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Comment by tnolet | Hacker News Reader

I'm a "pro" freelancer in the tech space. You've already had many relevant tips and critiques here so I won't repeat them. Just wanted to add this one, as I've seen it firsthand with startups: you are focusing on you. You fail to make me, a potential customer pretty much exactly in the market you are targeting, believe you have any idea how freelancing works and where the pain and value adds are.

Genuine question and not meant as a put down: how long have you freelanced and have you experienced the pain you mention yourself?

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I've freelanced on the side for a few years. I used to put together a google form for the requirement collection, then send the NDAs on DocuSign,I had a quite number of people asking me to send an NDA before discussing. Quickbooks for accounting and sometimes PandaDoc for agreements. While putting together this product, I wanted to reduce the friction of getting started with freelancing and put together all of these in a single package. I've also spent time answering previous portfolios, my fee structure etc, which are kind of FAQs, that's why we thought of putting a personal assistant to quickly answer basic questions.

I'd love to hear your points, and probably what are the needs of a pro person like you?

The only actual pain / needs I cover by a paid service are billing, invoicing and expenses accounting. Zoho covers this. Outside of that email and Google Docs does everything quickly and efficiently. LinkedIn serves as my "homepage".

Just as another data point for you, we don't generally sign NDAs, and I never did as long as I was freelancing solo either. It's close to 100% downside for the freelancer/consultancy to do that up-front, and it's a rare client whose project is going to be so attractive that we'd make an exception. A basic mutual confidentiality clause in standard terms has always been sufficient IME.

So, I started watching your YouTube walkthrough, and right after the "give me your email address before you can do anything" red flag, you got into some sort of legalese agreement. If I'd been interest at all in your product before that, I wouldn't have been any more at that point.

:) Thanks for this feedback. Will consider and work on this.

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