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How To Build A Web App in Four Days For $10,000

bscofield 18y ago
This just reinforces my impression that Carsonified is more of a marketing shop than a web development shop - they had as many PR people on the project as they did designers and developers combined??
- ajkirwin 18y ago
  Two bloggers, a copywriter and three PR people? Imagine how much could've been done if those six had been replaced with programmers and/or designers!
  - icey 18y ago
    The soup is cold, add more chefs!
    - omouse 18y ago
      Psh, they could have started another project or two at the same time. Why build one app when you can build two?
      - ajkirwin 18y ago
        With their numbers, they could've done THREE!
  - petercooper 18y ago
    Sure, but then we wouldn't have known about it. PR and marketing are way more important than building a good product nowadays, alas. It's like how implementation trumps ideas. You can have great ideas, but with no implementation, nothing happens. Ditto for building a good product. You can build the world's best product, but if no-one knows about it, it's not getting used.
    - Zev 18y ago
      On the flip side, with all PR and no product, you dont have much either. Like you said, an idea only goes so far. You have to have the actual implementation. Just look at Qtrax. They had pretty good PR, but no product to sell. So they blew their big launch and then blew their relaunch as well later on because their product didn't perform as well as PR said it would.
- billroberts 18y ago
  I think it was because they just got everyone in the company to work on it and those are the people they've got: with lots of PR people because their main business is running events.
  - babul 18y ago
    The people mentioned are all the people in the company. I would guess PR get mentioned as it nice to have the whole company included (for small companies like this) for team spirit and morale etc. and not because it took 3 people to advertise the endeavour. Anyway, when the PR people are not running events, they have to do something, right?
- babul 18y ago
  In the modern age, sad as it is, PR and being able to blow your own trumpet seems to be increasingly important. Sometimes things are made that are instant/viral hits, but most of the time you have to work hard to tell people about it (and hence get users).
- danw 18y ago
  That would be because those PR people are normally event organizers. The company organises event as well as build apps, which is what those 'pr' people are normally working on.
- ryancarson 18y ago
  I'm getting the impression that very few of you actually read the TechCrunch article. I stated very clearly that you only need three people (if that) to build an app like Matt. Carsonified has nine people so we used all of them to build the app. Did we need to? Of course not. We just gave a task to everyone and let them get on with it. Quite a few people on the team are not technical so they couldn't chip in with the design or dev.
redorb 18y ago
I'm waiting for one of the hackers here to make 'how to build a web app in four days for $500' ... This project wasn't ran "skinny" or even like a startup - but still nice, I enjoy the time lapse desktop video.
- notauser 18y ago
  One of the guys in the Techcruch thread pulled together a functional clone in a day on his own. So the other three days and eight people must have been for the drawings and the publicity :)
  - jfornear 18y ago
    He did the same for Posterous the other day.
  - petercooper 18y ago
    Oh, is that like all those armchair quarterbacks who came up with complete "solutions" for Twitter's problems?
    - notauser 18y ago
      No - this guy actually put together some code.
- ibsulon 18y ago
  At a startup, none of their salaries would have counted. As such, all they would have had to do is all meet in a coffee shop and pay the price for drinks.
- sdpurtill 18y ago
  oh it's been done - you just haven't heard about it because the team of hackers didn't have 3 pr reps!
  - redorb 18y ago
    agreed. sure many times - If I had to put together a team today it would be 1 designer 1 developer too simple? the more people the less perfect communication?
dmix 18y ago
In the last few years, developing the product has usually been the easy part. Now building a useful product, identifying a market need, and finding users/customers is the hard part. Lets see them do that next time because they missed the ball this time around.
dawie 18y ago
I think they did little with a lot of people. Sorry Carson, I like your stuff, but this is a bit weak in my mind.
Tichy 18y ago
I imagine they spent 2 hours coding and and the rest of the time for marketing (like producing the video)?
- jrockway 18y ago
  Hopefully.
tonystubblebine 18y ago
They did a great job with this, but it's also a good exercise that other people should try. These days, a lot of development styles ask you to be able to scope your work to the available time (agile, getting real, any crunch time situation). I did a couple two day solo versions of this and it's paid off repeatedly. My goal was to create and launch a website in two days. Usually I went in with an idea, but all the work needed to fit into two business days. The best thing I created was probably IHeartQuotes, a web front-end for Unix fortune files.
wumi 18y ago
A few are focusing on the literal aspect of building a web app -- why there are so many PR people, why did it cost so much -- while this seems to be an exercise of what a few people can accomplish in a short amount of time, a la Startup Weekend. He even admits as much "I would say you only need three people if you want to strip it back to the bare minimum..." The focus seems to be more on how teams can iteratively build new features, a quick app as proof of concept, or take time away from normal business to inject some excitement into the team.
breck 18y ago
"The app we built is a simple tool that allows you to post to multiple Twitter accounts." So, the real title of this article should have been "How to waste $10,000 on a pointless web app."
- jrockway 18y ago
  Yeah, I agree. I could hack this together in 15 minutes with Net::Twitter and Continuity, with maybe 30 minutes more to make the CSS look nice. Total cost? $250. (Oh, and $400/month hosting for an app nobody uses? I would just use my $20/month Slicehost until that stopped being possible.)
  - ovi256 18y ago
    >I could hack this together in 15 minutes >Total cost? $250. Do you really charge 1000$ per hour? What do you do?
    - jrockway 18y ago
      No, I round up to the nearest hour, though. I don't do a lot of consulting, but that's the going rate when I do.
  - mcxx 18y ago
    The difference between you and them - you say "I could" but they actually did it.
    - jamongkad 18y ago
      On this note I don't have any doubt in my mind that Mr. Rockway could do it.
henning 18y ago
Apparently we're hearing about this because of those three PR people, not because of the obvious large-scale payola going on between Carsonified and TechCrunch - it is purely because of the amazing viral marketing talents of those non-coding, non-designing, non-art-directing, non-blogging PR people!
- ideamonk 18y ago
  i agree its more about PR. thats why we are discussing it here, What good is a startup which no one knows about?
mtw 18y ago
we did the same thing earlier this year but with 11 different teams, who were challenged to make a working product in 48 hours. great experience. of course, we don't have a real company at the end of the event, but the goal is more about getting together, maybe find co-founders -- and well just hack things
goodgoblin 18y ago
What happens when they realize they built the wrong product or need to tweak it or pivot 180 degrees to follow a good opportunity? Helps to have programmers in house - or be a programmer.

This just reinforces my impression that Carsonified is more of a marketing shop than a web development shop - they had as many PR people on the project as they did designers and developers combined??

ajkirwin 18y ago
Two bloggers, a copywriter and three PR people? Imagine how much could've been done if those six had been replaced with programmers and/or designers!
- icey 18y ago
  The soup is cold, add more chefs!
  - omouse 18y ago
    Psh, they could have started another project or two at the same time. Why build one app when you can build two?
    - ajkirwin 18y ago
      With their numbers, they could've done THREE!
- petercooper 18y ago
  Sure, but then we wouldn't have known about it. PR and marketing are way more important than building a good product nowadays, alas. It's like how implementation trumps ideas. You can have great ideas, but with no implementation, nothing happens. Ditto for building a good product. You can build the world's best product, but if no-one knows about it, it's not getting used.
  - Zev 18y ago
    On the flip side, with all PR and no product, you dont have much either. Like you said, an idea only goes so far. You have to have the actual implementation. Just look at Qtrax. They had pretty good PR, but no product to sell. So they blew their big launch and then blew their relaunch as well later on because their product didn't perform as well as PR said it would.
billroberts 18y ago
I think it was because they just got everyone in the company to work on it and those are the people they've got: with lots of PR people because their main business is running events.
- babul 18y ago
  The people mentioned are all the people in the company. I would guess PR get mentioned as it nice to have the whole company included (for small companies like this) for team spirit and morale etc. and not because it took 3 people to advertise the endeavour. Anyway, when the PR people are not running events, they have to do something, right?
babul 18y ago
In the modern age, sad as it is, PR and being able to blow your own trumpet seems to be increasingly important. Sometimes things are made that are instant/viral hits, but most of the time you have to work hard to tell people about it (and hence get users).
danw 18y ago
That would be because those PR people are normally event organizers. The company organises event as well as build apps, which is what those 'pr' people are normally working on.
ryancarson 18y ago
I'm getting the impression that very few of you actually read the TechCrunch article. I stated very clearly that you only need three people (if that) to build an app like Matt. Carsonified has nine people so we used all of them to build the app. Did we need to? Of course not. We just gave a task to everyone and let them get on with it. Quite a few people on the team are not technical so they couldn't chip in with the design or dev.

redorb 18y ago

I'm waiting for one of the hackers here to make 'how to build a web app in four days for $500' ... This project wasn't ran "skinny" or even like a startup - but still nice, I enjoy the time lapse desktop video.

notauser 18y ago
One of the guys in the Techcruch thread pulled together a functional clone in a day on his own. So the other three days and eight people must have been for the drawings and the publicity :)
- jfornear 18y ago
  He did the same for Posterous the other day.
- petercooper 18y ago
  Oh, is that like all those armchair quarterbacks who came up with complete "solutions" for Twitter's problems?
  - notauser 18y ago
    No - this guy actually put together some code.
ibsulon 18y ago
At a startup, none of their salaries would have counted. As such, all they would have had to do is all meet in a coffee shop and pay the price for drinks.
sdpurtill 18y ago
oh it's been done - you just haven't heard about it because the team of hackers didn't have 3 pr reps!
- redorb 18y ago
  agreed. sure many times - If I had to put together a team today it would be 1 designer 1 developer too simple? the more people the less perfect communication?

dmix 18y ago

In the last few years, developing the product has usually been the easy part. Now building a useful product, identifying a market need, and finding users/customers is the hard part. Lets see them do that next time because they missed the ball this time around.

dawie 18y ago

I think they did little with a lot of people. Sorry Carson, I like your stuff, but this is a bit weak in my mind.

Tichy 18y ago

I imagine they spent 2 hours coding and and the rest of the time for marketing (like producing the video)?

jrockway 18y ago
Hopefully.

tonystubblebine 18y ago

They did a great job with this, but it's also a good exercise that other people should try. These days, a lot of development styles ask you to be able to scope your work to the available time (agile, getting real, any crunch time situation). I did a couple two day solo versions of this and it's paid off repeatedly. My goal was to create and launch a website in two days. Usually I went in with an idea, but all the work needed to fit into two business days. The best thing I created was probably IHeartQuotes, a web front-end for Unix fortune files.

wumi 18y ago

A few are focusing on the literal aspect of building a web app -- why there are so many PR people, why did it cost so much -- while this seems to be an exercise of what a few people can accomplish in a short amount of time, a la Startup Weekend. He even admits as much "I would say you only need three people if you want to strip it back to the bare minimum..." The focus seems to be more on how teams can iteratively build new features, a quick app as proof of concept, or take time away from normal business to inject some excitement into the team.

breck 18y ago

"The app we built is a simple tool that allows you to post to multiple Twitter accounts." So, the real title of this article should have been "How to waste $10,000 on a pointless web app."

jrockway 18y ago
Yeah, I agree. I could hack this together in 15 minutes with Net::Twitter and Continuity, with maybe 30 minutes more to make the CSS look nice. Total cost? $250. (Oh, and $400/month hosting for an app nobody uses? I would just use my $20/month Slicehost until that stopped being possible.)
- ovi256 18y ago
  >I could hack this together in 15 minutes >Total cost? $250. Do you really charge 1000$ per hour? What do you do?
  - jrockway 18y ago
    No, I round up to the nearest hour, though. I don't do a lot of consulting, but that's the going rate when I do.
- mcxx 18y ago
  The difference between you and them - you say "I could" but they actually did it.
  - jamongkad 18y ago
    On this note I don't have any doubt in my mind that Mr. Rockway could do it.

henning 18y ago

Apparently we're hearing about this because of those three PR people, not because of the obvious large-scale payola going on between Carsonified and TechCrunch - it is purely because of the amazing viral marketing talents of those non-coding, non-designing, non-art-directing, non-blogging PR people!

ideamonk 18y ago
i agree its more about PR. thats why we are discussing it here, What good is a startup which no one knows about?

mtw 18y ago

we did the same thing earlier this year but with 11 different teams, who were challenged to make a working product in 48 hours. great experience. of course, we don't have a real company at the end of the event, but the goal is more about getting together, maybe find co-founders -- and well just hack things

goodgoblin 18y ago

What happens when they realize they built the wrong product or need to tweak it or pivot 180 degrees to follow a good opportunity? Helps to have programmers in house - or be a programmer.