Hidden Founders - CTO as a service

@_jacksmith Wow... That's high.

@_jacksmith "If you offered equity to any web development firm" I'm not sure about that. Also there is a small misunderstanding here. Let me explain: 1. the sample you saw is less than 60% of what we got when we asked for quotes from US & European (good) developement shops and agencies 2. After a period of six months, our founders have the possibility to cancel their lease at any time, with no obligation to pay the remaining costs. If you do the math, this means they will have to fund 40% of the sample you shared ($12k) to test if there is a Market or not. If their product does not take off, the remaining cost won't be paid. Is this still high Jack ? 3. the sample we took is not an MVP. It is based on Kickstarter as it is right now. 4. The idea here is to be the most affordable option for people trying to build an MVP and test a Market quickly. Our founders had 2 difficult options before: either a way too expensive agency or dev shop, or managing multiple low cost freelancers (because the good ones are more expensive than our rates). I will talk about our mission in a separate comment. Thank you Jack for challenging our model!

@lekanb I would love to get your feedback on my reply to @_jacksmith

@_jacksmith @kachchani That makes a lot more sense to me. You basically give a requirements based quote like any dev shop would, but give the entrepreneur an alternative on how to get there. That feels better. Thanks for the detailed breakdown.

@kachchani definitely not too expensive. You just won't get the broke founder types to use the service. But a founder with a little money to play with, I could definitely see using this. Especially if they don't already have any developer connections.

@adammarx13 I don't really see how it resembles an incubator. Sure, their branding and taking 2% equity positions it as such. But apart from that, it just looks like any other web-dev consultancy firm.

@_jacksmith Perhaps. Incubator may have been the wrong comparison, though the reason it sprang to mind immediately was more because of the cycle/batch-format than anything else. The equity payment is comparable too, though I think it's more the former model which I'm most interested to see function and evolve.

@adammarx13 @_jacksmith thank you for your feedback. I'm sure @_jacksmith chose the verb "resembles" for a reason. We are not an incubator, but we're trying to mimic some of their attributes. In addition to the 2%, we work with a batch, we have weekly online meetups, we have a demo day (pitching in front of CTOs and developers) and more importantly we have mentors. Founders have office hours to get help, feedback and introductions. Mentors such as Hicham Oudghiri enigma.io's founder can sure help our first time founders to avoid early mistakes. I'll answer your second question in your other comment. Thx for reacting really!

@adammarx13 Thanks. We think about the continuity of the project a lot too, since the idea for Hidden Founders is to help founders get an MVP, not a full featured product, to market. We keep in mind that somebody else has to pick up the work after we're done and the product has proven itself on the market, and you're right, it's a lot easier to do when the projects are on the light side, technically speaking. However, we have very strict guidelines in place. The use of dev good practices, the use of trending tech stacks, the hiring of local rockstars are all things we take very seriously. We've been founders ourselves for quite some time now and we know what it feels to have a broken unscalable product while you just started to have to have traction.

@_jacksmith @kachchani Interesting. Just wanted to clarify that I wasn't calling you all an incubator, merely pointing out similarities that appeared to me. That said, those similarities are not necessarily negative; the notion of having a cycle-based model I think could work very well for something like this, so I'd be interested to hear feedback from the companies in the first batch or two.

@mwseibel interesting input. We are trying to position ourselves as a "pre-accelerator". A simple example will be as follows: founder A gets in a batch, build an MVP, validate his/her idea and get initial traction. Founder A pitch and seduce a risk averse tech friend to join as co-founder. Would this person be a candidate for YC ? We tried to always ask ourselves this question while coming up with our actual model. Btw we were suppose to meet while you were in Morocco Casablanca :) would have been an interesting talk.

@ideasasylum four-time interim CTO here. I agree, which is why part of my responsibilities has always been expectation setting and coaching to non-tech founders. Since I consider myself both technical and "biz", I can relate to both sides of the coin. Also, a bit pedantic, but why is this called "as a service". It's literally "a service".

@joshuaoxj one of the founders: http://www.producthunt.com/kachc...

@joshuaoxj This is our first batch, but we'll definitely share the success stories that'll come of out of it. As you'll see on our website and in the FAQ, we're gathering a small group of 7 founders for this first experience, and setting up schedules to build the products. We keep getting great projects so, as you can imagine, it's hard to pick the last founders and close the batch.

@mbaratz good point. Just asked them, here are some of their thoughts: > hacking on a product is fun, but can sometimes become boring. Hacking on many products (MVPs) is entertaining. Exactly what we love to do. > early stage is memorable: the challenge, the doubt, the launch... > equity in a company which owns equity in many startups We will do our best to keep being attractive to our hackers Maya.

@mbaratz By working with a range of products, services and people you gain insight, constantly challenged, and you get to be a part of the early stage creation. Also compensation; most startups can't afford a vp level marketer and the role isn't very challenging. If you want to work in Startup land you have to figure out a way to make ends meet or go back to corp.

@OurielOhayon agree. Exactly why batch founders pitch in front of CTOs and developers in demo day. We believe it's easier to pitch potential co-founders after you have some traction/validation.

@alanhamlett guess we will never know...

"in India, you can get a good dev shop to make you an MVP for something like $3-4k." @_jacksmith @AsadDhamani agreed this is not the cheapest option. But there are many downsides to outsourcing to that type of firm/freelancer...including crappy/unscalable code, and tons of required project management. The people who are just trying to do an mvp as cheap as physically possible...will never use a service like this, but that's fine (I would guess).

@drewmeyers You can get a crappy MVP like that for even cheaper, I was talking about an MVP from a firm that follows good coding practices. For people who are trying to build an MVP as cheap as possible, hiring a couple cheap freelancers would do. I'm only trying to understand the merit in going with something like Hidden Founders over hiring a good freelancer or a good dev shop for building your MVP, keeping in mind that the MVP is more a prototype than a finished product.

@AsadDhamani IF they truly can deliver a demo day in front of great potential CTOs (who are actually looking for something new), then that's worth it by itself. But that's a big IF.

@drewmeyers Agreed, but from what I've read on their website, it looks like they're pitching the MVP to developers. It's more important to pitch to potential customers at that stage. For a startup at the MVP stage, a single developer is what most startups would need.

@drewmeyers @AsadDhamani thank you for your feedback guys. Pitching to customers @AsadDhamani is done every day I believe. We will definitely share our learning in a few months, so please stay tuned.