Proposition HN: I will pay $8000 for you to build your side-project/MVP

How do I get in touch with you? I was about to possibly undertake an idea that would fit well into your idea and offer.

Ah how about no?

As tempting as it seems, a big project like that requires a team. A Lone Ranger cannot finish it in two months and even so it would not be of good quality and patched potential security holes. By the time the 'beta' is released to the public after two months, who exactly is the target market? You don't know what I am developing, you don't know who is going to use it, or who will pay for it, and of course no business plan either.

Work on the business plan first, research the market doing a SWOTT (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats Trends), pick the platform and language best suited for the project, write the proof of concept or 'beta', and then recruit beta testers to work out the bugs, and then after patching all the bugs and security holes you can release it and raise money to go public or whatever.

I'm not like these other guys, I have experience, I know what I am doing and how to turn a profit. I can smell failure like your offer. I don't want to create yet another Dotbomb that self-destructs.

Sure I got countless project ideas, why don't I do at least one of them? Well I have to do a feasibility study and all I mentioned above.

I've been throwing around project ideas with former business partners of mine. I ran two small businesses before, I've worked for FORTUNE 500 companies, I worked for small and medium businesses, I've worked for a college, I've done software consulting for the US Army and Federal Government. We don't do anything until we've done all the research first.

As tempting as that $8000 offer is, I'd be doing 100% of the work writing the software, and then you get 50% of the stock. I put in $2M USD worth of labor for a multimillion dollar project, and for your $8000 you get half the stock? I can find users and promote my web site for free you know.

Anyway thanks for the good laugh, I'd rather take my time and do it right than rush into two months with no research done at all.

Creative deal, I like it. Anything that gets people off their couch and building something is a winner in my book.

This is something that I half completed, but stopped because I lacked the marketing chops: http://www.mailreceipts.com/

FWIW, I have a story of a better proposition. I currently do a lot of subcontract work for a consulting company. These guys have been around for a while, but to gain more exposure, so they have been wanting to publish some Open Source stuff. I've been working, on and off, on an interesting (to me, at least) project that I was planning to release under a BSD license and if it gains traction, turn it into a business. What the consultancy proposed was this: they would pay me to finish the project and publish it under their name. We would then market it as an OSS project, gaining more exposure for their firm and for the project. Later, if I choose to turn it into a business, I already have a potential partner who is intimately familiar with the project. If not, I get paid, and they get a cool OSS project to show off.

This is strictly a better offer than the OP's: I get paid for about the same amount of time, and I get to keep 100% of the creation (so does everyone else, since it's Open Source). In other words everybody wins.

You have a good start there. I haven't used your app but looking at it the GUI looks kid-friendly.

You might want to look at iOS and iPhone review sites and give them your link for possible reviews. If you get more reviews on it from third parties who are neutral, it will help promote your app. Find target users by posting to K-12 education forums with your Tommy Teaches web site in your signature, find Homeschooling forums and post in them with TT in your tag line as well. Form partnerships with other makers of children's learning apps to link to your web site and your will link back to their web site.

I can think of more titles for Tommy, there is a big market for foreign languages as most schools don't teach foreign languages due to budget cuts (my son's school did that) and the school advises parents to go online and have their children learn there. You could make Spanish, French, German, Latin, Chinese, Japanese learning apps and market them to parents who need to have their child learn a foreign language. I haven't seen many children friendly foreign language apps on the App Store. They are mostly for adults. Tommy Teachers can fill that gap.

Write some eBooks based on the Tommy Teacher graphics and materials. Start out with an Alphabet book, and work on each title. You can publish them with Kindle and Nook as well as Apple iBooks.

Make some pages for Tommy Teaches at Facebook, GPlus, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc to promote new products and have people sign up and refer your pages to friends.

You might want to make some apps as Autism-friendly, I hear there is a big market for that. A Tommy Teaches app that autistic children can use that speaks for them, when they can't speak. They just click on icons and it forms words for them. Use most common words that a child might say and have cartoon pictures of them.

Good luck on Rev 2, this is all free advice for you. You don't need that guy's $8000 investment.