Seeking dev (full stack) co-founder, web3 focused startup
About the startup (Alien Star Cloud)
▪ Helping people to express their identity visually, think social banners, avatars, AR graphics, etc (with a bigger picture vision).
▪ Operating for 9 months, incorporated this year.
▪ Two co-founders, I'm in Australia and lead designer in Germany.
▪ Started doing things that don't scale with some no-code tools and made some early revenue.
▪ Seeing much larger potential.
▪ Raised a small pre-seed round (not enough for salaries) at a valuation of A$1.2M pre-money.
▪ Close to dropping an NFT collection to raise additional funding.
▪ Web3 focused, but not exclusively, we see opportunities for the product we will build across a wider spectrum of use cases.
About me
Third time startup founder. The first of which I worked on for 6 years (after hours). We outsourced development of our web app until I built our second iteration of the platform myself using no-code tools.
I have the skills to work with no-code tools to assist with some basic automation, but lacking those necessary to develop the product we need to scale what we are doing. My role as co-founder sees me wearing many hats, developing our website (WordPress), marketing / community building, product manager, etc.
What we are looking for
A full stack developer with experience in JS and ideally React (though another framework may be fine). I've found a couple of SDKs which should help us stand up an MVP faster than building from scratch as the app will initially be a single page graphic design tool, not unlike a simplified version of Canva (see mock-up UI attached to this post).
Some exposure to web3 tooling / SDKs may be helpful, but not essential if you can learn on the go (would just be starting with token authentication to unlock the web app, no full blown DApp or smart contract needed).
You would need to be available to work on an equity-only basis initially (effectively joining us as a late-coming co-founder), part-time would be ok to start (20+ hours/week), but our aim is to develop a full-time team and pay salaries once it is financially viable either through revenue generated or further capital raised.
Website: https://alienstar.cloud
If it sounds like it may be a fit and you have questions or you'd like to learn more, send me an email ([email protected]), reach out by Twitter DM (https://twitter.com/josephskewes), or comment below.
Hi @josephs! Would you be open to discuss hiring a dedicated remote development team for this project? We've worked with quite a few web3 focused startups and could really be helpful, I think.
Thanks for the interest, but no -- we are looking to develop the product within the company.
No offense, but I do not believe that your raised any money. Manually creating 3d designs for people for their avatars is a design firm not a web3 startup. Just my 2 cents after viewing your website. Validate your business model. Get 100 users etc.
Your username suits 😉
It's all good. Happy to show relevant people the bank deposits from investors.
We have validated our business model with the first 50+ paying customers, including repeat business. Manually creating the graphics was our 'doing things that don't scale' and now we are looking to build a product around it.
We aren't what I would consider a web3 native product, which is why I wrote "web3 focused". Though we do have an NFT collection on the way which will tie into gating our product.
tapflow.app can be your tech co-founder!
Appreciate the suggestion, but we want the expertise and development in house.
You forgot the most important part: how much equity?
Where did you raise money? I built my own web3/crypto research platform, always thought of raising money. I don't understand how people are locking down $1m+ pre revenue.
Thanks for the interest 🙂
Re equity: "It depends"
I know that's a bit of a cop out, but it depends on what the co-founder brings in terms of experience and skills, the hours they can commit, over what period of time they want vesting to occur (prepared to offer a shorter vesting period than existing co-founders). We may also be able to offer some small stipend from the money we raised.
It's likely to be ~10%, but we are open to negotiation. It could also be less if our NFT drop in the coming 1-2 months goes really well and we end up cashed up to pay a salary.
This isn't a back of napkin idea, we built a no-code MVP, validated the idea with some early revenue, convinced investors of the plan, and now we are looking for a developer to join us and build something we can scale.
Re raise: We didn't raise $1m+, we raised at a valuation of that. Raised what we did through my network and early customers of the business.
Thanks for the clarification! Makes sense RE equity based on value. :) apologies on misunderstanding of the raise.