If you are a talented internet software engineer, with deep experience working on web sites and databases looking for a ground floor opportunity in a startup, I want to talk with you!
I am a partner with a company that is setting up a network of auto service shops that pay referral fees for customers who come through our service. We generate the majority of our customers by signing up non-profits to receive donations every time one of their supporters get their cars serviced at a member shop. We charge the shops 5% of the gross bill for every customer we send them, and we give the charities 3%. The beauty of this is that the charities do all the hard work of marketing our service (i.e. telling anyone and everyone to get their cars repaired at our member shops), keeping our costs super low.
Our business model is self-financing , and will start generating revenue within months. This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky dream that hopes for a pay-off way in the future. Because we will be generating cash soon, and because our technology and marketing needs are modest, we are confident we can be self-financing, and will not need to give away big chunks of equity to investors.
We are currently starting off by getting this business (www.referredautorepairs.com) running in British Columbia. Once we are fully running there we plan on taking it across North America by the end of the 2010.
The best part is that we are seeing a simply PHENOMENAL demand for this. Charities are almost beating down our door asking to participate, and a LOT of auto repair shops are really hurting, making them eager to sign up. The worse the economy gets, the better it is for us as charities get more desperate for new funding sources, and service shops look for new ways to find customers.
The downside is that we are very cash poor right now, and really can’t afford to pay a CTO anything at the moment. Our back-end is our weakest link, and our reliance on off-shore developers is just taking far too long. We are currently a business of salesmen and marketers, but lack the technical skill to make the back-end hum smoothly.
This is the chance of a life-time for any web developer who is able to sustain themselves for a few months while putting in a lot of sweat equity into putting the finishing touches on this venture into place. We already have a lot of the back-end built (using the LAMP stack), and it won’t take a lot to get the very basics working. As soon as we have a working system to accept the on-line customer shop bookings, we will have a huge pipeline of PAYING customers to use it.
Most of the people in this company are in British Columbia and Seattle, but we don’t mind working with people who live elsewhere in North America. Most of our work is virtual anyway.
If this sounds interesting, just let me know and I would be happy to talk with you and share details.
