Hacker News: alegd

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How I find a job where what is needed is solid code, not firefighting?"

alegd — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 19:59:09 +0000

this sounds like a hiring problem, not a you problem. Companies with no docs and no senior expecting you to match output in 2 months are setting you up to fail.

the rabbit hole thing isnt a bug. Understanding the system before shipping is good engineering. The wrong companies just call it "slow".

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How do solo devs protect their work in the age of vibe coding?"

alegd — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 16:27:37 +0000

the painful truth is that if a big org wants to copy your approach they will, open source or not. They have the resources to reverse engineer anything from a paper or a benchmark.

I'd open source early. The community, feedback, and credibility you get compounds over time. Being first AND open builds a reputation that a clone cant buy. The algo might be replicable but being the person known for it isn't.

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:08:41 +0000

Saving this comment, this is one of the most useful in the thread for me. Appreciate the detailed breakdown.

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: What Would Make Stack Overflow Great Again?"

alegd — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:31:03 +0000

unpopular take: SO's problem was never AI. It was that they optimized for answers instead of relationships. The best thing about old SO was finding someone who solved your exact weird edge case and you could see their other answers and learn from their thinking

they should kill Q&A entirely and become the anti-AI platform. A place where senior devs mentor juniors through real problems in real time. Paid. Like a marketplace for technical mentorship. The brand recognition is there, the trust was there, and no AI can replace a human saying "yeah I hit that same bug in production, here's what actually happened"

SO sitting on 15 years of data about who is actually good at what technology. Thats the asset. Not the answers themselves.

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:27:50 +0000

this is incredibly helpful. The point about traveler supply having a different clock than demand is something I’ve thought about. Would love to chat, I tried sending you a message on LinkedIn but couldn’t. Please find my contact in my profile.

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: What skills are future proof in an AI driven job market?"

alegd — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:34:09 +0000

knowing how to give AI good context. Thats the skill nobody talks about. I use Claude Code daily and the difference between a lazy prompt and a well structured doc is massive.

also just understanding how the models work. I'm doing an AI masters right now and once you know whats happening under the hood the anxiety disappears.

bottom line: learn it and embrace it.

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 05:37:57 +0000

fair point on being light on details. I'm based in Spain, starting with domestic routes. The trust model is different here than cross-border, no customs involved for national shipments.

The luck and timing point is underrated. Half the reason I'm building this now is because the gig economy normalized "strangers doing tasks for strangers" in a way that wasnt culturally accepted 10 years ago. thanks for comment.

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:12:50 +0000

this is exactly what I was hoping to hear, someone who actually did it. Starting with one side where the cost/benefit was obvious and letting the other side follow makes a lot of sense. How long before the athlete side started coming in organically?

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:09:22 +0000

really appreciate you sharing this. This insight is huge for me. Do you think it would have worked if you constrained to a single city first instead of going broad?

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:50:20 +0000

Thanks for your reply! This will help me a lot.

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:30:41 +0000

Never heard of this one, just looked it up. Going straight to the top of my reading list, thanks!

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:21:51 +0000

bookmarked, thanks. Had seen NFX referenced before but never dug into this specific resource. Again, thanks!

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:47:37 +0000

This is gold. The "when someone ships with your tool it emails the recipient with the link" is exactly the kind of built-in distribution I should be thinking about. The real estate tool example is a great parallel. Thanks for taking the time to write this out!

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:43:49 +0000

That’s cool. 8500 manually is insane. But I get it, you cant understand your users without doing the work yourself

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:45:58 +0000

Yep I'm aware of PiggyBee, they actually shut down in 2022. Grabr is still around but international only, and focused on shopping. Part of why I think theres room here, especially for domestic/regional routes that the bigger players ignored. BTW I never said the idea was new.

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:41:52 +0000

this is exactly the kind of specific example I was looking for. Going to listen to that episode. The "founders were the first drivers" pattern keeps coming up in this thread, that might be the way after all.

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:39:29 +0000

this is really helpful, especially the "build a list of clientele first" part. I've been so focused on the product that I havent done enough of this groundwork. The craigslist/facebook angle for finding travelers is smart, it crossed my mind but wasnt sure

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:18:52 +0000

fair question. BlaBlaCar, Uber, Airbnb all got the same pushback: why would you get in a strangers car, sleep in a strangers house. Trust infrastructure solves it over time: ID verification, package limits, photo documentation, escrow paymnts.

And people already do this informally all the time. Sending stuff "with someone who's traveling" is super common, it just happens with zero oversight right now. This adds structure and accountability to something that already exists

New comment by alegd in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:01:52 +0000

yeah the "cheat" framing makes sense. I've been thinking about option 2, being the supply side myself at the start. Like personally coordinating the first few deliveries to prove it works before asking random travelers to sign up

option 1 is trickier when bootstrapped though. How do you incentivize signups without burning money you dont have? Curious if you've seen that work without VC funding behind it

Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?

alegd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 13:42:37 +0000

I'm building a P2P crowdshipping marketplace, basically BlaBlaCar but for packages instead of passengers. Travelers going between cities/countries carry items for people who need to send stuff.

About to launch the MVP and hitting the classic chicken-and-egg problem.

Travelers won't sign up without packages to carry, senders won't post without travelers available. Every marketplace founder says "focus on one side first" but nobody gets specific about how they actually did it, especially when you can't fake supply like you can with a SaaS landing page.

For those who've built P2P platforms or two-sided marketplaces: what actually worked for your first 50-100 transactions? Did you manually match people? Subsidize one side? Constrain to one route/city?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834213

Points: 150

# Comments: 163