I think the right thing to do here is to realise that they are outside your current means. Either pick them up for some contract work at the market rate or if they do really believe in the idea maybe they should be a cofounder.
What frustrates me the most as an entrepreneur
41–50 of 58 posts
Re: What frustrates me the most as an entrepreneur
#42I'm conflicted about this post. I think your expressions are heartfelt, but it sounds like you've been window shopping when you don't have the funds to buy. If you knew you didn't have the money to fairly pay for this designer's services, why ask? To the more cynical among us, this post may seem like a manipulative way to indirectly guilt-trip this guy into working for you far below his asking rate. Look, you know ho…
Absolutely!! I think if someone is really that necessary or could add value that could make a drastic change, you should ask him to become a co-founder.
Every founder would want the best people to work for him, but can they afford them? And if they can't how far are they willing to go to get the person.
A person can work under his pay-grade only if he thinks he owns the thing and can see his future connected with in terms of prosperity and happiness.
Re: What frustrates me the most as an entrepreneur
#43UX wise, I don't want to click through a random bunch of faces to solve my problem.
You will have tonnes of "experts" who buy in. There's always a supply of people who want money.
You could provide a way I can type "how do I do X", and any experts interested can give a free 30 second answer. You might want to get credit details first (to keep time-wasters away).
Re: What frustrates me the most as an entrepreneur
#44OP: You're one of the good ones, as far as I can tell. Please stay in the game. The real issue, I think, is that your job forces you to motivate people to take risks on your behalf and it feels like you're over-promising. A lot of success in business relies on motivating people (employees, clients, users) to help you succeed by promising what you'll be able to deliver if everything goes right... selling a vision, in…
The VCs have the well-paid, cushy, powerful and easy jobs and are pretty much guaranteed by their path-of-low-resistance career track to be rich Then why doesn't everyone and their mom become a VC? Hint: Because it's nowhere near as easy as you think it is.
really? not everyone becomes a VC because they are afraid that it's very hard?
what i see, people don't even know that it's hard so you have to enlighten them. i see people think there are some other barriers, like connections, friends of parents, university, money, etc
Re: What frustrates me the most as an entrepreneur
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
A good approach is to have a well-determined, public salary policy, as described by Joel Spolsky in http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html
This is good stuff. As the article was written in 2000, does anyone know how these things panned out? Is Fogcreek still using this plan?
Re: What frustrates me the most as an entrepreneur
#46OP: You're one of the good ones, as far as I can tell. Please stay in the game. The real issue, I think, is that your job forces you to motivate people to take risks on your behalf and it feels like you're over-promising. A lot of success in business relies on motivating people (employees, clients, users) to help you succeed by promising what you'll be able to deliver if everything goes right... selling a vision, in…
You raise an interesting point. As difficult as it is continuing to be to hire top technical talent in the Valley, I wonder if some talented people might have sufficient leverage, particularly in a situation like this one where the employer is a small, underfunded startup, to get themselves options on preferred stock rather than common stock. I'm sure that raises a host of complications vis-a-vis the cap table etc.,…
Thanks a lot for your great comments.
yes, that is definitely an issue. In many cases,I think some people need to worry about their rent, monthly expense, or mortgage (personal burn-rate) to worry about. If you are in your early twenty, your personal burn-rate would be much lower than in your late thirty.
Shares/options are great for motivating the team. They are bonus. But, we all need to at least cover our personal bur-rate to live.
I feel, as a founder, at least I should not let my devoting team members worry about that.
Re: What frustrates me the most as an entrepreneur
#47UX wise, I don't want to click through a random bunch of faces to solve my problem. You will have tonnes of "experts" who buy in. There's always a supply of people who want money. You could provide a way I can type "how do I do X", and any experts interested can give a free 30 second answer. You might want to get credit details first (to keep time-wasters away).
Thanks, great comments on the UX.
That is something we definitely want to work out. I understand that it could actually get time-wasters if you do not put the payment at the front. But, on the other hand, if you put a payment right at the beginning, it causes friction.
We are just experiment to find the best approach for both experts and clients.
I do like your "how do I do X" + 30sec answer idea. Thanks a lot
Re: What frustrates me the most as an entrepreneur
#48as a founder and an engineer.. you are being naive. You know how many times we hear, "I have a billion dollar idea, all i need is 1% of xxx market". Yes we all hope our startups will be successful, but in the end engineers and designers have to look out for our own best interests, as the odds are stacked against you and more than likely you will fail. While your idea has some social proof ( http://www.maven.co/knowle…
Thanks for your in-depth feedback.
I totally agreed that it would not be fair to ask other people to take as much risk as founders. It is all about structure it and get the balance.
Yes, we are not getting him full time. He is going to have another job in parallel. Hopefully, we could work with him 1-2 days a week to start with, and compensate his highly discounted rate the other way.
Re: What frustrates me the most as an entrepreneur
#49First, if you can't afford an UX guy, even just paying him something fair, then why even hire one? Work with him as contractor first but for a fix rate rate. That way he doesn't have to leave his paying job and gets to work with the team. Nights or weekends whatever works for him.
Second, again you probably don't need an UX guy now. Dig into your heart, whats not working for Minutebox? User adoption or just the plain old people are just not finding it. If that's is the problem, then you won't turn it around by hiring a great UX guy. You only need the UX guy when you get tons of users and you need someone to make the experience of using minutebox better for them.
Re: What frustrates me the most as an entrepreneur
#50[deleted]