Hello,
I have been developing websites for a considerable time now. However, I have found that user demands can sometimes be outside of my area of expertise. or that some of my skills have not been full satisfactory (most notably, graphics design) while others have been very highly satisfactory (back-end). I've also been very frustrated by the large amounts of competition - this is a world-wide market, after all.
So how to work around this, and still put some money in my pocket (and yours - I'll get to that)? Simple: instead of investing large amounts of time to expand my skillset to put my ahead of the rest of the competition in the world, which would be hard to do, why not just start a company?
Here is my idea: I, myself, consider PHP / MySQL my strongest point. However, I know nothing about, say, AJAX, or Java. So this company (whose focus will of course be web developement) will have one expert for each field. That means we will have one PHP / MySQL programmer, myself (unless I find someone better), one Java expert, one AJAX expert, et cetera. I want to explicity state that I am looking for people with a main strength in only one area. That means that I will take an expert AJAX expert over a considerably competent PHP/MySQL/Java/AJAX programmer.
So how will this work? I suppose this won't be a full-fledged company in the traditional sense - although if there is enough interest, I plan on officially registering the company - but it will be more of a huge partnership.
Here is how the numbers will work out. As I said, we will have one expert per programming language / general skill. We will have one company website. When a client requests a website through our site and has a reasonable budget, we will briefly decide on whose skills would best serve the client. As an example, we could have someone requesting a website made from scratch, fully dynamic (we'll say AJAX will do that) and large databases (PHP/MySQL). Then we will have the design expert create a design, and he will record the number of hours he puts into the design. Meanwhile, the AJAX expert and the PHP/MySQL expert will decide on the site functionality and will simultaneously start work on the front-end and the back-end. These two programmers will also record the number of hours they put into the project.
This way, the client will have his website finished much faster since there will be multiple people working on the site, and the quality will be very high as we will have hopefully become the cream of the crop, so to speak, in terms of skill.
Payment? The money will be divided as follows: 90% of the pay (or some other percentage we will agree on later) will be divided so that the people actually creating the client's website will have an equal HOURLY wage - NOT net wage. That means that those involved will not necessarily be paid equal amounts, but the pay will be divided absolutely evenly in terms of an hourly rate, so that nobody emerges as "more important" or "better" or "higher paid" than anyone else. The other 10% will be evenly divided among the other members of the company so that everyone benefits, providing an incentive to stay in the company. The percents can be decided on once this gets off the ground.
So what needs to be done for such a company? Ideally, I will need one expert per field. The fields I can think of, off the top of my head, are:
- Flash/ActionScript
- Graphics Design
- PHP/MySQL (probably myself, I need a part of this too
)
- AJAX
- Javascript
- Java
- maybe .NET languages, BV.NET, C#.NET, etc.
- server setup and configuration
- more?
I need SERIOUS APPLICANTS only, and this will be based in the USA. That means no outsourcing. That means you need to speak English fluently.
There are a couple other things that I can think of that would be very beneficial. Ideally, I would like each member of this company to live in a different major city, e.g. one in New York City, one in Los Angeles, one in Pittsburgh, one in Austin, and so on. Each member would also look for business in his city. Why?
Our main goal is to provide EXCELLENT quality work for our clients, while each member is paid reasonably for his/her work. Our secondary goal is to come out ahead of ther est of the worldwide competition. Although this is a major goal, it is much easier to deal with competition in a city than in the world - that is why each member will ideally live in a different city. That way we will be able to find work more easily from each member's city until we become established and can become among the top world-wide companies.
It may be hard for the first couple clients, since we will not be established. That means that we might have to work for a little bit lower wages for the first one or two websites. If things look bad, we will accept a cheap job and I will add $100 - $200 to the deal out of my own pocket so that we don't have people leaving the company or complaining about low pay. Projects will be accepted only by a consensus.
I will buy the domain name for the company website, and I will provide hosting for a year (unmetered bandwidth, 8gb disk space, unlimited MySQL databases - should be enough, no?
)
For anyone interested, I can be contacted as follows:
- reply here
- e-mail:
anastas@promethian.info
- AIM: anastas5425
- YIM: SurrealPrdctns
- MSN:
sp_admin@hotmail.com
Please, serious applications only. Please provide the following information in your application:
- full name
- contact information
- location (city, state is specific enough)
- area of expertise
- previous experience (preferably a portfolio, but not necessarily)
I should note that in the beginning, I will not REQUIRE you to only work for the company (though that is preferable) - since things will be slow in the beginning, most likely, I can understand accepting individual work out of necessity. HOWEVER, if you are working on something individually and the company accepts a client's request, you will be expected to give the company's work higher priority. If we become reasonably successful, you will be expected to work exclusively for the company.
Thank you in advance.
Looking to start a company: Serious venture, serious applicants only
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