Posts Tagged open home pro

Giving Thanks

Dec 21

Posted by Andrew Machado in Technology | Comments off

It’s been a long year. The last six months have been an incredible journey filled with setbacks, accomplishments and as of today fulfillment. As of today we are finally shipping the latest and a full rewrite of Open Home Pro into customers hands.

The purpose of this post is not about the app, but about the people that helped or inspired its being built.

Bert Toledo - without her we never wouldve started building ohp. She inspired it with her frustration and it turns out 14,999 others have her problem too. She’s my rock. Best girlfriend in the world.

Josh Elman - On September 11, 2010 Josh offered his initial feedback of my mvp product and I thought it was spot on. He talked a lot about focus and simplicity. I would find myself rereading this email a few times over the course of development.

Michael Dearing - When I met with MD he said one word that changed our design forever. Photos. Photos are everything in real estate and they are everything in our app.

Ryan Spoon - Ryan has always encouraged me to take the leap.  Without his advisement and resources we never wouldve shipped. God bless him.

Chris Smith - Chris really put OHP on the map by talking about how great it was for agents at Inman’s Agent Reboot conference held in major areas throughout 2011.

Egg Haus - Rob and his team were exceptional to work with.  We developed some really great methodologies throughout the app that we agreed our innovative and great for our user base.  The design work done in this app I’d argue is the strongest in the real estate industry. The landing pages look so good i’d hang them on my wall. Bravo.

Robert Malko - Robert barely exists online. He has no Twitter or Facebook profiles, but boy does he work his ass off.  He poured countless hours to help get this out the door, including 16 straight yesterday.

I had two great interns for a few weeks along the way. Sam and Kirk thanks for the help figuring out conversion numbers.

Chris Lim - Chris was instrumental in getting us enough funding to build towards our vision. His enthusiasm is his best quality.  He got me excited to keep pushing towards the finish line.

Angelo DiNardi - Angelo hadn’t done much iOS programming when he turned my original powerpoint slides into a functional app. He’s ridiculously solid and has one heck of a head of hair.

Steven, Tristan, Tyler, Can, Mona and rest of the artists formally known as Apture. Thank you for forcing me to build a better product. The polish that we put into every pixel really pays off for every user.

Last but not least mom, dad. I think nearly every phone call we’ve shared you two have asked how is it going. Not once did you ask when is it shipping?

thankyou


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First four weeks running the show

Jul 28

Posted by Andrew Machado in Technology | Comments off

Awhile ago @monaghandi told me this post she read about being a napkin entrepreneur.  Steve Blank in the post discusses how its easy to start a part time project nowadays with technology and the internet, but it takes a lot more effort to quit your day job and focus fulltime on one idea you have.  Steve is dead on with this.  I debated doing Open Home Pro fulltime for what felt like a year, but after the second version released and interest started growing I decided to take the plunge.

So what’s happened in the first four weeks?

Quite a bit, but I’ll just mention a few things.

1.  I committed a significant amount of code to the website, listing pages and even a few bits to the iPad App.

When the going gets tough the tough must get going. I don’t have much engineering help currently so I have to use what I’ve got.  It’s been challenging and a bit humbling, but the sense of accomplishment after each thing starts to come together has been great. Extra special thanks to @kkrewink who helped add a few key features.  The guy runs in one mode….100% beast.

2.  Growing Site Traffic and our User Base

If you are going to spend every waking moment on something I sure hope you improve the business and the user base.  Site Traffic is up 40% since I’ve started doing things fulltime and the user base is growing right along with it.  In the last two weeks alone we’ve double key metrics inside the app by simply communicating better with our users.  These kinds of things I simply didn’t have the time to pay attention to before going full time.

3.  Started Aggressively Going After Funding

When you are doing things part time the feedback you’ll get often from angel investors is you need to be fulltime on a project for them to invest.  I heard time and time again on Angel List amongst other feedback that unless you are fulltime its a no go.  Now that I’ve removed that barrier its time for me to put my money where my mouth is and get some people to believe in what I’m doing.

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Closing Time

Jun 30

Posted by Andrew Machado in Technology | Comments off

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.”


Semisonic - Closing Time by hushhush112

I walked through the doors of Apture June 29th, 2009. I was so excited to work there I showed up two hours early and hungout in a coffee shop across the street until someone showed up from the team. I started on the team as a Community Manager. You can see my thoughts on being a Community Manager here. Over the last two years I’ve learned so much that rambling on and on for paragraphs wouldn’t be fun to read for you. So I thought I’d do a list of my 3 favorite moments of the last two years with the team.

1. Apture Magic Search Bar aka “The Prestige”


Late one night at the Apture office @kurafire , @tristanharris and I were banging our heads on the desk about how to build this really magical search experience on publisher pages when we had that aha moment. And the Apture Magic Search Bar was born. By SXSW 2010 we had shipped it. This ranks slightly ahead of #2 simply because of the excitement of the night we came up with it. At one point we called @kansteven and made him drive all the way from Menlo Park to the office in San Francisco at midnight to partake in the development.

When we showed the team a mock of it the next day @cansar heavily breathed into a bag to contain his excitement :)

2. Apture Hotspots

As of yesterday we unveiled Apture Hotspots to the public. This to me is the culmination of the vision set back for Apture from the beginning. The idea of fundamentally changing the way people browse the web. We are empowering readers and publishers to work together to make articles smarter, more engaging and more connected. For example if enough readers look up the term “Angkor Wat” on your post Apture will automatically insert a Hotspot for future readers allowing them to instantly see what “Angkor Wat” is without having to leave the page. What this does is essentially connect the web in a whole new way, keeping readers engaged and happy on publishers pages.

It’s the best product I’ve ever had a hand in building.



3. Hiring Angelo DiNardi

If you don’t follow Angelo’s twitter stream you should. You’ll often see him yelling at Microsoft to die in a fire. His passion shows through on everything he builds. Without him the front end of Apture especially the New Search Experience simply wouldn’t have been possible. I think back to all of the projects he’s had a hand in helping with and like a team player he always executed and delivered something that’s world class. Quite simply he’s a gem.

Starting Monday I’ll be down at the DogPatch to work on my former side project Open Home Pro fulltime.

Still reading? Watch me get flying arm bared below.

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Two weeks on AngelList

May 16

Posted by Andrew Machado in Personal | 8,469 Comments

About two weeks ago I put Open Home Pro on AngelList. I’ve learned a lot in two weeks :)

Below are a few of my observations.

1.  Their invite system for investors is brilliant

With fundraising the domino effect happens often.  Once you get a few investors on board the rest come.  With Angellist you want to have all of your investors listed on your profile with how much each has committed.  What this means is I’m inviting all of my investors to the service ASAP in turn getting AngelList more potential investors for the other companies on the service.

2. Both Naval and Thomas are very active with the community

I have shared emails/messages with both Naval and Thomas.  Even small things like this to me make all the difference in growing a service.  It’s never been easier to talk to your users than it is today and they get that.

3.  Your company is not DOA if not shared by AngelList

There is an email list where they’ll  share your company out if you meet a particular set of criteria.  The reason for Open Home Pro not being shared is I’m not working fulltime on the project and the market being niche.  Despite not being emailed out we’ve managed to assemble followers, I’ve done a few calls with angels and have received a good bit of funding so far.

More to come as things progress

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