Applications of Passion and Innovation
Hack4Impact UIUC members are always looking for ways to make an impact beyond our organization.
Although we primarily partner with nonprofit organizations to build software for social good, we encourage our members to apply what they’ve learned in Hack4Impact to their other passions.
Recently, Hack4Impact UIUC’s External Committee members sat down with three of our past Hack4Impact Co-Directors — Tim Ko, Angad Garg, and David Chang — to discuss their insights regarding building and launching products together as a team, pivoting between project ideas, and sharing their learnings.
Starting December 2019, the trio initially set out to create Guojee (https://guojee.com/) in order to provide international students with personalized career services via a bootcamp program that included interview training and other resources. However, around mid-February, they then realized that perhaps their team was not equipped with the resources to provide such a solution to that specific problem.
For a brief period after, they considered whether there was a way to empower students in making side projects, but eventually, they decided that they did not have the means to make that possible on a large scale either.
In March 2020, they then set out to build Sidewise (https://sidewise.app/), a Google Chrome Extension that sifts through a GitHub user’s repositories in order to summarize the tech that they utilize. Recruiters are able to gain insights into their candidates' programming languages, project statistics, and how much of a match they are — all within a second. The extension had roughly 250 users as of November 2020.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation with Tim, Angad, and David.
How did you end up being a team?
Angad: David and I joined Hack4Impact in Spring 2018, and David was my PM [Product Manager]. Tim joined the semester before so we obviously met Tim as well. And then David and Tim were Co-Directors together. And then next semester, Tim and I were Co-Directors together. So we’d all worked pretty closely together. Not all three of us — but each pair.
Did you ever think of expanding?
David: I think if you have two smart friends, that’s enough. Honestly, it gets exponentially harder to keep everybody motivated and have everybody doing stuff. I can only say that because I tried doing some projects with eight people, and at the time I thought it was great; I’m working with seven people, I’m a beast. But you just talk about stuff for six months, and then nobody ever built anything. So this time, I personally thought: “Let’s just keep it at three.”
Angad: If the question is more about hiring and less about founders, then I don’t think we really thought about it. If we had gotten funding, and if we were somewhere in that stage, then yes, that would have been the next plan.
How did you come up with your first product idea, Guojee?
Angad: We first talked in December. I had just graduated, David was just coming back to campus next semester, and then Tim was abroad and was also coming back. We were all looking to work on side projects. We came to campus in January and we were trying to spend some time brainstorming different things that we felt passionate about, things we were somewhat familiar with. So we started looking at problems that other students were facing. We talked with different staff and different students — trying to figure out something where we could come in and solve the problem.
Tim: We were trying to understand the pain points of the people around us. Since we were still in school, we tried to capitalize on that fact. That’s an advantage that we actually had.
David: We talked with a bunch of professors and students. We noticed that international students have such a hard time finding a job. Part of it is companies have restrictions on if they can hire international students or not; it also costs them more money. There are logistical things involved. And then part of the equation also is it sucks to interview when English isn’t your first language… So we figured, why don’t we create some interview prep specifically geared towards international students? And maybe we can figure out all the companies that hire international students and be a middleman for connecting international students who work really hard with these companies.
“I just heard some really sad stories of people who worked 10 times harder than I’d ever worked and did all the networking, did all the projects — then submit their resume and not even get a first-round interview.” — David
At what point did you decide to pivot to Sidewise?
David: We designed a website. We had initial calls with students who were interested in tutoring or interview prep, and pretty quickly found out: “Oh, actually, maybe this is not as interesting or maybe wouldn’t be as helpful.” It’s not like we had some crazy solution. It’s not like we were geniuses with the interview prep process. We didn’t have some magic bullet that “you do XYZ, and you’ll for sure get an internship.” So I think it was still a problem to solve there. But we probably weren’t any better at solving it than a couple of driven international students. That was the first two months in a nutshell.
Angad: That took us into the middle of February. Early March, we moved away from the international student piece. But still thinking about students, recruiting companies, and hiring, we came to the idea that a lot of people do things outside of class — like side projects. It’s hard to talk about those as skills and quantify them. And then from the recruiter's end, even if they’re slightly technical, it’s hard to take a look at someone’s side project for however little time you have to actually look at their GitHub and get anything valuable from it. We started developing mostly after quarantine started, around late March, early April. We applied [for Y-Combinator (YC)] over spring break and then interviewed in late April.
What are some unexpected challenges that you faced during the process?
David: The unexpected challenges are kind of the ones you expect. I think from a product perspective, we all assumed that whatever we want to build, we’ll probably be able to build it. More so, are we going to build anything that anybody actually cares about? So we spent a month and a half, two months, figuring out what we were gonna build in the first place, and I don’t even think that felt like enough time. And that in itself was a big challenge, because you’re always feeling like, ‘I want to start developing now.’
Angad: When we’re brainstorming, it’s not like an idea struck us and we’re like, this is an amazing idea. So the kind of decision you have to make is, ‘Is this idea good enough that I think it’s worth starting developing?’, because once you start developing you probably won’t be changing the idea that much unless you throw it away and start looking at ideas again. At each step of the way, the question is, ‘What do we need to make this become useful?’
Were there any pleasant surprises that came your way?
David: One was when we were in BrewLab working on a project, and this kid overheard us and said, ‘Oh, I know, a couple of clubs that do that.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you heard of any?’ And he said Hack4Impact. But yeah, throughout the process, working on stuff, talking to people who are interested about what you’re working on and making some progress is always really nice.
Angad: Another exciting milestone was submitting our application to YC and getting an email asking to interview for YC. And then beyond that, when we submitted our Chrome extension for publication. Also, when we had a bunch of users and some from some different countries.
David: When we saw it live for the first time and we could use it.
Angad: And launching on Product Hunt.
David: An investor reached out to us too, just out of the blue.
If you could go back in time and do anything differently, what would you change?
David: We definitely could have tested things faster. If we have an idea and we can immediately test it to see if people are stoked about it, that is something we should just do more frequently for any project.
Angad: Me and Tim started developing, and David was designing and talking to people. Even though that was the most comfortable role to me, I think we fell into our defined roles a little too fast. Since there’s only three of us, more eyes on each aspect, more involvement, even though that does take up time, would have been helpful. In the beginning, I was pretty cynical with ideas, but I think not worrying about that and putting down all my bad ideas on the paper back in January would have been good.
Tim: Like David, doing more, trying to figure out ways to validate ideas really quickly, and scratching one. Or even with our latest one with Sidewise, just trying to launch as quickly as possible. We kept trying to polish it more and more, and dragged on a bit more. Instead, to just like release it and see what happens.
What were some takeaways from this experience?
David: Huge success, huge failure simultaneously. We launched something! Probably 95% of side projects never get launched, so that’s huge. We got users, talked to real people who actually use the product, and people who were down to pay us money for the product that we built. You’re also considering reasons why you think your product didn’t pop off, and there’s always interesting takeaways there.
Angad: We did a lot of reflecting after most stages. Where are we slow? What can we do better? How can we do this more effectively? We talked about some of those takeaways, like launching faster. Some of those are things you already know, but it’s not the same until you’re saying to yourself, ‘Ah, that’s what that means.’
Tim: Really understanding what makes something useful is hard. And the process of getting there is also a really big learning experience, talking to users and trying to really figure out what their needs are. I wasn’t expecting to raise a million dollars or get into YC and such. That purposely was not my expectation so I wouldn’t be disappointed. I wanted to do that, but in that sense, I don’t see this as a failure.
What advice do you have for college students?
David: Meet people you like. I actually hated school my first year and I had no friends. And that’s just such an unfortunate way to view school and spend my time. And obviously, it’s not as easy as just, “Okay, I’m gonna go make some friends today.” But, if you can, join some clubs, even if not Hack4Impact, meet some people you like. Because I think most things that you do in life are probably going to be because some people like you, and they want to hang out with you.
Angad: Accumulate a lot of different experiences. Looking back I feel like there were semesters where I overcommitted, not necessarily by taking on a lot of positions, but just doing a lot of different things. But I don’t feel like they were like terrible semesters, because I was trying out new things and enjoying most of them. It’s probably easiest to do it when you’re at school versus when you’re working and trying to pay rent, when you’re trying to do a bunch of things after graduating.
Tim: Spend your time in college wisely. Not just sticking around and doing school, but try to figure out what you like, explore more. See what you really, really are passionate about. And then once you know, find people that have similar passions as you. You grow a lot when you actually meet people with the same interests as you, and you become lifelong friends.
