I always make the client prove the business case before I work with them. I have zero interest in building toiletware.
That said, I had a conversation today with a client who has a fun, cool idea that it is going to be very hard to build revenue on and very hard to market. He's 46. He's been an employee all his life. He's poised for a mid-life crisis. Guys like this either get a mistress or an MBA. What I told him is that this is going to be cheaper than an MBA, so probably we should just build the damn thing.
This is a detail but both of your testimonials are from people in the same state. That's better than none but the fact they are both from the same place makes me suspect one is your wife and the other is your accountant. Solicit real user feedback you can use to build your testimonials - bribe people with an iPad contest or whatever if you have to!
The bulk of our initial user base has been local so most of our feedback has come from MI based users. I can certainly see how these testimonials might look like someone's wife or accountant, but I can assure you that is not the case.
Actually, doesn't YC suggest you not incorporate when you partner or launch so that if you apply for and get into YC, they can help you form with their preferred structure?
Someone is going to have to show me an assesment of the true liability exposure of a website with no personally identifiable user data, no financial information, and presumably no personal assets to collect against before I'm convinced that's not a perfectly sound initial plan.
We formed a partnership agreement, no incorporation, FWIW. The agreement is binding.
I'm a web designer by trade. While I think I have a good innate layout and design sense that I've been working since the days of print, I certainly do not believe it can't be learned. If your goal is to produce product, though, you have to consider if there's a long term time/money benefit to learning. I license layouts from Theme Forest and icons Graphic River for clients all the time when budgets are tight and money is an issue. There's no shame in it. It's very efficient and in the right hands, effective.
For me the biggest advantage is that they do backend stuff as well, which since that is God's most tedious job, is a real bonus. It is so much easier when you have somewhere to start.
Are these typically equity relationships, and if so, how much?
While you have good links on how it can work when they are, they don't need to be. Good people are generally nice and want to help. The tech community can be very tight like that, in a good way. A lot of people will give you their time for the asking, with nothing in return except the satisfaction of paying it forward and helping to nurture a promising startup.
If you;d like to contrast the MailChimp "shiny on the outside, shitty on the inside" experience with a direct competitor, log into Campaign Monitor. It is comparative bliss. I am also a fan of the outside, as it happens - its a nice site:
Hmm, so I guess the thresholds Patio11 mentioned exist.
iStock and Big Fish Games are very large companies with several offices around the world and a large share of B2C sales, so they started charging VAT.
Apparently, most SAAS companies don't make these thresholds, not even the larger ones, as github/slicehost/37signals/mailchimp/and many more don't charge VAT at all...
Try Plendi.com - snapshot receipts with your iPhone, it goes up and is entered by an actual person. Then you throw out the reciept - it's fabulous. You or your accountant just downloads them to do expenses at the end of the year. It integrates with other accounting packages too.
We have a three person startup with one programmer, one design and marketing person, and one "other." The "other" person on the team had the original idea, pays the dev bills, and is our primary non-technical tester.
We value all three partners equally - literally and figuratively. Sure, we could outsource the code, or outsource the design, or decide no idea has value if you can't build it yourself, but that is just not how we are constituted as people. We're very comfortable with our configuration.
That said, I had a conversation today with a client who has a fun, cool idea that it is going to be very hard to build revenue on and very hard to market. He's 46. He's been an employee all his life. He's poised for a mid-life crisis. Guys like this either get a mistress or an MBA. What I told him is that this is going to be cheaper than an MBA, so probably we should just build the damn thing.