Got an idea? We'll build it for $20k
20kprototype.com
20kprototype.com
The pricing in the software consulting industry is a bit opaque. Very few companies do what this one does and advertise their price up front. Which I respect.
So my question is, is this sort of pricing common? Am I over charging? Are they under charging? Are we both over or under charging? [1]
[1] I know there are a LOT of factors and there is no way someone could say for sure without due diligence but I guess you can take a guess.
1) Not sure why you'd have complaints with this site versus, say, any business on HN that attempts to make money being advertised. I originally put "Show HN: " in the title, but it was changed by a moderator. Was mostly looking for feedback.
2) Re pricing: I'd say in order to assume you are over/under pricing, I'd have to know what you are building. Are you building simple 5 page static sites? Probably overcharging, depending on the complexity. Are you building a complicated clustercuss of interconnected API calls hooked up to a background processor that munges the data and distributes it through multiple channels?... it gets complicated.
The reason I made 20kprototype.com is because I see a lot of people who have ideas, a decent amount of money, but no way to get from A to B. If they go to an agency, the overhead alone will cost them near $100k. If they go to a developer, the dev will say "Okay. Do you have a designer? Who's doing [insert whatever they don't want to do here]?" Then who manages those people?... This idea is: I'll take it from 0 - working so you can prove the idea or show investors. All the work goes into the functionality.
Hope that answers your questions!
Re #1:
Typically said posts are under Show HN. So the fact you put it there originally was right, I think the mod was wrong in that case. If it said Show HN I would have objected as much.
But I think the other part is because the only piece novel here is the price. There are a lot of services that do what you (and I) do. Unless there is something I missed.
Again, that second part is mostly moot because I don't think I would have cared if it was "Show HN"
Re #2:
Typically in that range I give the client an API, a single front-end (mobile or webapp) and all the database and design that goes with it.
I do really appreciate you trying to cut the crap and focus on shipping functionality. I also like how some things that people could call a negative you turn into a positive (like cutting edge tech and lack of fancy sales decks). I'm not calling it a negative mind you.
I do have one question, and feel free to not answer if it is prying too much. What do you pay the developers? How many of these a year does it take to pay their salary?
In the interest of transparency: our staff is all US based. Here it is $75k - $150k USD and if we have them on 3 to 5 projects a year we've paid for them.
Again don't answer if you don't want to. I can hide behind anonymity which lets me be a little bit more transparent.
Anyway, good luck to you!
The price/time ratio is the key to making this work. I've done a ton of prototypes that are near that sweet spot. Some will take longer than expected, some will fly out in a few days.
The biggest obstacle I see right now is finding the right platform for targeting the demo-graph I'm going for: people who have ideas, money and not a lot of connections to tech.
San usually meaning "without" and degree often meaning "Diploma from a higher education institute" it is a rather interesting chose of company name. Not something people typically advertise so explicitly if that is indeed what it means.