h a l f b a k e r yBusiness Failure Incubator
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A job listing website where relatively short jobs or projects are listed with an exact description of work to be performed. Payment for these jobs would consist of a dollar amount to be paid out when the company reaches some future milestone or set of milestones. Failure of the company to reach the
milestone, or failure of the person to complete the job results in zero or reduced payout.
The intent of this site is to provide a method for bootstrapping or low funded companies to get expert help when they need it without bankrupting themselves or going into debt.
Example: A home-grown website needs to be moved to a commercial server (with xyz supported) with encryption and yada yada yada. At the end of the job, I expect a, b and c. I can pay $500 6 months after successful job completion if income from that site has gone above $50/month and an additional $20,000 in 3 years if the company succeeds wildly and is making above $7500/month.
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Can't you get a similar effect by paying people in (non-voting) shares and promising them dividends in the future? |
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You could pay shares, but what if you don't want to divide the company? If someone is providing a valuable service which only needs to be done once, do you really want to pay for that service for the rest of the existence of the company? |
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You mean like a bonus? Or similar to the "no win no fee" model some lawyers work on. It seems to me that this is how lots of things already work. |
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And nobody is going to accept the terms you lay out, $600 for 6 months? How's a guy eat? $20,000 after 3 years? What self respecting (small) business is going to put aside a hefty 20,000 for 3 years - and what does the implementation (from a technical point of view) of a new server have to do with commercial success? What's stopping the business owner from "cooking the books" and saving themselves from paying out great chunks of their profit? |
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zen_tom, The "no win no fee" model is exactly like what I'm proposing. Of course, I'm sure that no business person would want to use this website to put up a job listing that requires a lawyer, but that model of payment seems perfectly valid for other types of work. All I am proposing is a framework for presenting these types of jobs. |
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I agree that the terms I put in the example are extreme and would never be used, but it is a "straw man" to poke at. The intent of the site is to provide a method by which an expert could come in and set something up in a day or two and be done as opposed to the business owner doing it himself over the period of a couple of months. |
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Any listing would have to follow with an agreement to be signed by both parties which might go into more detail on how the payment would be done. |
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As for cooking the books...yep, that'd be an issue. I haven't figured out how to solve that which is why this is a half-baked idea. |
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[+] People gamble their hard earned money all of the time. Why shouldn't they be able to gamble their labor. The best thing that can come out of not getting paid for your work is everyone else being able to see what you are capable of. |
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I've found many job opportunities on volunteer related assignments from people who pretended to be volunteers also.. but instead they were talent scouts fishing for skilled workers. |
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Small business loan, angel investor, etc... that is the real answer. It usually isn't in a contractor's interest to invest themselves in a startup where they only tangentially control things. |
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This is what interns do - they work for free in exchange for a reward at the end of their internship: useful experience and something good to put on their CVs. |
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This idea is meant to forgo a business plan. You will have no problem convincing someone to do some extra work to be paid in the future if it makes sense in the plan. But if you do, you are likely to get proper capital anyway, so whats the point? |
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