Ask HN: How do I find a small (inexpensive) design/programming firm?

Try Freelancer.com (or any other market place with lots of participants).

Freelancer.com is good for your use case because:

- Many users from all over the world bidding in an auction for your project => usually you get very competitive prices and no negotiation hassle

- 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

- Granular categories: you can get really anything from embedded C++ devs over Ruby to copy writer who write a book for you

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$

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.

Just a bit of free advice on Freelancer (or any other market place with lots of participants).

You will get what you pay for.

Not really helpful. As everywhere you can be lucky getting really talented and fair contractors or unlucky with mediocre people. But you have more people to select from and better control mechanisms.

Western devs and contractors usually do not like such market places because of the high competition and low prices.

Considering you're asking them to build the whole product 8k seems fairly cheap. Run some of the numbers:

Let's say it takes 1 month to build an MVP with 2 people at a small firm.

Programmer + (Programmer OR Designer) = 2 people

40hrs/week working on this to get it out the door.

2 (people) * 40 hrs * 4 (weeks)* X (hourly rate) = 8k

320 work hours * X = 8k

X = $25/hr

That's a pretty cheap rate in my mind. Of course you can play with the numbers and expectations.

You could always try a startup weekend or something to build an MVP with a team.

"takes 1 month to build an MVP "

If the MVP actually takes 3 months, X = $8/hr (rounded). My point is: OP needs to clarify the kind of application he wants to build for <8K.

I suspect the OP is looking for something more like 1 person for 1-2 weeks. Which is not unreasonable, IMO.

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.

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.

You should look through the HN monthly Freenlance/Seeking Freelancers post.

Take a look at http://facingworlds.co.uk its free to post a job and you dont have to sign up, its good for finding programmers/designers.

Do you have written down what the software will do? If not, do that first.

Try asking <insert closest university> students.

"Just a basic design with the main features that solve the problem I've identified". Can you elaborate on this ?

I'm not sure which programming language would be used to create this but this is basically what I need for my MVP:

A decent looking landing/about page. After a customer (an employer) purchases a monthly account they receive a log in. Once logged in they can input their employee names which will be saved. Then from there on they can log in at any point and add hours to every employee for each date.

This will translate into an online spread sheet which employees (who will also have a log in) can view once logged in. They will be able to mark shifts they have that they want to trade with other employees. And they will also be able to mark on the spread sheet when they want time off.

Is it realistic to think this isn't an expensive project? I'm a student and I don't have a tech co-founder.

I can give you some pointers if you are interested. Contact me through my profile. I am in greater NYC area.

The basic application logic of that, in my opinion, shouldn't take more than a week, and from then on it depends on how much effort you want to spend on design and polish.