- Right Right Now Notes:
I’m going to call my business ‘right right now.’ Maybe write right now. Dunno. Not super important TODAY. Focus: I delivering short projects on short deadlines with an increasingly good basis. I’ve been doing similar work so far, and I don’t have a system in place to ensure that we get things done fast. I’m improving–but there is only so much someone can do ad hoc.
These are all things I’m almost thinking. I may change my mind about some, all or most of these ideas. First of all, not being the cheapest is not going to be something I changed my mind about.
This is mostly ‘attributes,’ I’ll do one on sales strategy (cruise monster, offer project work in lieu of jobs, etc).
Starting Point ideas/brain storm (some well thought out, some just whittle bitty ideas, still cooing and puking)
- instant return. profitable as a JOB by 9/15/08. 3 jobs in by then. find work now, find work before business cards are printed. Sales focus first.
- No investors, partners. Collaborators and advisers, sure, but it’s my ship, my time to rock, my dream/idea.
- 100% high quality, known & vetted freelancers. No race to the bottom, only quality assets delivering the work.
- need: freelancer vetting process
- ability to throw 100 hours a week at a given project with quality people.
- focus on LAMP with the “P” being anything from Rails to python to whatever.
- Some design and writing.
- A good, trusted place for quality workers to send and profit from overflow work (possibly)
- Create gitomer type kick ass elevator speech. (maybe Christina can pitch in)
- Freelancer gets an average of $100/hr++
- 100% of the time, never, ever, ever, under any circumstances take hourly projects.
- Get a crystal clear spec in the beginning.
- Charge for changes suggested by the customer.
- Get a timeline established and agreed to within X of taking project.
- Have a 1 strike-and your out process for missing deadlines. “none of our remaining people have ever missed a deadline.”
- have some sort of system for personal emergencies that allows us to swap assets
- point is: company never misses deadlines.
- Collect greater of 50% or $2500 in the beginning. Once rep established, collect more.
- Easier to find paying clients than it is to collect from douche bags
- Have a project average of roughly 30 hours to completion and $6,000 net.
- All people are 1099’d as legitimate contractors.
- Roles:
- Sales People (find work, negotiate prices and contracts.)
- Spec Writers: Can be sales people, the people that get the job order or tech lead/asset.
- assets: people that do the work that runs the business.
- evangelists: find assets.
- Requested assets get an additional 20% in some cases, with 10% extra going to freelancers, 5% going to evangelist. (TBD)
- Contract will not obligate an asset to be used, but that’s not super strong.
- In demand assets get their rates automatically increased.
- NOTHING HOURLY. REUSE WORK, DELIVER A KICKASS EXPERIENCE.
- Agreement:
- Assets will have fanatical devotion to hitting deadlines.
- Deadlines will be realistic.
- Unrealistic deadlines will have premium prices of +75%.
- Unrealistic deadline is 60+ combined hours in the first week.
- All cost of researching EXISTING systems borne by client. i.e. if we have to research a company’s old code, that is the only ‘hourly’ project.
- We can outsource functionary shit, but never architecture/design high end stuff.
- All passwords delivered & code with reasonable comments (what it does, mostly).
- Collect at spec, and have clear agreement that is simple and easy to understand.
- TODO: Get Bonded/E&O.
- Single proprietorship (leaning towards. Name on the door, ass on the line. LLCs are pseudo protection, and my assets are under lawsuit threshold).
- Avg. project is closed out within 20 days.
- Noncompete:
- 18 months from when we found a job asset and company must buy out at $20,000. Not a big one, but one to keep us from being eviscerated.
- Agreements
- Deadlines: Core of our business. missing deadlines is huge.
- Negotiate realistic deadlines. Negotiate realistic deadlines.
- Once deadline is hit, do it again
- First time assets get hounded by me. We need to get progress reports.
- Assets are graded based on:
- Client rehires
- fiduciary values (must care deeply that the client has good tools)
- DEFINE FIDUCIARY VALUES
- client happiness
- communication with team/client and internal.
- deadline delivery.
- on budget.
- Client interactions
- Referrals of other assets (bonus system/residual must be in place)
- economy??
- finding opportunities for work for us??
- Assets must have:
- linkedin 6 months old or older in active use
- Written process that we are held accountable to and that improves!!!
- “How did we do” after each job, reviewed and process improvements created. 6 sigma.
- Process must manage expectations (skill)
- We want to be “ink dry-to-go” within 24-48 hours.
- How do we make it easy for people to buy our people….?i.e. channels that need to be open, ways to order?
- We don’t have a ‘bourse’ of commodity coders. No no no no no.
- We are ‘cheaper in the long run because we’ll make your stuff work together’.
- Process made crystal clear:
- Agree to engage us.
- Get spec & Send check.
- For new clients, spec-work = billable (again: easier to find a new client than to deal with dickheads)
- Register asset (to enforce buyout.)
- deadline clock starts…
- Work done.
- mile stones all have ‘approval & payment deadlines,’ when next deadline up.
- each milestone paid prior to beginning of next one.
- clients get credit = to 125% of their last bill.
- We must qualify clients to ensure that they can & will pay.
- Assets Find opportunities naturally.
- Have assets perform without rancor
- We don’t want assets financially dependent on us unless they are ‘money drunk, ‘ and then we can deal with as needed.
- Have this be based on finding short term jobs.
- Our assets are free to meet one another? collaborate? not a company…but anyway.
Intellectual Property: We’re work for hire with rights to repurpose source code.
RRN= us client= them.
–client gets original code w/rights to reuse.
–author gets no residual|nothing is due after contract is paid to RRN.
–coder can reuse.
–RRN and Client both gets use of code. All are negotiable; not a principle matter, but we want to have understanding of who gets what and when.
More to think about, i’m certain.
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