
How I tried to crowdfund my tuition, but got 20 potential clients instead - lalwanivikas
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/03/22/tried-crowdfund-tuition-got-20-potential-clients-instead/
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wizzard
I like the general idea, but (to me) the investment seems way too low. $1000
for a full-fledged game, and you plan to make 8 of them? In what time frame?
It also seems like this class is for people completely new to Obj-C and the
like. I have to wonder how realistic it is to expect to be pumping out that
quantity of games the moment you finish a two-month course.

Let's say (hugely optimistically) you work your butt off and complete all 8
games within a year. You just used a whole year to make $8000 that you've
already spent.

Again, I like the idea, but I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all price
that will be fair to either party. I hope you've explored the legal
ramifications of this setup. If you can't make the games in a reasonable time
frame, are you going to be on the hook for all this money?

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lalwanivikas
Hey wizzard, rightly said. Not all apps can be finished in such limited time.
That's why, I'm not accepting ideas that might take long, even if they are
damn interesting. I am very carefully choosing the ideas, that are good but
feasible to finish in a month. I am talking to people in detail to understand
their requirements before committing anything.

Secondly, though I m taking full responsibility of delivering these (and I'm
great with my commitments), I've many friends who are into app development,
and some of my would be colleagues at summer academy - they have shown
interest in this and are going to help me finish these apps.

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DSingularity
Keep it up! Best of luck!

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lalwanivikas
Thanks :)

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not_paul_graham
Kudos man. But seriously have you considered using the $10,000 and moving to a
cheap city like Goa / Bangalore / staying where-ever you are and spending some
time deep diving into iOS programming using best-selling books on Amazon and
iTunes courses from Stanford?

I know MakeGamesWithUs is a YC backed company and they aren't just another run
of the mill rip-off bootcamp that are popping up each day, still it'd make
fiscal sense to consider the alternative scenario.

There are a lot of pros to attending one of these bootcamps: community /
structure / mentorship / retaining IP to your creation / networking /
companies that might be recruiting but if you are motivated enough just
stumbling along yourself and associating with a local dev shop might also work
wonders without burning a hole in your pocket (despite the fact that your are
not paying out of pocket and crowd-funding this).

But anyways good luck to you with it, and I wish you success.

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lalwanivikas
Appreciate your thoughts not_paul_graham, and totally agree with the logic
behind your arguments. But for me, this course is more than just a coding
experience. Living a valley experience so closely, among the kind of people
attending the program has a value beyond what can be explained, at least for
me. It is just like quesitoning the value of an elite MBA (that breaks-even
after 3-4 years on average), which a lot of gurus are questioning these days.
I might learn equally sitting in Bangalore, in one tenth the cost, but I
really believe that there can be stark differences in terms of nuances,
personality traits, friendships and work opportunities, if I don't attend this
course.

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cobrausn
nishithfrrole, you appear to be shadowbanned (comments appearing dead). Not
sure why, I see nothing objectionable in comment history. Thought you should
know.

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mason240
Did you see the recent change in how comments are submitted?

New comments now go to a queue where they are invisible until they approved by
trusted users.

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namenotrequired
I thought that was only for a few hours and then turned off again and never
turned on again? At least I haven't seen 'endorse' buttons anywhere.

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mason240
You apparently need to have at least 1k internet points.

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namenotrequired
PG said he lowered it to 500.

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austinz
I built a decently good-looking Asteroids clone using SpriteKit during the iOS
7 beta, and a pretty polished iOS 2048 implementation more recently. Both
projects took a little longer than a weekend, and I don't consider myself a
particularly talented developer. The iOS ecosystem has lots of tooling and
libraries that make building simple games quite easy, so a month per game can
be quite doable (depending on the kind of game, of course).

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lalwanivikas
austinz, this is surely some inspiration. Would love to connect. My email is
in my profile. Thanks!

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niketh
Good stuff Vikas!! It's not easy to raise money in India (esp through
crowdsourced funding) and you seemed to have already made good progress.
Focus, choose your projects (games) wisely and I am sure you will do well.

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chiph
Has elements of _The Unincorporated Man_ to it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unincorporated_Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unincorporated_Man)

