Lol sucks to be you hahaha.
thanks for the support benn.
Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
211–220 of 241 posts
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#212I have outsource one project to india, I don't recommend it at all unless you get a project contract and the company has presence and a project manager where you live.
If you decide to outsource, be sure to make all the legal work well (nda's, work contracts) and bind the payment to the delivery of the project.
ps. I too think you were screwed, with that salary and equity it seems that you are her wallet, not emplyer or at least partner.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#213I have outsource one project to india, I don't recommend it at all unless you get a project contract and the company has presence and a project manager where you live. If you decide to outsource, be sure to make all the legal work well (nda's, work contracts) and bind the payment to the delivery of the project. ps. I too think you were screwed, with that salary and equity it seems that you are her wallet, not emplyer…
Oh and I didn't elaborate why the india is not a good deal, basically the culture is totally different: They don't tell you if things are not going well (they keep saying everything is okay while timetables delay and nothing is delivered) and the quality is not there unless you can keep a close eye on the code and understand how to check the quality of code.
just my 2 euro cents.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#214Holy crap - you're paying her $83K, plus gave her equity, in TULSA ?!?!? That's not exactly a high cost area. If you have $190K and you've paid close to $100K to her (14 months) just to get a proof of concept, I'd say you're in trouble. If she's drawing a handsome salary, won't put any of her own money in, and won't take a pay cut, she can't be that confident in the value of the equity. Sounds like you got milked. I…
83k in tulsa is like making 130k in boston http://www.bestplaces.net/col/?salary=83000&city1=46140&... That salary is crazy for someone that early, before revenue or major vc capital. By drawing that huge salary, she is avoiding all the risk and therefore deserved less equity. I think the 6% you gave her was generous.
Generous, but fatal. From the sound of it she was not a good candidate to be a startup cofounder. Better to give 50% to someone who's going to be as passionate as you than 1% to someone who's not.
Daniel
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#215Eat a hearty meal, get a good night's sleep, and think about it in the morning. There's a Russian saying "the morning is wiser than the time between late afternoon and night". It sounds better in Russian (3 words).
Oh. Please. Post the three words.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#216OK, so here's a problem. Even if you do get someone from this site to help you, Ms. Django owns 35% of your company regardless. Best case scenario, someone helps you, the product takes off, you have a big exit... you still have to pay her 35%. That's a big problem. The only way that you're going to get rid of her is to close the company and start over. And, she's wasted 14 months of your time with precious little to…
I would point out that a Django developer that can't show something in 14 minutes is incompetent ;-)
Yes. It's really that easy.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#217Giving someone 35% equity at a full salary makes no sense at all. If you can't find a developer who will take a salary cut for 35% equity, you have serious problems.
To elaborate: if a developer is earning a full salary plus equity, there is no opportunity cost to them. Your company will be no different to the developer from any other contract gig, barring the greater upside potential. The hunger to succeed will not match yours.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#218@drinko,
I feel sorry for you but here's what my advice would have been (although it would not have helped you in this situation) but typically when I contract out my project to someone else other than myself, I normally would include a deliverable clause in a contract, even if the other party is a cofounder.
The deliverable clause is basically a statement of work, with specific milestones and dates that the "contractor" would agree to. This helps in keeping the project realistic (in terms of scope creeps) and also makes sure that the project progress in good terms.
I would have to agree with most people who commented about the salary paid out. At $6900, you could have hired an outstanding developer without dishing out any equity. Although the equity play more than often would help as a motivational push for the other party.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#219Does anyone else think that a salary of $6,900 is too much? I even think that $3,000 is too much... Of course my situation in South Africa might be a lot cheaper. I got away with $1,250 per month, and even then I was able to live pretty comfortably.
I would have loved to make even half that a month, and I live just 150 miles from Tulsa. And if I'd been the one working on it, I'd have stayed and the app would be done now!
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#220Quasi-medical record keeping applications like this are boring. SUPER boring. Constantly rethinking your career as a programmer boring. French movie character experiencing existential despair boring.
Nobody outside of the medical world could possibly care about this stuff or get excited to work on it. Hardly anyone INSIDE the medical profession cares about it. Entire entry-level careers have been created for ths type of thing (medical records specialist) because nobody who can do something else wants to do it. I'm surprised your programmer ONLY wanted $6900 a month. Boredom is the real reason she didn't get much done and eventually left. Also, let me guess... she also hated your guts because she was sitting here working on this super boring application while you were out doing stuff she perceived as not very important.
This isn't meant to be insulting. I had an experience similar to yours. Nearly identical, aside from the duration and money involved. I didn't get paid as much and I bailed after 4 months. We even were using Python! I was the programmer. Other person was a doctor. Building some sort of medical record keeping startup thing. He was paying me ok, but not great. I had some laughably low percentage of the company. After the first two weeks, I alternated between wanting to kill him and wanting to kill myself. It sucked that bad. Medical record keeping is insanely boring. The programming issues are equivalently boring. It is like doing your taxes multiplied by 1000. It sucks. SUCKS. The hardest part of your programmer's day was probably mustering up the psychic energy needed to even fire up her text editor. I'm almost having a nervous breakdown right now just thinking about it. You medical people have really gotten yourself into a record-keeping pickle.
Your only hope is to learn programming because any programmer that is any good will want to disembowel themselves working on this sort of project. There is a real opportunity here, because all this work is going to end up being done by huge mega consulting firms who specialize in these sorts of boring recordkeeping problems. They are going to charge $69,000,000 per month to do this. The thing is, they don't really want to do it either, so I'm sure they will gladly pay you at least $6,900,000 for the right to license your finished software. That is reality.