Pioneer Blog

Location: Sacramento Remote: OK Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: Python, Linux, machine learning (PyTorch), emphasis on computer vision, familiar with JS and HTML Resume/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cRKBzaLXr3Zm4k2nUkPjWSIgjAJi-loJ/view… Email: matthew (dot) kai (dot) christensen (at) gmail (dot) com I am a highly motivated self-taught machine learning engineer who is looking to gain professional experience in the field. I recently won the Pioneer [1] tournament while writing my own PyTorch implementation [2] of a recent deep image matting research paper. I love deep learning, particularly anything related to image and video processing. I learn new skills very quickly and enjoy leveling up my skillset whenever possible. [1] https://pioneer.app [2] https://nomoregreenscreen.com (technical blog for the project)

this is a rad concept, thanks for sharing. sad that i can't play with it on my mac. from the screenshots, it definitely needs some design love, but it’s an interesting concept that really resonates with me. i know it's too early, but do you have thoughts on monetizing it? i wonder if you could do something like pioneer [0] and broker funding rounds for the really promising ones — looks like you have some background there. i’m working on designing something that is a bit like this, but for guiding the product building part [1]. it kind of papers over this idea validation step via a “wisdom of the crowd” voting system. do you see startizer only being focused on the initial idea validation part, or do you want teams to continue using it to iterate and build over time? [0]: https://pioneer.app/ [1]: https://www.co-op-os.com/

https://pioneer.app/ Apply with anything Apply with any type of project you need help with. It could be a company, physics research, journalism, or art. All you need to do is convince other applicants that your project is worth doing. Play the Tournament Every week other participants will give you feedback and points. The more interesting your work, the higher your score will be. Each month, the top-ranked applicants become new Pioneers. Become a Pioneer Pioneers receive a $1,000 investment with the possibility for a $100,000 follow-on, a round-trip ticket to San Francisco and access to a private online forum with other Pioneers. See the terms of the Pioneer offer.

This reminded me of an IndieHackers episode from a few weeks ago, where they interviewed the founder of https://pioneer.app/, which attempts to use gaming mechanics to motivate people to work on interesting projects and be more productive. It's a really cool idea that has the potential to do a lot of good for the world imo, so I have hope that this _can_ definitely be done. Highly recommend listening to the whole thing if you're interested in this stuff: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/080-daniel-gross-of-pioneer

Brilliant Idea! I hope you succeed wildly! Upvoted and Favorited! (Now, as a side note, if funding decisions were up to me, I'd suggest not using VC, never using VC, staying as far away as you can from VC, treating VC as if it were a highly addictive and intoxicating substance, like alcohol is to some people: "When friends don't stop friends from using VC..." (you know, like those old Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) ads from the 1980's <g>) "VC" above = "Venture Capital" (system) not "Venture Capitalist" (person). (You know, like "Love the sinner, but hate the sin..." or more colloquially in recent times, "Don't hate the playa, hate the game..." <g>) You might want to read the following articles: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/06/03/fixing-venture-capital/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/07/foreword-to-8220eric-sink-on… But let's say that despite this, you still want to garner some funding... For whatever reason, after Googling, I can't seem to find a comprehensive list of the various types and tiers of startup financing capital that are available (for example, there are lists of VC's, lists of "Angel Investors", lists of Crowdfunding platforms, lists of ways to bootstrap a business, lists of financial institutions and interest rates for generic borrowing -- but nobody has really sought to unify all of these sources into a single spreadsheet showing an amount of capital borrowed, and what is owed to whom in return for…

Pioneer | Frontend, Full-stack, Data Science | Open Source | San Francisco | Full Time | https://pioneer.app We’re building a community of creative young people working on interesting projects around the globe. We use software and ML to find people that lack opportunity but have great talent and ambition. We give them small grants to support their work and try to use various gamification techniques to keep them motivated on their project. Our goal is to be counterfactually significant in the creation of the next Albert Einstein, Marie Curie or Elon Musk. In the short term our technical challenges are equal parts computer science and human psychology. How do you build a product that can identify greatness? How do you then motivate people to become the best version of themselves? If you were building the Harvard campus, but entirely online, could you make it work? It requires great intuition and solid engineering. We work in Python, Ruby and Javascript. Email us at [email protected]. Thanks!

His latest project (https://pioneer.app/) recently (this year I think) got shutdown. I guess he's pivoting.

I like to think that pioneer.app (by former YC alum Daniel Gross [0]) is going back to the roots of the early YC model and a rethink on YC's Startup School program. I've seen some pretty great products built by "pioneers" over the years, though I must say, the gamification aspect of it isn't for everyone. Link to Pioneer 3 announcement: https://pioneer.app/blog/announcing-pioneer-3/ [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17841429

As an "SV outsider" geographically (but a tech founder at heart) being part the Pioneer program and a part of the founder community is incredible. As a Pioneer you become part of an alumni community that enables you to travel to a ton of cities[1] and have the chance to meet up with other incredible founders. The tournament and program are also great, but the founder community is what makes it incredible. [1] https://pioneer.app/winners

It's an app because we believe this way we can offer better user experience than a website. Devbook works similarly to Spotlight on macOS. You hit a global shortcut and Devbook appears as an overlay over the currently active application. We couldn't do this with a website. We don't show any ads or resell any user information. The advertisement in our privacy policy is just a standard language for cookies when you gather basic usage data through analytics tool. We're funded by Pioneer [0]. Currently Devbook is free. In the future, we will introduce premium plans for teams. [0] https://pioneer.app

(Also) Accountability — Write a weekly update. Post projects to https://pioneer.app/

Have you seen https://pioneer.app/ ?? Their leaderboard looks really cool.

Working on aggregated product search for peer-to-peer and resale marketplaces (OfferUp, eBay, Poshmark, StockX, etc): https://www.meetsuperset.com Resale is the fastest-growing category in online retail. 1 in 3 Gen Z shoppers are on it, 60% of women consider it. On top of that, there's the Marie Kondo effect and the current macro situation. I wanted to build something that lets you search in multiple places at once, so it's faster and you don't miss out on deals. No ads, no fake reviews. I'm hungry for feedback! This project is also a winner on https://pioneer.app :)

Pioneer | San Francisco, CA | Full-Time, ONSITE | Software Engineer, Business Operations | https://pioneer.app We’re building software to scalably find & support the world’s creative outsiders — the next generation of researchers, entrepreneurs, artists, and engineers. In the ~9 months since our launch, we’ve seen thousands of applicants from over 100 countries, working on projects spread across almost every industry (check out our recent winners here: https://pioneer.app/blog/meet-the-pioneers-take-3). We’re a small team of 5 led by our founder Daniel Gross (founder of Cue, acquired by Apple, former YC AI Partner), and are looking to hire our 3rd engineer & someone to run business operations. Please reach out to: [email protected].

An obvious & explicit url link for Pioneer in your blog article might also help: https://pioneer.app Based on your previous title of "Does Silicon Valley VC tournament manipulate the scores to pick winners?", I searched google for "pioneer vc"[0]. The top links were for https://www.pioneerfund.vc -- which is the wrong url. It was confusing because that landing page also mentions YC. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=pioneer+vc

You might want to consider applying for Pioneer—you can get a grant for your project: https://pioneer.app/

https://pioneer.app/ Looks like it's more of a popularity contest than anything else.

> Right. The application process appears to openly prioritize marketing skills, which puts it in serious conflict with the stated goal. Exactly. To quote [1]: "The world is full of extraordinarily creative people that are struggling to fit in.". If the candidate is struggling to fit in, he/she is probably not "the popular kid" or a highly successful self-marketer. Another quote from [1]: "Our goal is to build a decentralized network of young, creative and exceptionally motivated outsiders who don’t fit in to the traditional system.". I personally would claim that such self-marketing is exactly what the "traditional system" is (among other things) strongly about. So making it a popularity contest is opposed to the self-stated/self-imposed goals. [1] https://pioneer.app/

I'm making a PaaS thingy / Docker Swarm GUI called Lunni. It helps startups, small businesses, and self-hosting enthusiasts deploy and manage apps on their own server: https://lunni.dev/ I've done a Show HN last month [1], but it didn't get any traction (well, apart from 4 upvotes!). Perhaps because I didn't really capture what the project is about. I've reached out to dang and he gave some really valuable feedback (thank you!) and encouraged me to try again, but I'm still overthinking stuff :') I've also got an email from Rishi with Pioneer [2], saying I've got a fast track to their accelerator program. I'm still looking into that but I've tried their Tournament thing and got some nice and encouraging feedback from other founders. Overall, I'm not sure where this project gets me but even if we don't get any revenue at all, the experience of working on a passion project full-time is really nice. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34068557 [2]: https://pioneer.app/

Direct link to Dan’s site for Pioneer: https://pioneer.app/

Pioneer | REMOTE| Engineer | https://pioneer.app Founder of Pioneer here. We're building a fully remote online accelerator. A kind of YC-before-YC. We find people on the Internet that seem promising and give them "Silicon Valley", but on the Internet. It's a lot of gamification, Ruby software, Zoom, Slack, and fun. We've funded over 100 people around the world in 30+ countries. We direct them to YC once they graduate. (Tbc, we have no formal attachment to YC; just admiration. And a severe addiction to HN.) We're looking for a competent software engineer that can do front and backend development. We're happy to take a bet on someone junior or senior. The interview process is much like the job: get a high level prompt, and then _make a thing_. That's it. Don't apply if you're looking to optimize tight C++ loops, we don't have that. Apply if you're interested in building products, end-to-end. Apply if you're energetic and excited about the idea. Apply if you can see this gig be a legitimate cornerstone of your career. There's no formal ATS, it's a startup. Just email [email protected], mention this post.

If you like this idea, look up http://pioneer.app/

P.S. If Silicon Valley is inaccessible due to Covid, we will re-create the IRL period in another startup hub, such as London. We will try our damnedest to make Silicon Valley work. Taken from https://pioneer.app/blog/announcing-pioneer-3/

I appreciate your skepticism. It certainly sounds too good to be true. Unfortunately I only had 2000 characters to get everything down but happy to clarify any questions you have. Instead of a chemical that directly activates sweet receptors like other sweeteners, this protein binds to your sweet receptors for 30-60 minutes and activates it in the presence of acid. I'd be happy to send you samples to see for yourself in the return for feedback on my MVP :) Edit: I'm also backed by Pioneer so hope that makes it look a little more legit https://pioneer.app/blog/meet-the-pioneers-take-4/

I and several other founders are doing this on the Pioneer livestream next week. It's earlier stage than most YC companies but not afraid of a little transparency https://pioneer.app/livestream In fact, there are whole communities built around publicly sharing your companies' financial metrics. Eg https://www.indiehackers.com/products

I'm 19 now, 18 when I won. The list of winners is all here: https://pioneer.app/winners and includes ages. I believe there's two people over 35, including my cofounder who happens to be the oldest Pioneer.

But, it's not in the page describing the tournament: https://pioneer.app/tournament

Pioneers offer: https://pioneer.app/offer > Pioneer will retain 3% of any company you found over the next eight years. Pioneer will also have the option of investing an additional $20,000 for 5% in any of those companies. 3% of all companies founded over eight years is a very big ask.