Coding for equity.

The entry of the blog author.

Some time ago, Maxim Shkolnik wrote a lot of material in 4 parts on coding for equity. Until now, this is one of the most widely read material on my blog. In this material, Max told me about the intricacies of the issue on the customer side. I think readers will be interested to see how this same process can be seen on the other side of the barricades. Our guest Anton Rudich, who just did the work for Max. I think the material will be useful, as entrepreneurs and companies that make the design for startups. I would be grateful for the huskies, retweets and other buns.

Here are links to material of Max:.

part 1. http://dennydov. blogspot. com/2010/10/coding-for-equity. html.
part 2. http://dennydov. blogspot. com/2010/10/coding-for-equity_13. html.
part 3. http://dennydov. blogspot. com/2010/10/coding-for-equity_14. html.
part 4. http://dennydov. blogspot. com/2010/10/coding-for-equity_6827. html.

Max answers questions. http://dennydov. blogspot. com/2010/10/coding-for-equity_15. html.

But, in fact, the first part of the material from Anton.

Yours, DD.



Coding for equity. The downside. Part 1.

Programming for a share in the business - certainly not the most common and easiest way interaction between the entrepreneur and developer company, serving essentially an investor in the project to create a software product.
Many of the aspects that arise in such an interaction has already been described by Maxim Shkolnik (Project Address. ua) in terms of Trader. I will explain the view of the investor in the process, let me note the key challenges and advantages of this style of interaction.
Address. ua was not for our first project in which we are fully or partially finance the R. More than ten years ago, we began work on a project by the British Intellitracker. com ( in 2011 renamed the Cognesia), having the option to share in the business. And this year we started work on the project Smailex, which are responsible for the technical implementation of the project and fully funding the development of. We can say that we are professionals in programming at your own risk.

In addition to developing custom projects we are actively developing their own and have extensive experience in breeding projects in good financial position and credit rating (RABOTA. ua, TURNE. com. ua, IZUM. ua, poehalisnami. ua), which introduces additional specificity in our relationship with the rest of the project. Tried and tested knowledge and experience allow us to take an active part in the discussion of issues that go far beyond the development process and allow us to assist projects in such areas as business finance, marketing, building sales, development and modification of the product. For ourselves, we even have defined a style of programming and interaction with the customer to achieve maximum results by CUSTOMER as a business programming, t. e. programming in which wins the customer's business. But the description of our understanding of the business - programming is beyond the scope of this post.
For the beginning of a case where a software company interested in working on the scheme coding for equity. Necessary conditions for such an approach: the presence of the company -developer of free human and material resources and the presence of the leadership of a fair share of adventure. It should be noted that in most cases as a contractor for development will be to choose a company with experience in this area that has a certain effect on the interaction with the customer.
Maxim in their positions quite clearly described the technical features of the design rights of ownership for software companies and I will not deal with these formalities and paying more attention to actual issues of cooperation and effectiveness of the scheme.
The main features of the construction of the development process.
a. Definition of roles in the project. Perhaps this is more a problem X-tend Software Development as part of the X-tend Group. Our vast experience porgrammistov active participation in the development of successful projects leading. Having filled bumps in the same project is very difficult to repeat the same mistakes in the next, even if ... e. do not you define how and what should be done. In addition, these feelings have not only a programmer heads the firm, but the developers themselves. Apparent our ...
The developer, in any case only a singer, and should primarily be focused on the performance of their duties. Consultation on other aspects of the business with the developer or by some experts that company - it is a totally different role and it should be possible to separate the role of developer. It is desirable to meet even the ...
2. The discussion and implementation time. In principle, this problem is inherent in every design, in our case it just becomes more apparent.
At any time, the development of democracy is when all the (? ) Can voice their proposals and during the dictatorship, when the governing body decides what to do and everyone else should just perform tasks. In the case of coding for equity ( if the developers are aware of the scheme of financing the project) the atmosphere of the project involves more democracy than in programming for specific money. Naturally, this requires more of the dictatorship when the decisions. Easy to say but very difficult to apply to their loved ones, freedom, scarce programmers!.
3. Inability to accurately assess the project at the decision. This fact is not worth it to even discuss. In too many projects now there is no precise TOR and the circuit when coding for equity is seen even more clearly. It is necessary to program the ideas and the question of whether it is profitable to the artist ( company developer ) have to answer on the basis of previous experience, the knowledge partner of the customer and other variables neformalizuemyh. The essence of a startup is the high dynamics of implementation, therefore, need to decide quickly. In the end, it all comes down to decisions such as ...
4. A compromise between the desire of the customer and the desire to do everything a developer to make a minimum. This question follows from the preceding paragraph. Not everything can be defined in the TOR (if any), artist spends money with the specific increase in complexity and need to really look for a compromise. In this connection a question arises about the compatibility of the main customer and developer, t. e. question of the relationship between specific people. The question is very complicated and it is better to think ...