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Both had their own consulting businesses/clients and were working on this project around their obligations there.
Wasn't ideal, but they were great programmers and I really wanted them to be involve (they were friends, local, one was a musician I had worked with - other such reasons). But in the past number of months both have had serious illnesses impact someone close to them.
In part due to those events we have missed numerous deadlines and opportunities. One of the guys is now out of the country dealing with his situation, and the other is quite strapped for time for the foreseeable future. To be honest from the day we launched things didn’t go to plan. We launched around lunch one day, that night my wife told me she was pregnant with our first child; that’ll test any bootstrapping plan right there!
We launched a MVP last year and got a pretty good response for a) what it was and b) our marketing - which was fairly limited to blogging and Twitter really. A decent number of blogs and sites covered us including Hypebot and even Billboard did a small write up (we had good local mainstream coverage as well). We had users sign up in Canada (where we're based), the U.S. and U.K.
And the site wasn’t really that great, so we were happy. Then via being live we discovered some issues with the site that needed to be addressed. And decided we would revamp a good chunk of it based on feedback and knowing what our focus would be going forward.
So we started overhauling the site, including a complete visual redesign. And we have yet to launch this.
I have artists approaching me to work with them, others I am waiting to approach, a solid marketing plan that puts the focus on musicians and all the contacts required to make this work [self employed in music industry for past 7 years]. If we hit certain usage numbers, I have a sponsorship plan that should bring in some money as well. There's only a few hundred Twitter followers right now but I can build from there easily (my own account has a couple thousand - many of whom are musicians/bands).
User/revenue numbers aren't great - but I also have not been promoting the site actively due to the issues noted.
I just need a fully working site and I know I can get this to a point that it creates some type of worthwhile return for those involved (that could be as little as a really good salary for the time committed).
FYI: Not linking to the site because a) not that great/happy with what is live now and b) rather show you the redesign in progress.
I am a big believer in the 37signals way of doing things, bootstrapping et al. Thus the offer is equity and up to 50% (vested) is available for the right programmer(s)/pair. Ideally I would like more than one so if something happens to them I am not back in this position. But the right person can convince me otherwise.
Site is built in Rails and jquery.
Besides being able to commit adequate time, if you have any start-up experience and are a musician as well those would be nice bonuses to bring to the table. Now while you do not have to be a musician yourself, you have to definitely like music and believe that musicians deserve the majority of the rewards for the work they create.
Our focus is strictly on the musicians (which addresses one of our initial mis-steps starting with the focus on fans). Design/development decisions run through a filter: does/can this help musicians? Mission = more money to more musicians
One of the programmers is working on cleaning up the code and documenting the development environment now. He estimated that a experienced pair of programmers could have the redesign+ finished in less than a month. That's with the next round of developments added beyond where we are now.
Beyond that I would be looking for troubleshooting and some ongoing development - I can clearly lay out some key needs in a roadmap once on board so you have a very clear idea of what is expected. Again keeping 37signals in mind, the idea is to keep the service very focused.
While some new features are certain to pop up, ongoing one key will be automating the system as much as possible to help musicians save time and make better use of the service. One example of automating the service might be a feature that tracked whether or not bands took the time to thank supporters and created a to do/to email list of donors still in need of thanks.
The biggest question mark for development is the fan side of things.
If you would like more information I would prefer answer more detailed questions via email info at aquietrevolution com or we can chat on Skype a.quiet.revolution
Besides your questions, it’d be great if you could share a bit of background on yourself and what interests you about this.
Thanks for reading.
