gearoidoc

Sorry, you're a million miles off the mark.

The cover letter is your chance to explain Why you want to apply and Why you'd be a good fit.

The resume explains Who you are (professionally).

The Why is just as (and sometimes more) important than the Who.

Thank you - purchased!

> OK, we need to qualify what is meant by 'product'. I'm not talking about a palette swapped iteration on an existing product. I'm talking about something new that the market hasn't yet quite seen before. The sort of product Silicon Valley funds.

Something never seen before like Snapchat? Or something never seen before like Hyperloop? If its the latter then clearly you're correct in your assessment but most startups ambitions fall much closer to the former.

Your post here has got some valid points but you've moved away from the very specific "minimum $1m for a marketable product" to some very vague generalities.

> Even the palette-swaps generally cost anywhere from a quarter to half a million dollars to do properly

"Properly" is subjective. I could have a Snapchat clone developed easily for $100k - probably considerably less - lets just say iOS App and corresponding web app & server architecture. With the exception that it clearly wouldn't be able to handle the load Snapchat handles - but certainly enough to be marketable.

> which is really why it seems to you that a million bucks is an outlandishly huge number.

I never said a million dollars is a large number. I know how easy it is to blow through such an amount.

My argument was you don't need that amount to create a marketable product - whether you're a developer or not.

Perhaps In SV, you may be correct but most people do not live in SV.

The reason I feel so strongly about this is that your sentiment is a very dangerous one to propagate to new or would-be startup founders. Based on the number of downvotes I've received for disagreeing with your comment, it would seem that people believe you need $1m in the bank before you can go to market.

That's a very good way of making sure some entrepreneurs never bother trying.

> Generally you double an engineer's salary to arrive at the total cost to the firm of retaining their services.

It's a fair point thought I do think 1-3 engineers is still plenty for "most" startup products to get to MVP (not universal but general rule of thumb).

> You also need to realize just how new and unproven Lean Startup ideas are in the larger context of business. In that world, a million is just getting started. Most software products in the world took much much more than a million dollars to make. You have to pay the project managers, creative team, etc etc.

Established (and assumedly) revenue generating software is not the topic of the discussion. The comment I was referring to was that $1m is needed to make a marketable product. Its a bogus claim.

> Engineering, product design, graphic design (these are not the same), marketing, and sales are all needed in various proportions, depending on the product, to make a "marketable product."

I'm well aware. I've done this many times.

> Between all of those roles you could easily chew up $1million in 1 year

You could easily chewup $100 million too. Does that mean we should go ahead and say we can't make a marketable product for $100m? Of course not. Constraints are a fact of life - whether that be time/money/whatever. The challenge is getting to market given the resources at your disposal.

> standard Silicon Valley compensation

The business in question is based is OR. Also, and I'm going to sound facetious here but I'm really not trying to be, most businesses are not based in SV.

Same thing.

Are you telling me that to "make a marketable product" you would need to pay 10 engineers $100k for a year?

Hell, just hire 5 engineers at $100k a year (which is expensive) and that still leaves you with a decent budget for marketing/sales/running costs.

Certainly enough to make a marketable product.

It's blatantly untrue no matter what way you cut it.

"You really need about a million dollars to make a marketable product."

wat?

There are countless examples which disproves this (eg. Basecamp)

Isn't that exactly what P2P/IAP is?

Depends on what you define as 'much money'.

I spent 3 months building Hipster CEO and its made me approx $40-45k (as well as leading to other projects). Not a bad return for 3 months work.

Thank you. If more people thought along the same lines as you then our industry would be a much better place.

Experienced first hand when I said on a FB Messenger call that I was considering buying a Roomba.

Guess what was advertised in my feed later that day?

Note: I hadn't so much as googled Roombas before this - it was a totally off hand remark during a call.

"This group feels that it is vulgar and crass to even mention money or economics in the context of art or pure academics" - I'm not sure where you're gleaning that from - my point was there was/still is a social contract in place that tells young people that graduating from a third level institution will be a signifier of above average intelligence and/or work ethic thus leading to at least better than working class job.

Perhaps you had the foresight (or your parents did) to see that such qualifications would drastically decrease in social value. Others didn't. Then again, maybe you just happen to work in tech and lack empathy for those who didn't luck out in their chosen industry.

Or, I dunno, maybe it makes for an enjoyable read.