Outsource or create a partnership? Need your advices

Hi there.

(before diving into my long threat (please bear with me), please take into consideration that I am new to the forum, and that English is not my first language)

I am business student, and I have been working on my business idea for the past 6 months. The business idea is 100% Internet based.

I started by evaluating the profitability of the idea, as I was taught in Uni, so I wrote a business plan.

When I realized that numbers actually add up, I designed the whole website on photoshop , page by page, (I have been using photoshop for a quite sometimes).

Today, I have a solid business plan (that misses all the technicality of the website), a nice looking website in JPEG and approximately $5000 saved up for this project.

Going to a leading school (University of Sydney), I can have access to smart students on campus in the field of computer science and engineering. But, I don’t know whether I am being paranoid, but they would only partner up on a project IF they get a large part of equity (some went to asking up to 60 %).

Because I have no background in IT, they also tend to throw tons of jargons at me.

Here are my questions:

1) My idea involves the same technology used in a dating website:
a. a matching system based on a algorithm.
b. a webcam service to create an interactivity between the several parties involved
c. the possibility for users to create their own profiles.

Can someone please provide me with useful links on those 3 core technologies? More importantly, I would like to hold a conversation and understand principles behind each of them. The web is filled with thousands of information, it is a bit hard to know which one is relevant when you are a newbie.

2) How can I test a coder/programmer during on interview about their skills (e.g: to develop the 3 mentioned technologies)?
a. What questions should I ask?
b. Is there any specific experience I should look at when I screen their CVs?

3) How would you go about the creation of the website, (to maximum my returns). It is important to note that the predictions dictates ta 10K returns for the wesbite within its first year.
a. Would you outsource the creation and then hire someone within your location to tweak the website whenever you need to?
b. Would you share equity with a IT student in returns to their skills?
c. Have you had any bad experience while working with a IT student?

Note: I have also tried to be friends with some IT genius on campus and asked them to help me out in selecting the right IT students for me. It turned out to be cumbersome because they had too many insights about the project, and they could easily runaway with the idea (it was another idea than that one).

As you would know by now, I just want to hire the best possible asset for my startup.

Thanks you for your time and considerations.

Wishing you all a great weekend.

Kind regards,

Andrea3000

 

You mentioned that you have $5000 for this project.Am I right?

My advice, forget about students, you can hire any good web development company in this amount.

What you are looking for is
"
My idea involves the same technology used in a dating website:
a. a matching system based on a algorithm.
b. a webcam service to create an interactivity between the several parties involved
c. the possibility for users to create their own profiles"


In this

b) and c) can be easily established by any web development company, it would be easy,but for a) you need to explain what you want.

I advise you to ask these questions before hiring a web development company or a software programmer

Have you created a web cam service for a website?
Have you ever worked on dating sites?

Also ask for samples on which they have worked before.

No need to share profit with any one. You can get any good web development company in $5000 or you can outsource too if you would like.

Best of Luck for your business.

 

Hello Andrea3000,

First thing I would like to say that we are pretty much on the same situation but the difference is that I have no problem on the technical department, I am a seasoned developer and can pretty much whip out anything out of an idea. I'm in the process of looking for co-founders and possibly investors who can help me on the financial and business side of things. It is on this department that I need help and with an equity share I hope I could find a perfect partner(s). I face the same dilemma as some of the people I talked to asked as much as 60% equity and that's definitely something I am not comfortable with. But enough about me...

First thing I would like to comment is your budget. I don't think you can sustain with only A$5000 from developing phase all the way up to 3 months from your launch given that you are not a tech founder and a very large chunk of this budget will be going to the development of the site i.e pay for developers, server cost, and software/service cost (not to mention the business side of things if you establish a brick and mortar presence). Even more so the entire website itself could already cost you your entire budget.

Another thing you should be looking at is mobile App version of your website. It's given that any website, specially something as similar as your planned service will need of a mobile app and you probably have to set a new budget for that. But again if you are a developer you can reduce the entire project's cost and do this yourself.

I understand why you want to partner up with tech people. If you are lucky (and you have to be extremely lucky) you will be able find someone worthwhile. A 60% share is way off, a more sensible figure is 50/50 for two partners and 60/40 if you have more than that, 40% for you and the rest will split on the 60%. That's actually a very generous figure.

Partnership is probably your best option so you could use your budget for more important things. But you have several more options:
1. Partner up with a developer (as mentioned above, just for iteration).
2. Hire someone that fits your budget. Just remember if you want a decent and a startup-worthy website you should be avoiding cheap ass services.
3. Learn to code yourself. The internet is in abundance of tutorials for this kind of stuff. I recommend learning PHP, Javascript, HTML ans CSS and you will be able start putting your ideas into life both as a mobile app and a website. Of course there are a ton of Frameworks and third-party APIs you will need to get yourself familiar to to make your development easier. These technologies I mentioned are easy to learn if you put some time and dedication to it, being a quick-learn would not hurt either. After learning all these programming/scripting languages you can use these on top of a CMS/CMF (Content Management System/Content Management Framework) such as Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal ( more here ) to achieve what you want in terms of functionality and features of your site. By using CMS/CMF you can make your life even more easier. As a matter of fact most startups develop their sites on these technologies I mentioned. But remember you cannot learn and do all these overnight. You need to have some undying patience and will to succeed.
4. 1 or 2 is still the better option than 3. Learning these technologies is one thing, experience is another and is equally important. If you really care about your brand you have to spend some good time to be really good at it and be able to produce a kick-ass product. Remember, there are more things you need to consider for your business -- performance, server administration, scalability are only few of other tech concerns you need to tend to. So your last option would be to somehow combine 1 and 2. Hire an expert and offer a minimal payment with an equity share. This way you wouldn't spend much both of your budget and business equity. Give him/her a little piece of both.

Now to answer your questions:

Any good developer can create this.

Answered above. codeacademy.com and w3schools.com are some of the best place to start. But remember nobody would want to "hold a conversation and understand principles behind each of them" with you for free. It' your job to learn and understand.

a: When you learn these technologies you'd know what questions to ask.
b. Skills. Experience. Portfolio. Work attitude.

I offered you some options above, it's for you to decide.
c. It's given that the possibility of working with good and bad people are in equal chances so you just really have to be a people-person to make the right decision on who you want to work with.

Hope this helps....

 

Partnership is your best option, find a good freelancer and also pay for his time, give him a partnership less than 50%, but first calculate your budget for a year of server hosting - you will need a VPS for sure, with good bandwidth that supports video streaming. Best of luck!