I'm a little confused at the pricing.<p>Why would I require access to a constant stream of developers to code my projects? Is the supply that bad? Am I running developers out of town?<p>To me, it seems that you would use a service like this to establish working relationships and then <i>continue to use those same working relationships</i> in the future. In this model, it seems rather silly to pay you a monthly fee, and if I find a coder quickly you're not making much off of me.<p>The interesting issue is that websites like this are doing the exact same thing that professional recruiters do - playing matchmaker. The problem I have is that if you look at the recruiters that are really good, one of the first things that comes to light is that they our outstanding at building relationships. It's not so much about being selective as it is about understanding need and fit.<p>My concern is that the very thing that makes the process work well is completely absent on the web. It's hard to assess personality and fit without meeting a person and/or working with them in person.<p>I wish you the best of luck but I'm not sure if this is a technical problem at all.
Design is really important to me when deciding where to take my business. I love the idea, but the web site could use some serious design love.<p>For instance: That block of text might be good for SEO, but no one will ever read it.
It's good that at least someone is trying to address this. There are no decent freelance/telecommuter oriented job sites. The ones out there are generally geared toward the "let's outsource to India" style gigs -- I really can't compete with Indonesian teenagers for $10/hr PHP work. I have a feeling there is a huge swath of untapped talent out there being ignored by companies who are still in the 20th century and demand on-site employees.
This is a great idea, It's hard for people with little tech experience to find a good hacker/coder and it's hards to find clients with a sufficient budget for a project.
So here is my biz dev advice..<p>1) Your concept of screening coders for talent is important, only accept people who can get things done.<p>2.) Only charge developers a monthly fee. The collective fees should be enough to cover the cost of an ongoing marketing campaign to attract the right businesses and entrepreneurs.<p>3.) Educate businesses and single entrepreneurs about the cost of projects, and cost of talent and explain trade offs for paying less.
Experienced coders may cost more, but they have the experience can work faster, less learning on job....coders who charge less may be less experience, in different time zone, not so fluent in native language, etc. Provide rough estimates based on info on past projects. i.e. Angry brids cost about $150,000 to create.
(<a href="http://www.develop-online.net/news/37242/Angry-Birds-cost-Rovio-100k-has-made-50m_" rel="nofollow">http://www.develop-online.net/news/37242/Angry-Birds-cost-Ro...</a> )<p>4.) The education is important and it provides prescreen of potential clients, only accept projects that fall within reasonable guidelines.<p>5.) Do not charge businesses a monthly fee. as mentioned by MatthewB "If it takes any more than a month to find a dev, there's something wrong with your system."
Once developer has been found, charge business/entrepreneur fee per projects because you're providing technical screening service.<p>Note: So the idea is to take some elements of successful services like elance, etc and raise the bar.
setting up useful guidelines and an effective marketing campaign will not be easy.
I hate to say it but $2,000 sounds a bit cheap. I'm assuming that most people who want to "code an idea" aren't looking for a WordPress install but something that's a bit more grand and may require doing a spec. If a coder is $50 an hour $2,000 is just 40 hours (i.e. one week): In my experience you'll spend at least that doing bug fixes and QA (even on a small project).<p>Maybe you should even set the minimum at $5k? If you're not willing to spend $5k on your idea then it can't be a very good idea if you know what I mean. And I say this as a designer who isn't a coder...
You know, having coders or designers submit 30 second videos describing their skills and previous projects is an easy way to differentiate from other freelancing sites. Let non-paying visiters to the site see that as well. I would feel like I was getting a much higher quality batch of bid responses if I was able to see 30 sec videos of developers communicating their skills and previous projects competently in a not reading-off-the-screen way.<p>Maybe you could get the people asking for bids to submit 30 second videos of themselves too?
I love this idea but it feels like these types of sites have become overly popular and I've noticed some problems. For context, I'm an entrepreneur with a budget, mock-ups, some angel interest, and I'm having a tough time finding senior development talent (mobile app & camera experience, some web talent). Anyway, if you solve some of these problems I'd get interested in a hurry.<p>-there's no upside in describing my project to an unknown community, If I describe it blandly nobody thinks it's interesting, if I describe it in detail I've given away our secret sauce.<p>-black box effect; it's unclear when/if I'll hear from the match-maker service.<p>-qualifications; while I value other people doing the pre-screens on developers I won't be comfortable unless they pass screens from technical people I know/trust but I seem overly picky and slow to decide if I have multiple interviews with all potential candidates.<p>For what it's worth, I think if you put more information about yourselves and your qualifications for screening devs it would help soothe these concerns.
I'd suggest using DEBUG = False in the production environment. (Django debug view gives a lot of private informations..)<p>Exception Location: /base/data/home/apps/ecl-data-collection/1.350367717383270314/views.py in submit_programmer, line 28
Python Executable: /base/
Python Version: 2.5.2
Python Path: ['/base/python_runtime/python_dist/lib/python25.zip', '/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/third_party/django-1.2', '/base/python_runtime/python_dist/lib/python2.5/', '/base/python_runtime/python_dist/lib/python2.5/plat-linux2', '/base/python_runtime/python_dist/lib/python2.5/lib-tk', '/base/python_runtime/python_dist/lib/python2.5/lib-dynload', '/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1', '/base/data/home/apps/ecl-data-collection/1.350367717383270314/']
I'd rename the github field to something more flexible -- at least let it sound like a BitBucket address would be just as relevant.<p>Also, how about a field for a LinkedIn profile?
Interesting platform. For larger projects, I'm less likely to use a eLance/vWorker type service, and more likely to seek people out via their github/twitter/blog directly..<p>What is the revenue model here? Do you let me search people, and then I pay you a monthly fee, or do you take a cut?<p>The former is worthwhile to me; By requiring that users pay $50/month to search the devs, it keeps out a lot of the rifraff.<p>The later doesn't offer enough utility to be worth a cut of the entire price.
I'd like to be able to select more than just one of the "looking for" options. Maybe I'm looking for freelance work in addition to a co-founder with an idea, for example
Definitely agree with the problem that this site is trying to solve.<p>For most large projects it is impossible to spec out the idea accurately and what the client wants changes as the person starts to code. So I think that in many cases an hourly rate makes more sense for the coder and the project creator.<p>For medium sized projects around $2-10k maybe 20k, then project based work makes sense. Larger than this and a fixed fee is dangerous for the coder. Plus managing the timing of when the coder is paid is difficult.<p>And yes in most cases if the coder is great, a genuine coder will want an ongoing relationship with the employer.<p>Also I think it is possible to achieve the same result as your site by using vworker for example but only picking coders with VERY good feedback (the top 200 coders on the web site for example).<p>Another potential problem is how to you weed out all of the bad coders? If you get 10,000 applications from India, how will you know which guys are good and which are not good? That's probably the most important thing you can do for the employers.<p>Having said all of that, there definitely is a need, so good luck!
I was not sure about the purpose of the website. On the one hand, it apparently wants to help people with projects find great coders. Great. On the other hand, it appears that it is also aiming to help you find (technical) cofounders. I don't think these are very related so I was a bit confused as to what the actual goal is.<p>Any thoughts?
Why the monthly pricing? Job boards and freelance sites are traditionally pay-per-post for a reason. Unless you know something that the rest don't, you might want to stick to conventional wisdom here.<p>Just charge $100 to post a project.
$2000 can be a great price or a very bad price. A project which has a budget of $250 is great if it only requires an hour of my time. A budget of $2000 is horrible if it requires 200 hours of my time.
I'd suggest concentrating on the quality of work you will (hopefully) be offering, not the min project price. If I'm a potential employer I'm not thinking "Oh, God, I'm so desperate to find someone that will charge me at least $2K!". Yet, the price is the first thing you throw at my face.
Firefox 4 on windows - The blob of text doesn't have a margin to right, making it stick to the scroll bar and hard to read.<p>Great idea, I might even try out, but first I need to get a portfolio going. Damn all those closed source projects and non participation in StackOverflow...
I'm always considering building a site like this myself, there's not law of nature that dictates that freelance sites need to be races to the bottom.<p>The pricing is a little ambiguous, is it free (after the pre-launch period) for coders?
So the text says you are 'a team of developers and designers who want to spend more time doing what we love,' but this appears to only be for developers. Are you targeting designers as well, or only coders?
I really like the idea and I think there is a great need from both developers and customers for this service. Have you thought at all about how to drive the demand side of this marketplace?
Comment on the website: The main text goes off the bottom of the visible window and is obscured by the footer. This is on Chrome on Linux with the DPI settings increased a bit.
"We will not share your idea with anyone else, but we cannot guarantee that we will not work on something very similar."<p>That makes me almost 100% unlikely to use your site. I know that you're CYA here, but I would need to cover mine too...It seems a little stupid to tell you an idea if you say in big bold letters that although you might not share it, you may steal it or "work on something very similar."
<p><pre><code> NameError at /submit/programmer
global name 'phone' is not defined
Request Method: POST
Request URL: http://ecl-data-collection.appspot.com/submit/programmer
Django Version: 1.2.5
Exception Type: NameError
Exception Value:
global name 'phone' is not defined
Exception Location: /base/data/home/apps/ecl-data-collection/1.350367717383270314/views.py in submit_programmer, line 28
Python Executable: /base/
Python Version: 2.5.2
Python Path: ['/base/python_runtime/python_dist/lib/python25.zip', '/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/third_party/django-1.2', '/base/python_runtime/python_dist/lib/python2.5/', '/base/python_runtime/python_dist/lib/python2.5/plat-linux2', '/base/python_runtime/python_dist/lib/python2.5/lib-tk', '/base/python_runtime/python_dist/lib/python2.5/lib-dynload', '/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1', '/base/data/home/apps/ecl-data-collection/1.350367717383270314/']
Server time: Thu, 12 May 2011 17:32:17 +0000</code></pre>