Jewel Burks

@jewelmelanie · Founder, Partpic

@tomstocklein hi! Thanks for this question. Advantages of being located in Atlanta include a great pipeline of engineering talent coming out of Georgia Tech, more affordable cost of living, access to tons of relevant Fortune 500s who are HQd in Atlanta, and proximity to the country's largest airport which makes it easy to get anywhere I need to be. Major disadvantage is lack of early stage investors.

8 share tweet・a year ago

Kristy Tillman

@kristyt · Design Director

What advice would you give to other black women founders who are seeking venture funding?

@jewelmelanie · Founder, Partpic

@kristyt 1) Make sure you really need venture funding because trying to get it will be a battle (is your business going to have 10X+ returns?, can you just get customers to fund your growth instead?) 2) you are going to be repeatedly asked why you will be the one to win at whatever it is you are doing -- make sure you know and believe your answer to this question 3) figure out what VCs have a related thesis, have previously backed black women, are from your hometown, know someone you know, really any connection point you can find because you'll need to get an intro 4) practice your pitch and make sure its tight

6 share tweet・a year ago

Orlando

@orlandoweise · Tier II Engineer Application Support Eng

What would be your advice for another an aspiring startup out of Atlanta?

@jewelmelanie · Founder, Partpic

@orlandoweise make sure ATL is the right place for your startup and if your answer is yes, start adding value to the growing ecosystem. There are a lot of great community events at ATDC, I'd recommend starting there!

3 share tweet・a year ago

Marcus A. Carey

@marcusacarey · Investment Analyst, SVB Capital

Jewel, can you speak to the differences in stress levels and stress forms when comparing your Corp America experience to your entrepreneurship experience? Assuming that the stress types are notably different, would you say entrepreneurial stress has had a net positive impact on your life and personal relationships relative to Corp America stress?

@jewelmelanie · Founder, Partpic

@marcusacarey hey Marcus! In general, I think the stress level of an entrepreneur is much higher than stress in a corporate job. Don't get me wrong any career has the capacity to be super stressful, but knowing that I'm responsible for the livelihood of actual humans and their children adds another level of stress. The possibilities of entrepreneurship (impacting my community, eventual financial reward, building something people love, etc) will net to have a positive impact on my life and personal relations I HOPE. but the journey is definitely way harder on my life than any job I've had at a company

💖

Andrew Ettinger

@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)

Who are some people you look up to?

@jewelmelanie · Founder, Partpic

@andrewett My parents and grandparents, Stewart Butterfield, Carla Harris, Stacy Brown Philpot, Marie Johns to name a few

Thomas Stöcklein

@tomstocklein · FoundersFundersFuture.com

What are your thoughts about connecting the PartPic app wirelessly to a 3-D printer to manufacture open-source versions of photographed parts at home instead of making that trip to the local hardware store or placing that Amazon order?

@jewelmelanie · Founder, Partpic

@tomstocklein This is on our roadmap :-)

3 share tweet・a year ago

Emily Hodgins

@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt

What have been the biggest hurdles you've had to overcome at Partpic and how did you do this?

@jewelmelanie · Founder, Partpic

@ems_hodge biggest hurdle was proving out that the technology could actually work. Many people told us we couldn't build Partpic when I first got started, now every time I do a demo or see customers using it I get super excited knowing how hard it was to build.

4 share tweet・a year ago

Sarim Haq

@sarim_haq · AI Whisperer @ caspy.com

Hey Jewel, saw you on Small Empires, a big fan of your company. I have a couple of questions: 1. Do you think when companies like google open source their code bases, they end up hurting startups. For example: you guys might have been working on a machine learning algorithm of your own but now a potential competitor might just use Googles Vision API to come up with a similar product. 2. What was your most effective growth hack for Partpic in its early days? Thanks!

@jewelmelanie · Founder, Partpic

@sarim_haq Maybe sometimes, but in our case I'm not terribly concerned about it. Reason is our tech is built to find exact matches, whereas Google's vision API and just about every other visual recognition API out there is about "similar". Similar typically isn't good enough for the parts industry 2. Most effective growth hack was bartering services when I didn't have any money. Oh, and creating a make-shift lighting machines and photographing parts myself.

6 share tweet・a year ago

Sarim Haq

@sarim_haq · AI Whisperer @ caspy.com

@jewelmelanie Thanks for your reply!

upvote share tweet・a year ago

Kristy Tillman

@kristyt · Design Director

Hi Jewel! What do you see is the next in line, after tools and parts, for Partpic to help find replacements for? I know we talked a little over twitter about Replacement As A service.