TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur's JourneyThe journal of a web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

Project V Updates: More Investors, Domain Acquired, and World Class Programmers

So my focus over the past week has continued to be working on my corporate taxes (about 50% done now) and Project V.

In fact, there was some good progress made on Project V. The main investor has continued to be really pumped about the project. I can always expect to wake up, check my phone, and literally see 4-5 new e-mails from him every morning. In addition, we speak on the phone (Skype) nearly every day for around an hour discussing the vision and other elements of the project.

It’s a bit odd for me, as I’ve been working online for a living for around 12 years or so and have never collaborated on a project before. I’m still the primary owner of the project, but it’s still weird to discuss it with somebody else. I’m a bit of a control freak so it’s definitely a different feeling, but it’s nice to hear somebody else’s opinion of things.

More Investors

Since my last blog post, where I briefly mentioned that I was still open to accepting investors on the project, I received a few new inquiries. One of them never replied back to my response. Another was sent the NDA and non-compete from me but I haven’t heard from him since then, and the other sent me the signed NDA and non-compete and skimmed through the slideshow (but didn’t listen to the MP3) but wasn’t interested.

Since there have been a number of developments made in the project lately, I decided that I would update the slideshow presentation as well as add a new slide. In addition, I actually went ahead and re-recorded an entire new MP3 presentation for the 2 new possible investors as well. I was hoping to make it a bit shorter in length, but it ended up being exactly an hour (just like the previous one) so I guess that’s just how long it takes to present it.

Anyhow, I’m not liking the lack of response from the people who have contacted me about investing… but that’s okay. If it ends up just being me and the existing investor, that’s a bigger share of the pie for us.

Domain Acquired

Not too long after I first thought of this idea a year ago, I went ahead and searched for a domain that I thought would make a good fit.

I came up with a list of names that I thought could work, and my favourite on that list was a domain that was listed for $5,000.

Recently, when I decided to go ahead with this project, I found that the domain had dropped to $3,500. I spent a lot of additional time looking for alternative domains (the other investor did as well), including any domains up to $10,000 but there was nothing that beat this domain.

I wanted a domain that was very brandable and related to the project idea, so it was not easy.

So I went back to my favourite domain and ended up negotiating the price down to $3,000. In addition, I bought the .net and .org variant of the domain as well as a typo variation of the domain (which I’m actually surprised was available!).

I had the other investor register appropriate names on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The domain is up and running on one of my servers with a splash page. And for the first time ever, I set up rDNS (reverse DNS) on the domain (which was pretty confusing due to the lack of documentation available).

In addition to the domain, I received a logo with it as well. I am not sure if we will end up keeping the logo or not – it’s pretty good, but we may be able to do better.

World Class Programmers

With progress being made on the project, I started to look for a development company.

As cringe-worthy as it may sound, I did take a gander at Upwork and Freelancer and browsed through the top providers there with the highest feedback and a solid number of past clients. It has been a while since I last developed a website from the ground up, so I was curious how the quality of providers was today.

Unfortunately, looking through the portfolios, I was not too impressed. They simply won’t do for this project. I want this website to have a top-notch development team behind it, and there simply aren’t any top notch providers on these freelance websites.

But then I found Toptal. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this place before – it must be pretty new.

The best way for you to learn about Toptal is to visit the link above, but basically they’re a cream-of-the-crop freelance agency. Essentially they’re like Upwork and Freelance but have incredibly high standards to who they let in.

Doing some research from actual programmers, I found out that it’s very difficult to get accepted as a provider there. You have to go through multiple long phone interviews and undertake many tests over a period of a couple of months.

There are world-class programmers there… ones from Microsoft, Java, IBM, Zynga, etc. It’s kind of insane really.

Clients of Toptal include Entrepreneur, CNBC, Fox, and a lot of startups.

The main downside that I can see so far is simply the price. You get what you pay for, and from a very preliminary research into prices, I think they range from around $75-$125/hour.

At $125/hour, 120 hours would cost $15,000. That’s a 3-week 40-hour/per week programmer.

The upside is that you’d be getting a seriously talented developer with proper code.

I started the process of signing up as a client, and found that I myself have to go through some phone interviews. It just shows how serious they are about the standards of their agency.

Anyhow, that’s what has been going on this past week.