Stuck with my startup - desperately need advice

[bartlebee]

I also posted this in the web chat room, but I thought the general section may yield more input from some of the owners out there that may have experienced this in their own businesses.

I started my company about a year ago. After a pretty rough road (and $8000) my site is almost complete. Unfortunately, the programmer working on it decided to stop programming and move to India when all I have left is the payment gateway and some bug fixes. My issue is - I have talked to some development individuals and firms and all express the concern about jumping into someone else's code. The programmer did a great job, but it seems like he kind of figured some things out as he went, so it is probably not up to standards. I also talked to one firm that wants to charge me $1250 for the below deliverables.

Functional Test Report for:
· Testing the functionalities of the front end for its completeness and data integrity.
· Testing the back end of the application and its level of integration with the front end.
Determining Requirements for the back end & front end:
At a bare minimum, it appears that the back end needs to accommodate:
· product management.
· order management.
· basic reports.
· offline payment and online payment tracking.
Gap Analysis document - gaps will be presented from the perspectives of:
Completeness of workflow.
Coding standards from the maintainability perspective.
Missing functionalities in the back end and front end, if any.
User experience analysis.
Review of the code base from a maintainability and maintenance perspective.

Thoughts? The deliverables sound fancy, but my fear is if I don't like their work I am stuck with them, plus they will probably know that if I dump that much money into them they could really charge me what they want for any future programming. It just feels like I might get into a corner.

My real issues is I am running short on funds to keep pushing this. I can't afford to make any more mistakes that may potentially cost me thousands. I am in desperate need of some advice as to the best route to take at this point. It's times like these I wish I had a good mentor to walk me through some of these land mines. Another issue is not having any background with web development at all, I don't know what I should be looking for, or the right questions to be asking.

Please help! It would be greatly appreciated.

[generationy]

Thanks for posting this! Have you considered partnering with someone who is well versed with technology? Many times partnerships, where one partner takes care of business and the other the technology, works out very well. Especially for you since you will never have a clue as to what to fix if something should go wrong. You can also find out about web companies here: Vendors – Young Entrepreneur – Small Business & Entrepreneur Community

A link to help you on partners: Complementary Partnerships

Good luck!

[bartlebee]

Thanks for the reply! I read the complementary partnership article - that's exactly what I want. Just to give a little more background, when I initially started this 12 months ago I brought my cousin on for his web design background at 25%. Unfortunately it turned out he has been skating by for over 10 years without knowing what he is doing. He gave me no value add and in fact he has hindered me and cost me money during this past year. I actually just completed buying him out of his 25%, so now I am flying solo again.

I have a strong skillset in sales and marketing and even finance, but as you said I am clueless when it comes to the technical aspect of the business. I have to find a partner to complement me, this has to be my new direction. Any suggestions on where I could begin looking? I was thinking I might get in touch with my local Small Business Development Center and SCORE group to see if they have any suggestions. I also don't know how I would begin interviewing potential partners, since, again, I don't know anything about web development.

Any additional input would be greatly appreciated.

[veikoh]

You could try a Guru.com to find a low cost freelancer to finish the job. $1250 is pretty much a big money there.
Is it a php code? I could take a look to it as well.

[Encrypted]

Hey bartlebee, send me an email. chris (at) evokeinteractive (dot) com

[Ashvini Kumar Saxena]

I am sorry to hear what happened to you. Infact $1250 is quite a large sum of money to finish the remaining website. You can always look out for freelancers on various fl sites. There you would find much cheaper resources.

As per your getting stuck with your IT vendor, follow this approach

1. Write clear cut specification
2. Document how changes will be handled
3. Read the contract for any one sided condition
4. Promise the vendor more business once site is up and running( for e.g. maintenance)
5. Ask for a milestone plan
6. Clearly outline deliverables.
7. Do somethings yourself if you can ( for e.g. documentation)
8. Look for fixed price contract( IT vendor takes more risk ).

I hope you find them useful,
Best regards,
Ashvini