Welcome to the Anti-Pitch

Wed 22 Apr
2009

Posted at 8:19 AM by Max Cameron in Tech Start-Up 101

We're sick and tired of hack developers ripping off naive clients. And while I'm completely disgusted by some of the horror-stories I've heard lately, clients keep asking the wrong questions. As real developers, it's our responsibility to make the tough decision to speak the truth. This is an example of what we call the anti-pitch, and while it might cost us a few contracts, who cares: we do things the right way.

We believe the traditional way a technology company pitches a web project to a client is fundamentally flawed. Clients want two things from a developer; value and quality - but they don't know how to get it. Clients usually measure these two factors by looking at price and portfolio. Herein lies the problem: price-point and portfolios are a terrible way to measure value and quality.

We've been working on a concept that we call the anti-pitch. This is our effort to break down the typical client benchmarks for value and quality, in hope of changing the culture and practice of pitching web projects. We were recently contacted by a potential client who had just ended a nightmare relationship with a "developer" who won them over with a low price and a portfolio flush with pretty websites. I should add that this isn't a unique occurrence - we get calls like this quite frequently.

After our initial conversation, we received a request for, you guessed it, a portfolio.

I want to share my response with the community. I hope you enjoy this small part of what we like to call the anti-pitch.

Hi Stephanie, (Name is not real)

Thanks for asking that question, it's one that we get a lot. As much as I want to send you back a few URL's, we feel that presenting websites as a portfolio dangerously misleads prospective clients. This is, after all, part of what got you into the situation you are in now. The work we specialize in doing is "hidden," and not visible (or understandable) to people without web development experience. We could show you many sites that we have developed, but you would be making a decision based on the visual designs, which are usually created by a third-party.

In order to properly evaluate our skills and capabilities, we urge you to explore two options:

Ask us for references who can attest to our level of professionalism, attention to detail, customer service, client satisfaction, and website durability.
If you have access to a coder, we will be happy to point you towards our public code repository, which contains all of the code we have contributed to the technology community for public use.

We hope you understand why this measure is intended to protect you, and the stakeholders associated with your project.

All the best,

Max

Thoughts? Let me know what you think anytime.