fastmap

This morning, I gave out my first API token! It's exciting but mostly terrifying. While I've tested what I can, I have no idea what could still break.
To get that first user, on two sites (IndieHackers and Startup School), I offered feedback-for-feedback. One company took me up on that. I provided a lot of feedback on their dashboard and user flow. The next day, they requested an API key to help them with some of their data preprocessing tasks.
I feel like this has been a huge challenge and the next steps from here will be more obvious. As I become confident in the stability of fastmap, I can start marketing and pull in more users. For now though, it will be one-user-at-a time.
Tomorrow, I'll be giving out my second API key

It took 5 weeks from my first commit to complete what I consider to be a working MVP. Given any arbitrary Python function and any python iterable, fastmap will now automatically parallelize that execution in the cloud.

Originally, I viewed fastmap as a distraction from my primary project. Soon, I realized after talking with friends that this is a very compelling idea that many researchers and data scientists could make use of immediately. Also, it can be generalized to a lot of backend server tasks which could save a lot of engineering effort at a lot of companies. I'm glad that I pivoted and am feeling very enthusiastic.

Next milestone: One user.

I got an email today telling me that I was accepted into the Denver Startup Week Pitch Competition Semi-Finals! I'll be presenting live on September 15th in front of judges (no audience of course). If I win, fastmap gets $100,000. To be honest, I don't think I'll win. There's a lot of compelling projects that I'm competing against. But it's a fantastic opportunity to share the idea and get some users, a cofounder, and maybe even an angel investment.