on their own. Adafruit is a popular US-based Arduino provider. A starter kit runs $130-140 and comes with 15 different projects and directions. I should also note while I’d love to play with these things, so do kids. Both this and the Raspberry Pi are interesting ways to get children interested in STEM subjects.

Scott Miller heads up Dragon Innovation, which helps companies all along the hardware planning and manufacturing spectrum. Scott spent a long time on the actual cost of goods, and how hidden costs are underestimated and lost along the way. It was detailed in nature, so I don’t want to revisit this in depth. What I will repeat though was this caveat: cost of goods miscalculations explains why many crowdfunding projects can fail. If you don’t take into account the cost of machine time, cut the fat out of manufacturing overhead, think about packaging costs, or properly estimate transport costs, you’ll aim for the wrong crowdfunding target and be screwed from the get go.

Last up was Matt and Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi. It’s essentially an ARM based microcomputer or controller that can be connected to a variety of peripherals. It’s a Linux based system coded in Python (which explains the Pi name but not spelling). Eben was a student and teacher at the Cambridge engineering school. When he arrived, people spent their youth tooling around on Atari and Commodore 64. Over time, Eben believes Nintendo, Playstation, and the like have replaced the hacking-gaming systems and made people end users instead of system collaborators. This resulted in fewer applications to Cambridge engineering and a weaker knowledge base on entrance. Raspberry Pi is their answer to get kids playing again.

And kids definitely play with it. It’s a mini computer at a cost of $25. Yes, $25. Here’s an 11-year old’s website dedicated to his adventures with Pi. In fact, there’s an entire article about how kids and Raspberry Pi stole PyCon 2013’s show. Adults are inspired by it too. Here’s someone who hacked their own microwave.

Last night was great. I saw founders of companies I’ve followed for a long time. They talked about things that ten years wouldn’t have been possible. But thanks to a confluence of advances in hardware/software/engineering/manufacturing, hardware has become a real space. As all the different things it’s enabled? It’s incredible. Life is now hackable, in a good way. And that’s exciting.

An Easy Way to Meet People in NY Tech

Amusemi is the answer to many of my meetup problems.

Like many, I attend my fair share of meetups. While they all have their own unique qualities, most are filled with a large number of people, some pizza, maybe beer, and the need to walk up to strangers and say “Hi, my name is Tim.” I’m fatigued by it all. It’s like everyone’s trying to hook up and no one’s interested in dating anymore (I badly want to link to a South Park clip here, but common decency prevents me).

Imagine a world where someone doesn’t walk up, ask you what you do, ask for your card, and finds you later on LinkedIn. You used to get that initial email from them, saying, “Hey, that was fun. Can you help me with XYZ? We should really do this again some time! Stay in touch!” A few months later, you might have received another email saying “Was thinking about you today, I need help with ABC! Can you do that? We should totally grab a coffee sometime!” Used when convenient then discarded. It’s not that you couldn’t find someone special, it just wasn’t an efficient way to do it.

In this new world, there are companies like Amusemi. Amusemi is the OK Cupid to the Tinder/Hinge/Down meetups of the world. Instead of seeing everyone on meetup or Eventbrite who might be there, or walking around some huge event trying to find the right person to talk to, you set up a profile on their website. Broadly categorize yourself, give some information on what you’re working on. When brunches, picnics, or dinners come up, browse through the other members’ profiles. Are you a developer looking for a non-tech co-founder (these exist, I saw it happen at an Amusemi dinner)? Then look at other founders. You can find biz dev folks, investors, front end or back end devs. Click on a bunch of people you’d like to have dinner with and commit to attending. Alex and the folks at Amusemi will do their best to get you at the same small table with some of them. You connect with about 8 people over an inexpensive meal and a glass of red instead of in a sweaty bar.

With NY Tech being as big as it is, it can be difficult to meet people one on one. Focused meetups have so many people attending now that what used to be an intimate gathering is now a crowd of people who may not know each other. There’s value there. But I believe there’s a totally different value in small intimate settings. I think it’s inherently more valuable to start relationships with people predicated on shared interests rather than just how can we use each other best. Amusemi is filling that niche. They’re relatively young and still playing around with user experience as well as featured guests. I sat down with about 10 people at Cafe Asean a few weeks back. I’ve run into them multiple times since and we have stuff to talk about besides the same few customary topics you’re used to discussing. There’s room for improvement there, but I must say I truly enjoyed the experience.