

Ask HN: Planning a new company/agency - thekillerdev

Hello,<p>I am a front and back-developer and i am willing to open a new agency to create websites, web/IOS/Facebook apps, and all this sort of jobs.
There is already a couple agencies here where i live, but most of them are doing crappy jobs and i am pretty sure my jobs are better than theirs.
I married a designer, and she is doing an awesome job, but untill now we are only freelancing, and feeling like we need to make a bigger step, open an agency.<p>I know a lot of you guys can tell me to wait a bit more, gather a little more money, but i am doing this for (development) for 7 years now and i feel like i need to give a step forward, or else, start a new career.<p>Well, i have someone who have some money to invest and he is willing to invest in an agency, we just talked a couple times about this, but nothing serious.
Now i want to do this, and i was thinking, the first step is to plan everything i need... from computers, to persons to sell my jobs, and i have been planning for a couple months now, but i was wondering, what is the best way to show to this investor the idea? is there any best way to show him?<p>Some simple word documents with all the info? A couple slideshows showing the idea? well, i am really lost about this part now, could someone help me out here?<p>Any info needed i will answer in the comments.<p>Thank you very much.
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lasertron
I'm not a "you have to have a business plan" person at ALL, but working on one
for my own startup helped me IMMENSELY in communicating the idea, the value
proposition, how we are going to gain users, and how we're going to scale.
Because I spent so many hours refining that document--just for my own benefit
--I can speak about the inner workings of the business more confidently. It
also gave me the chance to anticipate problems and address them before
investors or customers could teach me about them the hard way. Obviously, a
good business plan (or "business planning document," or "cool-ass outline,"
whatever verbiage you want to use to describe it) won't save you from a ton of
hard lessons to be surmounted, but it gets your head in the game from the
onset if you begin with one.

Besides the normal mapping and purpose you should outline, it helps to think
of a list of objectives and then detail meaningful, practical ways you are
going to achieve those. That's where you ask that investor for help, and bring
all the data and numbers you can.

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brudgers
Since you are already engaged in freelancing, then you have the minimum
equipment required.

So why are you looking to an investor, when what you need is more clients?

Hiring a professional with a proven track record closing sales in your
industry is going to be relatively expensive (as in more than your investor
may want to invest). Hiring someone without a proven track record closing
deals means that they are less experienced than you.

Good luck.

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thekillerdev
Actually, that made me think about it. The idea came because i am having
problems finding clients (same old story), since i am trying to sell my
services for (around) 1k USD and they are finding ridiculously expensive,
because there are some others around here doing for a lot cheaper.

~~~
brudgers
If you're not price competitive with the low end at $1000 [US] raise your
prices.

At $4000 or $10,000 you imply greater value and only need to make a small
fraction of the sales in order to generate the same revenue. In addition, you
will have more time per project to provide better service.

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mfarmer
I saw your post. I am looking for a freelance computer programmer to do the
programming for the websites we design.

Skills needed:

HTML / XHTML CSS JavaScript WordPress and similar templates/CMS sites php and
asp a plus

Able to work in Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, ImageReady, Illustrator

If you are interested please email me at mfarmer@boomkin.com with your resume
or work samples and hourly rate.

Best of luck to you.

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zeet2020
investor are mostly interested if the idea is working, so i would suggest you
start implementing the idea as your in flow your will get more idea about
resources you will be needing to implement and running it. which will help you
put together a better proposal to the investor and your will get a better
prospective whether or not the idea will work.

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Kliment
Take all your data with you, and go talk to him. Don't just send a pile of
stuff over.

