I will build your business idea for free

I’m an entrepreneur myself and am no averse to doing marketing work. That’s actually what I do most at my current business since I hired a developer. But I find myself more and more wanting to just build something (which I find relaxing) and not have to worry about marketing it and acquiring customers (or worse, just letting it collect dust unmarketed). Damn growth is what keeps me up at night.

That’s why I’m looking for people who have both an idea I find interesting and the marketing skills to grow it into a profitable business. I’d be in charge of design (unless you want to do that yourself) + coding the whole thing.

About me:

  • I’ve been building web apps for almost 15 years now.
  • I’m based in Barcelona. I’ve been working remotely for the last 5 years and have plenty of experience of doing so with employees, clients, freelancers, business partners, etc. I know how freaking annoying is to have someone disappear into thin air or not communicate properly, and I won’t do that.
  • Built my current business from scratch (a dating site with profiles, photo upload, private messaging, news feed, mobile site, real time chat and tons more).
  • Recent side projects of mine: FounderPact, Jobroadcaster, Minecraft Flowers, Electricity bill analysis for businesses, etc. all designed and coded by me.

You:

  • You have a business idea you’d like to test / work on but don’t have the time / skills / money to build it yourself.
  • You have a proven track record (or can convince me you can do this) building profitable businesses before. It could be one business, and it doesn’t need to be a big business either. Having built something that makes a couple thousand dollars a month is already a very good indicator.
  • Ideally, you have good understanding of the market you’re going after.
  • Also ideally, you’d have done some work on this yourself (customer development, sales safari, testing, research…) that tells you’re motivated and a hard worker and didn’t just pull out an idea from the huge list of “business ideas one day i’ll work in” we all have.

Deal:

  • We’d be partners in the venture, so I wouldn’t get paid anything for my work. While I’m open to negotiating equity split on a case by case basis, I guess something like 60 you/40 me would be fair. As far as i’m concerned, you’d be in charge of the project and while I’ll definitely chip in with my ideas, you have the final word on everything.
  • This obviously won’t be a full time gig for me, but I get things done fast (plus we’d be starting with an MVP, not a huge project), so I don’t think this will be an issue.
  • We’d have traditional vesting clause there. If I end up quitting on you shortly after, I won’t be owning anything of your business, as it should be. Code/design produced will be owned by “the business”, not me.
  • Basically, while I’d like to get rewarded if the business ends up succeeding, I want you being comfortable knowing this is your business and I’m just happy to build and let someone else who knows what she’s doing making the decisions.

If anyone’s interested in this, please PM me (or ask any questions in this thread of course) and tell me who you are and what you want to build, and let’s talk. If you’re worried I’ll just take your idea and run with it, please remember a) I don’t want to do this by myself, I just want to build it and have someone else market it, and b) if you’re still worried, I guess I can sign an NDA or what have you.

1 Like

Which tech stack would you use?

Do you know Ruby on Rails?

While most of my experience is with a LAMP stack, I’ve also done some projects in Rails (founderpact.com is the latest) and I’m open to using it, since that’d allow me to practice a stack I don’t have years of experience with.

So how can one contact you?

To be clear, this means you’re not building it for free, you’re just building for equity. I’m not saying that this couldn’t be a successful venture for a non-developer, but it’s also not free. There is always a cost.

1 Like

Private message through here is good, otherwise manuelflara@gmail.com also works.

Absolutely. What I meant by free is for zero dollars. I presume it’s best to have someone build an idea you have and don’t have time or money to build it, and if it’s successful share the riches, than have it sit on your idea shelf and generate $0 for you (or me). But yes, I’d be doing this for equity.

This is a cool idea. Let us know if someone takes you up on it. Would be interested to hear how it goes.

2 Likes