[job]Automotive Classifieds

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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

@eksai:

I hope it doesn't appear that we are coming off as anti-your-idea. The fact is we as developers have done quite a lot of business (combined, among those that have responded to you) for people that are in your position. This offer you make is, I'm sure, not the first time that one of has seen an offer like it. I know that from the sound of the responses it may seem that we may not like your idea or your approach, and perhaps that is the case with some of the respondents in this thread, but many of us have experience in situations like this. Hence, we ask the questions that lead us to making a quality decision about your product.

For the record, many of us are very skilled PHP/web application developers. For some of us it is our only means of providing for our families. For others it is a hobby that has led to side business that have provided for us. In all cases, those of us who have responded have done so in part because we are trying to get a feel for what you are offering and trying, as best we can from what information you have given, to develop an assessment of the benefit of taking a stab at your project.

Given the vagueness of the information that you have presented, I myself, would probably decline to submit a bid for your project. I suspect others in this thread would probably decline as well seeing as many of us use our talents as a source of income. Few of use work for free or for promise of future payment as it is just not practical for us to do so.

Personally, I hope your project works out for you with whomever you select as your developer. I like it when business ideas pan out. So again, I bid you good luck.
alex.barylski
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Post by alex.barylski »

Hey eksai, here is my take on your situation:

I think expecting a quality developer to invest 3-4 months of initial development for the "chance" of success is far to risky for most to accept. If you do find people to accept, your likley *not* working with a quality developer but someone hurting for cash, so they will certainly do everything in their power to get the thing finished ASAP. We all know what happens when things are rushed. :)

Thats a big investment in time. You might have better luck if you could offer $1500/month and still offered 50% stake in the completed project. Atleast my time would be not a total waste if the project fails and seeing how my purpose in the enterprise is not to make it a success, thats the least you could offer, don't you think?

As it has already been said, software development is not "create once and sit on your bum while money rings in". Initial development just sets the pace for the project in terms of maintenance, upgrades, etc. Software is a living organism, so the only constant is change itself.

Knowing this, hopefully you can see why it would be unfair for a developer to invest 3-4 months of his/her time for initial development for either $1500 or 50% share. You need to assume that once the project starts, we would be kept equally busy in upkeep of the site, performance monitoring (especially for high traffic sites like classifieds), etc...

One other thing to consider, is we are mostly developers, not designers. Who is providing the design? Have you got this layed out already? Do you have each page designed in PSD or similar, ready for splicing?

I'll be honest, your minimal budget and apparent lack of research into how software development works, makes me nervous and I would question your integrity and business savvy. I'm sure ventures like this have worked in the past, but like most DOT.com startups, they are typically already friends from school, etc and have reached agreements over a period of time and established each others role in the business. But in your case, your asking total strangers to invest more into a project than you are and with only 50% share. The econmics of it all simply don't jive.

You might argue that you've already had 7 respondents, which might be true, but I'm quite certain this will likely result in failure, as only the inexperienced and naive (or struggling for cash) would accept such an offer, I'm sorry to say. I've always wanted to work on a classifieds site and have worked on my own, but simply don't have the time or skills to market the project so I've given up. The point is, I would be more than willing to partake in such a project, but the risks far outweigh the rewards.

Here is my counter offer:

1) You use that $1500 to have design of the site done
2) You give me 70% net share in the project
3) I keep all source code and provide ongoing tech support/development, etc

Basically all you have to do is make the business model "work" and I'll take care of the rest. Why do I expect 70% net share?

Because of the large initial investment in *proper* development and because that is where the majority of costs are going to lie. Working as a sole developer is one thing, managing one or more developers (in the future) is another - my talents are simply worth 70%

Think of it this way: As the majority share holder I profit most however I would relenquish business direction to you. Me CTO you CEO. Perfect partnership. :)

I realize this is your idea, but I ask you to consider the following:
1) An idea is seldomly that unique - it's more about how you market and build brand awareness
2) 30% of something is a helluva lot better than 100% of nothing - which is what you will likley end up with on 50/50 basis

Here are my upfront estimates (what I would charge a client):

3 developers working fulltime for 3 months

3 * $3500 = $10500 / month * 3 months = $31500

$31500 * 35% = $42525 (35% is my personal project padding for bug fixing, changes, etc)

Total project cost is $42, 525 USD and thats *without* me profiting as a business or charging additional fees for project managment. Thats me acting as a developer and hiring two other guns to assist.

Thats almost 30 times greater than your initial offer of a one time payment, so you can see how any developer worth his or her salt might be skeptical about accepting your bid.

Anyways amigo, I hope I've shed some light on the subject for you and made you slightly more aware of how things work from a development standpoint. Ideally, you'll accept my offer above and we can get started moving forward on this project.

Cheers :)
eksai
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Post by eksai »

Everah wrote:.
oh I'm not really that worried about it taking off, its really a solid approach. And like I said I already found a few strong people so this is more of a open discussion now.
hockey wrote:.
1. wouldn't someone who is hurting for cash not have the resources to invest 4 months of his time into a project?
2. see thats the thing, at $1500 a month, I can outsource the project and keep full profits. I mean look at all these start ups that pay peanuts to get their projects off the ground. The people participating there don't even get a 1% stake
3. true
4. don't know what splicing is, but I do have the design mapped out.(placement, colors etc), but yes before the coding starts a full blown design draft will be provided.
5. see thats the thing, there is 1 idea, but there are hundreds of developers. Which means I can be cheap, and still get quality people. And yes equity based projects are risky, but when something takes off the risk pays off big time. And to tell the truth I don't consider this project to be all that risky, success is pretty much hard coded into its dna.
6. Different people have different risk limits. For you the project's risk may out weigh the rewards, for others that is not the case
7. Regarding your offer, what a joke, if I wanted to get peanuts for my ideas, with no propriety rights to the result, I would pitch the idea at work. The concept is what makes or breaks the website, not the code, not optimization, if you have a good idea people will come, and personally only a fool would agree to your terms.
8. So you think because you are vested 70% in something you'll work harder than someone who is vested 30%? Don't you think it would be the other way around?
9. 42K + 70% equity? What kind of moron would go for that? On one of those bidding freelancing websitse, you can get a team of developers to do the whole thing for peanuts. And yes there might be a language barrier, but nothing a copywriter couldn't fix. And this is exactly why so many businesses outsource to India and Russia. For $10 bucks an hour you can have a team of PHDs with 10 year of experience to write your code.
Charles256
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Post by Charles256 »

Then by all means hire them and I'll be here in a few months when you've learned you've simply blown that money.
alex.barylski
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Post by alex.barylski »

eksai.

It's unfortunate you don't quite see things the way I do, but thats life I guess.

For the sake of clarity, when I said 42k that was the quote I would have given you for total ownership. 70% would have been equity with no upfront costs to you. One or the other, not both.

I look forward to hearing of your success. Keep us posted. :)
eksai
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Post by eksai »

Then by all means hire them and I'll be here in a few months when you've learned you've simply blown that money.
thats the plan, this is why I'm doing equity thing because this way I'm not out $50,000. Worst case scenario, the coder gives up halfway thru, says he can't do it, and I'll be back at square one, but with part of a finished project, and extra savings to actually be able to hire someone to bring it all together.
eksai.

It's unfortunate you don't quite see things the way I do, but thats life I guess.

For the sake of clarity, when I said 42k that was the quote I would have given you for total ownership. 70% would have been equity with no upfront costs to you. One or the other, not both.

I look forward to hearing of your success. Keep us posted.
ah I was under the impression that it was both. Maybe something like that would be possible in the future, because eventually I want to own a portfolio of websites, but this particular website is going to be the bread and butter of my company.

As far as updates, I can't promise anything, but if I remember I'll update this thread with the link to the finished product.
alex.barylski
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Post by alex.barylski »

eksai wrote:
Then by all means hire them and I'll be here in a few months when you've learned you've simply blown that money.
thats the plan, this is why I'm doing equity thing because this way I'm not out $50,000. Worst case scenario, the coder gives up halfway thru, says he can't do it, and I'll be back at square one, but with part of a finished project, and extra savings to actually be able to hire someone to bring it all together.
eksai.

It's unfortunate you don't quite see things the way I do, but thats life I guess.

For the sake of clarity, when I said 42k that was the quote I would have given you for total ownership. 70% would have been equity with no upfront costs to you. One or the other, not both.

I look forward to hearing of your success. Keep us posted.
ah I was under the impression that it was both. Maybe something like that would be possible in the future, because eventually I want to own a portfolio of websites, but this particular website is going to be the bread and butter of my company.

As far as updates, I can't promise anything, but if I remember I'll update this thread with the link to the finished product.
Thats exactly why you won't find a developer worth his salt. Your looking for potential free work. I figured that is what you were hoping for but figured I'd keep my mouth shut, but as they say in the navy, loose lips sink ships. ;)

I think you need more business experience and more importantly you need to develope a friendship with a professional developer so you understand how software actually gets built.

If someone develops you a classifieds site and bails half way cause they can't finish, chances are likely the codebase is faulted and would need to be re-done. :)

Cheers :)
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Bryan
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Post by Bryan »

eksai wrote:From your post, it sounds to me like you are trying to inflate your ego by making it look like what you do is some god's gift to earth. Face it, even though its somewhat complicated, it doesn't take a genius to learn this stuff. Pretty much the only reason programmers get paid as much as they are, is because most people dealing with them are not computer savvy, and they deal with the notion of programming of 20 years ago. I mean if someone looks at your resume, chances are they'll be impressed by the 20 or so code languages you know. But programming is actually quiet simple once you learn the ropes, very large portion of it is repeatable. An IF statement has the same structure in Basic, C++ and chances are in every other language. And if by some chance the structure is different, the difference is usually very minor. Which is why I think in the next 5-10 years we'll see a decline in programmer's salaries as more and more computer savvy kids grow up, and more and more projects get outsourced to India, Russia etc. But thats just my 2 cents.
1. Freelance developers don't get paid that much. A lot of times they get the short end of the stick because there isn't a plethora of work to go around all the time.

2. Programming is mostly simple to learn, I'll agree with you there. BUT, knowing a language, and knowing how to properly assemble a script with that language is quite a different story. It's easy to slap code together and create something that works, but you'll be scratching your head 6 months down the road when you find that your site got hacked, or is causing server bogs due to inefficient code. A lot of guys around here at DevNet will charge you a lot because they do quality work, and don't take shortcuts... you get what you pay for pal.
chrisranjana
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Post by chrisranjana »

I understand business startups need to be cautious etc but history has shown that "nothing ventured nothing gained" so I guess that if you believe you have a worthwhile idea to be implemented then the first step would be to arrange some funds for that venture.
d3ad1ysp0rk
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Post by d3ad1ysp0rk »

Seems to me like although you're criticizing developers here for not taking "risks" to reap "rewards", you're doing the exact same thing.
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

Alright guys, enough bashing of eksai. I think we have given him adequate information about our development standards. It is time we let this be.
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