[ale] Business opportunity...

[David Muse]

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 12:14:30 -0400
George Carless <kafka at antichri.st> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 27, 2004 at 11:10:06AM -0400, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> > Many startups do not have the cash to pay salaries or consulting fees. 
> > In my company I do take a salary but at less than what I was previously
> > making. The difference it made up in equity.  When someone has equity in
> > a company they value that company more.  I see it in the way I behave vs
> > the way our 100% salaried employees behave.  
> 
> I understand and agree with all of that.  My point was simply that the poster 
> seemed to be looking for someone to basically do *all* of the real work in 
> building out the business, in exchange for part-equity; I was struggling to 
> see why anyone willing to do that job wouldn't simply do it for themselves 
> and reap the full benefit.  There's really not much to an "HTML prototype" 
> and I'd suggest that companies like Google demonstrate that a successful 
> search site doesn't need much in the way of "look & feel".  To me, the 
> posting was akin to saying "I'm looking for people to develop and run a 
> successful product for me; in exchange, I'll provide you with a company name 
> and a logo".  
> 
> Now, to be fair the poster might have the capital for all of the hardware 
> etc.  But honestly, search engines of any calibre are fairly complicated 
> things, and I'd be prepared to say that the cost of hardware would be fairly 
> minimal compared with the cost of development time...
> 
> --George

It's possible that the web-based application that the poster is looking to have
built is only a small part of the actual business.

I'm doing a job like this for my dad and brother right now.  They own an
auto-repair shop in Texas and I'm working on a system for them that allows
customers to monitor the repair status of their car over the web.  In the end,
the sytstem is a relatively small part of their actual business.  They know a
lot about auto repair, and my dad is a good sysadmin, but neither knows how
to build a web based application.

As far as HTML prototyping goes... In our case, my wife is a graphic designer.
She'll be providing me with an HTML prototype of the application.  I'm using a
template engine to build the site so I'll be able to use the pages that she builds
for me directly in the application.  We've done the same kind of thing in the past.
She has always been able to come up with a much more attractive interface than
I can, and in the past, that's mattered to many of our customers.

David Muse
david.muse at firstworks.com