Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App • Hacker News Board

Re: Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App

#141

Post by markbnj » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 2:08 AM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #131

msellout wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their FAQ answers your question. They are planning to simply eat any project budget overrun, aiming for growth rather than profit. YOU SOUND TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. HOW CAN YOU DO IT THIS CHEAP? Agencies and development shops have a lot of overhead & are fundamentally lifestyle business, meaning that their focus is profits. Gigster is venture-backed so our focus is growth & customer satisfaction. We’d have a referral fr…

This actually sounds like a fantastic opportunity to have your development work subsidized by some rich VCs.

Ha, exactly, except that too good to be true usually is. I have a hard time believing the "low ball high volume" strategy is going to lead to well-executed projects.

Re: Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App

#142

Post by exelius » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 2:17 AM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #138

exelius wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does Infosys, Tata, Wipro, IBM, Cognizant, etc. They all have rapid prototyping frameworks for mobile/web apps, and can churn out something functional in under a week. This is a commodity product already offered by a number of scaled players. Their chances of breakout success are zero.

Their libraries are more geared toward big startups needing a major player, this service seems more inclined to garage dreamers, big difference in scope can make huge impact

I just can't see garage dreamers plunking down that kind of cash without guarantees. Invariably people will try to get out of paying for whatever reason (chargebacks, non-payment, etc) and at these dollar amounts and margins it doesn't make a lot of sense to try to collect. IMO the biggest problem in this end of the market is keeping your AR above water.

Re: Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App

#143

Post by pbreit » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 2:33 AM UTC

exelius wrote: post #136

pbreit wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Productizing a highly demanded service is a reasonable business.

It's not "productized"; it's exactly the same as the thousands of other companies that do this. I'm not saying they won't make money (it's actually a pretty profitable business), but this is not a business model that scales geometrically. It's also a really, really crowded space where relationships, project management and financial discipline (aka staying on top of your collections from day 1) are bigger factors of s…

Well, I can think of one and its name starts with "g". I've done Elance/odesk several times and its far from pleasant.

Re: Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App

#144

Post by LoSboccacc » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 2:40 AM UTC

keypusher wrote: post #59

rogerdickey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not linear but the math works out - managed right, and up to a point, projects get faster with more people. The management part is hard but that's where our platform comes in.

This is actually not how the math works out. The book referenced is a classic of computer science literature and goes into quite a bit of detail about why the math doesn't work out this way.

It's already happening. 40min and counting of waiting in line to speak with a pm, not even starting with the quoting talk.

Idea is good but scaling to loads of projects will be a very hard endeavour (and scaling back after demand dwindle)

Re: Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App

#145

Post by rebelidealist » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 2:47 AM UTC

The actual development is a minor part of a product's success. A good consulting firm has the experience to craft your idea into a product that highlights its most compelling features and minimize its usage friction. A experienced firm can also reduce time to market by eliminating features that are not necessary or finding alternative ways to develop them.

Re: Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App

#146

Post by curiousjorge » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 2:54 AM UTC

> "Just go to Gigster’s site, instant message with a sales engineer, tell them what you want built, and in 10 minutes you get a guaranteed quote "

My BS detector is off the charts. This has clearly worked well for lot of startups that went bust because the sales sold something that didn't exist and couldn't be delivered. First you are talking with the wrong person if they are not intimately involved with your vision. They will gladly sell you the moon and earth if it means a commission check.

I build MVPs but it takes a good week or two just to wrap head around their vision and develop a plan to turn it into reality. 10 minutes isn't enough time and guaranteeing the cost means cutting corners, A LOT of them. You can't do this in 10 minutes if you are looking for quality. In fact I'd argue that without taking the time to chat and do some careful mine sweeping to look for potential pitfalls or scope creeps, you are most likely talking to a snake oils salesman, and this excerpt from that article shows this.

If they did poach the top talent in SV, why in the hell are these people working for a fixed cost? Guaranteed quote means guaranteed overtime, there's no way someone talented would put up with unpaid overtime, or is there a major "disruption" going on here.

Re: Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App

#147

Post by georgemcbay » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 3:03 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #68

cool-RR wrote: post #15

Not really seeing how this is anything more than a fancy outsourcing company. Yes, they can say "We're different because we have the best developers," but really, lots of outsourcing companies say that.

If you have the best developers, they will likely want to go get a better job at Google or Facebook than work in IT services.

They tout that their developers actually work for these companies on the side, which for me is (yet another) huge red flag for the whole thing in that if you're already making Google-money (which, even in SV, is "more than enough" if you're a talented developer) the $10,000-per-project side gigs you're working on are really easy to drop if even a bit of boredom creeps in, which it will since these are bound to be relatively cookie-cutter apps at those prices.

The whole thing really doesn't make a lot of sense and is the first "YC" company that made me question if YC is maybe scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point in terms of what to fund.

Re: Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App

#148

Post by throwaway2215 » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 3:05 AM UTC

markbnj wrote: post #140

msellout wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their FAQ answers your question. They are planning to simply eat any project budget overrun, aiming for growth rather than profit. YOU SOUND TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. HOW CAN YOU DO IT THIS CHEAP? Agencies and development shops have a lot of overhead & are fundamentally lifestyle business, meaning that their focus is profits. Gigster is venture-backed so our focus is growth & customer satisfaction. We’d have a referral fr…

Translation: we're burning other people's money so we can underbid anyone and build a customer book. Of course, at some point someone is going to want the business to be profitable and then, hey presto, you're a dev shop like all the other dev shops.

I'm disappointed in YC for funding this; I think it's destructive to the hacker economy/ecosystem. Excerpting a comment from a thread last year re: Marc Andressen's complaints about startup burn rates that applies:

---------

I find it very hard not to get angry at these posts...

...One of the biggest problems facing my company right now is dealing with all of the venture-funded idiots coming after my customers, market and employees without so much as a hint of a viable business model. They outspend us on marketing 1000-to-1 and they offer to serve our clients essentially for free, apparently just to be able to win a logo for the "traction" slide in their deck in the hope that they will have enough proof points to get them their next hit of venture money.

I know that nearly all of them are going to vaporize eventually, but in the meantime they completely poison the well for all of us who are trying to do what Andressen, Wilson and the rest pretend they want startups to be doing - creating sustainable businesses in sustainable markets.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369734

Re: Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App

#149

Post by throwaway2215 » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 3:11 AM UTC

albertyw wrote: post #6

"If the project is behind schedule, Gigster just assigns more developers to it or fires under-performing ones so it gets done on time." - Somebody hasn't read Mythical Man-Month.

> Somebody hasn't read Mythical Man-Month.

Or managed a software development project of any significance.

Re: Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App

#150

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 3:24 AM UTC

TylerJay wrote: post #101

markkanof wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering the exact same thing. The reality of an agency model is that to scale revenue you have to hire more worker bees. As part of that process two things happen. One, logistics become more complicated because of the additional communication overhead between people. Two, standards have to be lowered for new hires, otherwise they will quickly run out of people to hire. So even assuming that they currently hav…

> The reality of an agency model is that to scale revenue you have to hire more worker bees. And the worst part is, it scales linearly \ cue groans\ . Funny how in business, that's terrible (it's literally the worst it could possibly be to have a potentially profitable business), but with algorithms, it's the holy grail. Interesting point BTW about reduction in quality of workers over time. (Like the pretentious-but-…

> And the worst part is, it scales linearly

Assuming optimum talent and project selection, it should scale sublinearly. The N+1th worker bee will be less productive than the Nth, and the N+1th project will have a be willing to pay less than the Nth in terms of $/unit output.