StartupGiraffe.com helps entrepreneurs design and build new software ventures. We’ve launched 20 startups in the last 2 years. We’re looking for a front end engineer to join us in our SoHo, NYC office. About You: – You want to lead front-end development on new products – You’re comfortable translating AI files into responsive front-ends – You have experience with jQuery, SaSS and at least one front-end MVC framework (backbone, ember, angular, etc…) – Familiarity (but not necessarily expertise) with one server side programming language – You understand tradeoffs between design and performance – You’ve got a handle on cross-browser complexity …

We often meet with folks who are at the earliest stages of their entrepreneurial ventures and are unsure how to go from idea to product.  After an initial meeting we send them the following recommendations on how to give us (or any other team members) enough context to get started. 1. Provide Background Info What’s the one sentence explanation of your product? Who are your target users?  We believe in tightly defining your initial target audience and expanding out once you have something that works for them. What are your business objectives for the first iteration of the product?  Are …

  Attention is expensive. Since most people think email is free, message proliferation has seen inboxes become progressively more noisy and difficult to manage. Most people err on the side of over-communicating and over-distributing despite that this incurs a cost to each recipient. Whether it’s extra time sorting through irrelevant message or even just taking the time to delete or archive unwanted messages, people increasingly spend more time in their inbox that isn’t actually centered around communication. Many attempts have been made to address this problem. First and foremost, the spam filter, which attempts to separate out the most egregious …

Inspired by this post Good software projects have clear business goals and objectives. Everyone on the team has an understanding of what metrics will be used to define success. i.e. Implementing these changes to the sign up flow will increase paid conversion rates. Bad software projects are driven by the loudest voice in the room and based on personal preferences. Success cannot be measured because it was never defined. Good software projects are built initially for a specific target audience based on customer development and hypotheses. i.e. We interviewed 100 used car salesmen and found out their most time consuming …

One of the most challenging things about running a software or design consultancy is managing expectations with clients. Many (if not all) programmers, like the late Boris Grishenko from Goldeneye, have a tendency to think they’re invincible. It’s tempting to want to get the product specs and then retreat to your code cave for a month and bang the entire thing out. If the specs were completely accurate, the genius programmer should deliver a perfect product, right? Unfortunately for us neckbeards, this isn’t the case. With any project, but particularly with early-stage startups, products need to be able to evolve …

Debates rage on whether companies who outsource all or parts of their development can be successful or not. In a perfect world you would have a brilliant in-house team that crushes features faster then you can think them up and has previous experience building similar systems. In reality this almost never happens. While long-term reliance on a development shop probably isn’t a great strategy there are a few situations where short-term engagements make sense. You need help getting to that next major milestone The appetite for great technical talent is at an all time high.  Good technologists can get multiple offers for …

A year ago Startup Giraffe was born.  Looking back it’s amazing how far we’ve come.  Like most business, our first few months was about getting our head above water, earning enough to pay rent, tweaking our business model and learning the legal, accounting and general ins and outs of starting a new company.  We made a lot of mistakes but were lucky enough to experience some successes too.  Today, we have lots of good problems related to growing our business sustainably.  The more startups we launch, the stronger our ability to execute and support our companies becomes. Some quick highlights …

Congratulations to you, budding entrepreneur! You’ve successfully navigated the difficult, even emotional process of slimming down your grand product vision into a lean, focused MVP, and more importantly have gotten it built and launched. While you haven’t yet gone full tilt on marketing and customer acquisition, you are starting to see some traction, maybe some organic growth, or other evidence supporting your product hypothesis. Mazeltov! Understandably this is an exciting and extremely busy time for you. You’re gathering feedback, establishing a plan for growth, figuring out the rubric of marketing, monetization strategies, pricing models, and all that. There are still …

Get paid to launch startups, become the tech co-founder of your favorite one StartupGiraffe.com helps entrepreneurs refine, design and build the first version of their startups. Our typical project takes 6 weeks from idea to beta. We’ve launched 10 startups in the last 10 months including stereogrid.com, therunthrough.com, undergroundeats.com, vestorly.com and eatdrinkjobs.com. We’re looking for a ruby on rails engineer to join us in our SoHo, NYC office. About You: – You want to join a startup in a lead engineering position but you also like eating and getting paid. – You are interested in launching a new startup with …

How do you validate your startup idea and start gaining early traction, without spending a ton of time and money building software? Delay complexity as long as possible by doing things manually. “Fake it till you make it.” Below are some examples of how successful companies smoke / ghetto / wizard of oz tested their ideas: Zappos In 2000 it wasn’t clear that purchasing shoes online was a great business.  Shoes have different fits and comfort levels and many thought they needed to be worn before they were sold.  The riskiest question for founder Nick Swinmurn’s fledgling company was:  “Will …