I know a 15-year veteran programmer who always builds on-time (I know, that doesn't sound possible), and on-budget. His name is Rex Parker. His email is rex at streetsmartinc dot com. He's interested in talking to you.
Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
221–230 of 241 posts
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#222In the words of Frank from Everyone Loves Raymond, HOLY CRAP!! Advice 1) Read Getting Real by 37 Signals at http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php Advice 2) Hire a decent lawyer, and attempt to recover the money you have paid to this "developer". There is a saying in hindi called "Lato keh bhoot bato sah nahi manti" meaning... Ghosts who need a kick in the ass don't agree with words. I think you owe your investors…
One more thing, SHAME CAN BE A HUGE MOTIVATOR. Find everyone she knows and be so loud that she cannot afford to ignore you. I don't know the exact legality involved so become friends with a good lawyer. You have to treat this start up like your baby... and you are mama bear. If someone tries to kill your baby, you need to rise to the occasion. I almost never give this type of advice but it's appropriate and needed in…
This would discourage other developers from working with the company out of fear for their own reputation in case something goes wrong.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Learn to hack. Giving any employee a hazy equity offer with promises to "scale it up" is a bad idea. The better your prospects get the more she is likely to feel screwed. And the worse they get, the less motivating the prospect of continuing seems. Any scaling equity package should be linked to dates and performance goals. You basically said you didn't want her to own the company unless it succeeded, when success was…
She wasn't initially hired as an employee - it was more of a contract agreement to develop the beta, with the option to come on as a full partner if we were working well together. It wasn't a hazy equity offer.
What was the partner option contingent on?
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#224OK, 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…
> We have people the commute from Dallas and Oregon to work here. Fly in, work 6 days straight, make 5K and then fly back.
How do I get that sweet deal? I assume I need to be a nurse, but are such gigs really that plentiful? I could work like three weeks a year at that rate.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#225Does 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.
$6,900 is quite reasonable in the US for a great developer. But for a bootstrapping startup, $6,900 plus significant equity is a little much.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#226Use Odesk there are some talented developers there. Odesk has great management software for you as well. It's a numbers game, hire 10 ppl, put them all on the same simple task, by morning you will most likely fore 8 of them. Keep doing that until you have a large and reliable stable of developers. Oh and stay away from Indian developers. Sorry if I offend but my real world experience has shown me time and again Indian developers aren't good. Feel free to report me to the anti defamation league and the thought police.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#227Learning Django isn't difficult at all. If anything, learning Django will be a huge benefit even if you do find a Django coder. Not only will you be able to convey your ideas more efficiently by having an understanding of code, but I'm sure your coder won't feel as much of a slave. Learn Python first: http://openbookproject.net//thinkCSpy/ and for Django: http://www.djangobook.com/ If you're really dedicated to conti…
Absolutely agree - hop on the irc channel too, people are extremely helpful there.
Mr. Tron is probably referring to the #django channel on irc.freenode.net (select the Freenode server from the drop-down list on http://www.mibbit.com to connect quickly), but he might also be referring to the #startups channel, where a lot of people from around here hang out, also on Freenode.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#228There is a strong potential market for your application. If you are looking for help, once you sort out the ownership issues, I would be interested.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can counter that with a real world example. I've done a startup that succeeded and got a pretty neat product out (which btw. included FPGA programming, hardware, mobile technology, and web technology - not exactly easy stuff..) and we had contractors do everything. No hackers aboard. And it worked. So it can be done.
got a pretty neat product out (which btw. included FPGA programming, hardware, mobile technology, and web technology What was it? Sounds fun.
Since fallentimes just asked the same in an e-mail I can copy paste it here :-)
Basically it’s an advertising display. The way it works is that you have a motor with an attached circuitboard that has a row of RGB LED’s attached in a line from the center and out. When you spin the circuitboard and modulate the LED’s in the right fashion you can create the illusion of a display that’s hanging in midair. This is pretty computationally intensive for an embedded application (72 RGB LED’s that each need to update roughly 5000 times a second) so we used FPGA’s for it. The whole contraption has a built-in GSM phone module, and can communicate with a central server. The idea is that you take the display to a bar or some other outlet and plug it in. It will then automatically call in to the central server and request updates. Each display has a unique ID and thus it is possible to create content and advertising for individual displays, or groups of displays. If for instance you want to advertise in a certain part of town you can buy advertising time on only displays in the part of town you’re interested in. There’s a webbased tool for doing this.
Re: Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
got a pretty neat product out (which btw. included FPGA programming, hardware, mobile technology, and web technology What was it? Sounds fun.
Since fallentimes just asked the same in an e-mail I can copy paste it here :-) Basically it’s an advertising display. The way it works is that you have a motor with an attached circuitboard that has a row of RGB LED’s attached in a line from the center and out. When you spin the circuitboard and modulate the LED’s in the right fashion you can create the illusion of a display that’s hanging in midair. This is pretty…
Great idea, there was a clock display on Wired a few years ago that did something similar. Did you guys roll it out?