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Builder's sell houses before they build them. I think developers often are intimidated because they might not be certain they can deliver. Nobody with a minimum
by sgc 9y ago
Builder's sell houses before they build them. I think developers often are intimidated because they might not be certain they can deliver. Nobody with a minimum of experience would hesitate to take 1000 for a quick gig, because it's obviously going to work out. So we need to prove ourselves to ourselves first, and then we will have the confidence to take on larger, more lucrative contracts.
- bluGill 9y agoSometimes. Most builders work both ways: They one's I've worked with closely seem to be about 3/4ths build to order, 1/4th build for sale after. The spec houses are carefully designed to be cheap to build (without sacrificing quality) and look great on the market so they will sell/close fast. Builders want a good looking spec house to show potential custom buyers.
- sgc 9y agoEven when they build spec houses (sometimes crap), they are paid first / at milestones by a bank or investor group. They don't hesitate to take on the job because they are confident in their capacities, which is my main point.
- brianpgordon 9y agoBuilding a house is very different from building a product. For example, timeline estimates for building a house can be reasonably ascertained; not so for software. It's the distinction between building something you've built before and architecting a new bridge or building. The latter is a creative effort with lots of variables that are extraordinarily hard to pin down into estimates that would be acceptable in spec house construction.
- mdpye 9y agoSo, your spec house is the yet-another-crud-webapp, where the spec is clear and the tech mature... Engineers do those too, but they aren't so much entrepreneurs as jobbing contractors or agencies
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dng88 9y agoStange about this house idea. In many cases like this ide I guess it may work. But in many cases we want to build something that is more like a movie. A dream. Most of us in the “soft”ware precisely not like hardware (like house or even computer as hardware). Even it hardware I bet most of us are working on the firmware at most but the manufacturing part. Somethings we cannot see. Something we have to feel a way trough. Imagine the x-windows, mac and windows’s gui part. That is hard part. Even network is hard. But not as concrete as house. Movie and dream. Please. And spec is hard to fix.
- sgc 9y agoIt's fine to move the analogy, but the point remains the same: The more confident you are in your own capacities, the easier it is to bid on a project. And to be confident in your capacities without it being simple hubris, you need to do difficult things that demonstrate to yourself what you are capable of accomplishing.