Bare Naked App

Just head over to heyamigo.net. We’re looking for some quality testers to get involved starting next week. It’s a great chance to get a sneak peak at the app and help us make sure it’s bullet proof.

As we decided to hire freelancers, instead of fulltime employees, it was time to find a developer and get him or her on board.

Here’s how we decided who to hire …

Plum Digital Media was the amazing team that we hired to build DropSend, our first web app. They had too many projects to be able to work on this second app, so we started looking elsewhere.

I sat down to have a think about who we could hire and I drew a total blank. This was a bit disconcerting, as I should know a ton of developers because we run Carson Workshops. The only thing I could think of was to send out an email to the Carson Workshops newsletter, as there are a ton of freelance developers that subscribe and are always looking for work.

Here’s what I said:

Hey everyone!

We’re getting ready to build our second web application, and we’re looking for a developer to build it.

If you’re a freelance LAMP developer, with some basic AJAX skills, we’d love to hear from you. We’ll need you for around 3 - 4 weeks, full time. You can telecommute - no problem.

We’ll need you to start around April 10th.

If you’re interested, please send the following:

1. URL to your site
2. Approximate cost for 4 weeks full time work
3. City and Country
4. Phone number
5. List of previous projects (with URLs) and your exact role in them

Looking forward to hearing from you!

It was great, as I received 10 replies in the first five minutes! Interestingly enough, one of them was from David Stone, a developer who’d attended one of our workshops. He had made the effort of chatting to me at our summit, “The Future of Web Apps”, so I remembered who he was immediately.

We received quotes anywhere from $5,000 - $25,000, so it was quite a range. David came in at $8,688 and he was available when we needed him. One of the biggest factors in us choosing him is that we knew him and felt we could trust him (it also helped that he was somewhat local).

If you’re a freelancer, I guess my advice to you would be: Make the effort to get to know your potential clients personally - it’s usually the deciding factor.

P.S. Photo by Peter J. Lambert

As you probably now know, Carson Systems is just two full-time employees right now: Gill and I. For the past two years, we’ve partnered up with amazing freelancers to help us out with everything from design to Linux system administration.

Well, after two years, I was getting kind of sick of the hassle of finding freelancers. Let’s face it, it’s a ton of work and it’s a pain in the ass. Here’s the 5-step process:

1. Put together a shortlist of talented people
2. Ask those people if they’re interested
3. Ask those people if they’re available
4. Ask those people how much they’ll charge
5. Pick one

Argh… It would be so much easier if we just had a fulltime developer who could just get working. Why do I mention this? Well, we were really close to hiring a fulltime developer and then we had a conversation with Jason Fried of 37signals. He was explaining how it was a full year until Basecamp was bringing in enough cash to pay for a developer.

Then it hit me. DropSend is doing great, but it hasn’t reached a level where we can justify hiring a fulltime developer to look after it. We were looking to hire a developer just because Carson Workshops was profitable enough to enable us to afford one, not because we really needed one. Bad Ryan! Thankfully Gill realised this and challenged me on it. We wanted a fulltime developer because it would be convenient, not because we needed one. When you’re a small company like us, you can’t justify spending large amounts of cash unless it’s vital to your success.

So … we decided to go the freelance route.

As we only have one web app (DropSend), we don’t need a full-time designer at Carson Systems (yet).

So when we decided to build a second web app, we knew we would be hiring freelancers to do the design. We also knew that the design is one of the most important parts of the project. Why? Well, if the user interface is poorly designed, no one will use it.

We decided to create a shortlist of designers that we wanted to work with. We came up with three names. These are people that wouldn’t be absurdly expensive, but they really know their stuff. They are talented in design, usability, accessibility and standards - all vital things in a good web designer.

Once we put together the list of names, I sent out the following email:

Hey XXXX, XXXX and XXXX,

It was wonderful to see you all at SXSW. It was our first time and Gill and I had a blast.

I mentioned to you all that we’re about to begin our second web app. We’re looking for great designers and we’ve narrowed it down to you all.

Before we get too far down the road though, we need to talk about money, so we know if we can afford you or not.

Here’s what we need doing:

1. Branding (logo, colours, tone, but no letterhead/cards)
2. Site design (public facing site, about 5 pages plus a WordPress skinning)
3. Web app interface (about 30 - 40 screens)

For DropSend, all of this took about 4 weeks work, full time. However, it was a *much* larger app (about 100 screens). Based on this, we think all of the above will be about 3 weeks (15 days) fulltime work.

Can you give us an approx figure of what you’d charge for this? Please be aware that we’re not picking based purely on lowest price.

Once we hear back from you, and we know we can afford everyone, we’ll tell you the specifics about the app, and ask for a very basic pitch.

If you could get back to us right away, I’d totally appreciate it. We’d like to have the designer picked and ready to work start on March 31st.

Take care,
Ryan

One of the candiates got back with some questions, so I sent this clarification:

Hey guys,

XXXX had a couple great questions, so I thought I’d respond to all of you, just to clarify things:

By ‘Site design’ we mean Photoshop/whatever comps. We have our own CSS/XHTML ninja that will take your designs and execute them. He’s amazing (and probably cheaper than you guys!) :P

The WordPress skinning is in addition to the 5 page site. Again, we just need comps from you on this, not actually building it.

When I say 30 - 40 pages of UI for the app, I mean that they’ll all be fairly similar, with just slight differences (different forms, etc). They won’t be 30 - 40 totally different pages.

Regarding the ‘pitch’, we don’t expect you to do visuals for free, so we just want some ideas (text) in an email for what kind of look-and-feel you’d propose.

Again, please don’t feel like I’m going to hold you to the price you quote. It’s just an estimate so we can make sure we can afford you. Once we choose someone, we’ll give them the formal brief and then we can modify the price accordingly.

Hope that clarifies everything.

Best,
Ryan

After I sent that out, we received the quotes which were:

Designer #1

$5,000

Designer #2

$11,700

Designer #3

$8,000

It was really hard to choose between the three. They all have great experience, nice personalities and strong work ethics.

As with many of these type of decisions, it came down to a gut feeling. Who did we think was a good fit for us? We need someone who is both trustworthy and fun to work with.

Basically, we decided on Designer #3 (Jason Santa-Maria) for following reasons:

1. We spent a lot of time with him at SXSW and really felt like we could trust him.
2. He expressed a real interest (over and above the others) of working on the project, so we knew he’d do a great job
3. His quote was a little higher than our budget, but was workable
4. He’s a nice guy and will be fun to work with

It’s not an exact science, but hey, that’s how these things work!

(Thanks to Dave Shea for the photo, by the way)