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Thread: Where the hell are all the coders?

  1. #11
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    You can contact me at raferbop@gmail.com, and you can use my email address to search for me on FB as well. My background is in accounting and finance.

    And just to show you guys how serious I am, the link below is the first design for an app that I am building to disrupt the Jamaica Yellow Pages (after they refused to sell me their database).

    http://cl.ly/5LbQ

    The design is currently being revised though, and to boot, I aslo have JM$ 500,000 location database (perceived value based on what NLA is charging), that even Foursquare would be proud off. But I can't do it myself, so I m currently trying to recruit some co-founders (anyone interested?).

    So Precision, looking forward to seeing that proposal, if it could be done by next weekend would be even better, as this would allow me to determine the necessary adjustments to be made to my budget.

  2. #12
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    Definitely love what I'm seeing here. I'm a coder and I wish I could be a part of it. But alas, I'm in college now; not so much time on my hands as I used to have.
    Rooted OnePlus 2 64GB Ed, Android 5.1.1 OxygenOS ; on teifin' AT&T's network; Rooted ASUS Transformer TF101 w/ dock, Android 5.1 KatKiss; Laptop: ASUS X550C, 2.0GHzx2, 8GB, 512GB SSD, Kubuntu 15.10;
    Facebook page: Skeleville Technology Solutions

  3. #13
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    @Rafer all I can say is start small, launch quickly, make a FB or BB App to help promote and always stay relevant. Spread costs over the length of the project instead of burning it all in the start.

    I'm not sure what you mean by "disruptive" though, because most of then not doing anything online worth disrupting - other than making money and often times the money making is offline.

  4. #14
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    I feel you Owen on the disrupting part...@Skele Drew, I will be waiting for you, but you should draw some inspiration from Mark Zukerberg and Seth Priebatsch, who both started their companies as undergrads (but ignore the dropping out of college part). But I definitely know how difficult it can be, but its doable to study full-time, and still make a meaningful contribution to a side project.

    @Owen...one of the major mistakes that local entrepreneurs make is not putting the necessary effort into building the right team; which is actually the most important component in building a successful business. So what happens in most cases is that a local web start-up with a founder with no coding skills pays a coder some money upfront to develop an app. On completion, the app pretty much remains in its original form from inception, unless the owner pays the coder additional monies to make adjustments. This model is not sustainable, as all web apps have to be very agile, and be able to adjust rapidly to changes in the economy and consumer behavior. Consequently, thats why I cannot launch as quickly as I would like, because I do not have a team behind me right now to build a great product.

    So again...who is interested?

  5. #15
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    On completion? you mean - IF it reachs completes.

    Gaining a quality team in Jamaica is tricky, if you know anything about programmers they are incredibly lazy and busy at the same time, which is probably why you have not gotten a team yet. I would suggest that if you have the time you hire junior programmers on a part-time who are enthusiastic and try to train them up into the team that you want.

  6. #16
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    Owen, you may getting some hate mail later for that. But the good thing is that your calling as it is, and no one can argue with you on that.

    I have spent some amount of money on freelancers on websites like elance.com, freelancer.com and rent-a-coder. But I realized from companies such as Twitter, Facebook and Quora, that you cannot outsource development, but the talent has to be sitting right next to you.

    BTW, where can I find junior coders. Precision is putting together something that may be similar to Tech Crunch's Disrupt Hackathon. Are you interested?

  7. #17
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    I won't be getting any hate mail. Junior programmers are easy to find, you can troll, utech or uwi or any of the classified on techj or post a ad in the gleaner. Interviewing people to find the characteristics that match the kinda team you would like is 80% of the work.
    Basically anybody who has had some formal programming training and some expirence with SQL could work but your miles may vary.

    I myself am both busy and lazy but send me a email if you need a consultant, i may need some new 14s.

  8. #18
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    It's tough to find co-founders.

    You might want to check out Kingston Beta

    http://kingstonbeta.com/2011/03/17/c...an-developers/

  9. #19
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    I am liking this discussion so far and understand the position Rafer has taken on this issue. Me i know nothing about programming but find myself very fortunate by having relatives that do and I can only implore them to explore the limits. On that note I can say we have been exploring several avenues and have several things in the pipe line which I will be privileged to speak about at a later date.

    I also agree that locally there is immense talent in Jamaica but most if not all are content with just holding a cubicle space but I guess that may be for financial reasons.
    If one looks at the state of affairs on the technology front, we are all faced with the ever increasing need to accommodate technology into our daily existence and this is no fault of ours but the natural course of life.

    There is no reason why we as Jamaicans can't make an impression in this arena too. Look........i have seen that whatever Jamaicans put their efforts into they have succeeded so why would being a player in this field be any different.

    Of the many areas "The last time I checked the fastest human alive was Jamaican".
    my location 10.10.10.10 subnet ?

  10. #20
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    how disruptive? is it bill gating?
    I recently heard the concept of an application that somebody wanted so badly to be built. the application solved a problem that I would have overlooked every other day if someone did not bring it to my attention.

    there are many reasons why i could not see the problem but maybe this is the answer to this thread. I dont know what people want nor can I put it into actuality for them. i can only tell whether the problem is worth solving and it was.
    1337

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