Hot answers tagged contract
31
The short answer: You should bill each consultant out at 1/1000th (0.1%) of their annual salary.
First of all, congratulations on doing this as an hourly cost with a fixed number of hours. That makes your life infinitely better than if you had to do it for a fixed price and were spending the rest of your life arguing over what's INCLUDED in the fixed price!
...
26
Dividing salary by 2000 would be way too low. Consider for employees, nominal hours worked are 52 weeks per year x 40 hours per week = 2080. Those are the hours that a typical salaried employee gets paid for. But employees get paid for a lot of hours they don't actually work! Consider: vacation, paid statutory holidays, sick days, bench time, etc.
As a ...
22
I think that a discount at this point would exacerbate the problem. In my experience when a project goes over time so significantly it means that it has also gone way over budget for the developer. The developer is now trying to find and do other work to pay the bills to subsidize the completion of your project. The less money he makes on your project the ...
19
In my opinion, these figure seem very very investor-friendly.
Basically, you're valuing your business at only 100K. It's hard to tell if that valuation is in line with your business but a 100K valuation is pretty low. If ordinary shares in the UK are the equivalent of common stock in the US, then that point is good for you. But I'm pretty sure you'll also ...
17
I've been through (and still am in) this situation. The first time I went through it, I just decided to swallow my pride and let it go. I think it was the right decision, as there's no way I could have done the project without my partner, even though I put in the lion's share of the work.
I don't think it's possible to set it up so that there's a perfect ...
15
At a basic level, with that shareholding configuration, they can band together and out vote you 60% to 40%. This is a concern but relationships and getting everyone onboard with direction before discovering it is the wrong choice should cover this.
You need to match this against "where would I be without it".
I would be trying for 40% to them, holding ...
13
I am so sorry that you have had an awful experience with such a big project for your start up company. Clearly no one is beating you up more than yourself.
If it is any condolence -- we have all been there. We have all had project grow, migrate, change. We have all worked with clients that have expectation on the suspect side. We have all given ourselves ...
11
Do not "let it ride". It will cause you more and more stress over time, affect your relationship with your partner/friend, and your pocket book.
I was in a partnership for 17 years. Initially, the inequities were explicit and acceptable (duties were different). We re-structured the way the business operated after 10 years, and our duties were then ...
10
But it's a double-edged sword. The sports team has a contract with the person to pay them no matter what (with very few exceptions). Do you really want to hire someone, commit to pay them $1M over 5 or 8 years, and then find out after 18 months that your startup is going to pivot and this person is suddenly no longer valuable?
I also believe that your ...
7
I'm going to go out a limb here and say there are no reliable online resources for finding high-quality, talented B2B professionals who will play an integral part of your team. I'm not talking about the art student in Kerblecistan who is happy to do spec work for 99 projects on 99designs just to get $99, but more the folks who will give you expert advice and ...
7
Disclaimer - I am not a lawyer (IANAL), so don't take any of this as legal advice... this is business advice (and you get what you pay for :-).
Why Has Nobody Answered This Question?
I assume that nobody has answered this question (a rarity for this site) simply because contracts/legal documents can be a pretty "gray" area... I see two main paths one might ...
7
It means that both you and your employer have no legal obligation when it comes to terminating employment. You're free to leave whenever you wish, with or without notice. Although professionalism and respect usually lead employees to give two weeks' notice and assist in the transfer of duties. Your employer may also choose to terminate your employment at any ...
6
Few things to add:
You don't say what type of freelancing you do. Find out what the general market rates are for the type of freelance services you will provide.
Always think about solution vs. time and which is best. For example, it might take you 10 hours to do a project for a client. (Whatever type of services you provide.) So if you charge $125/hour ...
6
You need to charge what you can reasonably afford to while keeping the lights on in your apartment. I recommend this site for helping you get to the real number you should be charging for your freelance work. I used this when making the switch from cubicle to home office.
http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/
6
These kind of deals are actually common when doing business internationality. Some of the Pros and Cons include:
Pros
Investment from another company does not dilute your company
The deal is separate and therefore failure is more manageable
The investing company does not control your company
More focus on building the business as opposed to funding an ...
6
Their client is communicating with me and they aren't in control. I do not have an agreement with their client, yet he is somehow dictating the terms
They are rank amateurs. Cut it off and put distance between you and this mess. And make a promise to yourself to never go into a so poorly structured deal again.
Who owns the copyright to the code right ...
6
Juan, there are no set standards in the software industry and there are many different methodologies. Varying from a waterfall development methodology where everything is specified and defined in much detail on the entire projects before developing anything. To, agile development methodologies where you have a high level view of the entire game plan, but ...
5
I have a blog entry that 'converts' a salary to a contract rate by taking out lunch hour, vacation, sick days, stats holidays, takes into account your own expenses. http://www.johnsoer.com/blog/?p=36 (Note this is for the Canadian market)
The issue I find and I struggle with this all the time. I believe an 80K a year job is equivalent to charging about 65 ...
5
There's an alternative to either cargo-culting some partnership agreement you download from the web or spending at least $5k to have an attorney draft an agreement: use http://fairsoftware.net as a Pre-Incorporation Partnership Agreement. Basically, fairsoftware.net has paid the lawyers to draft a general software startup agreement that will hold up.
While ...
5
Typically, joint development agreements have three categories of IP that should be addressed in the agreement:
Background IP - this the IP that each company brings to the table (code, know-how, methodologies);
Background IP Derivatives - this would be any enhancement of a company's background IP developed specifically for the project covered in the joint ...
5
You don't payroll contractors, contractors are usually paid as contractors 1099. The best way to pay them is by check, international ones by wire or paypal (paypal is cheaper than wire usually).
Make sure that all your contractors have signed the right agreements and that you are reporting amounts paid to the irs.
5
I'll refrain from offering any opinion on whether such a generic, vague NDA is legally enforceable in California. I think that's a matter for an attorney familiar with Californian law.
Instead I'll focus on something else:
The email is very general and simply states that the idea is for a game.
In my opinion, this marks her as a rank amateur. I ...
5
Those things are completely unrelated.
You seem to be entertaining either doing consulting/developing for others or hiring others to develop for you (it's unclear from the question).
Agile is how you go about the development process. In case of hiring others, development process is not handled by you, so the question would make little sense, so I'll assume ...
5
NetTecture pretty much got it right, but there is a silver lining to all this that you probably forgot: your client is just as dumb and inexperienced as you.
They took an unrealistically lowball bid for the project, setting themselves up for failure.
Then they failed to manage you properly, keeping in touch and requiring status reports on a weekly basis. ...
5
A convertible note is a loan with the right to convert that loan to equity later on. One of the reasons it is used by startups and their investors:
No need to come to an agreement at a valuation - this is good because valuations can be very hard to do early on. It also removes some distraction and overhead this early to focus on other things. The ...
5
Wordpress.com makes their Terms of Service available under a Creative Commons license. It's a clear, well-written, legally useful document that should have a lot in common with the needs of any web app.
http://en.wordpress.com/tos/
You mentioned starting a web design company, though. You may be looking for a design contract, not a terms of service. The ...
5
Basically what you outlined in your question is a standard way to structure such deals. 50 percent up front and 50 percent upon completion is not uncommon. Also common is 1/3 up front, 1/3 at a significant deliverable and 1/3 upon completion. The significant deliverable here could be availability for client review the test site with at least 90 percent ...
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