Re-reading my post about saying no got me thinking about the other reasons we’ve turned down work. It’s hard getting work in the first place and doubly hard turning it down, but sometimes you just have to say no.

One big one that comes to mind is we quoted to do some work for a company we’ve had a long term working relationship with. A small company, they were unfortunately facing the loss of a key member of staff in the final few months of development of a key project already well overdue. A update to a project we’d worked with before, so we were familiar with the architecture, team and almost every aspect of the project.

We made quoted a day rate at the low end of the scale and offered to agree fixed times for each bit of development, insulating them from any estimate errors by delivering that iteration for the quoted price before undertaking the next. We agreed to put the work we were quoting on first, push our own development schedule back, not take on other work and offer any time the needed to get their project released.

I got the very distinct impression they wanted the work done cheap from a discussion with the technical lead for the project. I tried to mitigate any problems by sending an email detailing our costs and how they break down from developers salaries, equipment costs and the meagre profit margins. I also made it clear that we were uniquely qualified for the work, due to our extensive working history directly with the project.

The response was disappointing, they were willing to pay about half the rate we quoted. I had a brief discussion with the technical lead, who was as disappointed as us with the reaction, but it was clear there was going to be no middle ground. The offer was never even going to come up enough.

We gave up in the end - a shame really, like any small business we could have used the money. It was an issue of value. Despite all the positives, the experience, the fact that there was nobody else who could have hit the ground running like us and our prior working relationships they weren’t willing to pay what we consider a very reasonable price. They effectively wanted work done for less cost to them than it would have cost to hire a member of staff, with none of the security or benefits. A short term contract under terms worse that a job I’d been offered months prior.

In the end they had to give the member of staff who had planned to leave a significant pay rise to entice them to stay, hired another, less experienced developer who needed more managing and training and still haven’t delivered the project, months later.

For us, and for anyone else considering taking work at less than a market rate, it’s a tough choice. Though we could afford to survive without the work, it would have been nice to have the money in the bank. There is also always the potential that work can lead to more work, however do you want cut rate work leading to more of the same? It’s all too easy for it to set the tone of a working relationship and an expectation that you will continue to work for the low rate. Also the whole time you’re servicing the contract you’re not getting new clients or doing other more lucrative work. As a consultant if you’re not saving for a raining day you’re taking a huge risk, especially if things get a bit lean for a few weeks or months.

From time to time this blog will reflect a decision we take as a company, this is one of those times. We’re currently working on a product called Citrus, a better way for agents to sell property online because frankly existing stuff sucks, scheduled for launch in the autumn.

One of the key decisions we’ve taken is not to implement everything on our feature list. We’d rather build half an app than a half assed one. As flippant as that sounds, it’s true- we could spend years analysing all the competition, ensure that we’ve not only bested them at the key features we know we need to implement, but at everything else as well and some day in the distant future launch a product. Or we can look at our feature list, choose the killer features we know our application needs to have to achieve everything 80% of our potential customers need from our app and forget the rest.

We’ve chosen the latter. It’s going to help us get to market faster, it’s going to help us get customers quicker and it will allow our customers actual use of the product drive our vision for it- not some paper list. Also if we’re totally wrong in assumption that a good product can gain traction in a poor market, we know and can move on sooner.

UPDATED: I renamed the title for consistency - we refer to the stage of development as either both the Minimum Launch Feature-set or the Minimum Stable Feature-set internally - the latter being the best really since it’s useful both for an initial launch and for discussing post launch updates.

By all accounts the property market is in free fall and we’re taking the possibly bold decision to launch a product with estate agents as our primary market.

The product is called Citrus and it’s better way for agents to sell property online because frankly the existing solutions are all pretty lame. We got here through our work with a good friend Colin and his spanish property business Spirit of Granada. In developing the website for his business we realised that the existing solutions weren’t easy for a small company or sole trader to work with, they involved lengthy contract terms, high costs and confusing feature sets and options. We want to change all that and think that our insider knowledge of how these smaller agents operate will allow us to build an application for the market that doesn’t suck.

Stay tuned to find out.

A friend of mine, Duncan is starting a new business and needs a website. He’s importing high end mountain bike components and I’m pretty excited about it. I know I shouldn’t be planning to spend money on a new bike frame - I should be saving it for important family things, but the frames look great, anyway I digress.

Duncan needs a website to promote the business and knowing us, we were an obvious choice. A few weeks ago he called me to chat about it and we arranged a meeting. He’s done a great job of setting the ground work, has taken some great action shots of the Zambi frames with a pro phtographer. All he needed was a great site to help him sell.

Simon [goroam cofounder] and I had a discussion about where we were going, what we wanted to do and how we wanted to get there. Our conclusion was: we’re too busy to take on a the website in the next couple of weeks and give it our full attention.

sorry duncan

So we met up, bought him lunch and told Duncan straight that we were too busy. We talked about alternatives and suggested working with logoworks.I didn’t like to dissapoint him by not taking on the work - but I think long term it would have been more disapointing all around if we had. Instead I’ve offered to give him a hand with any helpful advice he needs to get going and we opened the possibility of later working together to develop and promote both his website and online marketing strategies once the initial design work was done.

It’s hard to say no to work, and money when you’re a small company, but sometimes it’s for the best. We wouldn’t have been able to do as good a job as either we or Duncan wants if we did agree to take the work, and we wouldn’t have been able to deliver it in a timely fashion.

check him out

Duncan has already spoken to another designer and should get the site he wants soon. When it does go live, and if you’re looking for top of the line mtb gear give them a few days to sort the site out then check it out, All Mountain Imports