Where to get software made?

I have in the past gone to my local college and reached out to their programming programs for assistance, on small projects.

Check out this guy. He's really good. View Profile: dad2four

What kind of budget do you have in mind?

I got one small piece done from CodeClerks.com

You can always look for someone in freelancer sites but based on my experience I recommend you codeclerks.com because of their right prices and well done job.

Thanks for the offer, 6 figures is overkill for what I have in mind, more like low 5 figures would get the job done. Ill check out codeclerks. thanks all.

Feel free to reach me via (PM). I've built several softwares.

WILL -

Two part response here...

Part 1 - Stay Lean

Identifying a problem and coming up with a solution is fun. Nothing like it and I encourage you to press on. However, let me share with you how I am approaching things as I make the transition from marekting consultant to technology CEO.

Let's start with Boxbee - before there was any code written for this business, a guy went around knocking doors with some spare boxes and a store bought receipt book. In looking at the site, would you have a clue the business started this way?

Let's throw in AirBNB - these guys had a problem. They had no rent money. Then they saw there was another problem in their city - hotels were booked for a conference. They had no site for more than a year as they continually worked this experiment to validate their learning.

One more final example - Groupon. They started by pasting flyers in an office building to the pizza joint downstairs.

What do these companies have in common? They made sure they validated that they would not be building software that no one would ever want - before they built it.

I would highly recommend you read "The Lean Start-Up" by Eric Ries.

Chances are, that if you have identified a software solution to a problem. There is a manual solution. Granted, sometimes certain things cannot be done manually. Like you can't do Instagram manually for example. But if you can perform a task manually, that the software will solve - SELL THE MANUAL SOLUTION AND PRETEND IT'S SOFTWARE!!

Sell air! Get someone to agree to pay you money for your solution before you spend a nickel on development.

After the sale clears, refund these peoples' money and tell them you will be back later.



Part 2 - Design

Great design is not about how stuff looks, rather how it works. A relentless focus on the end to end user experiences yields great products. For example. When AirBNB hosted those first 3 travelers to make the rent, they left a bowl of change for the guests to take with them into the street, so that they were not made to feel uncomfortable by bums.

Think about that... If these folks go into a strange land and strange people can be intimidating.

If your consumer is going to use the software, use Part 1 as a means to make sure you nail the overall product design. Let's go a step further with this AirBNB thing.

Wimdu.com is an AirBNB knock off. The Samwer brothers of Germany routinely hijack American innovation, open markets and force their American counterparts into buying them out. They tried this with AirBNB. They got there months in advance. They spent more money. They ran "cheaper" prices, etc.

But the lost - big time.

Why? They didn't understand that the "sex" in AirBNB was in how they designed the USER EXPERIENCE - even after it extended into the real world...

Great software products is 99% design. 1% software.