People to talk to

[harryworld]

• Kalina
• Fer
• Gene
• David @ Variably
• George @ Variably
• Clement
• Fanny
• Kevin
• Ray Chan
• David @ SingleAccess

[harryworld]

Fanny What problem they face at the beginning?

• Hard to find partners
• Find someone that trust
• Some developers think they own the whole thing, work it out, and steal the idea
• Developers think from their own mindset
• Idea, customer channels are more important, developers think product is important

Want to manage develop work? Yes

• Want to give out ideas and have the developers to execute
• Want to know the working progress
• Want to understand how much to spend on different types of works

[harryworld]

Fer

What problem they face at the beginning?

• Not much budget
• Not validating the ideas
• If things not working good, would ask developers to add more features
• If developers come out with slow works, or low quality, would blame them
• Not valuing the developers
• Need someone to translate the business ideas into developer actions

Want to manage develop work? Yes

• Want to know what's happening
• Want to hire a CTO eventually to handle all these stuff

For developers?

• Sometime low incentive
• Depressed in keeping on the work

[harryworld]

Kevin

What problems they face at the beginning?

• Don't know how to code himself
• Finding developer just like finding business partners
• Make several quotation, highly depend on mix & match
• Look at the presentations from the developers, pick the right fix of time & cost
• Reference it to buying property & renovation (investor mindset), pay in portions
• Expect the product made should be aligning to the proposal
• Good for per-month meeting and progress check, for 3-6 month projects
• Want an app or website to be profitable by itself, would only start the project if he finds the right way to earn revenue
• Would list out all the possibilities on how to get revenue
• Would look at track records, on capabilities
• Would base on common sense to identify difficulty level, and thus time needed for tasks

Want to manage develop work? No

• Thinks the developer should be more professional
• Able to manage themselves, to create the product

[harryworld]

Kalina

What problems they face at the beginning?

• try to do some programming on her own
• hard to find developers, mainly look for help from previous colleagues
• based on trust, including past projects
• Think towards care more on money than time, expect a static website with design to be around 15K-20K
• Have no idea how much would it cost for an app prototype

Want to manage develop work? Yes

• Progress check
• want to know what is the right price for development work

[harryworld]

David @ Variably

What problems they face at the beginning?

• As trader, they used to working for long time in trading
• Treat IT geek as low cost personnel, treat them as repairing Bloomberg, buying coffee and know everything about IT
• When starting, bring the IT guy they used to work with, but in general the guy doesn't catch up with technology and startup (being fast and agile)
• More money, usually pay to wrong people
• He used to find IT geek like that, but finally not since CV didn't look good
• Bankers are selfish in general, they don't trust anyone
• Not going to pay high, not going to share ideas, stakes etc.

Want to manage develop work? Yes

• Yes, because bankers tend to be managers, thus want to manage
• No, find the translator to translate the ideas to developers

Suggestions

• Help the bankers to de-risk, e.g. signing NDA
• Talk to director level of bankers, especially Asia environment, companies are cutting people, director level cannot grow up to Managing Director level, they feel stuck and block on career path.
• They got some money, and want to make a move

[harryworld]

Dennis

What problems they face at the beginning?

• Hard to find developers
• 7 out of 10 bankers would think something big, and want to ask others to work on
• it is hard to manage a IT project, especially nothing to see in the midway
• Expect a project to be done in 1Q, otherwise the passion will go away
• Expect to offer around 50K for first trial
• Bankers want to hire a PM to manage the project instead doing themselves

Want to manage develop work? Yes

• Want weekly status update

Suggestions

• Bankers don't know about any developer network

[harryworld]

Learnings

• Trust level is very low
• Want to find someone to execute
• The offer is generally low, not much money, fair amount of time, and without stakes