Motivating the Non-Paid Help

twjordan asks: "I am leading a small pre-venture-capital startup consisting of two still in college CE majors and two just out of school liberal arts majors. We all own stock in the corporation and we have a small amount of seed money, but we cannot afford to pay ourselves yet. I was wondering if anyone out there could help me with methods to motivate the others in the company. Many of you work (or have worked) on non-paid software projects and deal with this from contributors, but this kind of sits between that extreme and just plain management and motiivational tactics since there is more ownership and commercial intent. Can anyone help us out? Got advice or links to good resources?"

things that don't cost too much

[faster]

Food is always good (look up news of Google's chef), and posting news of your industry that shows how your product will be a winner works for a while. Control over work environment is great too; look for news of Pocket Science's office layout (maybe on their web site?). One company I worked for had 'cookie time' every afternoon; cookies, coffee, conversation. It usually ended up being about work, but we enjoyed a little break and 'bonded' some.

Good luck! Let us know what works.

"methods to motivate"

[Anonymous Coward]

This has a certain sound of tricking people into doing what they don't want to do. If there's any need to "motivate" people, that's usually a sign of a deeper problem.

Motivation

[malice95]

I worked on trying to get several new ideas
rolling that could have done well but its tough
to find people to stay interested. There arent
a lot of computer folk who really truly LOVE what they do and are willing to spend a lot of free time doing computer stuff. I spend at least 9-10 hours a day at work.. though I could easily go home after 8, I generally am online 4-7 hours minumum per night working on stuff and I hate being away from the computer for more then a few days. Bring my laptop on vacation. I basically love computers.. its tough to find people like me
IMHO.. I have looked. Most put in the time they need to to get a paycheck and dont go much further. I think its also a matter of taking time to learn. I am currently building a very dynamic
website and I need to learn perl much better, databases from scratch, sql, mason, mod_perl..etc.
This takes a lot of time and reading. Most people dont seem to be willing to spend the time to advance their knowledge enough to take it to the next level without serious motivation..like money.

I would suggest you get them to first make a financial commitment in the company.. nothing motivates people like money.. second. Provide a very fun working environment. Maybe on day go out and buy 5 nerf guns and hand them out for nerf wars. People will work harder if they enjoy their jobs. People that dont want to put in the effort should be tossed. You have a long enough road ahead without being held back by slackers. Maybe
you could ask people on the net to join your team.

Most people that are online a lot LOVE computers..

Mike

On the negative side

[Tony Hammitt]

Here's the things that kill motivation:

1. Assholes. No one wants to work around assholes or on a project with assholes. If someone is habitually surly and rude, fire them. Make sure the other people know you fired the asshole just because he was an asshole.

2. Pay cuts. So you can't pay anyone anything much right now, no problem. When you do start making money, make sure you can always pay people in a monotonically increasing manner. People can survive on no pay for a while and not hate it, but if you start paying them something then stop, you might as well close up shop right then. No one will want to work anymore.

3. PHBs. Don't be like Dilbert's boss. Listen to your people's concerns, interact with them socially (especially in bars, more great ideas get generated in bars than anywhere else).

4. Make sure your people know what the goals of the project are in explicit detail. If you're not sure yet, make sure you keep interacting with everyone until you decide just what it is that you want to accomplish. Everyone is happier if their work is useful, wasting effort pisses people off.

These were the mistakes that completely destroyed the research group I was in. None of our work was ever used for anything usefull and we don't even speak to each other anymore.

Pity since the work was cool and could have been profitable.

Hope this helped,

Tony

Sometimes little things can help

[chart]

Try to come up with little things that are fun, inspirational, and don't cost much.

When we used to handle our own software shipping, we had a ship's bell mounted next to the fax machine. When a big order came in, the person who picked up the fax would ring the bell. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it really did make me feel good when the bell rang. We could all look up from our work and say, "yay!", and feel good that the company was doing well.

Good luck!

make them feel valuable

[Ser\/o]

I've worked some crummy jobs under no-pay conditions, and sticking it out was very difficult. The one thing that I can think of that really sticks out in my mind as making the experience worth it was when I felt that my contribution to the team/project/whatever was need and most importantly appreciated (we all know that nobody does it better than 'me') Do you feel that they know the importance of their role? Do they act as if the feel appreciated? If not, they may already be lost, but you can try to hang on to them. Take 'em out for a couple beers, invite them over for a cookout, maybe go line dancing (yeah right). In short, put forth the effort to let them know that you're screwed without them. Isn't that what we all want?