5 ms·

Regarding TrackStudio, do you seriously have those AAA companies as clients?

by zerr 11y ago

anovikov 11y ago
yeah! but: 1) i am no longer a part of the company. i can link you up with the sole owner if you have any interest though. 2) it is nowhere near successful really. more of a zombie startup. i tried to do all i could to help it out, even prepared to apply to YC, but i couldn't convince the partner (current sole owner, i left it and given up my share) to agree to go to U.S. if accepted.
- zerr 11y ago
  Interesting. There are tons of project management solutions, including some very popular ones... So these AAA companies just buy/subscribe to many of them? What's the reasoning behind this... Or maybe you've done some target marketing, approached some middle-managers in those companies or similar.. Interesting how did you get such sales. (But your [ex] product looks great, indeed). Btw, I'm in the same situation - living in eastern Europe, working remotely and getting "western compensation". So I'm stuck here... When you adjust for cost of living, and especially housing, moving west doesn't make sense...
  - anovikov 11y ago
    Probably yes, they buy many. There was no way to track how much they make use of them, but some probably do, because they bought continued support. In Russia it is a lot more popular and some AAA companies in Russia order some customization work so they are serious about it. No special marketing - they bought from site. Anyway, that doesn't make even a good living, let alone allow for hiring staff. Owner makes most of his living working from Upwork too now. LOL now try to think how coding people making $10K+ a month in Ukraine feel like! Many of them have 10-acre villas, chauffeur driven cars and full time gardeners. Real upper class. That's what i call being stuck!
    - zerr 11y ago
      While we're at it - one advice - I left upwork (it was odesk back then) many years ago, because, as everyone knows, it is race to the bottom. So next step for you could be to eliminate the middle man. Reach to clients directly. Try searching gigs on sites such as wewrokremotely, wfh.io, SO remote jobs, etc.. Even if you find interesting work on upwork, and posting includes contact details - contact the client directly, outside upwork. And no need to mention upwork in your CV. You can mention your past clients/companies and relevant work. Regarding the product - I guess if you had enterprise pricing separately (maybe as "Contact us") you could've arranged better deals with those AAA shops... not sure :)
      - anovikov 11y ago
        In fact, i sometimes did the reverse: found clients outside of Upwork and brought them in. I am even more likely to do it now since June 1 when the commissions drop from 10% to 5%. Upwork provides guaranteed billing... It is extremely difficult to extract payments when nobody does it for you. Enterprise pricing page - good idea, i will tell Maxim (owner). upd: he said that in fact decisions on buying it is usually taken by IT department heads who then massively rework the system for their own needs, so a higher priced sale would be impossible, in many cases they already prefer open source. In fact, even selling whole company failed through - interested buyers who definitely had money, eventually refused to pay even $100K. Working on Upwork has definively been way more productive activity.
        zerr 11y ago
        I'm freelancing almost 10 years now and so far I've never had any single issue with payments - I just send PDF invoices and get funds through bank/wire transfer. Even when I was on odesk - I've only logged offline time, i.e. haven't used that spying/monitoring desktop client.
        anovikov 11y ago
        What kind of clients do you pitch to? Is your manager/main contact typically a business boss or technical? Lastly, how much do you charge? That sounds interesting because in my experience people don't pay unless they are forced to (some system does it for them, or they need something more from you so forced to pay for the previous work to get that done, etc.)

Regarding TrackStudio, do you seriously have those AAA companies as clients?

by zerr 11y ago

Regarding TrackStudio, do you seriously have those AAA companies as clients?

yeah! but: 1) i am no longer a part of the company. i can link you up with the sole owner if you have any interest though. 2) it is nowhere near successful really. more of a zombie startup. i tried to do all i could to help it out, even prepared to apply to YC, but i couldn't convince the partner (current sole owner, i left it and given up my share) to agree to go to U.S. if accepted.

zerr 11y ago
Interesting. There are tons of project management solutions, including some very popular ones... So these AAA companies just buy/subscribe to many of them? What's the reasoning behind this... Or maybe you've done some target marketing, approached some middle-managers in those companies or similar.. Interesting how did you get such sales. (But your [ex] product looks great, indeed). Btw, I'm in the same situation - living in eastern Europe, working remotely and getting "western compensation". So I'm stuck here... When you adjust for cost of living, and especially housing, moving west doesn't make sense...
- anovikov 11y ago
  Probably yes, they buy many. There was no way to track how much they make use of them, but some probably do, because they bought continued support. In Russia it is a lot more popular and some AAA companies in Russia order some customization work so they are serious about it. No special marketing - they bought from site. Anyway, that doesn't make even a good living, let alone allow for hiring staff. Owner makes most of his living working from Upwork too now. LOL now try to think how coding people making $10K+ a month in Ukraine feel like! Many of them have 10-acre villas, chauffeur driven cars and full time gardeners. Real upper class. That's what i call being stuck!
  - zerr 11y ago
    While we're at it - one advice - I left upwork (it was odesk back then) many years ago, because, as everyone knows, it is race to the bottom. So next step for you could be to eliminate the middle man. Reach to clients directly. Try searching gigs on sites such as wewrokremotely, wfh.io, SO remote jobs, etc.. Even if you find interesting work on upwork, and posting includes contact details - contact the client directly, outside upwork. And no need to mention upwork in your CV. You can mention your past clients/companies and relevant work. Regarding the product - I guess if you had enterprise pricing separately (maybe as "Contact us") you could've arranged better deals with those AAA shops... not sure :)
    - anovikov 11y ago
      In fact, i sometimes did the reverse: found clients outside of Upwork and brought them in. I am even more likely to do it now since June 1 when the commissions drop from 10% to 5%. Upwork provides guaranteed billing... It is extremely difficult to extract payments when nobody does it for you. Enterprise pricing page - good idea, i will tell Maxim (owner). upd: he said that in fact decisions on buying it is usually taken by IT department heads who then massively rework the system for their own needs, so a higher priced sale would be impossible, in many cases they already prefer open source. In fact, even selling whole company failed through - interested buyers who definitely had money, eventually refused to pay even $100K. Working on Upwork has definively been way more productive activity.
      - zerr 11y ago
        I'm freelancing almost 10 years now and so far I've never had any single issue with payments - I just send PDF invoices and get funds through bank/wire transfer. Even when I was on odesk - I've only logged offline time, i.e. haven't used that spying/monitoring desktop client.
        anovikov 11y ago
        What kind of clients do you pitch to? Is your manager/main contact typically a business boss or technical? Lastly, how much do you charge? That sounds interesting because in my experience people don't pay unless they are forced to (some system does it for them, or they need something more from you so forced to pay for the previous work to get that done, etc.)