It depends. I could see myself doing this as a side gig in the future if it's managed well and the price is right. That's really the rub: my current job at a major tech company pays great, if Gigster's hourly rate is significantly less than what I already make then it won't be worth it.
On the contrary, I'm considered a 'good' developer by the normal standards (education / company / title / projects / etc.) and I would consider moonlighting. I usually work another 40-50 hours a week outside of professional employment on my own projects, so doing an app or website for some extra cash once and a while isn't a stretch. I applied.
Gigster was actually designed from the freelancer's perspective first - no bidding, no interfacing with customers all specs are in a standard format, reliable/regular payments, etc. I don't know of a better place to freelance.
I'm really struggling to believe "elite" people from MIT or google are going to be working at a rate where they can make 10-20k per month. It just doesn't really make sense given their other options.
I am going to assume that the sarcasm refers to the absurd arrogance in implying that only and all product managers in silicon valley, california, usa are good.
Overall, I really like the idea, but the language of the site and of the people answering on this thread is really ringing alarm bells in my head.
Agreed, I hate sites that provide no information on relative pricing. I’d love a formula for weekly costs and a low-level guestimate tool for project size/scope/cost… before having to fill out any form info.
We actually do not make you fill out any forms is the great thing and we do have an engine that figures out a pretty detailed cost within minutes of chatting with you. Sorry if this isn't clear! What might you be looking to build?
No offense, I have to start with a form and provide you my email address to go through that process. It may be super simple - but I was talking more of a calculator style solution that didn’t require giving you a way to spam me forever.
Hi! A good developer can expect to make $10K - $20K per month on Gigster :) The developer also can expect to do no sales or management work on the project. You just write code on interesting projects and get paid :) Much like Uber hands drivers rides and they just have to accept them.
> Much like Uber hands drivers rides and they just have to accept them.
So much like Uber, can we assume that "$10-$20k/month" is a mythical number[0] that could only be achieved by working 100+ hours per week and virtually no developers will actually make that much?
Sounds like this will have a perpetual race to the bottom as inevitably there'll be developers asking high prices and not being paired with the work, and those asking less with more pairings.
I have a hard time believing this estimate. What are you basing that figure off of? That's senior-level software engineer money for freelancers who are mainly students trying to "earn some beer money" and programmers at Google wanting some extra projects.
Does it matter for the context of my post? $240k is a hefty income either way for a freelancer who needn't live in an expensive metropolitan area. And it seems you agree with me either way with the way you ended your first bullet point.
A lot of startups in the sharing economy space have been guilty of grossly exaggerating how much their contractors/employees actually make. Is this just yet another instance of that or are these numbers legitimate? I think that's a perfectly reasonable question to ask.
So, you said elsewhere "Generally you can expect a Gigster project to be way cheaper (we've seen 10X in some cases) ", and yet your devs are making 10-20k? That does not add up.
can you give a breakdown on how the business model is sustainable? No real data but x number of projects, y number of staff, with total revenue of N and profit of M.
"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.
Hi! We don't assign more people blindly. But what do you propose we do if a developer gets sick or has to travel? We are engineers ourselves and are certainly careful to not just load up a bunch of devs on a project. We've done that before and it was painful :) Thanks for the feedback!
> But what do you propose we do if a developer gets sick or has to travel?
There's a difference between "if a developer gets sick or has to travel" and "if a project is behind schedule". (Though if the first happens late in the project, the problems with trying to backfill with an developer with no prior connection to the project at the late date are similar to trying to stack on more staff when a project is already behind schedule, and pose similar risks of delaying rather than accelerate delivery even further than accepting the cost of the loss.)
> But what do you propose we do if a developer gets sick or has to travel?
I don't know what that means. Those both seem like silly reasons to add more devs to a project.
Unless you're talking about long term sickness (like cancer) or travelling around the world for a few months, but that's not really the expected usages of those phrases.
>> But what do you propose we do if a developer gets sick or has to travel?
I think that's sort of the point. You do whatever any other engineering team does when faced with the same challenges. The question is what is Gigster doing differently that allows you to achieve consistent on-time, on-budget results? Because if you have that formula, you could probably make a lot more money just consulting with existing dev shops on how to implement it.
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 from you than your money. Profits come later
when we are at scale.
Will this attract 'cheap' customers? As a potential customer I think I prefer the idea of a company that profits by the standard of doing my work, rather than a referral standard I have no control over.
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.
I think the actual strategy is push idea guys into sharing equities so they get both some money for the initial investment and make it big on equity with relatively low risk if the project succeeds.
From another pov they are vc to idea guys, only instead of giving the money for equity they give the product for equity.
With the difference that they also get paid for it!
Thanks. I had an idea similar to this while working at a larger company. I wanted to start a tiger team to follow startup technically. Leveraging the employer name we could have vetted them to increase our success ratio and be sure both of the business idea as part of the vetting and of the technical side. Sadly this project would only have netted millions and the previous company wouldn't touch anything under billions.
Go figure. They prefer to acquire company after they hit success for top dollar and run them on the ground instead of actually fostering innovation.
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.
can confirm, used to be angry but I stopped fighting it and just went with the flow. In fact it drove me out of the lower consumer market and forced me to go higher up in the ladder and make more money and deal with less clients who in turn were frustrated with the VC backed solutions.
Unsustainable business models backed by a sugar daddy offering even more commoditization taking spoiled and angry users out of the market? Fine with me if you believe in free lunches, but somebody is paying for it, and cash is a finite resource so.
I can definitely understand the anger and that was my initial reaction last year but then I just stopped giving a damn. I stopped caring. I don't have to take this client and offer them deep discounts to match "free". I realized I rarely have to do anything. I can simply choose to wait for the next bus which won't be crammed with ton of people fighting over seats. I am so much happier and profitable as a result.
> But what do you propose we do if a developer gets sick or has to travel?
- don't run a skeleton crew dev team unless you are ready to handle the risks,
- better project management upfront to cater for this risk - maybe allow customer to choose risk tolerance upfront like some fintech companies do and
- include some internal reward mechanism for over delivery so you can better manage resources.
There are prob a ton more but these are the 3 that popped into my head. Apps don't solve problems but good business models behind apps do. Sort that out 1st.
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.
Just a bad guideline worded badly. I'd say this is far from the core value of what the service provides. I'd rather just hear:
"Quality products are guaranteed because of our extensive experience and knowledge of making these projects work with many dynamic circumstances." Ambiguous, sure, but that should be a good thing. Let's hear that they're constantly evolving and working around new challenges, and applying experience and learning from all the data points they have to tackle existing / mundane issues. The core should be just that.
>Dickey runs me through the process. “Say you want to build an Uber for pizza delivery. You get [a Gigster sales engineer] who’ll ask about the details. ‘How do you want to handle delivery?’ ‘Are you going to use your own fleet or a fleet service?’ Does it have to show exactly how long until the delivery?’ They figure out figure the budget and work schedule, and you pay with Stripe. On the backend we assemble a team for you , algorithms and people. 1 PM< 1 or more eng, and a uX UI designer. Team get started and you get weekly updates. PM is the single pout 0iof onset they take full responsibility. after 4-8 milestones and then it’s finsih and we handle maitnaencae for life. – bug fie. fi people want upgrades or additions, we price those out al a caret. IF you want to add a pizao f the day feature we say we can do that for 1k, how does that sound. All on-demand.
Did the writer have a stroke? How did this even happen?
I saw someone on Twitter mentioned that it was a draft version. Once updated, that's in a quote section and doesn't sound the same. I thought I was going crazy.
Second, 10-minute guaranteed quote? Would you share with me this amazing estimate technology? I've been at it for 10+ years, having helped build a popular website from the ground up and can't estimate the dev time of project with that kind of conviction given 10 hours.
I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic... It is pretty absurd to think you are going to get your head around the requirements for a project and come up with a good estimate in 10 minutes. It suggests naivety or dishonesty. You choose.
Half sarcastic, maybe. But, genuinely curious about how they are managing the risk around scoping/estimation. Perhaps using overly conservative estimates or else assuming that on average their estimates will be close. Or maybe those Google/MIT engineers are magical.
I don't think estimating will be that much of a problem if the right formula is used. Is this straightforward and the team a has done stuff like this before (most cases)... apply the component formula and add the markup. Is it hairy with lots of unknowns? 1.2 million dollars.
No disrespect meant, but no one with any real software development experience would suggest that a quick formula can be used to estimate the cost/time to develop a given project. Very experienced people spend lots of time up front trying to estimate cost/time and are usually not very close.
"Is this straightforward" can't be figured in 10 minutes for the vast majority of projects. And if you are outsourcing to devs, "has the team done stuff like this" is going to take some time too. 10 minutes simply isn't enough time. Would you have the same thought about 1 minute? 5 minutes? At what point do you say "no, that isn't enough time?". I'll take a few hours as enough time for some reasonably small but not trivial number of projects as a %.
I've built or managed the teams that built over 50 software projects, ranging from small up to about half a million dollars.
With all that experience, my estimate process is now extremely honed. It takes me, quite consistently, 4 to 8 hours for a typical web startup MVP. And that's assuming I can build the product completely with technologies my team has used before.
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.
A few other differences - you don't interface with developers, price is guaranteed, costs are lower because dev talent isn't in house (no holding cost).
That is literally how it works at many of them, just fyi. I'd strongly, strongly recommend you hire someone who does PM for one of those companies if you are as oblivious to how they work as that statement just made it appear.
> A few other differences - you don't interface with developers,
Yeah, plenty of them just want you to talk to the PM. The only time I was ever brought into meetings was when it was a very, very large customer [e.g. Bigger than Zynga] and the contract was 7 figures.
> price is guaranteed,
Prices are often fixed in outsourcing contracts at a per-project price with a list of deliverables and features.
> costs are lower because dev talent isn't in house (no holding cost).
I've worked with outsourcing companies where they paid per-project or per-hour a specific project [usually projects under $20k] as their sole model.
I worked with 2-3 at a time and just kept the apprised of my availability, one usually was the bread and butter while the other two handed me small projects [usually 80 hours or less].
You mean just like I can get with Infosys or any of the boutique software dev consultants? Most of those guys don't even bother with the type of rapid prototyping it seems like you guys do because the margins are crap and the collection rate is abysmal. The client always expects more than can be delivered at the price point and then refuses to pay on the basis of non-fulfillment. Sure, you can go after them, but a single lawsuit will cost you half of the value of one of your projects.
Prepayment isn't an option because you'd need to use something other than credit cards -- the chargeback rate would be far too high for any payment processor to keep you as a client.
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.
They probably have Google contractors, not employees. Or former employees, since their website has already shown to have proven deceptions (like claiming to have solely created Yahoo Weather)
It would tough for someone to make $10,000 coding something that's worth a few million, and not receive any equity. I'm not saying there aren't people willing to do that, I'm just saying it must suck to find that out.
Hi! Not all clients, just a select few. We collect data on all the projects we do and infer prices automatically :) Generally you can expect a Gigster project to be way cheaper (we've seen 10X in some cases) than what an agency would charge and often times cheaper or on par with similarly curated services like toptal but with the added convenience you get from having a product manager like an agency would provide.
> We actually plan to give all Gigster developers equity or options on projects!
So, Gigster can only be used by for-profit corporations? (Since non-profits, public sector entities, and non-corporations can't offer equity or options.)
What about "small" projects? Or projects that are "changes" to an existing solution/project/deployment? Finishing touches to existing project?
UX-design as a service would be great, at least from a developer's perspective. This is something I've never been able to do, and pretty much forces me to go elsewhere if I want a project completed.
These are ok provided the budget is $1k+. Otherwise it's probably not worth it for you given that we have to get in & learn the code. We do UX design too!
Misunderstandings always happen. Meddling with the customers is the entire problem with this type of work. If you don't meddle with them then they are unhappy and refuse to pay their bills and you end up in litigation up to your eyeballs. But meddling with them is expensive and time-consuming. Pick your poison.
Interesting I just tried signing up for a project. Under platforms they only have web or phone base platforms.
Am I the only one who doesn't develop for a mobile or web platform anymore:(
Just give me a couple of statisticians who can program so I can update my backtester!!!
Interesting idea, its easy to dismiss it but as someone who initially said meh to Uber and AirBnB when I first heard about them, I've learned that my initial gut reaction to most apps is pretty useless.
Keen to know why you had a "Meh" response to Uber or AirBnB...
I am assuming you don't have the same response now and if so what changed.. Did your knowledge of the product change(like, you thought AirBnB was renting Air mattresses earlier) or did the traction the product received change your thinking...
2 years ago, I was in NY trying to create a platform to match great open source devs and startups in need who also love good software (github/crowdfunding/great search engine).
I'm impressed you guys are doing it...
What does it take to actually work as a freelancer for Gigster ?
First, I'll say it's a cool idea and the website interface is well done on the backend. It looks as if they have created a great means of managing a project.
Speaking with their support staff was concerning, however. I asked rudimentary questions about how projects are handled that is not covered in their documentation. The staff member I spoke with became increasingly curt and bluntly asked if I wanted to proceed with a project or not, ignoring my questions. I apologized and logged out. I won't be returning.
So take my experience as you will. Best of luck to the team.
I am one of the cofounders and I'll be emailing you right away. This is absolutely not the way we operate and I'm happy to jump on a phone call with you to answer any questions you have! Very sorry about any issues you had in our chat. Techcrunch is definitely stretching us (in a good way) and so sometimes we mess up. Very sorry once again I'll be in touch!
I'm very interested! I was just about to start the slog of navigating ODesk/Elance to get something built but already feel more trusting towards your approach. We shall see...
BTW, portfolio doesn't seem to work:
trygigster.com/portfolio errors out
As a consultant/freelance engineer, this might be useful. It always takes way too much of my time trying to wrangle the non-product details from clients. My solution so far is to have a partner deal with that so I can focus on the software.
The irony is that YC would never invest in a startup that had its technical side outsourced through a service like this. But I can definitely see the market potential. Good luck guys.
This is amazing marketing for an outsourcing shop. You don't get to meet the developers so who knows what "top 5%" really means and there's clearly not any competition. The price you get is the price you get.
Just because you hide a software consulting shop behind an app doesn't mean you can change the fundamental difficulties with software consulting. I wish Gigster luck, but ultimately this approach isn't much different from what many offshore dev shops do today. I can get a quote in under an hour from a half dozen places today; but it doesn't mean it will be accurate or what I want.
Presumably, Gigster has already curated the top resources into a brand you can trust for the projects that they specialize in (and which you want done).
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.
The thing that has potentially changed (if they can really pull it off) is the ability to get a reliable quote for any particular project in a few minutes. Any technical manager can duplicate the process of building out a project plan and lining up the cheap resources to get it done (and recruiting from schools or whatever), but being able to scope a project reliably, let alone estimate its cost, basically on the fly is a real challenge. If they've actually solved that, then this is awesome. If not, then it's probably just the same as paying someone to use ODesk (or Upwork or whatever they call it now) for you.
If they can do that, then they have found a magic bullet for one of the biggest problems in software development. I have a suspicion that's the real problem they're trying to solve, so they're "doing things that don't scale" to try to engineer a platform that solves for that problem. That's the only way VCs would throw money at a business model like this.
I wish them luck, but I just think there are too many variables that getting a large enough sample size would bankrupt them before they approach a workable solution.
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 success than a fancy app or good customer service. Those functions don't even scale linearly, and because they're account management functions, you can't farm them off to a computer system unless you're cool with never getting paid.
Again, I know a half dozen companies off the top of my head that provide the exact same service. Just instead of a website, I have an account rep I can e-mail or call and get even more personalized service. And I can choose if they source developers from China, India, Argentina, Colombia, Ukraine, etc. based on price. Their PMs handle the intake and return a product within a specified time period. What's novel about this?
I'm thinking of something a little more full-service than that. There are a number of small contract dev shops that will do end-to-end product development. I've had fully designed apps churned out in as little as 6 weeks for under $50k, and they handled design, project management, QA, requirements gathering, etc.
The problem is that you have to find companies like this, and they tend to be small because the model doesn't scale past a certain point -- once you expand past a few teams, it becomes very difficult to control quality. Customers get upset and refuse to pay, which causes a cash flow problem. The best way to keep your accounts receivable aging down is to do quality work consistently, and the best way to have consistent quality is to keep your scale of control small.
This is not a business model that lends itself to VC well.
Wait, isn't Roger Dickey an investor in Toptal? I certainly read or heard this somewhere. That would be pretty odd (and unethical) if he is an investor in Toptal creating what seems to be a direct competitor. It's actually on his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerdickey "Investments: Docker, Toptal, Addepar, Classdojo, OpenGov, Wanelo, Vulcun, iCracked, Facebook (2nd market)"
Actually I don't think these guys are really a competitor to Toptal. They're a competitor to the guys that Toptal was trying to under-cut by allowing you to bypass the overhead of a more full-featured development shop (project managers, etc).
I agree that they're not a competitor, but they are highly complementary. It could be that the sourcing that makes this model possible is taken straight from Toptal (and if so, great way to capitalize).
191 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 87.9 ms ] threadOverall, I really like the idea, but the language of the site and of the people answering on this thread is really ringing alarm bells in my head.
Would be good to get more info of how much you can make as a developer and how much projects are likely to cost, though.
So much like Uber, can we assume that "$10-$20k/month" is a mythical number[0] that could only be achieved by working 100+ hours per week and virtually no developers will actually make that much?
[0] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/10/uber...
1. $20k/month every month? Unlikely.
2. Self-employment taxes + other business expenses.
edit: formatting
A lot of startups in the sharing economy space have been guilty of grossly exaggerating how much their contractors/employees actually make. Is this just yet another instance of that or are these numbers legitimate? I think that's a perfectly reasonable question to ask.
There's a difference between "if a developer gets sick or has to travel" and "if a project is behind schedule". (Though if the first happens late in the project, the problems with trying to backfill with an developer with no prior connection to the project at the late date are similar to trying to stack on more staff when a project is already behind schedule, and pose similar risks of delaying rather than accelerate delivery even further than accepting the cost of the loss.)
I don't know what that means. Those both seem like silly reasons to add more devs to a project.
Unless you're talking about long term sickness (like cancer) or travelling around the world for a few months, but that's not really the expected usages of those phrases.
I think that's sort of the point. You do whatever any other engineering team does when faced with the same challenges. The question is what is Gigster doing differently that allows you to achieve consistent on-time, on-budget results? Because if you have that formula, you could probably make a lot more money just consulting with existing dev shops on how to implement it.
From another pov they are vc to idea guys, only instead of giving the money for equity they give the product for equity. With the difference that they also get paid for it!
Go figure. They prefer to acquire company after they hit success for top dollar and run them on the ground instead of actually fostering innovation.
---------
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
Unsustainable business models backed by a sugar daddy offering even more commoditization taking spoiled and angry users out of the market? Fine with me if you believe in free lunches, but somebody is paying for it, and cash is a finite resource so.
I can definitely understand the anger and that was my initial reaction last year but then I just stopped giving a damn. I stopped caring. I don't have to take this client and offer them deep discounts to match "free". I realized I rarely have to do anything. I can simply choose to wait for the next bus which won't be crammed with ton of people fighting over seats. I am so much happier and profitable as a result.
- don't run a skeleton crew dev team unless you are ready to handle the risks, - better project management upfront to cater for this risk - maybe allow customer to choose risk tolerance upfront like some fintech companies do and - include some internal reward mechanism for over delivery so you can better manage resources.
There are prob a ton more but these are the 3 that popped into my head. Apps don't solve problems but good business models behind apps do. Sort that out 1st.
Idea is good but scaling to loads of projects will be a very hard endeavour (and scaling back after demand dwindle)
https://gist.github.com/kennethrapp/abbbca60ec286cc73f92
"Quality products are guaranteed because of our extensive experience and knowledge of making these projects work with many dynamic circumstances." Ambiguous, sure, but that should be a good thing. Let's hear that they're constantly evolving and working around new challenges, and applying experience and learning from all the data points they have to tackle existing / mundane issues. The core should be just that.
Or managed a software development project of any significance.
Did the writer have a stroke? How did this even happen?
Read this as "...and we handle maintenance for life. \brushes off shoulder\ bug life. "
Second, 10-minute guaranteed quote? Would you share with me this amazing estimate technology? I've been at it for 10+ years, having helped build a popular website from the ground up and can't estimate the dev time of project with that kind of conviction given 10 hours.
With all that experience, my estimate process is now extremely honed. It takes me, quite consistently, 4 to 8 hours for a typical web startup MVP. And that's assuming I can build the product completely with technologies my team has used before.
That is literally how it works at many of them, just fyi. I'd strongly, strongly recommend you hire someone who does PM for one of those companies if you are as oblivious to how they work as that statement just made it appear.
> A few other differences - you don't interface with developers,
Yeah, plenty of them just want you to talk to the PM. The only time I was ever brought into meetings was when it was a very, very large customer [e.g. Bigger than Zynga] and the contract was 7 figures.
> price is guaranteed,
Prices are often fixed in outsourcing contracts at a per-project price with a list of deliverables and features.
> costs are lower because dev talent isn't in house (no holding cost).
I've worked with outsourcing companies where they paid per-project or per-hour a specific project [usually projects under $20k] as their sole model.
I worked with 2-3 at a time and just kept the apprised of my availability, one usually was the bread and butter while the other two handed me small projects [usually 80 hours or less].
Prepayment isn't an option because you'd need to use something other than credit cards -- the chargeback rate would be far too high for any payment processor to keep you as a client.
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.
Also, would love to hear more about your pricing generally.
So, Gigster can only be used by for-profit corporations? (Since non-profits, public sector entities, and non-corporations can't offer equity or options.)
UX-design as a service would be great, at least from a developer's perspective. This is something I've never been able to do, and pretty much forces me to go elsewhere if I want a project completed.
I mean, the biggest problem in consulting isn't the coding, it is to work out what the customer wants.
If they give you a spec and you're just bound to that spec, it could be a good thing.
Code the stuff, get your money, don't care about the rest.
They have to meddle with the customers, if some misunderstandings happened.
Am I the only one who doesn't develop for a mobile or web platform anymore:(
Just give me a couple of statisticians who can program so I can update my backtester!!!
Interesting idea, its easy to dismiss it but as someone who initially said meh to Uber and AirBnB when I first heard about them, I've learned that my initial gut reaction to most apps is pretty useless.
I am assuming you don't have the same response now and if so what changed.. Did your knowledge of the product change(like, you thought AirBnB was renting Air mattresses earlier) or did the traction the product received change your thinking...
I'm impressed you guys are doing it...
What does it take to actually work as a freelancer for Gigster ?
^ I hope?
Speaking with their support staff was concerning, however. I asked rudimentary questions about how projects are handled that is not covered in their documentation. The staff member I spoke with became increasingly curt and bluntly asked if I wanted to proceed with a project or not, ignoring my questions. I apologized and logged out. I won't be returning.
So take my experience as you will. Best of luck to the team.
BTW, portfolio doesn't seem to work: trygigster.com/portfolio errors out
Rails but no Ruby
MySQL but no Postgres
Docker but no chef nor puppet
etc.
Might be good to sort by either type of technology or alphabetical etc.
::::there are always exceptions::::
I wish them luck, but I just think there are too many variables that getting a large enough sample size would bankrupt them before they approach a workable solution.
Again, I know a half dozen companies off the top of my head that provide the exact same service. Just instead of a website, I have an account rep I can e-mail or call and get even more personalized service. And I can choose if they source developers from China, India, Argentina, Colombia, Ukraine, etc. based on price. Their PMs handle the intake and return a product within a specified time period. What's novel about this?
The problem is that you have to find companies like this, and they tend to be small because the model doesn't scale past a certain point -- once you expand past a few teams, it becomes very difficult to control quality. Customers get upset and refuse to pay, which causes a cash flow problem. The best way to keep your accounts receivable aging down is to do quality work consistently, and the best way to have consistent quality is to keep your scale of control small.
This is not a business model that lends itself to VC well.