Currently trying to change the world with Bundlr.
If you follow this blog, you probably know that I organize a monthly meetup for the Coimbra Startup Scene. It’s been almost two years since I started doing it (since February 2010) and I finally made a website for it:
We’re also going to try out a new format that will include:
- A briefing, where everybody shares what interesting stuff they’ve been working on;
- One hour conversion around a pre-selected topic, with an host and guests.
The next meetup is already on January 4th, at Connect Coimbra. Fred Oliveira will discuss the intersection between code and design together with Paulo Pereira, Levi Figueira and everyone else who shows up. Join us
28th December 2012
Introducing Reading
For this year’s Codebits, I decided to do a solo project I had on my shelf for a while: a simple app to share the books I’m reading, and find out what everyone else is reading. It was the first time in 5 years I ended up with something publicly launched and working properly \o/
I know there are a lot of website around books. A lot of people told me about Goodreads. But I wanted to create something minimal: a stream of books that a person read. Take a look at my profile: http://reading.io/sdsantos
I used Twitter’s social graph to save everyone the trouble of yet again follow/friend people. And Twitter is where I’m already following the people I find interesting.
Go on, give it a try ;)
Really great presentation about Growth Hacking, specially for someone working on their first company.
A curated list of the web and mobile startup scene, working on end-user products, in Coimbra.
The result of a summer coding sprint of the Bundlr team: Matching Bags & Shoes
The folks behind the Lean Startup Braga meetup invited me to speak about startup metrics the other day. As you probably imagine, Bundlr isn’t the leanest of startups, but I had a great time overloading the audience with all the metrics we monitor and challenges we face.
Fortunately, they also invited Celso Pinto (quantitative marketing FTW) and Francisco Costa, who have clearly more experience with this sort of things.
The best was getting to know some of the people behind the Braga startup scene and the Factory Business Center (thanks Tiago for the tour). Now I’m working on an excuse for them to head South and visit Coimbra.
Notes: 1
- “Does anybody know how many months can we skip social security before they pawn my house?”
- First hire, after 6 months in the company:
“How’s that thing called again? Oh yeah, Bundlr.” - Google Analytics - Right now 0 active visitors on site:
“Let’s go home folks…” - “OMG, yesterday we doubled our signups! Wait, is it a bug in our dashboard? Yeah, it’s a bug…”
- At a fancy restaurant:
“I’ll have the children’s menu, please.” - “What the hell is convertible debt?”
- “How does this code here works?”
“Don’t touch it!” - “When will you finish X?”
“This week.” (For the 4th week in a row) - “Our website is down, why is nobody complaining?”
- “We got one RT… victory dance!”
- “And the new version is live! Oh wait… rollback, rollback!”
- “Do you have some kind of startup discount?”
Those around me know how much I’m into building a startup hub in Coimbra. It’s something I recurrently thing about: what could be done to turn this city into a more attractive place to start a company? I have a long list of things to do:
- meetings to between startups (already doing it)
- workshops
- organize trips to other hubs
- bring relevant mentors to Coimbra
- make intros to recognized investors
- broadcast news about local startups
- and so on…
But the more I think about it, the more I believe the best strategy is just to work like hell to build a successful company and then invest a lot locally. Invest in all the awesome people I’m getting to know here in Coimbra.
So, back to work…
