Tipping Point Partners

Inc. Magazine’s Howard Greenstein asks Art Chang and Tipping Point insider Adam Seifer, “In a world of beta tests, how do you know when your product is ready to ship?”

Adam Seifer, co-founder and former CEO of Fotolog.com, one of the oldest and most popular photo sharing sites on the net, said: “I frequently find myself trying to convince partners, advisees, etc., that one of the biggest risks a start-up has is to not launch anything at all—to get so caught up in talking about what you’re going to launch and so fixated on details that it feels like you’re making progress when instead what you’re really doing is moving asymptotically closer to something that doesn’t ultimately matter as much as you think it does.”

Some companies have truly embraced the world of continuous testing, also called “using your customers as test subjects.” Google’s Gmail was listed as a “beta” or test version for about five years. Apple’s “Siri” voice service is still considered a “beta” (and given that it works for me about half the time I’d say that is an accurate label.) But are these kind of tests for everyone?

“Not so fast,” said Art Chang, CEO and Founder of Tipping Point Partners, a New York City-based “institutional entrepreneur” that serves as a seed investor and founder of software start-ups. “Siri is a ‘feature’ on the iPhone, but the iPhone works. Gmail is an extension of the Google brand, and though it started a little shaky, by the time it came out of beta, it was solid. If you’re an established brand you can experiment, but for a traditional start-up, that first product represents a brand promise. So, it may be better to reduce features and functions to have a product that works really well, and does what it is supposed to do. Twitter and Evernote both started as very simple products, and expanded after they got the core right.”

Read the full article here!

We are looking for talented software engineers to join our team of creative, inspired, innovative, energetic, self motivated people who love making and shipping products. Are you one of us?

YOU:
A generalist who is comfortable doing a variety of tasks that could range from working on user interface to contributing to frameworks and libraries that support our applications. Diving into lower levels doesn’t scare you. You have excellent skills in object-oriented software design and programming, experience working on user interfaces of consumer oriented applications, and developing concise, consistent and developer-friendly APIs. You are someone who can step back and look at a problem in different light to identify an approach that improves performance and uses as few resources as possible, while still being responsive to users.

YOUR EXPERIENCE:
• BS Degree in CS, ME, EE or equivalent
• Strong object oriented programming and design skills
• Experience at app and user interface level with at least one of the following: Cocoa, Java, C++, C#, Android, Win32 or Windows
• Performance analysis and tuning experience including memory usage, CPU utilization, leak checking, etc.
• Excellent problem solving, critical thinking, and communication skills

BONUS POINTS:
• Worked on iOS or it’s predecessors at Apple or NeXT
• Knowledge of Objective-C
• Knowledge of Apple’s development APIs (Cocoa Touch, Cocoa, CoreFoundation, CoreGraphics, etc.)
• Experience developing reusable APIs
• Experience shipping consumer oriented products
• Familiarity with Unix, especially Mac OS X
• Experience writing multithreaded code
• Experience and interest in Enterprise data management
• Passion for the mobile platform and writing simple, elegant software that is easy and fun to use

THE JOB:
Responsibilities will include developing new features, maintaining existing code, fixing bugs and contributing to overall design. Performance analysis and tuning will also be a significant part of your job. Sound like you? Send us your resume!

Food+Tech Connect and Gojee are bringing together journalists, technologists, designers, policy makers, and food data specialists to develop tools and visualizations that help the public better understand how the Farm Bill impacts our lives. The Farm Bill affects us all – influencing what we eat, how much it costs, and how our food is grown. Thus far, there is little in the way of visually interesting and informative media about the Farm Bill. The hackathon is happening now at the Tipping Point Workspace as part of the International Open Data Hackathon. Follow today’s events on Twitter using the hashtags #foodtech and #odhd, or join us in person – we’ll be here till 10:00pm tonight!