As I had to write a few cover letters lately, I figured it'd be a good exercise to create a small project to automatically create customized cover letters based on a few parameters: your resume, a target job ad, a number of words and a tone.
I'm currently taking it and loving it. What I took from it so far is a toolbox for better thinking.
Examples:
- why you only have to convince small % of people for your idea to be adopted by most people (schelling models)
- how self-organization in cities and other domains works (lyapunov functions)
- multiple models for decision making (decision trees, spatial choice models)
- how economic growth works and how innovation is the only way to avoid economic stagnation (whether it's a good thing is another story)
- how linear models are super useful to understand complex situations
- how diseases spread and why R0 is so important (quite timely with covid!)
- how to try different perspectives and heuristics to solve problems
- how culture evolves and how innovation works to change the culture
- how networks work
- and more things!
I deliver products that focus on creating real business and user value. My latest project has been demoed to President of France and I personally demoed it to Secretary of Labour in France. It has been featured in dozens of newspapers and online magazines and is making a significant contribution to reducing unemployment in France.
I cut to the bone of what’s really absolutely necessary to make the project cost-effective for my clients while creating the most impact. I’m experienced with creating products from scratch (MVPs) and leverage user-centered design and a deep knowledge in user psychology to make products that are intuitive to use and get good user retention.
My area of specialty is web applications and SaaS products (http://saasfoundry.io) Ideally I work with developers to provide a full product.
Yep, users don’t see the value in the product (as shown in the email from the user). “plug&play analytics” does nothing to explain what’s new and why it’s worth my time.
Based on the info from the post, there was no specific need and ideal customer profile in mind for creating this product.
It’s not like an unknown problem, but it’s crazy how often startups have fell in the “do stuff no one needs” and wasted months or years on it. It seems to be one of these things where you need to experience it yourself to understand it.
I currently work in a French administration predicting which companies are likely to hire in the next 6 months (in France).
It's a long-term freelance gig in a joint venture between the french secretary of economy and the national unemployment agency.
My job title is officially Lead Developer for the project but since we're such a small team (the idea is to borrow the organisation and process of a startup in a big french administration, bypassing their hellish processes), I also help in copywriting, system administration, monitoring, and the most interesting : machine learning using a huge amount of economic/recruitment data to predict which companies will hire. We have pretty good results!
It's a great gig and hopefully of social value to France which needs it at the moment (unemployment is at an all-time high right now).
The main objective of the product is to help job seekers identify which companies are worth spending time for sending an open sollicitation.
75% of the job market is "hidden" (jobs that were filled without the company ever posting a job ad). We help the job seekers to identify this hidden job market.
SEEKING WORK - Remote (Paris, France - but can travel in Europe)
SaaS product specialist.
Do you need help turning your SaaS product idea into reality? I can help you with defining a MVP for your idea, and creating a prototype very rapidly. I’ve created MVPs that took literally a couple of days that were used to validate some pretty ballsy assumptions from the founders.
I’m used to working with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, and I adapt in consequence. I won’t bore you with technical details if you don’t need it, but can do it.
I can help you get to speed with the lean and agile methodologies, specifying your idea so that other developers can build it.
I work a lot with Python (often with Django) and Javascript. I’m a full-stack developer and can do web scraping or some complex backend stuff if needs to be, and I can do the HTML/CSS/JS stuff.
I’ve written a fair amount about SaaS free trials, pricing, user feedback, analytics and all things SaaS on my blog, several of which have been very well received (http://saasfoundry.io/blog). I know how you can start a marketing strategy and find your first customers.
SEEKING WORK - Remote (Paris, France - but can travel in Europe)
I’m Tommy. I help SaaS businesses make more money by optimizing their sales funnel.
1- Visitor-To-Signup: get more people to try your product
2- Signup-To-Activation: define a better first experience and get more people actually using your product
3- Trial-To-Revenue: convert those free trials into paid customers, by designing your product for it
How do I do this? I help bridge the gap between marketing and engineering and do fast cycles of A/B testing to test new ways for you to make more money.
Examples:
- I write and integrate lifecycle emails into your product (I have spent years writing complex software products so you don’t have to worry about it)
- I help you find sources of churn by looking for user feedback and analyzing it
- I work on copywriting to find the best way to get a user to sign up for your product
- I help you design your free trial in order to maximize your customer success, which creates happy customers and a better business for you
I’m an engineer/marketer with 10 years experience in software and developed my own products. You can subscribe to my newsletter about SaaS conversions here: http://saasfoundry.io
Good stuff about having a North Star, something that gets you up in the morning, why you're doing this in the first place.
I've worked on too many projects that were very tactical just because it sounded like a good niche opportunity at the time.
When time comes to doing the boring and difficult work (and it always does) you don't want not to be passionate about what you do. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it's true.
When you run a website for making gift certificate templates and you frankly don't give a damn about it, it's hard to get up in the morning and keep writing these articles, reaching out to small business bloggers or the million things you need to do to promote a website.
Here it is on Github: https://github.com/tommyjarnac/cover-letter-generator
It's also available directly on streamlit: https://cover-letter-generator-123.streamlit.app/