How Alex Made An App That Got 80k+ Users In 1 Month

### The Story
- In summer 2016, Pokemon GO took over the world. Alex saw a need for an app to figure out where certain Pokemon were, so he and a friend quickly created a Yelp-style crowd-sourced app tying Pokemon to locations (pulled from the Yelp API). Alex worked on the Android app, and the friend owned by back-end.
- The app immediately saw immense traction, going from a few dozen to a few hundred to a few thousand (3,000+) new installs *per day* within just a week. **After less than a month, the app had been used by 80,000+ people.**
- Alex ran into copyright issues publishing the app as it used Pokemon images. Despite the app being free, ad-free, and not even asking for donations, it kept getting rejected. To hack around this, a server-side flag was created to turn off the images as the app was in review and turn them back on when the app got approved.
- Google Play eventually found out about the trick and took down the app for copyright infringement. However, the app was impressive enough at this point that Alex could include it on his resume, and it helped a lot getting interviews and giving him something to talk about during them.

### Learnings
- *Building a marketplace is extremely difficult* - A marketplace product is one that's a platform and requires a certain amount of some valuable resource in order to be useful: It's not useful on its own in a vacuum. For example, Uber needs a supply of readily available drivers to be useful. In this app's case, it needed data on Pokemon locations, which had to be provided by users.
- *Don't expect users to use the product properly* - In fact, don't expect your users to not be jerks. The app suffered a lot initially as users were uploading blatantly fake data of legendary Pokemon showing up in the wild - Legendary Pokemon hadn't even been released yet during the app's lifespan!
- *Be proactive and think through edge cases* - Zooming out from the prior point, it's just good to do this in general no matter what kind of software you're building, whether it's an entire app or a small feature on some already existing product owned by a FAANG company. Understand how things can get weird and address those scenarios accordingly.

If you want to learn how to build your own side projects, check these out:
- [[Masterclass] How To Come Up With 100k+ Users App Ideas You Can Build For Free](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/AI4zi759PSGn6RwIFT6f/masterclass-how-to-come-up-with-100k-users-app-ideas-you-can-build-for-free/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Build And Grow Tech Products To 500k+ Users For Free](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/OEuX0KMhcnNSTJ50Voee/masterclass-how-to-build-and-grow-tech-products-to-500k-users-for-free/)

If you're interested in the code of the Android app, Alex took the time to save it here: [https://github.com/Gear61/GO-Database](https://github.com/Gear61/GO-Database).

The Most EVIL Way To End An Interview (And How Not To Do It)

Here are the core points from the video:
- It is **never** okay to end an interview early because the candidate wasn't good enough. This is immensely disrespectful, especially for an onsite interview where the candidate carved out an entire day to do it (likely taking PTO if they are currently working).
- As an interviewer, you are also representing your company. If you do this, you are hurting your company's reputation as people talk - That candidate is very likely to tell others that your company is a horrible place to interview at.
- When this scenario happens, *the proper thing to do is to switch gears and go entirely into maximizing candidate experience* (as your goal isn't collecting signal anymore). This involves:
  - Giving them hints aggressively to help them complete the problem
  - Pair programming with them and trying to teach them - Use your interview to make the candidate a better software engineer!
  - Allocating more time for them to ask questions about the company - Try to get them excited! If you do this properly, they'll want to interview with your company again at a later time. People change - They may come back in a few years and be an absolutely incredible engineer you 100% want to hire.

Related resources:
- [Full session on being an amazing interviewer](https://link.jointaro.com/NhjenQ5vERKwRPdb9) - This is where this clip was cut out from.
- [Full 1 hour+ Masterclass On Acing Your Big Tech DSA Interview](https://link.jointaro.com/VfSeuUFiXNtKa5if7)
- [Full 1.3 hour Masterclass On Acing Your Big Tech System Design Interview](https://link.jointaro.com/Tmqs62Lw7WV4qDw59)
- [How Alex Got Into Meta With 0 Prior Leetcode Experience](https://link.jointaro.com/vaNH1hjRUhmF8ibSA)

Why Being A Good Interviewer Is So Hard

Every software engineer know what it's like to be interviewed, but few know what it's like being on the other side of the table giving the interview. It's important to understand this flipped perspective as it will help you resonate with the interviewer.

Here are the core points from the video:
- A good interviewer has 2 core goals:
  - Get signal on the candidate's abilities
  - Provide a great candidate experience
- Unfortunately, these 2 things usually conflict. In order to get good signal, the candidate often times has to struggle to solve a tough problem. Struggle is generally not associated with good experience.
- *A truly good interviewer makes it so that the candidate enjoyed their round even if they didn't pass.* This means that you need to get signal in a positive way by building the candidate up and bringing out their true skills without solving too much of the problem for them.

Related resources:
- [[Taro Top 10] Effective Interview Prep](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/HLBYxJI7D1j8STolrwum/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Ace Your Big Tech Interview - Data Structures And Algorithms](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/V4sTACzfOh22nMVcUV3w/masterclass-how-to-ace-your-big-tech-interview-data-structures-and-algorithms/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Ace Your Big Tech Interview - System Design](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/J3I9fTW9ulr6T9KjxpqY/masterclass-how-to-ace-your-big-tech-interview-system-design/)
- [How Alex Got Into Meta With 0 Prior LeetCode Experience](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/ZYiTbN21FsqFxFdpwt5a/how-alex-got-into-meta-with-0-prior-leetcode-experience/)

How To Put The Interviewer On Your Side

At the end of the day, passing a software engineer interview is about convincing another person that you're competent. The best interview candidates behave in a way that naturally puts the interviewer on their side. Weak interview candidates behave in a way where the interviewer becomes their opponent. This video covers how to do the former.

Here are the core points:
- **Always be communicating** - Nobody can read minds. By regularly explaining your thought process, you are keeping your interviewer in the loop and giving them the maximum chance to fully understand you and your skill. Communication is an especially important axis for Big Tech.
- **Be very careful asking for hints** - If you haven't made a lot of progress on the problem, asking for a hint is effectively asking the interviewer to solve a good amount of the problem for you. This severely reduces the signal the interviewer gets on your abilities. *If you ask for hints too aggressively, you may be tanking your own chances.* For deep dive of the dynamics of interview hints, [check out our video here](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/QFZxCLSuUDRYysvBBFLR/how-to-handle-hints-in-a-software-engineer-interview-without-failing/).
- **View your interviewer as a human not an obstacle** - While it's true that you need the rubber stamp from the interviewer to pass, focusing on that too much will negatively show in how you interact with and communicate with your interviewer. When you view your interviewer as another person and have empathy for their situation, you will understand what they're looking for and be much better equipped to show that signal.

Related resources:
- [[Taro Top 10] Effective Interview Prep](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/HLBYxJI7D1j8STolrwum/)
- [Effectively Learning Data Structures And Algorithms (DSA) For Software Engineer Interviews](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/XwpMMY3ss97zOrXJQ7Xr/effectively-learning-data-structures-and-algorithms-dsa-for-software-engineer-interviews/)
- ["How can I show to a Big Tech company that I'm likely to succeed there?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/ZpqoWC1zi3wMTXBUsS2B/how-can-i-show-to-a-big-tech-company-that-im-likely-to-succeed-there/)

How To Handle Hints In A Software Engineer Interview Without Failing

The best software engineer interview performances feel like a collaborative experience between the interview candidate and the interviewer. If an interview is going well, you will be supporting them as the interviewer and maybe giving hints. However, both sides need to be careful about how this happens.

Here are the core points from the video:
- Giving hints is tricky. There are some situations where it's good and some where it's bad.
- In general, you should lean towards giving less hints as an interviewer to maximize the signal you get.
- *Don't give hints when the candidate is desperately fishing, and they have no idea how to solve the problem.*
  - **Fishing example**: "Can we use a binary tree for this?" (they didn't explain their thought process at all prior to asking)
- Fishing questions like the one above are tricky as you can't answer them normally:
  - **If you say "Yes":** You reveal the core pattern behind the problem, solving way too much of the problem for the candidate. At this point, they have failed the question.
  - **If you say "No":** The candidate is one step closer to the core solution via process of elimination. This sets them up to keep fishing until you say "Yes".
- When the candidate is fishing, say something like, *"How do you feel about it? If it makes sense, we can try building it out."* Flip the question back to them and push them to think through it more.
- Give hints to bridge small gaps. If the candidate is 90%+ of the way there, just give them the hint so everyone can move on.
  - A common scenario here is that the candidate has almost all of the solution working minus some trivial 1-liner. You are losing signal by having them struggle on this trivial piece and not working on other, larger problems. In this case, just give them the 1-liner.

Related resources:
- [[Taro Top 10] Effective Interview Prep](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/HLBYxJI7D1j8STolrwum/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Ace Your Big Tech Interview - Data Structures And Algorithms](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/V4sTACzfOh22nMVcUV3w/masterclass-how-to-ace-your-big-tech-interview-data-structures-and-algorithms/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Ace Your Big Tech Interview - System Design](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/J3I9fTW9ulr6T9KjxpqY/masterclass-how-to-ace-your-big-tech-interview-system-design/)
- [How Alex Got Into Meta With 0 Prior LeetCode Experience](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/ZYiTbN21FsqFxFdpwt5a/how-alex-got-into-meta-with-0-prior-leetcode-experience/)

5 Offers w/ FAANG Companies As A New Grad: Details + Lessons

In 2014, Rahul graduated from Stanford with a BS and MS in Computer Science. He received new grad Software Engineer offers from 5 companies: 
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Microsoft
4. Google
5. Square

This video outlines the exact details of the offers, and models out the increase (or decrease) in value of those offers 8 years later, in 2022. The total compensation of the offers range from $174K/year to $262K/year, and those numbers go a lot higher if you factor in stock appreciation.

If you want to better understand how compensation works in top tech companies, first watch [this video](https://link.jointaro.com/819tdsqwJj4VnaEC6).

[Masterclass] How To Choose A Good Company And Team As A Software Engineer

Choosing the right company (or team) is one of the highest leverage decisions you'll make in your career, so it's worth doing some reflection!

It’s all about your priorities

- Figure out what’s important to you and what’s not. Create a stack-ranked list of all of these and work backwards from the top 2-3 to figure out the best opportunities for you
- People don’t realize how many angles there are to this. Here’s all the ones from the presentation: *Compensation, work-life balance, company prestige, supportiveness of team, growth opportunities, stability, maximum outcome (risk), remote work, product space, company ethics, technical space, level/title, benefits, location*

Supportiveness and overall quality of the team are often underrated

- It’s really hard to grow and have a healthy work life without this
- If you like your manager/teammates and you feel like you’re regularly learning/being challenged by them, deeply cherish that. People underestimate how hard it is to find an environment like this. Even in a prestigious company like Big Tech, this is difficult to find.

Big Tech vs. Startups

- At the end of the day, it’s all about your risk tolerance - Startups can have insane monetary/promotion outcomes, but they also might collapse the next year.
- In a vacuum: Start off at a Big Tech company to build a good foundation and then switch into smaller companies to have more scope/ownership

Some things you should NOT spend time on:

❌ Don't focus on how much you liked (or did not like) the people in the interview process. The recruiter/interviewer is NOT representative of your life at the company. Instead, focus on trends of the people joining the company, rather than individual data points.

❌ Don't spend time looking at the financials of the company. Even if you do decide to dig into the numbers, there's a good chance you'll screw up the interpretation -- humans have a really hard time with exponential growth.

Learning the quality of a team

- Talk to engineers/ICs if you can - The manager will inherently be biased towards their own team as they are often goaled on hiring
- Make sure that the team has a healthy oncall process and fast code review iteration

Related resources:

- [\[Masterclass\] What Software Engineers Should Look For In Their Engineering Manager](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/oeY7ncZhzJ5NO6dij5e7/masterclass-what-software-engineers-should-look-for-in-their-engineering-manager/)
- [“How can you tell if a large public company is going in the right direction?”](https://www.jointaro.com/question/TrlweQQ7DveTnYBP9VUH/how-can-you-tell-if-a-large-public-company-is-going-in-the-right-direction/)
- [“What does it mean to not have enough scope to be promoted?”](https://www.jointaro.com/question/bJuagPwOEEy5vkcXKkqh/what-does-it-mean-to-not-have-enough-scope-to-be-promoted/)
- [“What should I look for in a new team in terms of growth?”](https://www.jointaro.com/question/i2bOMPrqaRc0NUZ7918F/what-should-i-look-for-in-a-new-team-in-terms-of-growth/)
- [Presentation Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S_kULq5zzVLkcoKy0bKJ2IHSrjL3s2VbOLe8p1TQJ7s/edit?usp=sharing)

[Case Study] Maximizing SWE Growth: Ownership and Specialization At Startups

**Huge** thanks to [Henry Prior](https://www.linkedin.com/in/henryprior/) for joining us and sharing his perspective and insights!

This was a *massive* session, so here are just some of the highlights:
- **Henry's core learning**: Bias towards action. You aren't really going to truly understand what is and what isn't fruitful to you until you just start trying things.
- **Story #1** - At his first startup job, Henry found a project to upgrade from Tensorflow 1 to 2. This ended up moving the metric he cared about, but he found out later that the business impact wasn't great. The company's clients were non-technical and didn't really care about the company's model being ultra-accurate.
- **Story #2** - Found a reinforcement learning project at his next company where he did all the modeling on his own and worked closely with an infra engineer to ship. The work was very complex and had huge impact, saving ~25 hours per week in Data Scientist cycles. He got massive recognition from the company, and this project was a big part of his move to senior.
- You have a lot of autonomy in early stage startups. Take advantage of this and actively look for large problems to solve, doing so as early as the interview process. It's not like Big Tech where you are generally given a good amount of direction on what to do (at least until you get to staff).
- *It's in your best interest to be completely authentic when interviewing with a startup.* It's not like Big Tech where you're putting on a facade to meet their interview requirements. A startup might not be the right for you due to a lack of work in your interest area: Big Tech in contrast has a little bit of everything.
- *If you're going to get into machine learning, you should understand the underlying math first.* This puts you in a much better position to work on the modeling part of ML vs. the more tertiary tasks like data wrangling. The math is a combination of probability/statistics, linear algebra, and calculus.
- **You can't study your way to being good at system design.** Resources like books and blog posts help, but system design is something you very much have to get good at by doing. Instead of just leaping into the code, start planning out your tasks and doing technical writing. From there, share your material with your team and get feedback.

Related resources:
- ["What's the difference between Big Tech and startups in terms of learning and growth?"](https://link.jointaro.com/yzWgzTF4WFzfXjS29)
- ["Does it make sense for me to choose a specialization like ML? If so, what's the impact?"](https://link.jointaro.com/jV34Jz7cJqQv2MpD8)

How Do Effective Engineering Leaders Help Their Teams Achieve More?

3 questions engineering leaders ask to increase the impact of their team without burning the midnight oil: 

1. What parts of this project are most critical? Who is most important for success? 
2. Can I optimize/shortcut some part of this project? 
3. Can I propose scope reductions for this project? 

Rachel also talks about the iron triangle often used for project management (time, scope, cost).

For more resources on engineering leadership:
- [This Is Why Most Engineering Managers Are Terrible](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/4NJbAn0uTDUPfYfa859V/this-is-why-most-engineering-managers-are-terrible/)
- [[Masterclass] What Software Engineers Should Look For In Their Engineering Manager](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/oeY7ncZhzJ5NO6dij5e7/masterclass-what-software-engineers-should-look-for-in-their-engineering-manager/)
- [[Case Study] Becoming A Tech Lead Again In Just 1 Month After Joining Robinhood From Meta](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/X8vpfJooDpsX915ouC00/case-study-becoming-a-tech-lead-again-in-just-1-month-after-joining-robinhood-from-meta/)

What Advice Do You Have For Women (And Allies) In Tech?

There are not enough women software engineers. Rachel talks about the importance of sponsorship for career advancement, being ok with discomfort, and using employee resource groups (ERGs) to find community + support.

For allies (those in positions of privilege), acknowledge contributions from women and call out their good work if it's not getting noticed. 

Rachel also discusses how to evaluate a company's priorities around diversity and inclusion.

For more wisdom from Rachel, [here's her Taro playlist](https://link.jointaro.com/Cm5rJk4RJTkWhhnq7).

How To Quickly Understand Company Culture - Airbnb Example

Culture is more than what people say. It's about how things get done in the company. The best way to ramp up on a company's culture is to observe what people do and talk to as many people as possible when you first join.

Rachel also talks about the 2 unique aspects of Airbnb's culture: 
1. Mission-driven (as opposed to tech, sales, or founder driven)
2. Incorporating the best of different companies

If you want to learn more about how to understand an org/company and build up influence within it, here's some related resources:
- ["How do I sell the vision behind a large, org-level project?"](https://link.jointaro.com/ESa5WJyk682iwqJt9)
- ["How can I build up more influence in an org?"](https://link.jointaro.com/GVYFUhx46N2QWVeZ7)

How To Find Your Path Among The Countless Paths In Tech

As an early-career engineer, it can be overwhelming to figure out what technology to learn and which domain to dive into. In this video, Airbnb Director of Engineering [Rachel Zhao](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelzhao/) walks through the framework you can use to find your path.

The key to finding your passion is: 
1. Explore and refine. Give yourself some time + space to try adjacent areas.
2. Reflect on the various activities you do: What sparks joy? Think about both technical and non-technical activities.

If you want to learn more about this topic:
- [Figuring Out The Best Company To Join As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/Nqs0U6rt2qFyXKSZurTh/figuring-out-the-best-company-to-join-as-a-software-engineer/) - The former VP of Engineering of unicorn startup Mixpanel shares his thoughts here.
- [This Is How Software Engineers Should Initially Learn](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/wUl3hc2wr1ms493bd23b/this-is-how-software-engineers-should-initially-learn/) - This video covers how earlier-in-career engineers mess up their learning.

English Communication Is The Most Important Skill For Immigrant Engineers

The field of engineering is filled with immigrants. Silicon Valley is famously built from the creativity and hard work of immigrants around the world (China, India, Israel, and much more).

If English is your 2nd (or 3rd) language, only or mostly speaking your native language at work will hold back your career. Rachel talks about her misconception that communication skills weren't that important, and how to improve your speaking + writing.

If you want to get better at communication, check out our course: [\[Course\] Clear Communication For Software Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/course/clear-communication-for-software-engineers/)

This thread is helpful too: ["How to improve my communication?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/omak9oOT4NJE9dhKeMZi/how-to-improve-my-communication/)

What's the Difference Between A Senior And Staff Engineer?

The mark of someone who is NOT ready to be a staff engineer: Asking what needs to happen to get to staff.

A staff engineer should identify problems worth solving, and then get buy-in across the org to solve the problem.

- Despite each staff engineer's journey being different, there's still an opportunity to learn from the examples of other promotion cases. Here's an example from Rachel's days at Yelp with a talented staff engineer:
  - Google announced an algorithm change for SEO ranking, which would favor websites with better mobile friendliness.
  - An engineer on a feature team recognized that this would hurt Yelp and brought it up very proactively.
  - They drove a proposal and broke down the problem with several domain experts in the organization.
  - It took a while, but they were able to ship a quality, long-term solution.
- Instead of just looking at "what" new problem to solve, there's also opportunity for very senior engineers to breakdown the "how" to accomplish a large, ambiguous problem and get to staff.

If you enjoyed this video, you can watch all of Rachel's other Taro videos here: <https://www.jointaro.com/topic/rachel-zhao/>

For more resources on getting to staff:

- ["How can I come up with big initiatives, especially those at a Staff level?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/c3LcBDXEcxA85y9jlFjz/how-can-i-come-up-with-big-initiatives-especially-those-at-a-staff-level/)
- ["For a Staff engineer at a Big Tech company, what should their first 3-6 months look like?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/X8QYtxzD7SXdzMfcnBiX/for-a-staff-engineer-at-a-big-tech-company-what-should-their-first-3-6-months-look-like/)
- ["How do I come up with innovative, impactful ideas and bring them to my team?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/3QIJhAT4loA7n1hSfCuw/how-do-i-come-up-with-innovative-impactful-ideas-and-bring-them-to-my-team/)

Rachel's Career Story: Waterloo, Yelp, Airbnb

To check out Rachel's excellent tech career advice, you can find the [full playlist here](https://link.jointaro.com/EFUYvmLHzenKQLRp6).

Rachel moved to Canada in high school, and then attended the University of Waterloo where she picked up programming for the first time. 
- She did various internships as part of the co-op program, and her first job out of college was at Yelp. 
- After 9 years at Yelp, Rachel had become a Director of Engineering there.
- Since 2020, Rachel has been an Engineering Lead at Airbnb, heading up the search product there.

**Rachel's core learning**: The times where you're uncomfortable and struggle are the times you learn the most. Stay calm and embrace the more difficult times in your career - When you view these situations as a growth opportunity, that's how you come out of them stronger than you were before.

3 Mistakes Too Many Software Engineers Make (from a Director at Airbnb)

As Head of Search Engineering at Airbnb, [Rachel Zhao](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelzhao/) has coached + mentored many engineers as they climb the ladder. She calls out 3 things NOT to do for software engineers: 

1. **Don't work too hard (for an extended period)** - This leads to burnout, which hampers both your health and your growth. Rachel regularly spends time reflecting and figure out what new skill/project she can take on. You can learn more about the importance of reflection when it comes to productivity in [our video here](https://link.jointaro.com/dXkvKXs4FfbK5V6h7).
2. **Don't say "I'm not learning enough"** - At the end of the day, the company hired you to do a job - Growth is more of a 2nd order priority for many companies. This means that you need to be proactive about owning your growth - Don't just expect your manager to hand you the perfect curriculum of projects to get to the next level. For in-depth advice on how to create that scope for yourself to get to the next level, check out [this in-depth Q&A advice](https://link.jointaro.com/bah6v7RFpnywVYyv9).
3. **Don't focus on the score, focus on the game** - In particular, don't focus too much on level and viewing others as competitors. Think about how your org functions and how you can add the most impact. Check out our in-depth advice on [how to view levels when it comes to your career](https://link.jointaro.com/JJBA5KSCLdoK9Sc39).

"How did you decide to quit your job and make a startup?" - 9/13/2022

If you're interested in starting your own startup, check out our curated playlist for it here: [[Taro Top 10] Entrepreneurship And Tech Startups](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/ArtlSzF17v7cad1K6TJG/)

- Alex has wanted to start his own thing for a while - Ever since his side projects started getting serious traction in 2015-2016 (25,000+ users each).
- The initial goal with [Tech Career Growth Community](https://www.linkedin.com/company/techcareergrowth/) wasn't to make a business out of it. The pandemic was happening and people were suffering - We just wanted to help people.
  - Tech Career Growth then grew beyond Rahul's and Alex's wildest imaginations.
  - This made them start thinking what they could accomplish if they worked on it full-time instead of part-time.
- For Alex, there are the core reasons why he decided to make the jump back in early 2022:
  - **Diminishing returns on "preparing" to make a startup** - He had the 0 to 1 experience from doing side projects and building Course Hero's Android apps from scratch. Meta was great helping him build soft skills.
  - **Tech Career Growth taking off** - Alex had more fun working on this community than working his full-time job at Robinhood (which is saying something as he *really* enjoyed working at Robinhood!).
  - **Getting into an incubator** - In late 2021, Alex and Rahul got into OnDeck, which gives the old YC deal of 125k for 7%.
  - **Life timing** - Alex is 30 as of the publishing date of this video, and creating a startup only gets harder as you age due to increasing responsibilities outside of work.

If you're interested in how Alex published ~30 apps that got ~3 million users combined, check these out:
- ["Finding a mobile app idea - How to do it?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/KJ4VXh6rUhKbWeiJoRDe/finding-a-mobile-app-idea-how-to-do-it/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Come Up With 100k+ Users App Ideas You Can Build For Free](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/AI4zi759PSGn6RwIFT6f/masterclass-how-to-come-up-with-100k-users-app-ideas-you-can-build-for-free/)
- [[Masterclass] How To Build And Grow Tech Products To 500k+ Users For Free](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/OEuX0KMhcnNSTJ50Voee/masterclass-how-to-build-and-grow-tech-products-to-500k-users-for-free/)

Lastly, here's a great discussion on how hard startups are compared to leveling up at a "traditional" job: ["Career advancement or building a startup? Which one is harder?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/EquWmWjZhqiiujyltreJ/career-advancement-or-building-a-startup-which-one-is-harder/)

"How can I help with what you guys are doing with Taro?" - 9/13/2022

- If you can afford it, please [join Taro Premium](https://app.jointaro.com/membership)!
  - If you work at a Big Tech company, there's a good chance you have L&D (learning and development) budget that you can use to expense Taro and pretty much get it for free! Here's a [template](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xpY2XBKTpiMN-o7U2c1pvqai5afQSVIuGMgQZiB-_Rg/edit) you can share with your manager to get Taro reimbursed.
  - Here are the companies we know of that can reimburse Taro: Meta, Google, Amazon, Robinhood, Airtable, Yelp, Gusto, Shopify, Gusto, New Relic
- Send us your feedback!
  - As an early user of Taro, you have outsized power for taking a bet on us. We listen very closely to all user feedback at this stage.
  - On the mobile apps, we have a "Send feedback" button in your profile.
  - We're also on LinkedIn and the [Tech Career Growth Slack](https://join.slack.com/t/techcareergrowth/shared_invite/zt-lt2tbjcn-LOAVIDuGPI~nkuc4woHDLg).
- If the Taro's content is helpful for you, share it!
  - In the mobile apps, there's a share button on every Q&A and video.
  - We spent a lot of time on the underlying tech for this sharing, using something called "dynamic links". They work on every platform, matching the user to the Taro web app, iOS app, or Android app accordingly.
  - Fun fact: Taro content links will open up within the Android app after you install it and sign-in if you are shared a piece of Taro content and didn't have the app yet.
- If you're on Taro Premium, please share your perspective and answer questions! One of our core goals is to diversify the perspective on the platform.

"Why is Taro named Taro?" - 9/13/2022

- Here are the 3 main constraints we had on a name:
  - It should be short (4-8 characters).
  - There should be a good domain for it, ideally a ".com" website URL.
  - It should have positive associations.
- The reason it took 3 months to find a name for our product and company after we quit our jobs is because we spend the first 3 months thinking about what idea we wanted to do.
- "Tech Career Growth" is a wonderful name for our free community, but it's not a great product name as it's too long and too literal.
- We took ~3 weeks to decide on a name. Here was our process:
  - Come up with guiding principles for the name (covered above)
  - Brainstorm a bunch of names (100+)
  - Narrow it down to ~8 based on the above principles
  - Make a deck with the final candidates, weighing pros and cons
  - Have a couple rounds of discussion/debate to pick 1 name
- You can think of "Taro" as a similar play to "Apple". Doesn't really describe what the product is, but it's a food with positive associations and a short name.
- The logo is a "T" and has additional symbolism by looking like roads. Our goal with Taro is to help you **navigate** your career!

The Plan To Make Taro Q&A Suck Less - 9/13/2022

- **Update:** Literally a few hours after recording this video, the ability to like answers on Taro web was shipped.
- The #1 priority with the Q&A platform is adding notifications. Here are some important ones:
  - Being notified when someone answers a question that you have asked
  - Being notified when someone likes an answer that you have shared, as you should be able to feel good if you have shared your wisdom in a high-quality answer
- Overall strategy: Make the process of asking a question and getting answers delightful and silky smooth, as you can't have answers without questions. From there, make it a great experience and rewarding to answer questions.
- Ideas:
  - The ability to write a private "Thank You" note to someone who left a really great answer on your question.
  - Question askers can choose and highlight an answer on each of their questions, which helped them the most. This is another way to let question answerers know the impact they're having.

Tech Career Growth Videos

Our instructional videos provide software engineers with insights needed for career growth. Masterclasses go incredibly in-depth on a specific tech topic while case studies are real examples from established engineering leaders.