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I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

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Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#161

Post by AdrianB1 »

pc86 wrote: post #154
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons that I am working on the project that I'm on now (for the last couple of years), is because a friend of mine had set up a 501(c)(3), and was looking to develop an app, out of his own pockets, and through solicited donations. The main problem was, he didn't really know what he wanted (non-technical). He asked me to sit in on a couple of his enquiries to developer agencies. It was a shitshow. I had r…

This speaks to me. Around 2012 or so I had a semi-technical friend (PM, could tell when there was a lot of bullshit being thrown around but not a dev by any stretch) with an idea and he needed a Facebook page/app. Remember this was back when people were building a lot of brand experiences inside of their company's FB pages, and this was similar. I quoted about 30-40k. He got a quote from one of these offshore places…

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Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#162

Post by turdprincess »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #67
blagie wrote: post #9

I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: 1. There's an agility to being able to change things yourself, at 2am if necessary. That's very important to startups. 2. There's a discipline to not accruing unreasonable technical debt of the type that will sink you two years in that you can't expect from someone who doesn't deeply care. 3. Managing devs generally requires u…

So, if it's very hard to start a software company based on paying contractors for software development -- which seems true to me -- there's another warning here for software contractors/consultants . If someone is paying you, as contracting engineering talent for hire on a consulting/hourly/iteration basis, to develop an app or product they hope will be the foundation of a new business -- chances are high this won't…

What is the better kind of client / project then, out of curiosity?

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#163

Post by iancmceachern »

blagie wrote: post #9

I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: 1. There's an agility to being able to change things yourself, at 2am if necessary. That's very important to startups. 2. There's a discipline to not accruing unreasonable technical debt of the type that will sink you two years in that you can't expect from someone who doesn't deeply care. 3. Managing devs generally requires u…

#3 exactly. You need to know enough about the work to be able to grade their work.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#164

Post by minzak »

They've made a classical mistake of building everything from scratch. I happen to work for a company which builds and maintains SaaS system with a Marketplace for tours & activities (not just last minute), apart from other things. Dozens of super bright developers have spent almost a decade building these features they've tried to build with $209K. They could have just used us or our competitors and get a similar result for a fraction of time/budget they've spent. The rest is sales, as they say. And yes, this market is exceptionally hard to get into.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#165

Post by turdprincess »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #77
jrochkind1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if it's very hard to start a software company based on paying contractors for software development -- which seems true to me -- there's another warning here for software contractors/consultants . If someone is paying you, as contracting engineering talent for hire on a consulting/hourly/iteration basis, to develop an app or product they hope will be the foundation of a new business -- chances are high this won't…

OT, but I thought I'd ask, since you seem to have experience with this sort of work... In your experience, is it possible to negotiate work at a rate where one would only be working 2d / wk? I'd imagine it's hard to negotiate such an agreement with a company because they want work done on a faster timeline?

Maintenance work can easily be negotiated at this schedule. For example, you can launch a project, and then stay on "retainer" for 5 hours a week for bug fixes. If you find a few projects like this it could meet your criteria.

With new feature development it would be harder. But you could negotiate a weekly fee based on a 4 day work week, and then get so good and efficient that you do the work in 3 days.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#166

Post by AdrianB1 »

swyx wrote: post #68

> And finally, I ended up landing my first CFO role at a venture-backed tech marketplace. uh, what? without knowing more, and without insulting the author... this is a surprising outcome given the surface facts

The scientific name for this is "failing upwards".

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#167

Post by firefoxd »

I had two customers. One came to me after he couldn't get a company in the Ukraine to cooperate. He had already paid them $25k and the website was barely useful. This was an san fransisco exGoogle product manager with more money than sense, zero coding skills, and in love with subscription services.

I charged him half for 2 months of work and got the website in front of paying customers. Then $1000 a month for maintenance. He hired other devs after me who dragged him along for a year before he went on to the next team.

Today he has closed shop and got a job.

My other customer was a hairstylist, who put together a wordpress website by dragging and dropping. The website is pathetic, amateurish, sluggish, but damn it makes money. To this day she sends me message like "how can I download the pixel", to which I append another tracking script to the footer, and get paid 50 bucks. She probably paid me around $1500 over the 10 years I've been helping her.

She has zero coding skills, and is as close to computer illiterate as you can be, but she is willing to get her hands dirty. She is about to appear on good morning America again, and I don't think her website will hold... Again.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#168

Post by lolinder »

ekidd wrote: post #84
blagie wrote: post #9

I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: 1. There's an agility to being able to change things yourself, at 2am if necessary. That's very important to startups. 2. There's a discipline to not accruing unreasonable technical debt of the type that will sink you two years in that you can't expect from someone who doesn't deeply care. 3. Managing devs generally requires u…

> I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: I've seen two types of non-technical founders that stood a chance: - The industry insider who knows exactly what problem to solve, and who can sell the solution effectively. For example, I saw a woman who had closed $500k of revenue by month 3. She knew everyone in her niche. That kind of product/market fit will gloss over a…

You've still got to be careful working for the industry insider. You don't know the industry, and so you don't know how realistic their expectations are until it's too late.

I just finished a stint with a bootstrapped startup whose co-founder had decades of experience in the industry and a lot of connections. He has a pre-existing software business in the same industry with modest revenue (His problem is that he completely failed at market research and sincerely believes there are no solutions already in the market, because there weren't when he first had the idea a decade ago. I believed him at first, but the better I came to know the industry the more venture-backed startups I found that were solving the same problem and already had substantial market penetration. Any time I would show him one of these he would insist that our product was so much better that we would blow them away when we reached market.

The same founder also struggles with the concept of an MVP (which seems common for grand-vision CEOs), so nearly three years after I joined they still haven't released the new product. In the meantime, the largest venture-backed alternative has become the standard in the industry. The founder is still convinced that his idea will win out, but I'm glad to be out of there.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#169

Post by edude03 »

> No one is going to invest in your business if you aren't willing to quit your day job.

> If you aren't crazy enough to take the plunge, why should they be? Full stop.

Money? As a consultant who helps startups build prototypes (used to, though still I still do from time to time) it was actually mostly people who worked day jobs but dreamed of being their own boss and building out their "crazy idea".

For me, the "risk" the their idea didn't work out and I'd need to go "job hunting" again is baked into the price - the longer you can promise to pay me, the lower my rate could theoretically be (yes, there are other factors, but this was a big lever)

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#170

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

fragmede wrote: post #151
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons that I am working on the project that I'm on now (for the last couple of years), is because a friend of mine had set up a 501(c)(3), and was looking to develop an app, out of his own pockets, and through solicited donations. The main problem was, he didn't really know what he wanted (non-technical). He asked me to sit in on a couple of his enquiries to developer agencies. It was a shitshow. I had r…

Sounds more like you got suckered into working for cheap by someone you know. Unless the app is drastically different than the last CRUD app the firm did, 3 months is plenty of time to run find-replace on a codebase.

Nope.

It probably would have been quite different, and I guarantee that they would have come up with some bolierplate crap that they had their offshore devs whip up for next to nothing.

The demographic we're Serving has some very particular needs, they don't have much money (501c3 means nonprofit, if you are not familiar with the designation), but there's tremendous sensitivity in how the data is handled, and also in how the UI is presented. Small features will make (or break) the app.

Long story, and not one I'm particularly interested in sharing, at the moment.

It's all good.

BTW: I'm not working for "cheap." I'm working for free. I'm enjoying it.

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