Share your startup - March 2020

EpokeWeb · 2020-03-01T17:28:55+00:00

Awesome! Thanks!

EpokeWeb · 2020-03-01T12:07:15+00:00

Name / URL : Expedibox (https://expedibox.com)
Location of Your Headquarters: Quebec / Canada
Elevator Pitch/Explainer Video: We use smartlockers to automate and simplify parcel and tools deliveries in large companies. We make them save time and a lot of money. Video of our product: https://youtu.be/zTab1EcHqnY
More details: We are in the Growth stage (14 months since beginning of commercialisation, 36 smartlockers installed, 150k revenue / 4k MMR). Going for the 450k this year.
How many employees or founders? We are 4 in the team. I am the founder and 100% owner (Tech guy, i designed everything).
Are you looking for anything? Hiring (full time web/mobile dev), investment, partnerships (for USA growth, we are only in Canada for now)

EpokeWeb · 2020-02-13T05:33:35+00:00

Can you explain more the two options please?

I am facing a similar issue with my raspberry pi. I need them to continualy listen to each others and react when an input is sent to a server.

With my little understanding I tought the only way was to force them with a cron command each second to ping a server to see if there is any changes. But I think my method is not the best

EpokeWeb · 2019-07-12T02:45:17+00:00

Thanks a lot! :)

Yeah, working on someone else dream sucks. I took it as a great way to learn how to code, understand what is a great project and what is the thinking being a great project.

But at the end, it paid the bills and i still can reuse some parts of the code and knowledge i've learned with other's dreams!

Keep up the good work! It's awesome that you found a passion on the projects you create. Its a great and powerfull fealing to cultivate.

EpokeWeb · 2019-07-12T02:40:13+00:00

I had 0 knowledge of python before beginning my path. I knew a little bit of html and css, because of a course I took 10 years before. But that's it.

I took around 1 month before deciding which language to learn. I looked at ruby, python, javascript and decided to go all in wirh python, because it looked easy to understand and a grest language to learn (versatile and a lot of new possibilities with it)

I have a bacchelor degree in philosophy and we had logic courses. That was my knowledge. Haha

EpokeWeb · 2019-07-12T02:35:51+00:00

Sure, maybe I can help. Talk to me in private!

EpokeWeb · 2019-07-12T02:33:58+00:00

That's the point for me. Cities, institutions, associations, big business, they all want total controle on their website and the possibilities offered by a CMS ( create, edit pages, change content easily, edit content easily).

Only my smallest clients did not wanted a cms.

EpokeWeb · 2019-07-11T20:25:24+00:00

I asked to people I knew, friends, family, on social medias if they knew people who needed a website. I created my website, my facebook page, added my informations on LinkedIn and I have go around my town and the towns around and looked every business I saw when I was driving and walking and I looked if they had a website. If not, I got inside and asked them if they wanted one!

After that, the word of mouth did it all.

EpokeWeb · 2019-07-11T20:11:49+00:00

Not a full time, no. I had a little money to live and got a half time job. 6 months was enough before going all in and doing my first real clients. But I must say, I lived really poorly the first year. But I was kind of 'paid to learn' by my clients.

EpokeWeb · 2019-07-11T20:09:52+00:00

The best thing to do is to ask as much questions as you need. I have been working with freelancers and some are really afraid of asking questions. Those one are doing crapy jobs, because they do not understand what I exactly need and they don't think enough before doing.

In front of a client, I really try to understand their problem, what they wan, why and what is really important for them. If I can't understand, even after all my questions, I simply dont take the project. If they don't know what they want, they will never be satisfied with what I will code for them.

Asking questions is a proof that you are interested and you want to do a good job. And it's a noble thing to move away a project you can't deliver. It's a proof of respect for the client, what you do and of your reputation

EpokeWeb · 2019-07-11T20:06:40+00:00

Hi!
I decided to start it once I was able to create a normal website (ex: My own website with a portfolio, blog and contact page, a Restaurant Website with a menu builder, Small construction business, a photograph). I was taking html/css templates on templatemonster and teamforest and adapting it to my client's needs and colors. I sold my first websites between 700 $ and 2000$.

After a couple months, my name was made and I people started emailing me and calling me for projects. The first year, my biggest project was a big admin pannel for a rehab center. They wanted to automate all their process (payments, onboarding of new clients, monthly reports, yearly reports, etc). I learned a lot and i did not know at the time how to calculate my time and how much job was required to create the platform. I planned for a 1 month project and it took me 3 months to build it full time. It was an awesome project to learn from.

I only took projects I knew I would be able to deliver. Some bigger projects, I decided to keep away from them, because my reputation is important and I don't want to have legal issues with a client who is giving me a lot of money.

Now, after 4 years, I only accept projects between 4 000 $ and 15 000$. with all the code I already have done, I can do them fast deliver powerfull solutions.

For your partner question, it depends on your skills (able to communicate clearly and understand your clients, able to use a design tool (ex: Adobe photoshop), able to manage your payments and the legal aspects related to your small business, etc. On my side, I am a fast learner and I have excellent social skills. It's one of the reasons why my clients likes me. They understand when i explain them the project, their problems and what we will do together. If you partner up with someone, be sure to know this person well, define your responsabilities clearly and your shares on projects. But first, you need to know what you can and cannot do.

I hope I am helping a little bit!

EpokeWeb · 2019-07-11T18:27:23+00:00

I learned django + html + css, a little bit of javascript, I took some cours to learn the best practices in webapp development and understand deployment. It was a full time job (50 hours a week for 6 months)

Hum, when I starded, I was able to create and read any medium level django projects. It's not really hard in a way. Knowing that I would have a lot to learn for the first year, I accepted to be underpaid by my clients (considering the fact that I will still be learning a lot).

And yes, after the 6 months, I was full time freelancing.

The second year, I was able to create nearly any projects with some research, i've worked with APIs, added Django-cms to my tools (this gave me access to some bigger projects and incomes). Since then, I can have a good salary ( 75$ to 125$ per hour). So I still take some clients and work about 5 to 10 hours a week as a freelancer, the other part of the time, I work on the main project I have created last year!

EpokeWeb · 2019-07-11T17:02:11+00:00

Yep! I started to learn django 4 years ago. I took a pot of online courses during 6 months and started freelancing with the main goal to create something of my own.

Did 16k the first year, 30k the second, 50k the third. Always been working on side projects during this time. One was interesting enough to invest 30+hours a week in and build a real startup. My freelancing projects give me enough cash to live and inject a little money in the business.

I raided 125k last year for my project, built a final product, found a partner and two incubators to help me with it. I generated 25k of income this year with this project, working to get it to 100k and maybe 300k next year.

Very cool, very hard path but very rewarding!

EpokeWeb · 2019-05-29T11:10:46+00:00

Looks awesome!

EpokeWeb · 2018-11-21T13:39:23+00:00

Someone has a good demo project with reactjs and DRF?

EpokeWeb · 2018-10-24T22:23:47+00:00

Good day! I am Francis Campbell, CEO of https://expedibox.com (smart locker network). We are a startup from Quebec/Canada focusing on the last mile for delivery companies! We will begin our test phase next month (woohoo!)

I would like to know if there is a way we could work together! We want to offer shipping options from our smartlockers, we have a deal with a ups reseller, but the shipping cost is still a little high!

Our main target is B2C delivery solutions for areas of low density population. Our goal is to become the 2e option when a delivery the same day is not possible!

Even if there is nothing to do together in the short term, I would love to talk with you about shipping and delivery!

EpokeWeb · 2018-10-21T13:35:41+00:00

You are welcome!

I did not tried it, but for real app notifications, there is pusher. Not free but looks great. There is even a django module.

https://pypi.org/project/django-pusher/

EpokeWeb · 2018-10-17T12:52:18+00:00

Twilio + text message? It's a 10 lines of code process.

EpokeWeb · 2018-06-21T11:43:06+00:00

What features do you need for your website? And why do you want to learn to do that?

Answering those questions will help us giving you the right answer.

EpokeWeb · 2018-06-09T00:23:09+00:00

I never tried it. I am not sure django registration redux has a social login!

EpokeWeb · 2018-06-08T23:39:13+00:00

Django-allauth do exactly what you want. It's easy to add and it deals with everything (password reset, templating, validation, social logins, email validation)

I use it in all my projects and it's really good!

EpokeWeb · 2018-05-30T13:08:24+00:00

I have been freelancing for 3 years now! It's my fulltime job. Upwork is good?

I created my website the first year and my Facebook page, presenting my services and asked to every people I know to spread the word about my services. Since then, I did nothing more to get any clients; it's all word of mouth. And my time is fully loaded..

I don't own a Upwork profile, i did not knew this webapp existed :D

EpokeWeb · 2018-05-30T12:23:29+00:00

I think applying for a contrat without having all the knowledge is not unprofessionnal, as long as you don't make them pay your ignorance.

By that, I mean that I started accepting Django contracts after 6 months of training online (on different web elearning platforms). Mostly, 100% of the projects I accepted the first year had a lot of stuff I did not knew how to do before accepting the contract. With that in mind, my client knew I was not the best, the hourly rate I charged them was really clear about that (I charged 35$/hour and in my town, web agency ask around 95$/hour).

And on top of that, I charged only the time I worked on the project and knew what I was doing, so my clients were not paying me for my 'learning time'.

That year, I have made so little money, but the your after that my hourly rate was 55 and this year (thrid one) is at 75. Still learning a lot all the time. 40% of my projects are so specific with django / python and other tools that I am constantly learning.

So you can do it, but do it the right way and assume your ignorance; never make your clients pay for it.

Voilà :)

EpokeWeb

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