
Show HN: Bonsai (YC W16) – bulletproof contracts and payments for freelancers - mthomasb
https://www.hellobonsai.com/
======
mthomasb
Hey everyone, one of the Bonsai co-founders here.

We're former freelancers who realized there's way more to freelancing than
good design, development, photography etc.

Freelancing is a business and many freelancers lack the interest / skills to
create effective contracts, manage cash flow properly, etc.

Our first two products are contracts & payments. We had a Stanford lawyer who
writes novels on the side draft solid, plain English contract templates. We
built a simple, helpful mad-libs style workflow to create the contracts. And
finally, we have invoices that can be automatically generated and sent from
those contracts.

Our initial users are getting paid about two weeks faster than they were
before Bonsai.

Would love to hear what you guys think and answer any questions you have about
Bonsai or the freelancing business in general.

Edit: Also, in TC: [http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/22/bonsai-wants-to-be-the-
free...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/22/bonsai-wants-to-be-the-freelancers-
best-friend/)

~~~
gmisra
This looks interesting for me, thanks for sharing!

Question: what is your end-of-life plan in the event of acquisition or
business shut down?

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jayliew
It depends. When are you expecting to go out of business?

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with them, I'm just annoyed by what you're
insinuating. Dude. This is not a life altering business proposition. If your
business is torpedoed because you suddenly forgot how to cut and paste, you've
got other problems.

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wkirby
The app itself looks really nice, but I'm unconvinced this will be useful in
practice. The number of times our company has sent a contract and had it
accepted without revisions is literally 0, and I see no way to customize the
terms of the agreement beyond the pre-filled fields.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: if this is intended to be a tool for
generating, signing, and managing contracts there must be more flexibility in
actually drafting the contract language. If it's supposed to be a tool for
invoicing clients, I see no way to actually invoice for contracts provided by
a third-party.

~~~
mthomasb
We're working on a big release this week to add flexibility, but the contracts
definitely aren't for everyone.

If you're a decent sized agency working with larger clients, it probably won't
be flexible enough. We try to cover the 80/20 cases and provide some
flexibility, but we need to maintain some standardization for the ease of
creation, integration with invoices, etc.

~~~
sadok
I talked to your support team about this. The contract, as a base, is good,
but there are some clients that just need to change the language or other
fields that are NOT editable from your interface. And that's the only reason
I'm not using Bonsai.

~~~
mthomasb
Yep, we definitely understand the need for more flexibility. In about 1 week
there will be many more options to edit.

The big reason we didn't do that sooner is that we didn't want the average
user to think they had to really get into the details and tweak it, because
the template is made to just work well in most cases. But have definitely seen
the need for more flexibility.

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koolba
If I'm reading the pricing copy correctly, the contracts themselves are free
and invoicing service charges $1 per invoice.

Is it possible to be profitable (in a successful startup sense, not
casual/bootstrapped/side project sense) at that low level? Maybe I'm missing
something but I don't see a lot of room for revenue growth here. I'd figure
that the average freelancer as a handful of contracts a year so you're looking
at $10-20/year per customer.

I'm not saying the idea itself isn't good. Anybody that's freelanced or done
corporate invoicing knows the annoyingness of " _We 'll pay you within 30 days
of deciding to pay you_"[1]. Solving that problem would benefit a lot of
freelancers. I just don't see this being a sustainable solution in the form
that's being presented.

[1]: Quote is shamelessly stolen from a patio11 comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076590)

 _Edited to add link to quoted comment_

~~~
nickpsecurity
Remember that the main model of Silicon Valley is selling stories to VC's
about how things will be profitable later or grow enough to be acquired on
potential/userbase. They're not usually that concerned with profits upfront.

However, a service that's easy to automate can be maintained at low costs
while scaling easily. I'd probably still charge a small, montly or yearly fee
for contracts with a free trial. Just to cover operating costs.

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pbnjay
I like the concept, but what exactly about this makes it "13 days faster" or
gives me "3x fewer late payments" ? Is this result just for non-enterprise
contracts? People new to freelancing? I don't understand how you can make that
claim, and it really rubs me the wrong way that you aren't clear about it.

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physcab
I'm having trouble figuring out if this is a product that would benefit me.
I'm a contractor / freelancer. When I take on a client, I receive a PSA with
statement of work, and typically get paid on a Net 30 terms with Bill.com,
mailed check, or direct deposit (however the client wants to pay me) managed
with something like Quickbooks I'm guessing. The contracts are all very
similar. Cash flow is definitely tricky because Net 30 is a pain. And
invoicing is pretty easy. I use On The Job, create my pdf invoice, and send
that to accounts payable on the first of the month.

    
    
      - Is this product for a certain type of contractor? Size client?
      - How does the flow work using your product?
      - Is my use outside of the norm of your typical customers?
      - What is different about your contracts that make them 'bulletproof'?

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mariocesar
If you support 2checkout I would be able to use it in Bolivia, and many other
latinamerica developers will also be able too.

Hiring freelancer for most international clients is more appealing if they are
from other countries than USA, Canada an UK, for several reasons: like price,
diversity, time availability, work culture etc.

... I'm sensing that someone will say that hiring freelancers from USA(or the
first world country of your choice) has more advantages. The fact is that most
of the long lasting freelance market is outside USA

~~~
mthomasb
Yep, definitely looking to expand international support for contracts and
especially payments. That's one of our largest themes in feature requests
right now.

Thanks for mentioning 2checkout, hadn't heard of them before. We've been
looking into [https://www.adyen.com](https://www.adyen.com) for international
payments.

~~~
mariocesar
Good thing about 2checkout is that it has already permeate the freelance
culture, at least in south america.

Sadly I can't even use Bitcoins safely in Bolivia as it's legally baned here

Most south americans freelancers use either: Payoneer, Skrill, Wire Transfers,
or 2checkout. Though 2checkout is more popular for ecommerce and small/medium
startups.

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davidbarker
I like this idea, and would probably use it. I only seem to be able to select
"United States" (and subsequently choose a state) in the contract, though. Are
there any plans to open it up to other countries? I see you can already choose
GBP as a payment currency, for example, but not choose the UK as my location.

~~~
mthomasb
We do support US, UK, Canada, and Australia for contracts. About 20% of our
users are Brits.

On step 1 of the contract creation process, what happens when you click
'United States'? Also, what browser are you using?

~~~
davidbarker
Oops, thanks. I must've missed that when I created my example contract so it
got left as the United States, and then I couldn't change anything in the
contract except the state.

I just created a new example contract using the United Kingdom in the first
step, and all seems fine. Thanks!

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Fando
Awesome, I'm looking into becoming a freelancer next year and will definitely
try bonsai. Thanks and good luck.

~~~
mthomasb
Thanks :) Lots of our users are new freelancers or are making the transition
from part to full time freelance.

We try to put together resources for them specifically, like a tool to
visualize what they should charge:
[https://www.hellobonsai.com/rates](https://www.hellobonsai.com/rates)

~~~
hobolord
are those rates based off contracts in Bonsai?

~~~
mthomasb
Yep, sample size of a few thousand signed contracts

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_puk
Looks really good, thanks for sharing.

Created a sample contract, nice and easy.

Are the contracts the same for US and UK? I've only created a sample UK one,
but notice that you use the US spelling for 'license' as opposed to 'licence'.

Is there an option to export archived contracts?

Anyways, I'll likely be using this. Good luck with it.

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pj_mukh
Siiiick!

Any chance you'll handle tax remittances? Contractor taxes (esp) in Canada are
kind of a quagmire.

~~~
mthomasb
Not yet but it's been very heavily requested. Definitely looking into it.

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sandGorgon
Have you built NDA, I Assignment, etc into these contracts?

Lots of people use Upwork for contracting, but would still like to send a
contract with the right legal wording that they can sign.

~~~
mthomasb
Yep, the contracts include confidentiality and IP assignment.

We also see alot of users bringing projects to us from Upwork et al.

~~~
sandGorgon
Could you talk about why I would choose you over using Upwork's default
contract form? Or are you saying that people would move their project entirely
to you?

Because there is valuable deterrence in using Upwork's rating system versus
doing it myself.

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drew22huthut
Just completed my first contract/charge via @bonsai, I'm in love to say the
least. Makes creating a contract and getting clients setup for billing a snap

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kdamken
Seems neat, commenting for later in case I decide to start taking up more
freelance again.

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profeta
bulletproof + free = ?

what happens when the contract is contested? and what if you lose?

~~~
mariocesar
I was thinking the same then I look at their page footer.

> Bonsai is not a law firm, does not provide legal services or advice, and
> does not provide or participate in legal representation.

So basically they are providing just the tool, you are still legally
responsible and you have to represent yourself

~~~
gcb0
so the product they assume zero responsibility is the headline for their
company?

~~~
mariocesar
No, is on the footer

(obviously a bad pun joke)

