Ask HN: Site for new businesses to build business | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Site for new businesses to build business

5 pointsleftnode6 comments

I think one of the differences between a startup and a small business is that a startup focuses on a single project whereas a small business does more client/customer work until it can grow larger.

There are a tremendous number of resources out there for startups, but I'm having a hard time finding ones for small businesses, especially to attract new business.

I'm starting a small business with just money I've saved and finding work can be difficult. There's the Craigslist approach, which generally doesn't turn up much as other businesses don't want to pay much for services, and the getacoder/elance/guru sites just seem to be full of non-serious/spam type posts.

Would it make sense to develop a site where small businesses can register and say, "Hey, I'm available to do high quality work (generally tech/web/software related)" and other businesses in the area who need work done and are serious about paying for it could easily find another company to partner with. To keep the site legitimate and the spammers out, each business would be charged a decent fee (say, $250 a year) in order to post their information.

I was somewhat inspired by Joel's "we made an extra million by putting ads on my blog" post. Is there a website out there already serving this need, and if not, do you think it would make sense to develop one?

So, this raises a few questions for me:

1. Your dismissal of eLance, getacoder, guru, etc. seems questionable, at best. "non-serious/spam" type posts, I imagine, must be a problem for any site of this sort. I'm not sure I see how you could prevent it better than they do. And, I'll mention that I've used rent-a-coder, eLance, and 99designs for work in the past, as a buyer. All of them worked, by some definition of "work". But, what you're describing is...different. It sounds like I can't list my projects, I can't get bids, and I have to do my projects the old fashioned way--find someone via an ad, contact them, beg them to get back to me with a quote for services, etc. I'm not saying there aren't times when I prefer the old-fashioned way (when I need programming done well, for example, it's simply not possible via the outsourcing sites I've tried), but the reason these sites do well is because it's possible to get quotes from a half dozen providers in a day, and have the project underway in two.

2. What do you believe will draw buyers to your site, as opposed to the many, many work for hire sites out there? Without the buyers, you won't find any providers willing to pay you a dime, much less $250/year. Why wouldn't they use craigslist, if they want to find a specific talent? It's either free or $75 to place a want ad on craigs (depending on the market), and you can know that thousands of people will see you ad. Without lots of eyeballs, Joel's post is nonsensical. He happened to have a large readership that fit exactly the profile of employers looking for tech employees.

3. $250/year for effectively an online listing service? Are you out of your damned mind? Again, you'd better have a hugely popular website if you want to pull this off.

So, maybe I'm just not grasping the value add you are offering here for buyers or sellers of services. I'm not saying it's a bad idea...just that I can't think of when I would use such a service (and it sounds kinda like I'm your target demographic: business owner, hires technical talent regularly, and in the past I have been technical talent looking to get hired).

In leftnode's defense, getacoder/rentacoder are filthy with ridiculous requests to "clone wildly popular X for tiny sum of money" with a dozen bids from outsourced shops.

I agree. But...what do you do to prevent that while still making deals happen?

I think the $250 yearly fee might keep the "clone X for cheap" crowd at bay, but I'm not really sure how to tackle the onslaught of low outsourced bidders.

I don't think another website is needed, businesses just won't use it. I've seen it tried before and it just doesn't work.

In your case you can find an enormous amount of new clients by getting involved with your local startup community.

What happens is startup founders talk to everyone and often times they get asked to build an app or website or whatever. If you network with these founders, you'll end up having extremely high quality clients because these founders start referring you. It takes a little time but it works great for anyone looking for clients.

The web solves a lot of problems but not yours, that just comes down to networking and talking with people who need your services.

The difficult part of making a site like that is getting customers: Actually programming the site is quickly done.

The reason Joel's jobsite works is because they already have a lot of smart people coming to the site, and can push them on to the job section.

So in answer to your question: Yes, if it isn't out there (and since you've looked and haven't found anything it seems like a good presumption) it's a good idea. But don't kid yourself - marketing the site is at least 2/3 of the effort. And if your original problem is that it's hard to find customers this may not be what you want.

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