Outsource your technical cofounder

Here's how to amplify your skills and create a psuedo co-founder using offshore talent. Maintain control of your software and free yourself from managing software dev teams. Use this approach to find talent with integrity and ability. Extend your runway or rapidly develop more features to enhance your customer discovery capabilities.

Feature development through social marketing material

Build data-based graphs for social media postings, along with the code to integrate into the application.

This gives you two benefits: 1. Content for marketing posts based on your actual user data. 2. Identification of software talent for integration of features into your application. The approach below focuses on upwork.com, but you can use any number of asymmetrical cost platforms.

Task content

  Create a new post. 
  Choose short term / part time work.  -> Continue
    Title: Dashboard from csv.
  Job category: scripting and automation -> Continue 
  Choose the skills: Dashboard Scripting Data Visualization PDF HTML
  Choose small project, less than 1 month. 
  Intermediate experience
  Not part time to full time hire (contract only)

  Location: Worldwide
  Select eastern european countires: 
  Bulgaria
  Poland
  Serbia
  Slovakia
  Slovenia
  Ukraine

  Yes, you want it from much lower to much higher than US rates. The
  next step will give you options.  Choose 5-40 hours for the rate.  How
  is this fair? 

  As of Mar 2023, software devleopment rates nationwide are:
  US: 43$/hr
  Bulgaria: 50
  Poland    40 
  Serbia    24
  Slovakia: 19
  Slovenia: 75
  Ukrains:  32

  For a technical cofounder these rates are the equivalent of 200-400 per hour. 

  Paste the job description: 
    Title: Dashboard from csv.
    Your creation of a dashboard style one page report in pdf generated from the following data.

    We also want the code used to create the report. 

    Some examples of content that could be in the report: 
      Total number of users. 
      Users by domain. 
      Total number of paying customers. 
      Total number of free trial users.
      Total number of trial expired users.
      Total number of cancelled users.
      Average time since login. 


  To reiterate, we would like a one-page PDF report that uses the data
  linked in the csv below. The code used to generate the report is
  required as well. For example, you might use weasyprint in python
  along with some hand specified html markup. This or any other
  technology you choose to generate the report is fine, with the
  following limitations: 
  1. Free, open source. 
  2. Single line execution to generate the report.

  Can you do this? If so, please respond with what your plan and how
  long it will take you to complete.

  Add an attachment that is an export of your current user list.
  Click Post job.
  Choose 'hire a single freelancer'.
  Fill our your company profile if not already done so.

Talent selection

    If you want to selectively invite candidates to the job, use the
    following rules: 

    Search for candidates:
    Search for a keyword from the job description, such as "python dashboard"
    Set the filters to the following settings:
    Earned amount: 1K+
    Job success: 90%+
    Hourly rate: $10 and below
    Hourse billed: 100+
    English Level: If this is required, use the tests, not the self-descriptions. 
    The self-descriptions of native, fluent, etc. are not accurate.

    Freelancer type: Independent freelancer

    Location: Desired geography

Expectations

    Approximately 24 hours later, you should have at least 15 responses. 

    Open oldest proposal first. 

    Your hiring candidates based on screen or qualification.
    Did they read the post or was it a form response? 
    Read and tailored reply -> shortlist
    Form response -> do nothing

    Examples below of form responses include the following examples: 
    1. No indications they read the post whatsoever.
    2. They at least read the post, and copied and pasted the requirements into their form response. 

Example Form 1 Example Form 2

 
    Response below is from an individual which is really a firm.

    This is what you do not want as you will be managing the team
    yourself. You want to train yourself to create tiny technical tasks
    that can be executed quickly at tiny cost and integrated into your
    product, achieving technical cofounder speed.

Example Bad result firm

    Examples below of good responses: 

    This is the outstanding level that typically arrives from one of the
    candidates, where they essentially do most of the work requested and
    post it as part of their response: 

Example Good_result_1 Example Good_result_1 Example Good_result_1 Example Good_result_1

    Review the shortlist entries and hire. Remember the goal here is not
    perfect work, the goal is identification of talent and integrity.

Follow up

   +---------------------+
   |Go to upwork.com     |
   |Click messages       |<---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
   |Click oldest message |                                                                            |
   +---------------------+                                                                            |
             |                                                                                        |
             |                                                                                        |
             v                                                                                        |
   +---------------------+                                                                            |
   |Review work products |                                                                            |
   +---------------------+                                                                            |
             |                                                                                        |
             v                                                                                        |
         *********                   *********              *********                                 |
       **         **               **         **          **         **         +---------------+     |
     ** Do the work **  NO       **  Does the   ** YES  **  Did you    ** YES   |Apologize, and |     |
     *    products   *---------->*  contractor   *----->*  communicate  *------>|post the fixed |     |
     **   meet the  **           ** have quest.?**      **  badly?     **       |communication. |     |
       **  spec?  **               **         **          **         **         +---------------+     |
         *********                   *********              *********                                 |
            |                            |                      |               +-----------------+   |
            |               +------------+                      |        NO     |Rephrase the task|   |
            |               |                                   +-------------> |requirements     |   |
            |               |                                                   +-----------------+   |
            |               v                                                           |             |
            |       +-----------------+                                                 v             |
            |       |Degrade contractor                                         +------------------+  |
            |       |assesment        |                                         |Degrade contractor| -+
            |       +-----------------+                                         |assesment         |
            v                                                                   +------------------+
         +--------------------+
         | Improve contractor |
         | assesment          |
         +--------------------+
            |
            |
            v
         *********
       **         **
     ** Is the work **  NO
     *   complete?   *------
     **             **
       **         **
         *********
            |
            |
            v                       *********                                              *********
    +-----------------+           **         **        +--------------------+            **         **
    | Click Jobs      |         **   Did they  ** YES  | Improve contractor |          **  Pay        **
    | Click job title |-------->*  stay within  *----->| assesment          |--------->*  contractor   *
    | View contract   |         ** time budget?**      +--------------------+          **             **
    +-----------------+           **         **                                          **         **
                                    *********                                              *********
                                        |        NO     +------------------+
                                        +-------------->|Degrade contractor|
                                                        |assesment         |
                                                        +------------------+

Evaluation

    Make sure the instructions can be followed to run the report
    generation tool as required in the job posting.    

Integration

    Now that you have identified some talent to work with, send messages
    like that shown below. Make sure to send these directly to them, and
    not to everyone on upwork.

    "We'd love to integrate the dashboard creation into our main project.
    Can I send you some requirements and see what you think? Thanks."