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A Startup Odyssey: From Concept to Launch in 30 Weeks.

October 26th, 2015

 

“This is a true story. The events depicted in this article took place in New York in the summer of 2014. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”

This is not the story of how we created the hottest startup in 2014, far from it in fact. We’ve had a lot of success attracting the right type of people within a very narrow and defined demographic. The proposition “hire the best freelance developers” cuts through our potential user base like a hatchet with every word, and in very quick succession.

I do not expect to see my mother on hirable in the next ten years, unless of course she decides to take a crash course in coding and discovers a remarkable hidden talent. Regardless, she would have to be invited or apply for an account through the site just like everybody else, we make no exceptions!

While I’m sure it’s possible, assembling a team of people with the skills required to help you execute an idea with no money is extremely difficult. This assumes that all involved are convinced the idea could work and are willing to risk the investment of valuable time in the hope that it will eventually pay off. Fortunately, people are more forgiving when cash is being exchanged for services rendered, but we’ll get to that.

Naturally this all began with an idea. For months prior I had been working closely with various freelance developers. Casual conversation would often lead to the obvious: “where had they worked previously?” “Where were they heading next?” Out of these conversations the idea for hirable was born. You can read more about it here This idea remained exactly that for the next few weeks before I eventually committed to making it a reality, which in turn begged the question, now what?

Being a designer myself meant creating a proof of concept would be pretty straight forward. Building it would not, unless I was able to bank roll it myself, which I wasn’t. I pitched the idea to a friend and former colleague for a 50% stake if he agreed to build it, he liked the idea, we had a deal. Or so I thought.

We began to scope the project and I made a start on the design. The challenge being to express the company proposition in the simplest way possible.

For companies, this meant being able to easily follow new developers for updates on their availability and developers, a simple way to aggregate their online presence in one simple and easily scannable profile.

Perhaps blinded by my enthusiasm for the project, I failed to take into consideration the huge gap between design and development time. What would take me 1–2 months would most likely take my friend 6 months or more. Though he remains involved to this day and continues to vet new user requests, we decided to part ways on the actual build. I was back to square one, admittedly with some pretty pictures.

A decision needed to be made. I could abandon the project entirely or pursue other avenues. I decided to pitch the idea to potential investors in order to cover the cost of development. I thought the project was doomed.

A key turning point came during an unrelated conversation with a former business partner a few weeks later. We had co-founded a previous startup together, a search and bookmarking tool for job seekers. I decided to run the concept by him and showed him some preliminary designs.

he was intrigued but wasn’t able to foot the bill, another false start. A few days later I get a call back. He had a friend who was looking for a small project like this to invest in. Amazingly, it was back on.

Things were finally moving along again. The design phase was complete and money set aside. The company we’d previously worked with would build it, but the modest budget certainly wasn’t helping our cause, we’d need to get creative. A tech lead in the u.s would manage a group of offshore developers to keep costs down. The band was officially back together, admittedly with a couple of well paid roadies carrying the equipment.

In addition to this, there was zero room for error. Every feature was meticulously mapped out in a highly detailed plan, every dollar and dime accounted for. Any alterations to the design would be met from that point onward with the same predictable response “sorry out of scope, that will cost you” and did it.
Starting a business online has never been easier, or more affordable. In addition to sheer man hours, we were dependent on some great free, or reasonably priced applications and software. All of which, given our budget would have made completing the project almost impossible without. These included:

Design
Photoshop
Illustrator
File Exchange
Dropbox (Pro Account)
Communication
Gmail
Google Docs
Trello
Platform Solutions & Plugins
Wordpress
Mailchimp
Mandrill
Google Analytics

Ironically, hirable was developed by the very people it’s intended for: freelance developers. This helped validate the concept as we progressed, and allowed us to continually refine and evolve features to best suit the needs of our users.

We eventually launched but it was a slow crawl to the finish. There were no press releases, TV profiles or launch events. Hirable, like many others before arrived at the party inconspicuously, relatively unannounced and nobody took our coat, but hey, that’s not what this story is about.

I once heard somebody say “in the 80’s and 90’s everybody in L.A had an idea for a script. Now everybody has an idea for an app” and it’s true. Approximately 1.5 million startups emerge globally every year, it’s even parodied on TV shows like Silicon Valley. It’s easy to become swept up in the vernacular and buzz that surrounds any industry or scene but If you stop to think for a moment, perusing a vision for a startup is really no different from most creative endeavors, whether it’s recording an album or writing a book. They all begin with the belief in and passion for an idea, followed by the will to execute on it with any means necessary and tools at your disposal.

With more and more companies emerging daily, the odds of success are slim but that isn’t deterring people, and understandably so. What could be more motivating than ditching your day job and becoming your own boss? This account was written for anyone who may abandon an idea in light of the challenges that lay ahead. It certainly doesn’t require an army with an unlimited cash reserve, far from it in fact.

As Marc Kohlbrugge from beta list was kind enough to say when we featured his company in our last article
“Thanks for the shout out and best of luck with the rest of the journey”
We couldn’t agree more, a journey it certainly is.

Posted in Uncategorized

Hey BetaList, you’re pretty swell.

October 26th, 2015

For those of you who don’t know, BetaList is pretty much the best resource for startups that are doing just that — starting up. If your company is in Beta, and you want users to see your early stages/sign up, BetaList has the platform to help you, just like they did for us.

Hirable was created to connect freelance developers to the startups and tech companies that need them. We love our company and truly believe it solves a big problem in the tech space, much like BetaList does.
I was at the gym when I got the text messages. I needed to “check out BetaList’s twitter RIGHT NOW.”
I was in the gym when I got about 97 text messages from my partner excitedly telling me to go to twitter and BetaList and see what happened. I couldn’t believe it.
Boom. Instant traction.

We had over 600 Retweets! The reach on something like this is quite substantial, and really boosted our traffic over the next couple of days. We had over 200+ signups in a two day span and slowly tapered off in the days that followed. But that initial spike was incredible!They were also kind enough to feature us on their home page. Which also drove tons of traffic to Hirable.

Thank you, Marc & BetaList. You truly helped us. What you’re doing should not go unnoticed, and is something we as a young company truly appreciate. BetaList is one of best resources to get a company’s name out there!

Posted in Uncategorized

How Beta List, Product Hunt, and Tech Crunch helped jump start our company.

October 25th, 2015

 

We created hirable to connect the best available freelance developers with great companies. We built a targeted audience in just a few months with a marketing budget of zero. Here’s how:

 

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” -Arthur Ashe

 

It all began with an idea and a teaser page. We allowed users to register for a beta account while we continued to build our product. THIS WAS IMPERATIVE TO OUR FAST START. Sorry for yelling, but if you’re creating a product and want people to use it, give them an opportunity to check you out and register while they’re there. This way, your user base is growing while you work, and you can update the interested parties as you progress. The best part about this? When you launch you have a mailing list of people who are:

1. Interested
2. Willing to test your site
3. Not your Mom and Dad

Beta List
A one stop shop for people looking for the next big thing. Need beta testers? Look no further, We wrote an article about this not too long ago, but it bears repeating. BetaList is AMAZING and the process of submitting your startup is a simple one. Your start-up should be in Beta (crazy right?), have a teaser page where people can signup for a mailing list (…this sounds familiar), and be willing to wait a decent amount of time, unless you want to pay to get featured.

So after 627 retweets and 31 favorites we can agree that this is a no-brainer? We also made it into the trending section of the homepage for the remaining week which continued to send a lot of traffic. Submit your beta’d website to Beta List. It’s really a win win.

Product Hunt
The Billboard Music Charts for Start-ups. Get featured for the day, hold on tight and ride the wave of massive exposure. Here’s another great tool for getting your company out there. People are able to up and down vote companies that are posted to the site. We were fortunate to get featured and ranked pretty high for the day.

Featured 2/26/05 see it here

Their FAQ answers some of the questions you may have regarding posting and getting your company featured. They have a TON of companies submitting to them daily, but if you meet their guidelines and are featured, it can be a huge boost! Our traffic grew, and is still growing as a result.

Tech Crunch Radio
Product pitch to a panel of experts on air for some great critique and added exposure.
We can’t stress enough the importance of social media, but in this case specifically Twitter. We have been tweeting, following, and favoriting ever since our beta. It’s important to follow those you want visiting your site, or with experience in the field related to your business. In this case, we did both when we followed the host of Tech Crunch Radio and East Coast Editor John Biggs.

Now, we called. And called. And called. As I’m sure you can imagine, didn’t get through. But we did follow up with a tweet hoping it would spark some interest if they saw our site.

We were fortunate to start some dialogue from this and get our information to John. Shortly after, we were approached by a producer from the show and they gave us the rundown. We had 60 seconds to pitch our start-up, after which we would go through a two minute Q&A. We wanted to know what they would ask us so we did some homework. We even listened to previous winners on their Tech Crunch Radio Sound Cloud. Here’s an example of a pitch we listened to:

What we learned
With more failures than wins over the course of this time, we learned a few things. Here are some key takeaways:

Believe in your idea
Regardless of whether its great (or not) you need to believe in your idea in order to succeed at this process. With so many rejections to come it will only help keep you motivated and engaged.

Don’t take “no” for an answer
Of the hundreds of tech blogs and sites we reached out to, only a handful featured us. Fortunately for us they happen to be the most credible, so we decided to feature all three in this article.

“Fuck pride”- Marcellus Wallace
Peddling your company idea to the press is akin to going door to door in the rain, sleet and snow. Many will be slammed in your face but it’s important to keep on at it.

Time your announcements
If you have a big announcement, make sure you circulate your news with enough lead time prior to its release. We learned this the hard way with the staff at Venture Beat who twice expressed interest but due to timing, passed.

Be ready
Have your company bio and answers to important questions on hand at all times, memorize them even. Often you’ll be asked similar questions, have these ready and you’ll be able to respond before any leads go cold.

Ask questions
Perhaps the most important of all, and why we wrote this article. We still have a long road ahead of us, but we’re proud of our accomplishments to date. We only wish we had a few more pointers like this when we started out.

If you have any questions or would like more hints and tips on this process feel free to email us at [email protected]

Posted in Uncategorized

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