cvinson

Bandzoogle | Front end designer | REMOTE | $60k-$100k

Bandzoogle builds tools that help bands succeed online. Our app powers tens of thousands of artist websites and helps them make a living by selling their music and growing their fan base. We've been "bootstrapped, profitable, and proud" since 2003 and are growing fast.

We're looking for a "designer who can code". Someone as adept in Photoshop and Sketch as they are in HTML/CSS. In this role, you'll be responsible for the look and feel of 30k musician websites.

Besides directly empowering musicians, this role offers:

- A fast paced startup atmosphere, with the stability of an established (14 year old!), profitable company;

- A family-friendly schedule — no overtime or weekends, flexible work hours;

- 100% health insurance coverage for US and Canadian employees;

- Reimbursement of home office expenses, computer, and coworking spaces;

- Time and resources for learning, including reimbursement of books and conferences;

- Yearly meet-ups in fun locations, family included!

More info: https://bandzoogle.com/jobs

This is great info thanks.

The firm's suggestion was "comply or be at serious risk" Because it adds a ton of filing overhead, it seems to be the most beneficial option for them. That's why I thought to post here.

I'll reach out to you directly, if you are available to discuss this further.

Aside from all the technical questions, don't underestimate the importance of knowing about the company you are applying to.

I've hired several developers over the last 10 years, and by the final round, there are often candidates with similar technical ability. The applicant that really understands the company they are applying to work for (the current state of their app, their competition, the direction you think they may need to go) will have an edge.

I live here, and started the company here. It is massively difficult to move the company without incurring the ire of the tax authorities. Moving was my first response to this situation, but lawyers and accountants have advised against it.

Very. We post multiple times a day on social media, create videos, do webinars, and long-form eBooks. Most of our staff are in the US, and don't speak french. Of our ~25,000 customers, 10 are in Quebec.

As you can imagine, hiring a full time french speaker just doesn't make sense. So, we have to "fire" our Quebec customers and block the province via IP. This is what dozens of startups (and big web companies) are doing now to circumvent the crazy laws.

Try having a startup in Montreal. Our has been targeted by the language police, and is being forced to translate not just our front end, but our blog and social media presences. It doesn't matter that 0.01% of customers are in Quebec, and that we have determined that there is no market for our product in french.

Anyone can send an anonymous message to this government agency and it will audit your business to make sure you are compliant. Have more than 50 employees? Make sure the copy button on your photocopier says "copiez" or you'll have to put stickers over it (true story, happened at my brother's pharma startup).

The sad thing is that most Montrealers have the attitude that "you're in Montreal, you should learn french." The problem is, this law goes far beyond that, and is a serious impediment for Montreal startups.

Bandzoogle | REMOTE

Bandzoogle builds tools that help bands succeed online. Our app powers tens of thousands of artist websites and helps them make a living by selling their music and growing their fan base. We've been “bootstrapped, profitable, and proud” since 2003 and are growing fast.

We're looking for an experienced, well-rounded Javascript developer to join our team. Bandzoogle's realtime website editor (built in Ember.js) is evolving quickly, and you will play a key role in its development. Our members love our product, and every feature you contribute to will be cheered on by thousands of artists from around the world.

More details: https://bandzoogle.com/jobs/201510-javascript-developer

Bandzoogle - UI/UX designer - REMOTE (or Montreal)

We're looking for an experienced designer to take charge of the UI/UX of our app. Bandzoogle powers tens of thousands of artist websites, and help bands make a living by selling their music and growing their fan base. We've been "bootstrapped, profitable, and proud" since 2003 and were named one of the fastest growing companies in Canada the past 2 years.

Why work with us?

Other than the chance to work on fun projects that empower musicians, Bandzoogle offers:

- A fast paced startup atmosphere, with the stability of an established, profitable company.

- A great salary plus generous performance bonuses.

- A flexible & family-friendly schedule.

- Full health insurance for US and Canadian employees.

- Reimbursement of home office expenses, computer, and use of co-working spaces.

- A $1,000 yearly education expense account - reimburse books, conferences, whatever you want to learn about.

- Yearly meet-ups in fun locations, family included!

Full job post here: http://bandzoogle.com/jobs/

Montreal (or REMOTE)

Bandzoogle is looking for an experienced, well rounded Rails developer to join the our dev team. Our app powers tens of thousands of artist websites, and helps them make a living by selling their music and growing their fan base. We've been "bootstrapped, profitable, and proud" since 2003 and were just named one of the 100 fastest growing companies in Canada.

As a core member, you'll have varied and challenging projects to work on, from building new e-commerce features, launching in new markets, building mobile solutions, and more.

Why work with us?

- A great salary plus generous performance bonuses.

- A fast paced startup atmosphere, with the stability of an established, profitable company.

- A family-friendly schedule -- no overtime or weekends.

- Health insurance for US and Canadian employees.

- Reimbursement of home office expenses, computer, and use of co-working spaces.

- A $1,000 education expense account; reimburse books, conferences, whatever you want to learn about.

- Yearly meet-ups in fun locations, family included!

Full job post here: http://bandzoogle.com/jobs/

Bandzoogle - Montreal, QC or REMOTE

Rails Developer

At Bandzoogle, we build tools that help bands succeed online. Our app powers tens of thousands of artist websites, and helps them make a living by selling their music and growing their fan base. We've been “bootstrapped, profitable, and proud” since 2003 and are growing fast.

We’re looking for an experienced Rails developer to become a core member of our dev team, participate in key technical decisions. You’ll work on varied and challenging projects, from backend media encoding on EC2, to integrating external APIs, to adding new front-end features. Even better, our Rails 3 codebase is squeaky-clean and ready for you to jump in and start creating.

Requirements

* Sample code that we can take a look at (in any language).

* Solid Ruby on Rails experience.

* Ability to be productive in a distributed team environment. Our 12 member team is spread across Canada, UK and USA; we work where we love to be.

What we offer

Beside working on fun projects that empower musicians, Bandzoogle offers:

* A great salary plus generous performance bonuses.

* A fast paced startup atmosphere, with the stability of an established, profitable company.

* A family-friendly schedule — no overtime or weekends.

* Health insurance for US and Canadian employees.

* Reimbursement of home office expenses, computer, and use of co-working spaces.

* An education expense account - reimburse books, conferences, etc.

* Yearly meet-ups in fun locations (last one was in Montreal for the Jazz fest), family included!

To apply: Email jobs@bandzoogle.com with the subject "Rails developer".

As someone who has received >$5m offer that fell through, here's what I learned:

1) until the final documents are signed, don't consider any offer to be a done deal. There are many reasons for it to not happen at this stage.

2) Keep the project running as normal, and try not to get too distracted by this. You have something of value, don't jeopardize that by taking your eye off the ball.

3) As others have mentioned, get a lawyer who is experienced with these types of deals ASAP -- before discussing any more terms. Without help, you may be leaving a lot on the table, or conversely souring the deal.

Anywhere (we're based in Montreal)

Bandzoogle is hiring an Interaction Designer.

We build tools that help musicians succeed online. Our app powers tens of thousands of artist websites and helps them make a living by selling their music and growing their fan base. We've been “bootstrapped, profitable, and proud” since 2003 and are growing fast.

As our design lead, you’ll own the visual Bandzoogle experience -- from the front end to emails to the UX of the app. We’ve recently revamped our entire codebase to Rails 3 -- now we need you to revamp the look of our app from the ground up.

Our 10-member team is spread across Canada, UK and USA; we work where we love to be. Remote work welcome!

More details: http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/9438

Happened to me. Worse, competitors started copying my exact Adwords text and headlines as well.

I was able to remove the ads that included our trademark fairly quickly by contacting Google.

For the rest, you just have to start your own campaign against them. Since our own company's keywords are pretty low search competition they are extremely cheap to bid on. When competitors see that you are bidding against them, they might back off (they did in my case).

Bandzoogle is looking for a remote Ruby on Rails developer.

We build tools that help musicians succeed. Bandzoogle launched in 2003 with the idea that if we can help bands make money, they would sign up. It worked, and we've been profitable and growing every month since.

We just re-wrote our app in Ruby (from terrible, terrible Coldfusion) using today's best practices, and have some big plans for new features.

Aside from working on fun projects for musicians, we offer great pay + profit sharing bonuses, reimbursement of home office expenses and education materials (including conferences), and fun yearly meetups. Next one is in Montreal for the Jazz festival.

Interested? Full job post is here: http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/8006

Bandzoogle.com is hiring a full time Rails developer. We build tools that help bands succeed online. Unlike many music industry startups we’re stable (launched in 2003), profitable, and growing fast.

More details and to apply: http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/8006

Sent!

I was just about to post on 37 Signals job board; we're looking for both freelance and full time rails developers. Our company makes CMS tools for entertainment markets. We've been around for 7 years, are stable and profitable. If you're still in the market, email me!

I run a music "startup" that is in the "extremely saturated" space he is describing. We're now 7 years old, have 10 employees and have been profitable since 2005 with no VC.

There are many opportunities in the music startups, just as in other industries. Find a market need. Test your product, and iterate quickly. In our case, we found that by bundling a website builder with tools to promote and sell music is something that musicians want to pay for. We're not the only one, there are many profitable companies in this space.

This is bad advice. It discourages only the people that do not find value in your app to eventually pay.

I've been running a 30 day trial with my app since 2003, we've grown double digits every year.

As a musician with a startup in this space, so I know first had these numbers are skewed.

First, a musician's online product isn't just their music -- merch sales like t-shirts make up a big part of their revenue stream. For our members it is 70/30 split in terms of music/merch, but the profitability of merch is a lot higher. And as others have mentioned, royalties are not in the picture.

Second, the data seems to favor CDbaby. I guess it was easier to just look at one source, but these days there are a lot more compelling options for musicians that have no fees (through sites like Bandcamp). Even the physical CD pricing with CDbaby is incorrect -- on a physical disc an artist selling an album for $10 would only make $4 with CDbaby, not $7.50.

1: Since 2004

2: No, didn't apply.

(Sidenote: we're #29 in "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund" http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html)

3: No, bootstrapped.

4: http://www.sitezoogle.com

this is really the big issue; translating sites are easy. Providing ongoing support in 5 languages, means having separate dedicated support teams. I'm interested to see how they handle this.

Thanks for all the responses. The quality of feedback you get from HN is really amazing.

Good idea, but unfortunately Sitezoogle isn't the product; our members just know our main website brands like Bandzoogle (that are protected by existing trademark).

Our company was launched in 2003, well before Google Sites. Since we also own the trademark for Bandzoogle, it isn't a stretch to change to Sitezoogle. My lawyer (who can't officially represent me) said that the trademark office looks mainly at the first 4 letters of the name. Google Sites is a trademark, which is very different from Sitezoogle.

The very worst that can happen is that I lose a few thousand dollars defending their contest. It's not like they are going to back down at this point. The next thing they'll send is the domain dispute letter. If I lose, fine, I'll change the name. But just instantly giving in to the big "do no evil" bully seems a little premature.

Well, it depends on the cost. It is our corporation's name, and we have printed promotional materials. The biggest issue is that we have thousands of members using our DNS servers that are using the domain. Changing it would require them to change their DNS settings, or have their site go offline. A big pain to say the least.

I have a bit of experience here, as I run a website builder app for bands.

I launched Bandzoogle.com in 2003, around the same time that MySpace came out. I thought we were dead; they were offering all the stuff we did (a guestbook, music player, photo gallery) for FREE. How could we compete with that?

We decided to focus on being a "premium" service, and kept adding stuff that bands wanted. To my surprise MySpace actually helped our business. Bands would sign up because they wanted something more than "just a myspace page", or "without all those ads". We're the SmugMug to their Photobucket. It worked for us, we have 10 employees and have been profitable since 2004.

That said, social networks like MySpace are still necessary for bands. Potential fans will stumble across an artist's profile page, often from links from other bands they are playing a gig with. The goal is to hook them, then get them over to the artist's .COM site. There, they own the fan list, and can present a much more compelling experience than on a profile page alone. It is a bit more work to have to maintain profiles everywhere, but companies like ArtistData, Reverbnation, and my own (Bandzoogle) are making this a lot simpler.

I run a company that has been creating site builder products for 6 years now (sitezoogle.com).

It is one of the toughest markets for a web app, in my opinion.

On the dev side, there are very high requirements for each market. Take Realtors. You'd need to interface with MLS -- problem is each MLS has different requirements, and there are dozens in the US and Canada. Some have XML feeds, some only let you use an iFrame, others let you only download listings via FTP (!). You'd also need an internal CRM to help agents manage visitors and market to them. Both of these functions take a lot of dev.

Then there is the competition. Take realtors again, and do a search in Google. There are hundreds of competitors, and therefore the adwords PPC is in the $3 range for the top listings.

We've succeeded (profitable since 2004, 10 employees) by focusing on underserved niches (Landscapers, Horse breeders) and working closely with them to understand their needs.

But, it is definitely NOT easy to go across dozens of market and have a compelling product and market it effectively.

We are looking for help, so if anyone is interested in this market, send me a msg!

I built Bandzoogle.com, which is currently the leading band website host.

We have explored this idea at length. The problem is, 9/10 sites for bands just don't let you share data (some examples: Virb, PureVolume, Reverbnation, Sonicbids). And they are extremely protective of the data they have.

Derek does mention the idea of customer support logging into Facebook accounts to update the content manually. That is fine for a few dozen sites, but to scale that you would need a huge staff. We're not just talking about entering NEW shows, but also being able to modify them at the last minute when data changes. That is very hard with 10,000+ bands.

The end result is, until all these sites create an open platform to share info, it just is not possible to make a cost-effective solution to make one step entry happen. I wish it was.

In the meantime, we are integrating with all the sites that DO offer open solutions (Twitter, Eventful, etc)

Just because there isn't a paper contract doesn't mean it isn't binding. Make sure a lawyer looks at your terms page in addition to writing the draft. I know that I am indemnified completely with my TOS.

Also, IMO just the presence of a clear TOS is a deterrent for all but the dedicated abusers who don't care about prosecution.