Hidden Founders: CTO as a service

Hustle X

Here is the sample quote they give : http://ge.tt/1FxPEb62/v/0 $30k + 2% of your company is a lot for any startup I'd say. If you offered equity to any web development firm, they'd probably reduce the price a bit.

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10yr ago

LekanB

@_jacksmith Wow... That's high.

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10yr ago

Yassine el Kachchani

Startup Patterns

Maker

@_jacksmith "If you offered equity to any web development firm" I'm not sure about that. Also there is a small misunderstanding here. Let me explain: 1. the sample you saw is less than 60% of what we got when we asked for quotes from US & European (good) developement shops and agencies 2. After a period of six months, our founders have the possibility to cancel their lease at any time, with no obligation to pay the remaining costs. If you do the math, this means they will have to fund 40% of the sample you shared ($12k) to test if there is a Market or not. If their product does not take off, the remaining cost won't be paid. Is this still high Jack ? 3. the sample we took is not an MVP. It is based on Kickstarter as it is right now. 4. The idea here is to be the most affordable option for people trying to build an MVP and test a Market quickly. Our founders had 2 difficult options before: either a way too expensive agency or dev shop, or managing multiple low cost freelancers (because the good ones are more expensive than our rates). I will talk about our mission in a separate comment. Thank you Jack for challenging our model!

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10yr ago

Yassine el Kachchani

Startup Patterns

Maker

@lekanb I would love to get your feedback on my reply to @_jacksmith

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10yr ago

LekanB

@_jacksmith @kachchani That makes a lot more sense to me. You basically give a requirements based quote like any dev shop would, but give the entrepreneur an alternative on how to get there. That feels better. Thanks for the detailed breakdown.

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10yr ago

David Spinks

CMX

@kachchani definitely not too expensive. You just won't get the broke founder types to use the service. But a founder with a little money to play with, I could definitely see using this. Especially if they don't already have any developer connections.

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10yr ago

Adam Marx

How Many People Have Voted?

An interesting idea. Reminds me a lot of the incubator approach, though perhaps with less of a percentage at stake, and sans relocation requirements. The question in my mind would be what might happen if one of the "interim CTO's" becomes more invested in a particular project than in the others. It seems realistic to plan for the reality that some projects will need a lot more hands-on work than others, simply depending on the project and general industry. Though that said, it's certainly something I could see as a useful service, and I'm intrigued to see how it will evolve after it's first cycle or two.

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10yr ago

Jack Smith

Hustle X

@adammarx13 I don't really see how it resembles an incubator. Sure, their branding and taking 2% equity positions it as such. But apart from that, it just looks like any other web-dev consultancy firm.

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10yr ago

Adam Marx

How Many People Have Voted?

@_jacksmith Perhaps. Incubator may have been the wrong comparison, though the reason it sprang to mind immediately was more because of the cycle/batch-format than anything else. The equity payment is comparable too, though I think it's more the former model which I'm most interested to see function and evolve.

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10yr ago

Yassine el Kachchani

Startup Patterns

Maker

@adammarx13 @_jacksmith thank you for your feedback. I'm sure @_jacksmith chose the verb "resembles" for a reason. We are not an incubator, but we're trying to mimic some of their attributes. In addition to the 2%, we work with a batch, we have weekly online meetups, we have a demo day (pitching in front of CTOs and developers) and more importantly we have mentors. Founders have office hours to get help, feedback and introductions. Mentors such as Hicham Oudghiri enigma.io's founder can sure help our first time founders to avoid early mistakes. I'll answer your second question in your other comment. Thx for reacting really!

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10yr ago

Yassine el Kachchani

Startup Patterns

Maker

@adammarx13 Thanks. We think about the continuity of the project a lot too, since the idea for Hidden Founders is to help founders get an MVP, not a full featured product, to market. We keep in mind that somebody else has to pick up the work after we're done and the product has proven itself on the market, and you're right, it's a lot easier to do when the projects are on the light side, technically speaking. However, we have very strict guidelines in place. The use of dev good practices, the use of trending tech stacks, the hiring of local rockstars are all things we take very seriously. We've been founders ourselves for quite some time now and we know what it feels to have a broken unscalable product while you just started to have to have traction.

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10yr ago

Adam Marx

How Many People Have Voted?

@_jacksmith @kachchani Interesting. Just wanted to clarify that I wasn't calling you all an incubator, merely pointing out similarities that appeared to me. That said, those similarities are not necessarily negative; the notion of having a cycle-based model I think could work very well for something like this, so I'd be interested to hear feedback from the companies in the first batch or two.

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10yr ago

Michael Seibel

Cargo

I think this is an interesting idea but it really depends on the startup you are trying to build. If you want a lifestyle business that reaches profitability with little upfront investment and comfortably provides a salary for you and your employees - this could a good option. If you are interested in building a venture backed billion dollar tech startup - step one is recruiting a good founding team with strong technical talent.

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10yr ago

Yassine el Kachchani

Startup Patterns

Maker

@mwseibel interesting input. We are trying to position ourselves as a "pre-accelerator". A simple example will be as follows: founder A gets in a batch, build an MVP, validate his/her idea and get initial traction. Founder A pitch and seduce a risk averse tech friend to join as co-founder. Would this person be a candidate for YC ? We tried to always ask ourselves this question while coming up with our actual model. Btw we were suppose to meet while you were in Morocco Casablanca :) would have been an interesting talk.

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10yr ago

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