3 ms·

Ask for enough money to have say 3-6 months of resources, which would force them to figure out pricing/business economics before the money runs out, and forces

by nhangen 13y ago

Ask for enough money to have say 3-6 months of resources, which would force them to figure out pricing/business economics before the money runs out, and forces them to invest in the idea as much as their backers do. First reaction for me was: 'Wow, this is awesome, and I'm looking for something like this. How much do they need? Wow, 100k to build a mail app? No thanks.' I get that this is a free product and is open source, but I'd like to know what they plan to do after the 100k is gone? Instead of a proposal a) pay us to work on it for a year, I'd like to see proposal b) help us bridge between now and phase 2, which is where we'll x. I'd just like to see a little more thought put into it.

nimblegorilla 13y ago
The majority of backers are paying $23. That's not even 15 minutes of software development time. I fail to comprehend how backers are investing as much into the idea as the developers.
jongraehl 13y ago
Why do you think it should cost less than 100k to build a mail app?
HerraBRE 13y ago
We have actually put a fair bit of thought into this, but the pitch has to be relatively focused. Publicly speculating about things which may change is not a good way to manage expectations. One core question is: how big a team will we need in a years time to continue development? The answer to that depends on many factors - since this is open source, it is actually perfectly OK to work for a year, ship something awesome and hand off to the community once things are a bit more mature. However, since we do assume there will still be quite a bit of work to do in a years time, our preferred business model is actually listed in the pitch: backers are joining a community and we will reach out to them again in a years' time and ask them to continue supporting us if they are happy with the work we have done. Mailpile has a broad enough appeal that it may be possible to sustain the team using this model alone, which would IMO be ideal. However, plan B includes things like grants from human rights / free-speech orgs that need better tools for activists in the field, corporate support from companies unsatisfied with the current crop of tools, and subscription support services (like https://pagekite.net/ https://pagekite.net/, SMTP relaying, etc) which help the average Joe run his own Mailpile.

by nhangen 13y ago

nimblegorilla 13y ago

The majority of backers are paying $23. That's not even 15 minutes of software development time. I fail to comprehend how backers are investing as much into the idea as the developers.

jongraehl 13y ago

Why do you think it should cost less than 100k to build a mail app?

HerraBRE 13y ago

We have actually put a fair bit of thought into this, but the pitch has to be relatively focused. Publicly speculating about things which may change is not a good way to manage expectations. One core question is: how big a team will we need in a years time to continue development? The answer to that depends on many factors - since this is open source, it is actually perfectly OK to work for a year, ship something awesome and hand off to the community once things are a bit more mature. However, since we do assume there will still be quite a bit of work to do in a years time, our preferred business model is actually listed in the pitch: backers are joining a community and we will reach out to them again in a years' time and ask them to continue supporting us if they are happy with the work we have done. Mailpile has a broad enough appeal that it may be possible to sustain the team using this model alone, which would IMO be ideal. However, plan B includes things like grants from human rights / free-speech orgs that need better tools for activists in the field, corporate support from companies unsatisfied with the current crop of tools, and subscription support services (like https://pagekite.net/ https://pagekite.net/, SMTP relaying, etc) which help the average Joe run his own Mailpile.