Show HN: Bonsai (YC W16) – bulletproof contracts and payments for freelancers (opens in new tab)

Hey everyone, one of the Bonsai co-founders here.

We're former freelancers who realized there's way more to freelancing than good design, development, photography etc.

Freelancing is a business and many freelancers lack the interest / skills to create effective contracts, manage cash flow properly, etc.

Our first two products are contracts & payments. We had a Stanford lawyer who writes novels on the side draft solid, plain English contract templates. We built a simple, helpful mad-libs style workflow to create the contracts. And finally, we have invoices that can be automatically generated and sent from those contracts.

Our initial users are getting paid about two weeks faster than they were before Bonsai.

Would love to hear what you guys think and answer any questions you have about Bonsai or the freelancing business in general.

Edit: Also, in TC: http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/22/bonsai-wants-to-be-the-free...

The app itself looks really nice, but I'm unconvinced this will be useful in practice. The number of times our company has sent a contract and had it accepted without revisions is literally 0, and I see no way to customize the terms of the agreement beyond the pre-filled fields.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: if this is intended to be a tool for generating, signing, and managing contracts there must be more flexibility in actually drafting the contract language. If it's supposed to be a tool for invoicing clients, I see no way to actually invoice for contracts provided by a third-party.

If I'm reading the pricing copy correctly, the contracts themselves are free and invoicing service charges $1 per invoice.

Is it possible to be profitable (in a successful startup sense, not casual/bootstrapped/side project sense) at that low level? Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see a lot of room for revenue growth here. I'd figure that the average freelancer as a handful of contracts a year so you're looking at $10-20/year per customer.

I'm not saying the idea itself isn't good. Anybody that's freelanced or done corporate invoicing knows the annoyingness of "We'll pay you within 30 days of deciding to pay you"[1]. Solving that problem would benefit a lot of freelancers. I just don't see this being a sustainable solution in the form that's being presented.

[1]: Quote is shamelessly stolen from a patio11 comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076590

Edited to add link to quoted comment

bulletproof + free = ?

what happens when the contract is contested? and what if you lose?

If you support 2checkout I would be able to use it in Bolivia, and many other latinamerica developers will also be able too.

Hiring freelancer for most international clients is more appealing if they are from other countries than USA, Canada an UK, for several reasons: like price, diversity, time availability, work culture etc.

... I'm sensing that someone will say that hiring freelancers from USA(or the first world country of your choice) has more advantages. The fact is that most of the long lasting freelance market is outside USA

I like this idea, and would probably use it. I only seem to be able to select "United States" (and subsequently choose a state) in the contract, though. Are there any plans to open it up to other countries? I see you can already choose GBP as a payment currency, for example, but not choose the UK as my location.

Awesome, I'm looking into becoming a freelancer next year and will definitely try bonsai. Thanks and good luck.

Have you built NDA, I Assignment, etc into these contracts?

Lots of people use Upwork for contracting, but would still like to send a contract with the right legal wording that they can sign.

Siiiick!

Any chance you'll handle tax remittances? Contractor taxes (esp) in Canada are kind of a quagmire.

I like the concept, but what exactly about this makes it "13 days faster" or gives me "3x fewer late payments" ? Is this result just for non-enterprise contracts? People new to freelancing? I don't understand how you can make that claim, and it really rubs me the wrong way that you aren't clear about it.

I'm having trouble figuring out if this is a product that would benefit me. I'm a contractor / freelancer. When I take on a client, I receive a PSA with statement of work, and typically get paid on a Net 30 terms with Bill.com, mailed check, or direct deposit (however the client wants to pay me) managed with something like Quickbooks I'm guessing. The contracts are all very similar. Cash flow is definitely tricky because Net 30 is a pain. And invoicing is pretty easy. I use On The Job, create my pdf invoice, and send that to accounts payable on the first of the month.

  - Is this product for a certain type of contractor? Size client?
  - How does the flow work using your product?
  - Is my use outside of the norm of your typical customers?
  - What is different about your contracts that make them 'bulletproof'?

Looks really good, thanks for sharing.

Created a sample contract, nice and easy.

Are the contracts the same for US and UK? I've only created a sample UK one, but notice that you use the US spelling for 'license' as opposed to 'licence'.

Is there an option to export archived contracts?

Anyways, I'll likely be using this. Good luck with it.

Just completed my first contract/charge via @bonsai, I'm in love to say the least. Makes creating a contract and getting clients setup for billing a snap

Seems neat, commenting for later in case I decide to start taking up more freelance again.