a product manager who codes
I’m a product guy with 7 years of experience.
I’ve built, coded, managed, or MVP’d more than 25 web and mobile products in a variety of spaces.
Amazing visual content curated by your favorite podcasts
This app displays a facebook-style feed of content that is curated through media. For example, all the things that are referenced in a given podcast - articles, politicians, videos, locations, books, movies, etc - are offered up in an easy to consume, scrollable list of tiles.
Everything is deep linked when possible. Annotator is looking to launch with partnerships with the most popular podcasts to validate the idea.
Search Angellist, find mutual connections, export to spreadsheet. One step.
Search Angellist, find mutual connections, export to spreadsheet. One step.
This project is a work in progress so there is no public version of the site yet.
An iOS app that lets you submit feedback to 311 about taxis in seconds
An iOS app that lets you submit feedback to 311 about taxis in seconds
WINNER: NYC BigApps 2014, Vision Zero, Task Force
FINALIST: Top 20 Finalist for NYC BigApps 2014
"This is going to potentially save lives. This is a profoundly important new tool that's going to help people in a profound way."
-- NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio
Product Owner
Product Manager
Looking for SFDC professionals and engineers? Look no further.
I was brought on to scope out and implement an MVP for this employer/candidate matching Rails app. I worked with one developer.
Prep for job interviews with a smart checklist.
Career Hound manages your job search through an intelligent, customized todo list and helps you find the job you want.
Search jobs from 2,000 NYC startups and prep for interviews with a smart checklist.
Small businesses and startups create the majority of new jobs. But many of these opportunities are not easily discoverable by underserved people or inexperienced job seekers.
You've heard of mappedinNY and madeinNY. "Hired in NY" is a mobile web app that makes it easy to discover, connect and apply to thousands of jobs at 2,000 NY-based startups and small companies. "Hired In NY" manages your job search through an intelligent, customized todo list and helps you find the job you want.
Hired in NY is a checklist that turns even the most inexperienced job-seeker into a highly engaged applicant so when you do apply and get that interview, you'll be prepared to put your best foot forward. It's perfect for internships/entry level jobs all the way up to execs.
Hired in NY was the 3rd place winner of the "Jobs and Economic Mobility" category in the 2013 NYC Big Apps Competition. Here's some of the press: NYCEDC, MikeBloomberg.com, Official NYC Big Apps entry.
Mobile Product Manager
Check out more examples of my work at Groundlink here. In this dropbox link you'll find:
Skip the line, leave your credit card where it is, and never wait awkwardly for food or coffee.
Lines suck. Credit cards suck. And awkwardly waiting for your food sucks.
Check in Take out is a Foursquare connected app that lets you check in as usual, order directly off the menu, pay with venmo and get an alert when your order is ready.
You know what doesn't suck? A kickass cashless in-person ordering process.
Your friendly reminder on payday to set aside money for your goals.
When a client gets their paycheck, that’s the best time to remind them to set aside some money for their financial goal.
Pay yourself first lets a counselor quickly set up a financial goal with their client and set when the client expects their paycheck and how frequently.
On payday, the client gets a an interactive text message reminding them to set aside money (10% of the paycheck) for the goal they set up.
The client can then reply to the text with how much they were able to contribute that period. They'll get another response with a snapshot of how they've been doing.
Counselors can be part of this as well. They can review an admin page that shows all the clients they've set up, their goals and how consistent they've been at making contributions. In one click, a counselor can send a text reminder to all the clients who, say, are making contributions on fewer than 50% of their paychecks, to proactively ask if they'd like to schedule an appointment.
This is a PHP application built using jquerymobile and Twillio for texting. Most clients have access to cell phones with basic text messaging – so we’re using that as the primary means of communication. But they’re also very busy, so on the go, they can get a quick reminder away from the computer.
A patient portal that works.
Patient Communicator was a good idea but ultimately couldn't find a market fit with doctors. I wrote a detailed post-mortem analysis about why it failed and the lessons to learn from it. That blog post has been reposted in several outlets including HIT Consultant, Inc. Magazine, DC Inno, Tech In Asia, Silicon Valley Business Journal, Vet To CEO, and CB Insights.
A Spotify app for discovering great music with friends through your favorite places.
On 14-15 April 2012, Coca-Cola and Spotify joined forces with some of the hottest app developers from around the world to create the next generation of the Coca-Cola music experience. See what happened behind the scenes of the Hack Den.
This was a super secret, invite-only, Spotify/Coke hackathon. Six hand-picked teams (many from Startup Bus) came together and built some cool music apps that combined: music, location, coke, spotify, facebook, and friends. It was an interesting challenge that set the event apart from all other hackathons I’ve participated in, which had no rules and often just large themes.
Our team was code-named London Calling: Andrew, Aaron, David, Alex, Toby, and me.
Coca-Cola & Spotify Hacker Den | FRUKT: Smart ideas in music and entertainment
My photos and press about the event and the winners
Coke recently hosted a Spotify “hack day,” in which programmers huddled to develop music apps that would work on the music program. The winning app, called London Calling, will be introduced during the Olympic Games in London this summer, as part of the wave of marketing and promotion that Coke does during each Olympics. In recent years, that wave has often involved music.
Spotify will help Coca-Cola look cool by injecting them into the conversation of music fans. In addition, the two partnered this past weekend to host a friendly competition between 6 different hack teams. The winner, named “London Calling,” will be an integral part of the public launch of this partnership.
The first example will be the addition of the Spotify Play Button to Coca-Cola’s Facebook page — the most popular brand page on Facebook, according to Ek, with over 40 million fans. The idea sprang from a recent Spotify Hack Day in New York from the “London Calling” team.
Coke finally releases “Placelists”, the app my hackathon buddies built
Decluttered, turn-by-turn directions for recipes.
Cheftacular recommends new recipes to try and then helps the chef make it with verbal directions from our virtual Sous Chef, so they can focus on making an incredible dinner, not fumbling with the recipe.
Created by: @rorypettingill, @jeffnovich, @sweetastandy, @aaronasmyth, @mondayjblack, @tobym
Discover amazing, unknown bands playing your favorite NY venues.
On October 30th, 1987, an unknown band played an acoustic set at CBGBs. A few New Yorkers got to see them. The songs became classics. That band was Guns N Roses.
BandsNearby is a Spotify app that helps you discover amazing, unknown bands that are playing at the intimate NY venues you know and love. You can easily build a playlist of music based on dates and venues. For example, the bands playing in the Lower East Side next Friday and Saturday. Then spend the week getting to know your favorite songs and which shows are worth checking out.
You love your local music venues like Living Room, Rockwood, and Arlene's Grocery. But should you plan to see next Friday's show at Cake Shop? Or Pianos?
BandsNearby is the ultimate local music discovery tool.
The premier online SAT prep course, by Bespoke Education
Ingenious Owl Online SAT Prep (www.ingeniousowl.com) was conceived to provide Bespoke's expert SAT guidance and curriculum to students anywhere, especially those who could not benefit from working with a Bespoke tutor. Its aim was to be a relatively inexpensive way for any student anywhere to get an all-video based review of key content and strategies for the SAT. As we worked on it, however, we thought it could provide an excellent resource - just like Bespoke's lesson books - to our own students. I want to thank Jeff Novich, one of Bespoke's tutors, for all his work on IO - this has truly been a collaborative effort. I also want to thank Kara Jones, one of Bespoke's tutors who has been the administrator for the site for several months now, and Isaac Foster.
IO is built of hundreds of short videos (2-3 mins each generally) that teach Bespoke's combined SAT lesson book, divided up into math, verbal, and writing videos. Just as you use Bespoke's lesson books in your tutoring, we'd like to ask that you begin to use the IO videos as well - assigning them for HW and showing students how they can use the videos to review concepts during the week either before or after your sessions (your most advanced kids may find IO's videos too basic but there are many that will be useful). You'll also find that IO videos will greatly help your ability to reach students in between sessions.
Poach talent from dying companies.
The idea for Poachbase came from hearing that startups were having a hard time finding talent to recruit. At the time, it felt as though there would be a funding crunch where startups that had raised seed rounds may have a hard time with their next funding round. Thus, if you were a surviving startup, you could look towards failing startups and approach the talent within their company. The data was culled from Crunchbase. Poachbase touched a nerve everyone faced: how do you find talent for your startup?
My team came in 2nd place at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon where 1,000 techies signed up, about 500 came to Pier 94 to play and nearly 100 hacks were demo’d on stage.
Foursquare deals for the 99%.
We won the "Best Small Business Hack" award - $2,000!
Here's the pitch:
We love Foursquare deals but most of them don't apply. I'm not the mayor of Starbucks, I'm not interested in Radioshack discounts. In fact, only about 15% of Foursquare specials are the fun kind - free cupcakes, dinner deals, buy one get one free - but that's a fun, cheap night out. Poorsquare.us solves this problem by surfacing all the amazing free Foursquare deals. I want to take my wife out the Lower East Side but I'm part of the 99% so I want my handouts.So now I'm ready to embark on a freebie crawl - get drinks, beers, pizza, wings, all kinds of stuff. all for free. Green tells me this is a kickass deal, and they are sorted by best deals first. Things like time restrictions (shown by this clock), or the need for multiple check-ins push the special down to in rank. Finally, it's super easy to add any of these deals to my Google calendar so I can actually plan the night out. Girls love that, even if they know you're not spending money on them. We used the Foursquare api and did a lot of magical processing on a lot of poorly formatted data. This is totally live and has about 500 deals available. In fact I'm going to use this tomorrow night. Check it out now at Poorsquare.us
- Select the neighborhood you want to explore
- type of deals (free, or maybe a discount is ok too)
- It's not my neighborhood so I'm only interested in first-time checkin deals
- And am I traveling solo or with friends who can unlock swarm deals
As Featured In: MSNBC | CNN | Yahoo News | PC Magazine | Lifehacker | Amex Open Forum | The Next Web | Business Insider | Programmable Web | Entrepreneur | CNET | NY Convergence | Digital Trends | HypeBot | St. Louis Today | Read Write Web
A mashup of top-rated IMDB movies with Netflix.
IMDBFlicks.com shows you the Netflix streaming library filtered through the top IMDB movies by year.
As Featured In: Hacking Netflix
Create a speed-networking event in seconds. No tables. No timers.
Turning strangers into friends, one text at a time. Cnvrge lets you add speed-networking to your event in 60 seconds. No tables. No timers.
Cnvrge lets you add a speed-networking component into your existing event without the logistical hassles of tables or timers. It adds tremendous value to attendees looking to network efficiently, and can be set up by the organizer in under 60 seconds.
When attendees arrive, they can check in via texting a number. Then they are texted who to meet and where... every few minutes. It's all done via SMS so it won't disrupt the event and can be done literally anywhere - bar, conference space, etc. It is opt-in and optional, so some attendees can participate while others can mingle as they would normally.
It's speed-networking but without the awkwardness. It’s an awesome host who circulates and introduces you to new people. It’s a dash of Hashable, a tincture of Sonar and a dollop of serendipity.
Cnvrge is like an awesome host who circulates and introduces you to new people. When attendees arrive, they can check in via texting a number. Then they are texted who to meet and where... every few minutes. It's all done via SMS so it won't disrupt the event and can be done literally anywhere - bar, conference space, etc. It is opt-in and optional, so some attendees can participate while others can mingle as they would normally.
What I learned after running 4 speed networking events with Cnvrge.
Check out Cnvrge events at Columbia University and Business Bash Speed Networking Bristol Tennessee.
As Featured In: Twilio Blog
Fun and educational activities for your child in the supermarket.
“You can teach a kid just as much in a grocery store as you can in a museum… maybe more.”
-- Steven D. Levitt, from Freakonomics (the movie)
Supermarket Classroom is an app that provides fun and educational activities for your child (pre-school through second grade) while you’re shopping at the supermarket.
The Supermarket Classroom approach was developed by two leading educators (and mothers). The activities included in this app have been tested extensively with children and were designed because we were looking for a way to make the shopping experience educational and interesting for our children.
I worked with a developer and designer to create this app for my mother.
Create a personalized music playlist your Valentine will love.
This was my very first hackathon! I joined a team and worked through the night on my tiny netbook to create the look of the site.
It starts with a missed Valentine card and ends with a not-so-lovely apology. We wanted to make it insanely easy to craft a playlist that will make your Valentine swoon. Valentun.es lets you enter your Valentine’s name and his or her specific interests. It then searches lyrics to discover music that uses those words and then serves up streaming tracks so you can listen and hand-pick the final playlist. Valentun.es then delivers the playlist to their cellphone.
What better way to say "Be my Valentine!" than through a tinny cellphone speaker via AT&T. If your special someone can listen all the way through 5 songs without dropping, you know s/he's a keeper!
The iPhone app lets you be even more forgetful, so you can quickly create a Valentune on-the-go (presumably while shopping for flowers 5 minutes before making dinner reservations). Just like the web front end, the app lets you enter your Valentine's info, view and listen to possible tracks, and select the ones you want to package as a playlist.
Wanna see the code? Check out the github repo here.
Here's some of the press and coverage of the event and hack: Wired, Evolver.fm, Matt Katz's Blog Post (teammate).
Watch a video from the hackathon below (that's my team, I'm in the middle with my back turned):
Learn vocab through the context of news articles.
Share a taxi with people going in the same direction.
Fare/Share is an iPhone app that helps New Yorkers share taxis on the go. It features one-click ride requests, fare calculations, identification by photo or apparel, Paypal integration and a comprehensive feedback/rating system. Socialize your ride!
Where your tweets blow up.
Wanna see the code? Check out the github repo here.
It's a game. With vocab. And tweets.
Vocabbomb is an insanely addictive, simple game. Just check what the challenge word is for the day and have a Twitter account.
Tweet as your normally would, but be sure to include the key ingredients to ensure your tweet gets counted. Use the challenge word in a well-crafted tweet. Anything is fair game, just keep it clean (and preferably original). Finish it off with the hashtag #vocabbomb. So an example would look like this:
I showed up to class today a little unkempt. Even my shoelaces weren't tied. #vocabbomb.
We capture all tweets that use the daily challenge word, and display them in the VocabBomb rating system. Anyone gets to rate these tweets using any criteria - humor, originality, usage. Check back to see the top rated tweets for the day and for all time.
Learn words by using them: You can study all the flash cards you want but the best way to really learn a word is to write a great sentence using it.
Get your creative juices flowing: They say you should write something creative every day. VocabBomb is the simplest way to do that. It's not so easy to come up with a funny/sarcastic/pithy/witty/clever sentence that uses "inured" is it?
Be proud of a quality tweet: Most of your Twitter stream is probably filled with mind-numbing checkins, blah retweets, shortened URLS and tons of ugly hashtags. It's no reason that most of Twitter is filled with zombie accounts! Let's change that by adding a few shiny tweets that stand out and represent some quality writing and thinking.
Discover great tweeters who aren't Ashton Kutcher: Believe it or not, there are people on Twitter (who aren't Stephen Colbert) who consistently write funny/interesting/clever tweets. With the simple VocabBomb rating system, you can quickly see who's writing the best material. People who write highly rated tweets on VocabBomb tend to have consistently interesting tweets. Follow them!
Oh yeah... POINTS!: Who doesn't love points? Anyone who comes to VocabBomb can rate your tweets with a +1, 0 or -1. So each of your tweets has a rating count, and you get a total score from your tweets. Top tweets are displayed prominently, as are players who write the best tweets.
No registration, No log in: Participating could not be easier... seriously. All you need is a twitter account. Your tweet only needs two ingredients to be displayed on VocabBomb: 1) use the challenge word and 2) include #vocabbomb. That's it. Your twitter username will be automatically added to the site if your tweet is indexed and then you'll be right up there on the leaderboard.
The most comprehensive film festival search engine ever.
FilmDevil was an idea I had when I submitted a feature length comedy film to festivals in 2001/2002. I found the process frustrating and saw that there was no searchable directory of festivals to quickly find the most appropriate ones for your film. So I worked with a few friends and we built an insanely complex site and never launched it. This was an example of overthinking the product. This was the vision:
For the independent filmmaker, finding festivals to submit your film to can be a daunting task. Filmdevil.com recognizes the filmmaking community's need for a one-stop tool to find key information on any festival in the world; to give filmmakers the ability to find festivals that suit their specific needs, and put all of the relevant information at their fingertips; to offer an equal opportunity playing field for film festivals to post as much or as little information about their fest as they want; to provide festivalgoers, enthusiasts and filmmakers alike, a forum to post reviews about any film Festival.Filmdevil.com is bridging the gap between filmmakers and film festivals, making it easier than ever before to find the most appropriate festival, using the most comprehensive film Festival database resource in the world. We have over 1500 completely searchable fest listings, with all relevant information updated by the festivals themselves. We also feature reviews of the fests written by filmmakers and film buffs alike. If you are a filmmaker looking to submit your film to festivals, then you can trust FilmDevil.com to help you choose the right ones for you.
Web Designer
In 2001, I was introduced to Zeke, the founder of ManhattanGMAT. At the time, the company was just him. He wanted a website so we worked together and I built this.
Over the decade, the company expanded and became the premier GMAT prep course. In 2010, ManhattanGMAT was acquired by Kaplan Test Prep and is now called ManhattanPrep.com.
I will respond.
jeffnovich [at] gmail