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Ask HN: How do I find a local app developer?
I’ve been working on a design for a more functional twitter over the last one year. I think I've nailed the design and feel like it has huge potential. I currently work as an SAP CRM functional consultant, so writing up the business requirements and project planning is a cake walk for me. What I lack is three things:
1. A good developer (I have started to talk to a Chinese developer who is asking for $5000 for IOS app) 2. A great UI/UX designer ( I have a friend ready to do the work for $1000 but I’m kind of a perfectionist and don’t really see him do a good job) 3. And most importantly, TRUST in working with a person I don’t know in China with the probability of my intellectual property being stolen. I am a very trusting person in life. Not in business.
I could potentially safe guard the core functionality from the developer in China, and have another developer complete it. However, I do foresee some issues with integration of both modules. I’d rather have one developer to work on it from the start. Maybe even partner.
Even if this idea of mine is stupid, I’d still want to give it a shot. I was looking for places that I could meet like-minded people around LA, but haven’t found any lately.
What would you guys suggest?
- aggieben 12y agoMy friend, $5000 is cheap for a good developer. It's practically bottom of the barrel if you're talking about an app that has very much customization in it at all. Pretty much the same goes for a good designer. A highly custom app, done right, could actually cost quite a bit more than that. I think your biggest problem here is your expectation of how much good skilled work is going to cost you. If all you need is to find people, then try local meetups: Android or iOS meetups are going to be happening in almost any major metro area. Look for non-technical meetups, too. In Dallas there's at least one startup happy hour each month, and I'd be shocked if LA didn't have something like that. One good source for this is meetup.com, but also...Google. Once you find people, though, you need to be prepared to offer appropriate compensation. If you don't have cash, then you might need to offer equity (or a slice of whatever revenues you make) along with some cash. Almost nobody is going to do anything for you without at least some cash, though.
- scaminc 12y agoThanks for the input. Those are the costing I have right now. But as you know, quality does not come cheap. I am prepared to compensate appropriately. As history is our testament, working with anybody has a risk of having the intellectual property stolen. From my perspective, I d rather work with someone who I know personally than someone sitting 10000 miles away without any physical connection/control. Even if I take the two module approach, I would still need someone here locally to integrate it. I did look at meetup.com and tried googling without luck. I am going to try again now.
- davismwfl 12y agoI am not local exactly but would be happy to talk and at least share some experiences. We are a small firm that does this work and are in The US, Florida and Colorado mainly. We don't outsource anything but have taken over a ton of projects that started offshore. Prices are obviously more expensive here in the US but they don't have to be excessive. If you want to chat my contact details are in my profile. If nothing else I can share our experiences so you can compare notes around.
- scaminc 12y agoWell, I'm not sure if you charge for consultation. But I do have one major question. My app idea is just like twitter (But better, At least I think so). The developer in China has suggested that we build it on Parse. Good idea?
- davismwfl 12y agoSorry, I missed this response. If you want to chat about the app I am happy to do so, no charge for that. My email is in my profile. We don't work with Parse, but it seems like a viable solution. We generally write native apps for each platform without translators, although we have some shared libraries we generally use. This can be more expensive sometimes, but in the end the reduced number of issues and the app capability is vastly better being native. We have used xamarin a few times, but honestly we find a lot of times a hybrid application (like LinkedIn or Facebook) works better from our experience -- e.g. Native app with web services and html served from the server.