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This is genius. Great idea! We took contract work to pay for an employee at my last startup and it worked out pretty well (until they stopped paying). He would
by cmer 15y ago
This is genius. Great idea! We took contract work to pay for an employee at my last startup and it worked out pretty well (until they stopped paying). He would work for them ~2 days a week, and that would cover his salary for the whole week. Basically, we got a free employee 3 days a week + his input and expertise.
Although this approach is a little bit distracting, it can be much less distracting that raising capital and dealing with bad investors. I would recommend it to any early stage startup.
- whather 15y agoThanks cmer! Yeah, investment can be super distracting. We spent around 5 months talking to investors for our last startup back in '08, when we could have been bootstrapping on a gig. Just curious, how did you find your last contacting job? Did you work as a team or just allocate 1 person to do it?
- cmer 15y agoBasically, there was one guy I wanted to hire but I simply couldn't afford it at the time. I found the contract through someone I knew. That new employee was the only person working on that contract. The rest of the team never touched the project. I only had to do some minor management work on it, talk to client, etc. We didn't charge a whole lot but it was enough to cover most of his salary. We're not in California and salaries are lower here.
- prawn 15y agoI wondered if this might be a better angle - an ability to hire someone for a specific day each week. Not going to suit everyone, but it would mean that startup types could work the other 3-4 days without being distracted by the other project. Otherwise, replacing a day job with a contract job might not be the biggest gain.