This is a great rate. I’d love to know how you find clients willing to pay this amount. Most people I’ve come across that need a new site/app built have extremely low budgets. Like $10,000…total for an app. Certainly not $10,000 for a week.
I have a similar weekly rate but $200 hourly; How I bill depends on the client (though yes, gravitating more and more towards weekly over time).
> “Don't talk to your local barber who wants a website to show up on google maps.”
The specific case I was referring to was a series seed funded startup that needed to build an MVP. Even for them $10,000 was too much. They ended up finding someone for half that to build their entire V1. This was maybe 5 years ago. They’ve since rebuilt everything in house and are doing very well now.
But don’t take that to mean you can just walk in and ask for money. People still want to know who they’re investing in. Prior track record is key.
Once they have 3+ programmers working full time, they'll be spending _at least_ $15k every single week on their site/app -- likely way more. Save them even a single near-future month of crap-rewriting, "switching frameworks", infrastructure headaches, "one-click signup", getting their shaky foundations sorted out, etc., and it's a very clear win.
I've seen founder and first contractor tech debt that was really hurting the business take _a year_ to clear out, because once the business is running at all, you can't just swap out the engine. Heck, I've seen it take 5 years! Making the right choice today can really change their whole outcome, from struggling or closing to thriving -- and a bad contractor is not the right choice. (etc...)
You have to show them: your rate is just a demonstration of your value. If they pick you, they're gonna be laughing all the way to the bank.
That's one possibility. Another, and one that I think is more common with startups (majority are people using their own savings and family/friends, not raising millions from seed rounds) is that they really didn't have that much money up front, but paying a cheaper way allowed them to minimally get a product out the door until they had enough revenue to "do it right."
If they remember you as dependable and all-around competent, they would be thrilled to be able to deploy their budget against the problem nearly instantly.