another good one, originally steming from the Amiga:
424 karma · joined April 28, 2017
Google search bar breaks macOS keybindings eg. option-arrow doesn't work as expected.
"XYZDEVS Hiring marketplace is straight-foward, You can hire devs worldwide based on their quality instantly and straightforward. No Joke."
First, it reads exactly like a joke. Second, it has typos.
I applaud you for starting businesses. But please team up with someone who has at least an inkling of an idea what a business is and how a business works. Alternatively you could acquire that knowledge yourself, but that would be a long road.
Regarding the brand, business people understand the word "developer" and "devs", the problem lies more in the xyz.
Most developers gave good feedback because you are promising to them to end their marketing problems, without taking money from them. That is a very good proposition.
In fact, it is too good to be true. No sane person believes this to be real.
Your target customers are "remote tech startups and technical founders" and do you have asked any of them, if they would hire "quickly for cheap"?
You business case is not really clear. So, I hire a freelancer for a project over your site. Why don't I just hire someone on Fiverr then?
Why wouldn't I just contact the developer directly? Why go through your site?
Screenshots, config file, etc anything, please share.
I will just write all the problems I see at first glance, I try to acknowledge what you wrote here on HN.
1) When I read the parent I first thought "xyzdevs.com" was your way of obfuscating your domain in order to stay anonymous. That's how a bad a brand that one is. This name will never, ever be taken serious.
1.a) The whole site looks like a github or so. This is the best way to make sure no business type will take you serious.
1.b) The stock photography on the site just makes it worse. Unless you show photos from you, your team, your office, etc you just look like a scam.
1.c) No real business contact. Just a "feedback" form, which is not a form but a sort of a box I don't even know. No phone number. Nothing. All that says: it's probably a scam. Until you read "Wyoming" in the footer, than you think, I don't know what, just "Coyotes!" or so? (I am not from the U.S.A., btw.)
2) Hiring coders based on tech stacks is a worthwhile offer. The main problem I see here is a severe lack of clarity in communicating the offer.
2.a) "bring your startup idea to life" does mean what you think it means only to one single group: nil.
2.a.1) People who think themselves as entrepreneurs who are running a startup do usually hire people as full time employees.
2.a.2) All other people who hire developers in any capacity do not think of themselves as "startup" anything.
2.b) Instead of talking about "startup" you should observe what language the people who hire devs from marketplaces use.
2.c) I still have no idea what it actually is that I can buy on your site. Can I hire people on a per hour basis? Do I get employees? What am I actually buying? Or is there something to buy? It's not clear. at. all.
3) The listed devs show no photsos either. They are represented by a "screenshot" of their "work"? What? This ist almost not recognizable as what it is. Scam, must be a scam.
4) You seem to expect that I "hire" one of these screenshots by hitting a green retangle with a number on it? Or am I mistaken? (Again 'what?')
Okay, I don't want to go fruther. You probably get the idea.
Now, regarding your outreach in order to sell…
First, it's good in general, that you have an idea what could be done.
If you have read the above it should be clear to you why that is that neither LinkedIn PM nor GoogleAds resulted in any sales.
What you have to do is to get a clear idea, who exactly should by what exactly. What exactly is it that you offer? I am still not clear on this. A screenshot gets pais 2000$ by me and then?
Who needs that?
So, you want to find clients for developers. That's the general thing you are doing here.
Okay, then tell me: who wants to buy that? In the exact form you are offering it.
If you can tell me that, than you will have mastered the next step.
Because all the above, the name of the brand, the site layout, requirements etc it all hinges on that.
So, your life intuition is telling you to not do it again: and it is right.
Learn first how to win customers. Prior to that you are not qualified to build a business successfully.
You can ask specific questions on that topic here, because a lot of know how in that area is on HN. But be specific, otherwise nobody can help you.
So, short answer to your question: Don't. Don't cope with a signal from your psyche, but interpret it right.
…you put a Commodore sign on top of an Atari monitor? You want to provoke a bar fight, don't you?
This sorta happened at Apple (and IBM and Motorola) with the OpenDoc/Taligent initiatives. With the return of the Jedi however, Master Steve axed OpenDoc at Apple, to much chagrin of those involved.
Some of that hostility became internet famous, I am sure most of you have seen the video from the conference back then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o#:~:text=I%20thin....
It is interesting how (in the video) Steve explains the decision: the Smalltalk way doesn't fit into an overall cohesive vision that allows you to serve the majority of people.
I think he got it right. The Mac/Win ways of Apps is the right way to slice and dice these issues. I do use Emacs every day. I do feel the Smalltalk way and I like it. But it's not the "right" way; just not.
The best concepts of integrating a terminal/shell CLI driven environment with a GUI and together with on-the-fly manipulation of ENV variables and objects based on those was actualized by the Amiga. Unfortunately Commodore went bankrupt.
This is the best summary of what the original Macintosh was all about and why Macintsoh enthusiasts back then loved System 6 and upwards.
(They didn't call them keybindings though. Keyboard shortcuts. (Ironicly a longer word. (yes)))
An open source version of the Elite universe:
e.g. https://www.emporiopt.ch/content/uploads/2021/08/salsichanob...
(used to be active there, in the demoscene)
BTW, it doesn't come "at zero cost" as you say. You are skewing a very important data point in advertising, the first touch point in the customer journey.
Even this question should be done anonymously, IMHO, now you just publicly announced that you don't know what you are doing in terms of PR and marketing for your cool product.
You don't like Paul Graham's essays? Because they are marketing. One of the best I've ever seen I may add.
You didn't say how much you charged for that job, so it is impossible to give assessment there. But it is almost certain you charged way too low.
From what I can gather, you provided a lot of services there. It's not so much the designing and the 3D model that counts, but all the services you describe, that are really, really valuable. Because you provide a total package and one that is facing regulatore/legal.
Two years of site visits alone would amount to ~50 trips. This alone would be worth 20k at least, since you also are bound for that time and cannot leave town etc. Hard to say without further details…