All Things Cahill

So you’ve got the basics set, having a general plan ready to go (you did read the first article in this series, right?).  Now it’s time to nail down another important aspect of your little project: the community team.  Again, we’re going to have some choices to make, and each one comes with it’s own set of baggage.

• Partner – give up equity in your project and pay the team member with an ownership stake.  This helps to properly motivate team members in the beginning, but to keep them involved, your going to need to see some financial success fairly quickly (but that’s a good thing, right?).
• Hire – The dreaded FTE, which is something a new and unproven business model should avoid at all costs.  You’ll know when its time to get serious and hire people, but pre-launch isn’t the time.
• Contract – As Charlie Sheen notably said about call girls, “I don’t pay them for the sex, I pay them so they will go home after the sex.” This is the reason I like contract work or freelancers for building sites initially.  The project is scoped, the project is built and eventually, they go home.  No long term commitments, no nasty divorces.
• Outsource/Third Party – Hire a company or freelancer for a specific task or area of expertise.   
• Barter – Yup, you can trade your skills for those of other professionals.  The good news is that no cash has to change hands.  The bad news is that you’re going to be doing work for someone else, for free…
• Intern – There are folks out there who will want to become involved in your site, and they’ll be willing to help, and they’ll do it for free.   Not all of them will work out, but you’ll find over time that looking inwards to a community for help is a great way to make things happen.

You should have a good idea from your business plan where the major areas of work are going to be.  Let’s generally assume: