I am a non-technical entrepreneur who has a startup idea for employee scheduling software. My plan is to have the creation of the minimum viable product outsourced. I'm not attempting to find a programmer who will work for free in exchange for equity, but all of the programming firms I've talked to said they don't take projects that cost less than $8k.<p>This is out of my price range, but it is discouraging because I was much more comfortable hiring someone with the same geographic location as me (Syracuse, NY). I was wondering how I could go about having this product built on a budget? I'm not trying to build anything flashy or intricate. Just a basic design with the main features that solve the problem I've identified. My plan is to have the person I hire build my basic MVP, then I would establish a customer base and then go back for more improvements/features/attractiveness to the front-end.<p>Thank you for your input
Try Freelancer.com (or any other market place with lots of participants).<p>Freelancer.com is good for your use case because:<p>- Many users from all over the world bidding in an auction for your project => usually you get very competitive prices and no negotiation hassle<p>- Nice payment options with milestones and ratings => give you a good control over the project development and progress and at the same time force you to think about specification and what should be done at which milestone<p>- Granular categories: you can get really anything from embedded C++ devs over Ruby to copy writer who write a book for you<p>Only drawback (but this drawback is with all agencies or contractors): after work is done you are in some dependency to your contractor and introducing the work to a new contractor costs time and money. So, you have to look that the chosen guy has a fair after work policy and doesn't demand day rates beyond 1,000$<p>To solve (somehow) this problem the pros usually choose two contractors for each critical tasks and let both know that there's another one doing exactly the same. This leads to better competitive prices after the project is finished but has to be keepen through the entire project and doubles the cost.
Considering you're asking them to build the whole product 8k seems fairly cheap. Run some of the numbers:<p>Let's say it takes 1 month to build an MVP with 2 people at a small firm.<p>Programmer + (Programmer OR Designer) = 2 people<p>40hrs/week working on this to get it out the door.<p>2 (people) * 40 hrs * 4 (weeks)* X (hourly rate) = 8k<p>320 work hours * X = 8k<p>X = $25/hr<p>That's a pretty cheap rate in my mind. Of course you can play with the numbers and expectations.<p>You could always try a startup weekend or something to build an MVP with a team.
I don't know what your budget is, but $8,000 is not a lot. I've managed dozens of software projects and I would never trust ANYONE who says they'll build ANYTHING for $8,000. Very, very few successful websites, rails sites, iPhone apps, or desktop apps were ever made for $8,000. Even for a simple MVP. Hiring quality people costs money. Hiring lower quality people leads to problems.<p>Based on the information you provide, unless you have min. $50,000 to invest I would recommend a technical co-founder or a seed investor.
Take a look at <a href="http://facingworlds.co.uk" rel="nofollow">http://facingworlds.co.uk</a> its free to post a job and you dont have to sign up, its good for finding programmers/designers.