We wrote a post about this recently[1]. It really depends on how you want to use them, but here are three things that might not be obvious about Projects on first glance:

* GH Projects exist within a repo, so you can only have Issues from a single repo on a Project.

* A Project contains a subset of issues within a repo - they need to be added manually to the project. This would make it tough to manage a whole project with a Project because you'd have to manually add any issue you created to it.

* You can't filter issues in a Project. Fundamentally a Project is not driven by a query, it's driven by manually adding issues to a Project. So slicing and dicing issues on a Project isn't possible.

I think GH Projects could be used to manage the release of an Epic (e.g. a subset of issues grouped together within a repo). But I think it'd be challenging to manage an entire project with one.

1 - http://blog.codetree.com/articles/the-important-differences-...

> what are your thoughts on aqui-hiring a side project instead of just purchasing a side project, but incorporating the sole developer(creator) too?

I'd want to feel good about the reasons the creator wanted to sell and keep working on it. I think it would be hard to take the product where we wanted without the creator getting frustrated - if s/he had the vision and ability to execute, why did they need to be hired?

That said, I'd be open to it.

> how would you estimate the valuation in that case? would you offer him/her the price to purchase the side project in addition to a salary? or offer a unique compensation package that takes into account of the valuation of the side project?

Hard to say because I think it depends on the situation.

Are you asking about valuations? FE has a post on how valuations work. It's pretty simple. Basically a multiple of how much cash you can take out of the business. If that number is small and not growing then the multiple is small. If the number is big and/or growing fast then the multiple will be larger. The key is it's about how much cash the business makes now vs. traditional tech VC land is about... how big this might be some day maybe.

If you're interested in buying a business the people who know how all this stuff works are the private equity people (PE). These guys do this stuff all day long (obviously at much larger scales. If you search you can find a fair amount of info on PE. On a smaller scale there is good info from people researching search funds. Search funds are basically small scale PE. Here's a good starting point: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/centers-initiat....

Warren Buffett's annual shareholder letters are one of the better ways to learn about these things. Easier to read than textbooks with plenty of real life examples.

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html

I'd read a few prospectuses and make sure you understand them (especially the profit and loss statements - lots of info online about these). Sign up for FE's mailing list to get some prospectuses.

Otherwise, it depends what you want to learn. I'm sure a quick search on Amazon would be fruitful.