4 ms·

I'm looking for a co-founder (UK)

8 points by bazookoid 15y ago

I'm a 30 year old web developer from the UK (north west). For the past two months, I've been building "an ebay for time", similar to taskrabbit.com and zaarly.com where users post small jobs and tasks and others bid to complete them. The bulk of the coding is done - I still need to add payment integration and geolocation. This is my first web startup, but I've run two successful companies in the past. One wrote shareware for the (original) Palm OS platform. The other consisted of three computer retail/repair stores here in the North West. Both companies were eventually sold (at profit) as I wanted to try other things. I'm looking for someone with excellent UI and design skills to join as co-founder. Knowledge of html and css is essential. You would be responsible for all aspects of design including logo, branding and of course the web pages. I'm now working on this full time and I'm looking for someone who can commit at least 20 hours a week. I would strongly prefer to work with someone from the UK but I'm happy to hear from anyone who might be interested (email in profile).

shadananu78 15y ago
First of all, HN isn't a place to find a co-founder for your start-up. You can't seamlisly find a co-founder. Co-founders are people you may have known for a while, such as colleagues, roomates, friends, etc. Second of all, if you end up hiring a UI designer, they won't work for free, given the reason 80% of startups fail, just because you had 2 successful start-ups from the past, doesn't mean you will have a third start-up that will succeed. So in this case, you will have to pay them enough so they can work with you, and I'm sure they'll ask for the same amount they currently get paid for. Finally, if you know your start-up will be a clone, in this case it obviously is, you know theirs going to be an issue. You're gonna have to come up with better ways to make money as a start-up, and market your users, which is strategically challenging, because these two start-ups (I've interviewed both founders) are launching worldwide in less than two months. Zaarly will hit the grounds first, soon TaskRabbit will follow, so my best advice would be that if you could tell us one good reason why your start-up will succeed, I'll give you props, other than that, it's undoubtful that your start-up will succeed.
- ig1 15y ago
  You say that as if launching a two-sided marketplace worldwide is a trivial thing. In the market in question you have to fight for dominance in each city individually having to attract both workers and customer. Even if Zaarly and TaskRabbit launched in the UK tomorrow it would still take years for anyone to become established. And the fact is that both of them have only penetrated a handful of American cities at the moment, it would be crazy for them to pursue a tough international growth plan when they've barely penetrated their home market. If you look at a history of two-sided market startups (job boards, classified listing, auctions, daily deals) what happens in most cases is that you end up with a large number of local players who end up merging or being acquired to form a global player.
  - shadananu78 15y ago
    Even if Zaarly takes time to establish it's grounds in the UK, a clone is a clone. You have to have a better idea than whats out in the market, you can't create a Groupon clone and expect for it to rocket (unless you have an amazing deal that offers $100 of Food for $2) but in reality, that is impossible. Zaarly already uses Geolocation. I'm here to help, if you can provide us with mockups, or designs of what your start-up will offer to it's users, we can improve the stability, and provide harsh feedback for it to succeed, and take on those competitors.
    - ig1 15y ago
      Tell that to SoSasta (India), Groupoer (Israel), Twangoo (South Africa), Disdus (Indonesia), ClanDescuento (Chile), CityDeal (Europe), GroupMore (Malaysia), etc. All local Groupon clones which were acquired by Groupon for multimillion dollar amounts.
      - shadananu78 15y ago
        I'm sure the OP doesn't want to get his start-up acquired, well atleast that is what I'm hoping, to beat the guys in the market he needs to provide some key features that can set him aside from his competitors. Why won't people go out and create Groupon Clones and sell them to Groupon for millions of dollars? - Because Groupon has a key acquiring strategy they use, and a lot of other start-ups use. They look at the key features that Groupon doesn't have, then they look at their market and get term sheets ready.
freddealmeida 15y ago
@Bazookoid I've been thinking of something similar for the Japanese market as well. So I would be interested in a collaboration.. Some questions: 1. What is the technology stack you chose to develop in? 2. Have you integrated i18n into the code base? 3. Will the whole or part of the code be open sourced to Github? (or similar) 4. Does this have a mobile component? Smartphone and/or feature phones? Or are you expecting to go to html5 based web apps for mobile? Responsive design?
- shadananu78 15y ago
  If you expect a response from him, put in your email or a contact link of some sort.
- bazookoid 15y ago
  1) Standard LAMP stack + codeigniter 2) Yes, there is full i18n support. The beta will initially launch in the UK, Italy and Spain (see later comments for why). 3) I have no plans to open source the code at present 4) There's a very strong mobile component. I have a contractor building iphone and android apps using Rhodes (http://rhomobile.com/products/rhodes/ http://rhomobile.com/products/rhodes/). The site itself is html5 and mobile friendly, but a mobile app will be required for anyone undertaking a task When I said it's similar to taskrabbit and zaarly I didn't mean to say it's a clone. It's similar to those sites the same way airbnb is similar to ebay or HN is similar to reddit - the underlying concept is similar but the implementation is very different. I'm not sure which market you're thinking of targeting but my site is focused on a niche in the travel sector, hence the three-country launch. I'm trying to solve a specific problem which will make use of the mobile camera, mic and sensors while a task is being carried out, hence the native mobile apps. It's intended for people already working in the travel industry so I'm not sure how relevant the code would be to your idea but it could easily be updated to a different market (with or without the mobile component). I'd be happy to discuss specifics by email.

8 points by bazookoid 15y ago

shadananu78 15y ago

First of all, HN isn't a place to find a co-founder for your start-up. You can't seamlisly find a co-founder. Co-founders are people you may have known for a while, such as colleagues, roomates, friends, etc. Second of all, if you end up hiring a UI designer, they won't work for free, given the reason 80% of startups fail, just because you had 2 successful start-ups from the past, doesn't mean you will have a third start-up that will succeed. So in this case, you will have to pay them enough so they can work with you, and I'm sure they'll ask for the same amount they currently get paid for. Finally, if you know your start-up will be a clone, in this case it obviously is, you know theirs going to be an issue. You're gonna have to come up with better ways to make money as a start-up, and market your users, which is strategically challenging, because these two start-ups (I've interviewed both founders) are launching worldwide in less than two months. Zaarly will hit the grounds first, soon TaskRabbit will follow, so my best advice would be that if you could tell us one good reason why your start-up will succeed, I'll give you props, other than that, it's undoubtful that your start-up will succeed.

ig1 15y ago
You say that as if launching a two-sided marketplace worldwide is a trivial thing. In the market in question you have to fight for dominance in each city individually having to attract both workers and customer. Even if Zaarly and TaskRabbit launched in the UK tomorrow it would still take years for anyone to become established. And the fact is that both of them have only penetrated a handful of American cities at the moment, it would be crazy for them to pursue a tough international growth plan when they've barely penetrated their home market. If you look at a history of two-sided market startups (job boards, classified listing, auctions, daily deals) what happens in most cases is that you end up with a large number of local players who end up merging or being acquired to form a global player.
- shadananu78 15y ago
  Even if Zaarly takes time to establish it's grounds in the UK, a clone is a clone. You have to have a better idea than whats out in the market, you can't create a Groupon clone and expect for it to rocket (unless you have an amazing deal that offers $100 of Food for $2) but in reality, that is impossible. Zaarly already uses Geolocation. I'm here to help, if you can provide us with mockups, or designs of what your start-up will offer to it's users, we can improve the stability, and provide harsh feedback for it to succeed, and take on those competitors.
  - ig1 15y ago
    Tell that to SoSasta (India), Groupoer (Israel), Twangoo (South Africa), Disdus (Indonesia), ClanDescuento (Chile), CityDeal (Europe), GroupMore (Malaysia), etc. All local Groupon clones which were acquired by Groupon for multimillion dollar amounts.
    - shadananu78 15y ago
      I'm sure the OP doesn't want to get his start-up acquired, well atleast that is what I'm hoping, to beat the guys in the market he needs to provide some key features that can set him aside from his competitors. Why won't people go out and create Groupon Clones and sell them to Groupon for millions of dollars? - Because Groupon has a key acquiring strategy they use, and a lot of other start-ups use. They look at the key features that Groupon doesn't have, then they look at their market and get term sheets ready.

freddealmeida 15y ago

@Bazookoid I've been thinking of something similar for the Japanese market as well. So I would be interested in a collaboration.. Some questions: 1. What is the technology stack you chose to develop in? 2. Have you integrated i18n into the code base? 3. Will the whole or part of the code be open sourced to Github? (or similar) 4. Does this have a mobile component? Smartphone and/or feature phones? Or are you expecting to go to html5 based web apps for mobile? Responsive design?

shadananu78 15y ago
If you expect a response from him, put in your email or a contact link of some sort.
bazookoid 15y ago
1) Standard LAMP stack + codeigniter 2) Yes, there is full i18n support. The beta will initially launch in the UK, Italy and Spain (see later comments for why). 3) I have no plans to open source the code at present 4) There's a very strong mobile component. I have a contractor building iphone and android apps using Rhodes (http://rhomobile.com/products/rhodes/ http://rhomobile.com/products/rhodes/). The site itself is html5 and mobile friendly, but a mobile app will be required for anyone undertaking a task When I said it's similar to taskrabbit and zaarly I didn't mean to say it's a clone. It's similar to those sites the same way airbnb is similar to ebay or HN is similar to reddit - the underlying concept is similar but the implementation is very different. I'm not sure which market you're thinking of targeting but my site is focused on a niche in the travel sector, hence the three-country launch. I'm trying to solve a specific problem which will make use of the mobile camera, mic and sensors while a task is being carried out, hence the native mobile apps. It's intended for people already working in the travel industry so I'm not sure how relevant the code would be to your idea but it could easily be updated to a different market (with or without the mobile component). I'd be happy to discuss specifics by email.