1) This guy is a product/marketing wizard and wins hackathons on the regular. Recruit him for that rather than just for his JS skills.
2) His dad is a programmer, this to me greatly shades his "taught myself to program respectably in six months" story. Still cool, but I am unsurprised to find a supportive programmer in his life.
What I got out of it was a demo of parts of his pen.fm interface (while there are some rough edges, frankly most e-reader apps I've seen are substantially worse than this...), in the form of a cute little story that illustrates how different the reality of starting a company can be from how budding entrepeneurs often picture it.
(I went at it from the opposite direction of this guy when I started my first company: I could program, but had no clue about sales, marketing, finance or any number of other things, but eventually found myself doing phone sales, sales meetings, ordering print ads and negotiating with suppliers)
For the site in question it seems like re-introducing it by immersing us in what it is about - writing stories - is a much more interesting approach than throwing up some glossy brochure-ware site.
#2 is very fair, but I'll also note that growing up as a kid with two parents who had masters degrees in mathematics (from Warsaw Polytechnic), it was actually near impossible to learn math from them. I think it's also very difficult for me at this point to really help people learn to code. I recall a time when I was in the middle of learning where I could really communicate with people on both sides and bridge that gap of understanding, but I'm afraid that I've now surpassed that point. My dad was a great resource in learning, but mostly in the confidence arena where I knew if I got stuck, I would have someone to turn to. That being said, I school him on JS now.
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What I got out of this:
1) This guy is a product/marketing wizard and wins hackathons on the regular. Recruit him for that rather than just for his JS skills.
2) His dad is a programmer, this to me greatly shades his "taught myself to program respectably in six months" story. Still cool, but I am unsurprised to find a supportive programmer in his life.
3) There is no three.
What I got out of it was a demo of parts of his pen.fm interface (while there are some rough edges, frankly most e-reader apps I've seen are substantially worse than this...), in the form of a cute little story that illustrates how different the reality of starting a company can be from how budding entrepeneurs often picture it.
(I went at it from the opposite direction of this guy when I started my first company: I could program, but had no clue about sales, marketing, finance or any number of other things, but eventually found myself doing phone sales, sales meetings, ordering print ads and negotiating with suppliers)
For the site in question it seems like re-introducing it by immersing us in what it is about - writing stories - is a much more interesting approach than throwing up some glossy brochure-ware site.
#2 is very fair, but I'll also note that growing up as a kid with two parents who had masters degrees in mathematics (from Warsaw Polytechnic), it was actually near impossible to learn math from them. I think it's also very difficult for me at this point to really help people learn to code. I recall a time when I was in the middle of learning where I could really communicate with people on both sides and bridge that gap of understanding, but I'm afraid that I've now surpassed that point. My dad was a great resource in learning, but mostly in the confidence arena where I knew if I got stuck, I would have someone to turn to. That being said, I school him on JS now.