003 : Building the ultimate roommate finder with Ajay Yadav

NNL Podcast What would you do if you came back to your apartment after a trip abroad to find out that your roommate had disappeared with the deposit, the locks had been changed, and your stuff was missing? I know my response would involve a large number of guttural screams and a healthy amount of crying.

Ajay, on the other hand, used it as inspiration to build Roomi, an app that helps people find ideal roommates. List or browse apartments, describe your lifestyle, and never get stuck with a nightmare roommate again.

After a ton of research, Ajay built Roomi from scratch — learning Objective-C in a few months using free online resources, hiring a designer, and creating a minimum viable product (MVP). He’s learned from past mistakes and really did it right this time.

If you’re still struggling to figure out your best next move, listen to this episode and follow in Ajay’s steps. You’ll come out with an awesome product.

Continue reading →

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:20 — 48.5MB) | Embed

My Menu Bar: 16 Apps That Made the Cut

I don’t allow just any app to take up space in my menu bar. It’s prime real estate — always on the screen and accessible regardless of whatever app I’m currently using. It’s the perfect place to store small snippets of useful information, like how many unread emails I have or which apps are connected to the internet.

I’ve spent a lot of time building the perfect menu bar, and I want to share with you what I’ve crafted. Here’s my essential menu bar apps, listed in the order in which they appear. Continue reading →

002 : Getting press in a crowded marketplace with Daniel Howley

NNL Podcast LAPTOP Magazine’s Daniel Howley joins me to talk about the do’s and don’ts about pitching your product to the press. Tech journalists’ email inboxes are particularly full this time of year because of CES, an annual trade show that’s the main event for many companies in the technology industry.

But with lots of emails comes lots of inefficient emails. Did you know that out of 50 PR emails, Daniel only actually uses about five? If you’re a small startup or sole developer, you need to be one of those five emails in order to survive.

Daniel shares what it takes to get read and noticed, and these strategies can be applied immediately.

(Hint: It’s not as hard as you might think.) Continue reading →

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:19 — 100.6MB) | Embed

Welcome to the Novice No Longer Podcast

nnl-150x150 Welcome to the Novice No Longer podcast!

Every week, I’ll be talking to entrepreneurs, builders, designers, and journalists to give you information to help you build better products and get the press you deserve.

In this short introduction episode, I tell you a little bit about my own background and how this website and podcast came to be.

I hope you’ll tune in and check it out every week. Stay in touch by subscribing via iTunes or RSS.

If you enjoy the show, please rate it on iTunes! It helps me a ton and help other people find the show.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:55 — 7.9MB) | Embed

Quit wasting time searching for a technical cofounder

Finger wag

It’s no surprise to me that many of my students are searching for a technical cofounder.

If you have a good idea but not the ability to bring that product to life, it makes sense to try to find someone with a complimentary skill set: a coder without an idea.

But this thinking is based on flawed logic — these students are assuming that their idea alone is valuable. This is flat-out not true. It’s the execution of an idea, not the idea itself.

Even if you don’t know how to code, there are a ton of other things you can do that will actually help move your idea forward. Knowing how to code is not the be-all and end-all of building apps or other technical products. Continue reading →