Show HN: Hire.Bid – marketplace for on-demand work | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Hire.Bid – marketplace for on-demand work

hire.bid

38 pointsPunisher25 comments

"Patent pending" isn't something that should be on a freelancer job board. The idea of patenting anything about this is approximately as rediculous as Amazon patenting one click checkout. Cool otherwise.

Just for curiosity's sake, here's the patent application: http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=...

Here's also the founder's Medium post about the creation of this service: https://medium.com/startup-foundation-stories/about-my-11-ye...

I can understand why a profit seeking venture wants to get a patent if they can (even though I viscerally disagree with high level, low-effort software patents), but to advertise it on the footer, while sharing to the tech community that cares about these issues, is just plain bad judgment.

I mean also, given it's the glorious chicken-egg problem, with only 1 developer within 50 miles of my SF zipcode for the major web categories I searched, idk if they think an investor will hook at "They have a patent!" while ignoring this lack of engagement?

On the contrary, patents are one of the only things besides engagement that may be valuable about a typical startup. The technology/software that powers any given startup is usually easy enough to replicate (excepting massive cutting-edge projects like SpaceX/Tesla).

Most companies would prefer to copy your features into their own product for ~$1M of engineering time over the course of a year or so (3-5 full-time guys assigned), rather than pay tens of millions for an outside version that would have to be integrated, and wait for an acquisition to go through (itself probably costing close to $1M just in professional fees).

Startups therefore only get bought if they have a userbase that the acquiring company may be interested in, or if they have a good patent portfolio/other interesting intellectual property. Patents are exclusive government-backed monopolies over systems, techniques, or processes ("inventions") that can be used to force competitors out of business (ideal but rare, because competitors usually have their own relevant patents that need to be licensed). More often, patents are useful leverage to get competitors to agree to a mutually-beneficial cross-licensing deal. Thus, a startup with 0 users may be a good buy if they have patent(s) relevant to the problem space.

Entrepreneurs should apply for patents because entrepreneurs need ammo. Big companies are not going to buy your company and transfer millions of dollars because they think you're a nice guy. There are a lot of nice guys out there, but there aren't a lot of guys with a patent that a big player needs. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to get some chips before you show up to the table!

Disclaimer: IHNIWITA (I Have No Idea What I'm Talking About). Not a lawyer or an investor.

Not interested in looking for an investor, and certainly not one that says "Look we have a patent!"

Ok here's some constructive feedback:

1. Open dev console. You're trying to load non-existing fonts. You are trying to serve stripe js from your own server instead of their cdn.

2. Drop the buggy reg process and go with "standard" auth providers - google/github.

3. Take a note from upwork - let me hire and be hired with same login.

4. Once registered as "want to hire" I got 404.

EDIT: 5. Get a designer to give you professional feedback on the look and feel.

In reading the Medium blog post (https://medium.com/startup-foundation-stories/about-my-11-ye...) from 2016, I am curious as to why he scraped the design he had hired a firm for and went back to this design. His reasoning in that blog post is that it was buggy and "didn't look like a product that had been worked on for so long". The screenshots from that blog post show a much more polished product (at least to me) than this revision so I am just curious the reasoning behind the change.

Hey. The good screenshots from the medium post of the schedule etc. are largely still in the product. The home page was not great. I'm making some slight revisions to the new home page as we speak, but agree I can make some more improvements.

Here is the product I was delivered: https://www.chopdawgdev.com/brandon/hirebid-dev/index

Yes. Needs some work - I agree. What was the 404? - I'll definitely need to look into that. Thanks.

Interesting idea about reverting it. I wonder how/if it could work in context of remote work - with focus on hire-via-calendar availability. My feeling is that it could work very well with getting things done in budget and making developers happy salary wise at the same time if done properly.

I seem to remember marketplaces and systems from 10 years ago that would let service professionals - mostly consultants, it seemed - sell blocks of their time. I'm seeing 'mytime.com' today as something similar. Always interesting to see new takes on previous ideas, but it doesn't seem as revolutionary as the OP's medium posts seemed to make it out to be. (or maybe I'm missing something)

The UI needs work, to me it looks like a "Under Construction" page at first.

If it's also aimed at 'remote work' as it says on the main page - why is it restricted to US only, and why does it need a ZIP code?

Because handling payments for outside of the US has all sorts of legal and logistical obstacles.

As with handling payments inside the US... Let the client decide.

I like the idea but the UI really needs work. Wouldn't be included to use it based on how it looks tbh.

Yes absolutely. Especially when it is aimed at elites.

I floated a similar idea (dubbed quickgig) and quickly realized it isn't very feasible for the vast majority of work that could be characterized as on-demand. better to break it down into specialities first and foremost.

The marketplace allows to work for $0.00/hour. You can slave this guy for free:

https://hire.bid/profile/elycheikh

Well. Every professional has total control over accepting or rejecting a bid. And the hirer would have to cover the stripe fees, so not sure if that guy will really accept your low bid.

I usually try leave work-time flexible in contracts. Would be cool to have "up to X hours/week" as availability option.

That is a concept I've thought about for a future iteration. A little more flexibility in time blocks etc.

Great idea. I signed up but I'm unable to save my profile photo, FYI

I've had this same problem on many websites lately and it's because they require Flash. Soundcloud and Glassdoor to name a couple.

Sad state of the current web.

Good domain name.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com