After getting written up in various publications, we received around 250 emails from planners worldwide asking if they could use our prototype for their transportation plans.

I run a company called Remix, where we help about 300 cities around the world plan their transportation future, from public transit to street design.

Before launching on Hacker News, we debated whether to build a full product or test a lightweight MVP to gauge interest in our concept.

We started doing user research in earnest, which opened our minds to the entire world of urban planning we now work in.

When I returned to San Francisco, I was inspired by the explosion of technology connecting people in unprecedented ways, leading me to believe we could leverage these connections for meaningful purposes.

We launched the prototype in January 2010, and it took off by word of mouth, even before a public launch, surprising us as it was just an API for charging credit cards.

Segment successfully launched their idea on Hacker News, receiving hundreds of votes and comments, which validated their concept.

I managed to convince Brett Taylor to co-found FriendFeed with us; he was frustrated with the slow and clunky product at Google Maps and rewrote the entire JavaScript front-end over a weekend, making it ten times faster.

We built a feature called 'God View' to track rides in real-time, which helped us manage demand and logistics effectively as we scaled our operations.