Ask HN: Review my startup CanYouCode.com

[jeswin]

http://www.canyoucode.com

CanYouCode is a freelancing website, which is different in the following ways:

1. Minimum rate of $35/hr - likely more. (you can't find good freelancers for anything less.)

2. Profiles are reviewed before being allowed to bid - We verify LinkedIn profiles, Open Source contributions, Blog, proper web standards etc.

Basically the idea is to target developers who can't survive on the $10-20/hr at Elance or oDesk. Currently we are accepting signups only from the US and Europe.

We would like inputs on: 1. It is interesting? 2. How to get traction? 3. Should we apply for YC Winter 2011?

Thank you.

[petervandijck]

1. Yes, it's interesting to have a curated place to get good developers, even if it's more expensive. However, I think you might need to do more than the things you've listed so far.

2. Make sure your clients have a really good experience and then help them promote you.

Since this is a marketplace, you have to stimulate both supply and demand. Supply: contact good coders and ask them to sign up. Demand: work very hard to get clients into the system, and follow up with them.

Also: the name "canyoucode" is aimed at developers, that's not very good, should be aimed at clients. And finally: having the site full of dummy date is kind of crap. I would go with a closed beta. Again, you have to stimulate supply and demand: you need to make sure that your first coders get good clients (and then blog about that), and that your clients get good coders (and then blog about that). I would make it closed beta at first.

[jeswin]

Thanks.

This is one of the things we plan to do. In fact, our backend lets us make pre-filled developer profiles which just need to be 'activated'.

edit: You are probably right about the dummy data. We could try a closed beta. This has been up for just a few hours.

[jacquesm]

I don't think it is fair to discriminate by country, it would be much better to only discriminate by capabilities.

What the price is should not matter either, unless you are looking to set up a shop that people will know will overcharge or where the people from the 'west' can set up shop without competition.

[aplusbi]

IANAL but I imagine having the site open to all countries is a legal nightmare.

[jeswin]

Good point. But are you saying $35/hr is excessive?

The good developers/designers I know charge way more than that. And people are willing to pay for predictable results.

[shadowfox]

As a note jeswin comments on this in another thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1698039

The idea seems to be to restrict this to western countries only

[jim_dot]

What's wrong with making the site region-based? Maybe don't discriminate by country, but certainly limit people to their own region/country. If people are looking for slave labour from India there's always Elance.

[jacquesm]

From the name I thought it was another code judge.

[joshfinnie]

I have to agree. Unfortunately, I do not think the name fits the application. I know domains are hard to come by these days, but this is better than frelancodr.com.

[AmberShah]

Me too. You may want to consider integrating Code Antgem badges too as part of a user's profile. Email me [email protected] to discuss.

[3pt14159]

Canada and Israel have a ton of excellent coders too, you should let them in as well.

[GeneralMaximus]

India too. Sure, there is a large pool of "career programmers" here who write terrible code, but you can always weed them out.

Edit: What prevents you from allowing people from other countries from signing up? Isn't this just a service that connects clients with programmers? From the looks of it, you aren't even handling payments or doing anything else that could get you into trouble with law enforcement.

[mike-cardwell]

The signup process is causing me problems... It seems to be geared towards companies with only a single member...

It asks me to select a username and then states:

"Your company's url is http://www.canyoucode.com/username

Both me and my partner want to sign up but we can't both have the same username, but it seems wrong to have two separate company urls...

We both want to set up individual profiles and then link them together as a company profile...

[jeswin]

We probably need to do a better job of communicating this.

1. The username is assigned to the company; users cannot login individually. 2. But once you login, you can add various user profiles and credentials to the company profile.

[alinajaf]

I think this is a great idea, but am I the only one who thinks the minimum rate should be more like $70? This would widen the perceived quality gap between this and Elance IMO, but I'm guessing you've probably done a lot of research before settling on $35.

[jamesbritt]

I do not expect to get anyone skilled for $35.00.

Perhaps that's an ignorant assumption, but I don't think I'm alone in this.

Charge more.

[ergo14]

Tried to sign up, unfortunately my country which is a part of EU is not there (Poland), but so are others missing. You should at least allow for every EU member to participate when it comes to "europe"

[CWIZO]

+1

There's not much logic in that country list. I kinda understand (but not really) that Slovenia (my country, part of EU) is not listed there, but Austria, Switzerland, etc are also missing. That means I can't register and give you more feedback.

[tialys]

I see an employer has already posted a job that seems to break the $35/hour rule. In this case a 100 in 1 iPhone Game App (including artwork!) on a $1000 budget. Which, even at 1 hour per game works out to $10/hour.

What checks do you have on the jobs posted by employers?

[jeswin]

That post was likely created by an employer who wanted to test the site. CanYouCode has been up for just about 7 hours now.

In future, such posts will be removed. The site will initially be moderated by us. Eventually, we want to bring in more user participation in this moderation.

[huherto]

The idea is very interesting. I like the idea of minimum $35/hr. To take the idea further, avoid using pricing as a signal, and protect the buyer as well, $35/hr could also be the maximum. That will take rates out of the equation. After that competition will be to get the most rewarding work, with emphasis on work quality.

As a developer, I may even be willing to pay a screening fee, if I would be able to get good quality work.

Apply to YC. You will get support, ideas, and make great relationships. That will also help you get traction and gain credibility.

[kranner]

I agree with parent that you might end up inadvertently anchoring the price at $35, making it harder for people who can justify charging significantly more.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

$35/hr could also be the maximum

Are you serious? That's about what my wife charges to give horseback riding lessons, and we live out in the country. Near a big city it would be a lot more expensive. I'd like to think that even an average developer should expect more per hour.

[mMark]

Personally, I agree with others that the $35 minimum may be a little restricting on new developers who are trying to build site experience. Maybe a new developer rule could apply in which for the first 5 or so jobs the mandatory minimum is waived when they're sending in offers.

You could also have something like Gold Star, Silver Star, Bronze Star rating for new developers so as to alleviate anxiety from selecting a bid from a new buyer.

New user star rating earned by things like, experience and references from their LinkedIn, Open Source attributions, and a rating on their website (by standards, how many posts their website has - don't tell them that can help their ranking though. Also could include in the ratings formula any tests that they completed on your site if you implement that (maybe make it so the highest rating they can be without completing any tests is Silver Star even if their resume is above and beyond).

I agree with everyone else who mentions escrow (most definitely) and testing for developers.

What hasn't been mentioned yet is some kind of work tracking system. I personally don't like systems which seem like big brother is looking over my shoulder as I code (you know which sites I'm talking about), but a system where the dev could post a snippet of what they're doing or even the ability to post the updated source (to be archived and viewable by you only of course, to be seen in cases of a dispute in hours).

[Qz]

Maybe a new developer rule could apply in which for the first 5 or so jobs the mandatory minimum is waived when they're sending in offers.

Wouldn't this just incentivize people to keep making new accounts? If there's going to be a minimum, there shouldn't be any exceptions or it defeats the point and allows people to game the system.

[jeswin]

All good points. Thanks.

[bobds]

I don't like the arbitrary minimum rate but I do see how it would differentiate you from the rest of freelancing marketplaces. I think it would be better to have different minimums depending on category and type of work. There is no reason why data entry or similar should start at $35/hr, It just shouldn't be $3/hr. Could also have different minimums for different countries, freelancers have different standards on what's a good hourly rate, many of them can do fine with $20/hr.

Other pain points to address:

It's very tiring having to bid on dozens of projects and never getting any work. This is a major problem for new freelancers. You have to lowball dozens of bids in hopes of getting your first ratings.

Something like Odesk's tests for freelancers but higher quality.

Buyers should also be reviewed not just freelancers. Putting money into escrow before accepting a bid should be mandatory, at least for new buyers.

I've used about five different freelancing websites in the past but it's been a while since then and I think a lot of problems are not coming to mind now. I'll let you know if I think of more pain points I would like to see addressed.

EDIT: I tried signing up but my current address is not in a country listed in your dropdown menu. I don't see why you would limit Europe to a handful of countries. If you can do business in one EU country, you can do in all of them thanks to the economic union.

[jeswin]

We are only targeting developers at this point. And that too, people with enough experience to command these rates. Hence the $35/hr minimum.

Also, this fair-pay guarantee is what we hope will attract the folks who will be lost in the noise at Elance/oDesk.

We debated the escrow arrangement, but decided that we step out of the way once the employer and provider reach an arrangement. Other freelance sites stay on as middlemen, because the revenue model is in taking commission off the development fee.

[jeswin]

Will be doing that tonight. The initial plan is to have North America + (all of)Europe.

[ErrantX]

The "Technology" edit box in your profile is absolutely horrible; I spent about 5 minutes trying to type stuff in - it randomly deletes stuff if there is a typo.

[kbrower]

Changing phone number is broken and there is no way to delete your account.

[jeswin]

Thanks. Will be fixed in the next build.

[ramanujam]

Providing the option for the developers to show github and stackoverflow profiles might be a good.

[jeswin]

Stack Overflow, GitHub, HN is already included.

[jeswin]

Clickable: http://www.canyoucode.com

[thinkalone]

Fantastic design! It can really set you apart from the more "corporate" designs of Elance/oDesk. It's a great idea to have the marketplace have a good design and aesthetic to position yourself as different from the kinda sketchy RentACoder-type sites.

How will you distinguish your review process and qualifications from the certification tests that oDesk offers? Arguably your internally-reviewed approvals will be more valuable than "User X passed the HTML Level 1 test" but how will you communicate that to clients searching your site for freelancers?

[jeswin]

Thanks.

The review is something we hope to figure out soon (as we reach volumes that we cannot handle ourselves).

We are looking at how the quality on HN stayed sane over the past years. And how we can include crowd-sourced moderation and ratings without people gaming the system to their advantage.

[nl]

I'm sure you'll get a lot of developers sign up, so the supply side is fine.

But how are you going to generate demand? I know a number of people paying ~$20/hour on elance for developers (usually from Eastern Europe or the Phillipines). None of them are complaining about paying too little (or about the quality, or the language etc).

Your site is right when it says "Great talent does not work for peanuts". But $20/hour is great money in many places - why would someone want to pay more?

[zabraxias]

From a usability perspective you should add more technologies and make the textarea itself bigger.

I can appreciate the need to control the terms you are allowed to choose but lets say someone releases a new JS framework tomorrow and it hits major popularity in a month - your site might still not have this. Perhaps this should work as pseudo-tagging.

In any case I love the idea since I want to take on part time project gigs apart from my full time job.

[aarongough]

Just signed up, looks pretty good. 2 suggestions:

1) Having a linkedIn profile shouldn't be required to sign up.

2) The 'pages' associated with an account don't seem super useful to me right now. A lot of my most interesting work is not graphical in any way, so given that the main element of a 'page' is the image that is not super helpful.

Maybe a 'projects' section as well/instead? That way I can provide links to GitHub pages or whatever.

[vindicated]

I think people might find some of the statements on the page offensive. Such as the implication that 'real experts' are only found in the west. Or that people from the east work for 'peanuts'. Sure they work for less because they need less to support a decent lifestyle, but that doesn't mean they're working for peanuts.

I realize the intention is good, but there must be another way to get the message out.