4 ms·
Design love, anyone?
Hi All,
I’ve been following Hacker News for a while, but never really posted in here before. I was hoping I could get some startup advice from you guys.
We are a bootstrapped startup operating out of New Delhi, India. Okay, I’ll be honest. We’re three folks under thirty who love eating ramen and spend most of their time building a web application for a global audience.
We want to change the rules of the game in the sourcing advisory market by bringing the entire process online and harnessing the power of social influence. We are ready with the concept and a prototype application, spending around three months full-time. We have so far built the core application engine (capable of requirement and evidence-based technology recommendations for say a healthcare provider operating in France with a project budget of $500k) and a CMS to handle the data.
Here’s the challenge for us though - we are fairly confident with the technology part, know our concept will ruffle a few feathers, but we can’t seem to find the right balance on UI design. We need help on getting progressive UI and graphic design, but we are in the ramen mode and don’t have enough monies to buy our way through to the design Gods. We want to be ready for TC Disrupt when it happens next (possibly Dec'10) but can’t seem to solve this problem as none of the local design firms are up to the task.
What should we do? Any suggestions or pointers in the right direction would be immensely appreciated. Would you know of any design groups or startups who may want to collaborate with overseas startups?
The Three Ramens
- michael_dorfman 16y agoWait a second: We want to change the rules of the game in the sourcing advisory market OK. Would you know of any design groups or startups who may want to collaborate with overseas startups? Damn, if we only knew someone in the sourcing advisory market. They could answer your question, no doubt. Seriously: the irony is killing me.
- papkol 16y agomy bad :D sourcing advisors are sort of like management consultants who help businesses with decisions on what to buy and from whom (they charge a grand buck for doing this too)
- michael_dorfman 16y agoYes, I know that. You are asking us for help with a decision on what to buy and from whom, without offering us a grand buck. Presumably, this is what you meant when you said you wanted to change the rules of the game. Seriously: if your target audience are sourcing advisors, certainly you are close enough to several of them to be able to get some advice from them on your problem. The fact that you turned to HN for help in finding a firm to outsource your designing to, instead of to them, is puzzling.
- papkol 16y agowe are indeed trying to change the rules of the game - the idea is to draft in the concept of social proof, say someone similar using and recommending a particular piece of technology or service. having worked as a sourcing advisor these last 5 years (focused entirely on big and bulky enterprise software though), i feel the status quo is closer to a guru-speak model than true evidence-based research.