employee-compensation, programmers, budgetLooking to start a company on the back of a network software platform. College student with $0 budget looking for someone (preferably another college student) who can build the platform at least to a prototype phase where I can begin looking at financing/revenue generation.
I want to find a fair and equitable way of compensating them. Current proposition would essentially be equity and 6-packs, but wondering if there are any other common conventions in these scenarios.
Posted on Software Engineering SE and got a bunch of spiteful comments and deleted: I’m aware of implications of $0 budget/value of programmer skillsets. Just curious if there are common conventions / creative ways in start-up phase that make everyone happy and treat everyone fairly.
The only way you can actually make someone to work for you like this is to offer part of your company as the payment, you don’t want employees, you want an associate. and you have to value how much does the work they are going to perform and how much value will that represent for the company.
a programmer should not be a 50% owner of the company if he is just going to be a programmer, not even the CEO owns that much.
1%, 2% ? maybe 5% is a good number, yet, i will recommend you, don’t look for programmers in united states. american programmers are not entrepreneurs, look for Indian programmers or Mexican programmers, those are entrepreneurs.
Although I agree that giving equity to the programmers is probably the best way to compensate them for the work, I do not agree that Americans would not work for such a benefit structure.
I have started two companies from scratch, with $0 for development and was able to get them off the ground and to the demo stages without outside investments. But i did it in Sillicon Valley where such things are not that far from normal.
It is not easy to find people willing to do it for equity but its not imposible. It may mean that some developers would do it on a part time basis, choosing to keep their day jobs but one can work around that.
The crucial thing to realize is that the sucess of such a strategy will hinge on you “selling” your idea to developets. Developers don’t mind taking a chance but few will want to sign on to a hail mary project. So the key ingredient would be your ability to convince and inspire developers to want to put in the time and effort into your project knowing that there is a 90% that it won’t go anywhere.
A lot of people may be OK with those odds if they get something else in return. They may look to gain experience that they dont currently have, or they may like the idea or implications of the project or they may follow you just because you are charistmatic enough.
As such, I think American and Sillicon Valley developers in particular may be what you need. They’ve been around enough companies that they have the experience, know how and maybe the connections to help you in more ways then one.
Hope this helps.
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