>I got no positive reaction from the [climbing] industry at all
This was my experience trying to create a climbing tech product in the last few years.
The market for climbing is built through reputation, tradition, & thus a visceral rejection of new ideas & methods. This is very interesting, since many climbers work in forward-thinking tech companies.
Companies often resist growth to stay small. There are dirty secrets and bad blood among many competitors.
> The market for climbing is built through reputation, tradition, & thus a visceral rejection of new ideas & methods. This is very interesting, since many climbers work in forward-thinking tech companies.
Maybe moving fast and breaking things is not always appropriate.
> The market for climbing is built through reputation, tradition, & thus a visceral rejection of new ideas & methods.
Every climber I meet is lovely, but there is your standard sports equipment elitism at play as well, not to be confused with the very real brand loyalism that comes out of trusting something with your life.
I think if you are bringing a product into the climbing space you would do well to lead with a low risk product for brand reputation, something like a hangboard or training equipment perhaps.
I've been working on a version of this for Slack -> Jira.
I built a Slack bot, Skipper, to turn conversations and unorganized messages into formatted tickets.
Generally, team members fill out mandatory fields in a Slack workflow. This gets posted in a channel and discussed. Then we @ the bot in the thread and it organizes everything in a new ticket.
The AI seems smart enough to recognize mandatory fields, even when implicit.
I built a Slack bot that converts your Slack conversations to detailed Jira tickets in seconds.
Our team needs to routinely convert Slack convos into tickets manually, and it gets tedious and repetitive. Automating scribbled requirements to a ticket has been a big time saver. It's like I have a Jira assistant now.
Definitely! The key difference is open source. I feel like there have been several times when I wanted to build something that didn't exist on Strava but had no way to do it.
I'd also like it to be something you can use with Strava and provide deeper insights specifically for marathon runners.
I'm Vikram, a lead-level Software Engineer looking for a part-time contract role while bootstrapping on my own startup, Cling.
I built Cling’s entire tech stack from scratch. SwiftUI, Compose, MVVM arch for iOS. Ruby on Rails for API. Compose, Flow, MVVM arch for Android. I’ve worked on native and full-stack teams of varying sizes. I have a lot of experience with design, product and leading projects to completion.
As the tech founder of my startup, I also taught myself Ruby on Rails to build the API, fundraised to expand the team, and led the Android dev team to launch.
I’m ideally looking to work in mobile-focused products. I’m reliable, communicative, and eager to ship quality products!
Hi, my name is Vikram. I'm looking for part-time work primarily in mobile apps.
I have worked for a few start ups and most recently started my own!
Technically, I have a ton of experience working in iOS, and a good amount of experience in Ruby on Rails and Android. I've worked on some complex products using video, machine-learning, experimentation, etc. I can also work on design, UI/UX, and basic product management.
I'm working on Cling, a training community for rock climbers.
Rock climbing is a complex, metric-driven, and growing sport that doesn't have good-enough tooling in tech. Outdoor vs indoor is very different, so we're focused on significantly improving the climbing gym experience for now.
What made you choose to build an iPhone app before an Android app? I'm curious where that debate stands in the last few years as I haven't seen the arguments for a long time.
Main reasons for me are speed, quality, and showing proof of market.
I have worked on Android previously, but I'm much more familiar with iOS. In a space with competition, product quality is one of the important factors to gain user interest. That's also the reason I didn't go with React Native, since the tech needs will grow to a point where I won't be able to provide a good enough UX. Once I've proven value, I can hire an Android dev.
I'm in the same exact place in terms of progress and emotions. I've been trying to cold emails and not a single successful one so far. VC's say they read cold emails, then reject me without reason or ghost me.
I can't improve it without feedback, so I've been reaching out in my network (post-seed founders, execs, PM's) to get critique on my pitch before grinding at it again. Storytelling and extroversion definitely seem like the main drivers of success.
Since I'm here, I'd love to trade pitch critique/network with you if that's useful.
This is very cool! What do you envision as the applications of this app?
Also, what is that wall made of?
Funny coincidence, I also spent the lockdown + winter working on an app for gym climbing. You can check it out at https://www.cling-app.com/.
This was my experience trying to create a climbing tech product in the last few years.
The market for climbing is built through reputation, tradition, & thus a visceral rejection of new ideas & methods. This is very interesting, since many climbers work in forward-thinking tech companies.
Companies often resist growth to stay small. There are dirty secrets and bad blood among many competitors.
Amazing sport, hard fought market.