Check out TIC's temporary Wix website. It's obviously not the final public site. Its only purpose is to present TIC to funders.
When TIC gets its $250,000 I'll be writing a book on the ordeals involved.
A few of the problems so far:-
Wix to Wordpress freelancers. Original Wix is not fit for any sensible business purpose. It is not responsive. Elements move around by themselves. It is only just usable for drafts. It is so disagreeable, so unreliable, that Wix Studio must be instantly excluded as a possibility. Since March 2024 I've been looking for ONE freelancer to convert the Wix site into a responsive Wordpress site. I can report:-
two paid American freelancers. One wrecked a Wordpress version, in places adequate, in places parlous, done for free by an Indian freelancer. The other messed up something else important. All relevant Americans with whom TIC has dealt talk too fast, have no discernible thought processes, behave aggressively and defensively ('Excuse me?'), have an unpleasant uncilivised uncooperative attitude to service and don't know the first thing about doing a flawless job. They get away with it, as I see it, because their American customers have no relevant critical faculties, no guts and are inarticulate to the point of incoherence
contact with hundreds of Asian freelancers (and many other regions including Europe, Scandinavia, South America, Australia and southern Asia). All freelancer hubs I've tried have been beyond appalling in yield. The story over more than the last two years and to date dealing with freelancers — an absolute waste of time — is so horrific, so uniformly populated with idiots, morons, imbeciles, charlatans, fraudsters and deadbeats, I can't bring myself to tell it
I have a globe on my desk. I spin it looking for countries, regions, cities in which to search for Wix-to-Wordpress freelancers. I already know what I'm going to get
still looking.
Looking also for:-
a CEO. Learning a lot about the 'retained' headhunter racket. Let's see. We, the retained headhunter, want you to pay us up front, wholly speculatively, an insane amount (from where?) to pretend to look for and possibly (no guarantees) find a person whom we aver we don't need to look for or find because he's already in our award-winning specialist rolodex or we know where to look and where to find him, or whom we aver we do need to look for and find because, despite us being award-winning expert specialists in the multimedia sector, we have no idea who or where he is, for all of which you will of course have to pay us award winners, and whom we might never functionally look for or find, and if we do eventually pretend to find someone suitable (but probably patently not suitable), then go through the award-winning charade of trying to tortiously induce him to break his current employment contract by offering an obscene salary plus benefits that you the startup don't have, to do a job for which he's not suited and for which he will want to be paid without first bringing in a bent cent, all of which will get you no closer to ever finding the right CEO, for all of which we'll get an award… What sort of rubbish is this? I'll give you the award you deserve, but you won't like it. I'm clear about the CEO that I want. The job description is here. How nowadays does one begin to try to find him?
specialist seasoned sagacious advisers and contributors on procedure and substance. Folk who know how to run and contentise a 21st-century global multimedia business using competence, decency, intelligence, imagination, decency and more decency. Been looking for these people a lot. No idea where they are. Why don't people answer emails? Here's a particular curiosity. People who claim to know the industry and lots of people in it turn out on inquiry to know absolutely no-one. I've asked many self-proclaimed self-congratulatory self-important sector mavens with extensive industry cvs to introduce me to appropriate people. Not one of them actually knows anyone. One way or another, there's an awful lot of lying going on in this industry
funders. This caps it all (to say nothing of the constant continuing loss of major financial opportunities). All TIC wants to get off the ground is a lousy $250,000, which compares favorably to the typical 'raise'. There are the absurd funding hubs, most of which in my experience are rackets. And the bizarre 'angel' community, some members of which are undoubtedly phony. Don't forget the 'pitch', the 'deck' and other gibberish ('runway', 'funnel', 'pivot', 'traction', etc.). This baloney might resonate with12-year-old Josh, peddling a stupid idea with a stupid name (beginning with 'z'), about which no-one in his right mind gives a living crap, on a stupid website with a stupid name (beginning with 'z') to fly-by-night funders in it for the exit who speak gibberish similarly, who will probably raise $10m (12-year-olds called Josh being highly bankable) and blow the lot in the first three weeks. It's not for me. I know who I'm looking for. A smowdfunder. Calm, sincere, sensible, thoughtful. Old school. Are they all dead now?
Why should all this be so damn difficult?