4 ms·

Your startup sounds rather technical "a nontrivial web site," yet you have two CEOs, a lawyer and an accountant. In my opinion, you need to let go of at least

Your startup sounds rather technical "a nontrivial web site," yet you have two CEOs, a lawyer and an accountant. In my opinion, you need to let go of at least one of the CEOs and outsource the lawyer and accountant until you have a need for them full time. Why do you have two CEOs? Fortune 500 companies only have one. This sounds very much like an idea cooked up by some "business guys" who thought they'd farm the real work of a tech startup out to their buddy in IT. I've been there and I haven't seen it work. In my opinion, there's a place for outsourced work, but it isn't when a startup is developing it's core technology assets. That requres heads down devlopment by a team of dedicated engineers for a period of months. That's exactly why YCombinator was set up. To deal with the minimal business setup and let the team just dig in for a quarter and see what happens.

endtime 18y ago
>Your startup sounds rather technical "a nontrivial web site," yet you have two CEOs, a lawyer and an accountant. In my opinion, you need to let go of at least one of the CEOs and outsource the lawyer and accountant until you have a need for them full time. Well, a couple things. First, we're in the finance space. Second, both of the CEOs have a lot of important experience and connections. And the lawyer and accountant are kind of outsourced - they aren't doing this full time. They have both worked with one of the CEOs in the past. The site is nontrivial in that it requires some serious initial development...but once built, it shouldn't require much maintenance. And it's nothing technically groundbreaking; there's just a lot of content management and user type stuff that needs to be put together. So it makes sense to us to hire a team to build it.
- coglethorpe 18y ago
  I guess if I was in your shoes, I'd hire a small team of developers (3?) to do the initial build. Pay them with a combination of cash and equity. If this is in the finance space, you should have some funding or be able to get some.
  - endtime 18y ago
    We have funding. :) But we still want to keep costs reasonable as much as possible. And hiring a small team might make sense...but we don't have office space right now, and we're actually spread across the country a bit (I'm in California, one person is in Florida, the rest are in New York). So most of the situations in which we hire a small team end up adding more overhead than they're worth, unless I'm not thinking of something.
    - sarvesh 18y ago
      Unless you have your requirements down to the smallest detail, which is rare, it will probably cost you a lot more to have developers spread out in different parts of the country. You are at a phase where you want rapid prototyping to discover what your real requirements are. Outsouring at this stage is a bad idea.
- brc 18y ago
  "but once built, it shouldn't require much maintenance." I think you need some technically proficient co-founders to really understand what is involved in iterating towards a successful project. Successful websites aren't like office buildings where you build it and then move the furniture about yourself. You'll need fulltime development staff to reach your goals.

endtime 18y ago

>Your startup sounds rather technical "a nontrivial web site," yet you have two CEOs, a lawyer and an accountant. In my opinion, you need to let go of at least one of the CEOs and outsource the lawyer and accountant until you have a need for them full time. Well, a couple things. First, we're in the finance space. Second, both of the CEOs have a lot of important experience and connections. And the lawyer and accountant are kind of outsourced - they aren't doing this full time. They have both worked with one of the CEOs in the past. The site is nontrivial in that it requires some serious initial development...but once built, it shouldn't require much maintenance. And it's nothing technically groundbreaking; there's just a lot of content management and user type stuff that needs to be put together. So it makes sense to us to hire a team to build it.

coglethorpe 18y ago
I guess if I was in your shoes, I'd hire a small team of developers (3?) to do the initial build. Pay them with a combination of cash and equity. If this is in the finance space, you should have some funding or be able to get some.
- endtime 18y ago
  We have funding. :) But we still want to keep costs reasonable as much as possible. And hiring a small team might make sense...but we don't have office space right now, and we're actually spread across the country a bit (I'm in California, one person is in Florida, the rest are in New York). So most of the situations in which we hire a small team end up adding more overhead than they're worth, unless I'm not thinking of something.
  - sarvesh 18y ago
    Unless you have your requirements down to the smallest detail, which is rare, it will probably cost you a lot more to have developers spread out in different parts of the country. You are at a phase where you want rapid prototyping to discover what your real requirements are. Outsouring at this stage is a bad idea.
brc 18y ago
"but once built, it shouldn't require much maintenance." I think you need some technically proficient co-founders to really understand what is involved in iterating towards a successful project. Successful websites aren't like office buildings where you build it and then move the furniture about yourself. You'll need fulltime development staff to reach your goals.