[Asterisk-biz] Starting a Calling Card Business $1000 - hiring an Intern

Fri Nov 12 13:34:52 MST 2004

Sounds like someone has been burned by the intern approach. I for one have
been burned by the outsourced approach. There are merits to both. It all
comes down to finding competent people.

Funding an intern to give them the opportunity to grow into a full-time lead
technical role is both charitable and CAN make long-term business sense.
Everyone was a student once. Much depends on the person. Find a rock star
and be happy. Companies spend money training employees because depending on
how you run the numbers, there is a greater opportunity cost to constantly
relying on outside expertise rather than investing in in-house human
resource building. Example: I had a roommate who coded high-end Java
applications for $15/hour. Sure his first 6 months were worth $0 in actual
produced value, but his next 18 months were more than worth the initial
investment in 'free learning time.' As an added bonus, you have a
ready-to-go fulltime employee who needs no learning curve at full salary for
the initial month or two.

Can you build a business on that? No. Can you expand a business on that?
Most definitely.

Expertise costs time or money or both. You can accelerate one in exchange
for the other. I believe what you are saying is, "you can't have your cake
and eat it too," OR, "it takes money to make money," or a thousand other
cliches that are "cliché but true." lol.

On 11/12/04 1:59 PM, "Race Vanderdecken" <asterisk at vanderdecken.com> wrote:

> As to "hiring an intern" you might as well burn the money or give it to
> charity. 
> 
> I can't imagine any business putting its future in the hands of an
> intern. I have watched a couple of companies waste 6 months cause they
> think they can do it in house or with cheaper labor (he says from his
> soapbox.) 
> 
> A competent programming could have done the work in a month and they
> could be selling their product.
> 
> Get a plan and then hire the right people, which may or may not be an
> intern.
> 
> The economic principle is called "Opportunity Costs." This is the money
> lost by not having the opportunity to make money. So the six months
> worth of sales lost plus the labor money burned must be accounted for.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
> 
> Yes it is open source and it is free to all who would like to have it,
> but if you are building a serious business then you have to pay costs,
> whether they are opportunity, hidden or real.
> 
> It amuses me to watch companies that are going to use Asterisk to get
> rich selling telephone service but they never seem to have the money to
> get started, if only they could get everything for free they could make
> a bundle.
> 
> Race Vanderdecken
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
> [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of ChitChat -
> Info
> Sent: 12 November 2004 14:32
> To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-biz] Starting a Calling Card Business $1000
> 
> Off the top of my head, here are some other things to consider:
> 
> * tracking of payphone surcharges and remittances
> * reporting functionalities - what's my profit, etc. How many cards have
> been used?
> * how accurate is the billing system. Trust me, the smallest error can
> cost
> you thousands of dollars. Prepaid cards mean that you can't track the
> person
> down and just say "give us some money for the free minutes we
> accidentally
> gave you"
> * routing tables - how do you change the carrier on a
> destination-by-destination basis based on price/quality.
> * anti-fraud - can you block 'bad' people from hacking your box, trying
> pin
> combinations, blocking inbound numbers, blocking specific destinations?
> * refill, pin creation, batch creation, batch cancellation, distributor
> tracking, inventory tracking.
> 
> I think Asterisk is amazing and we are hiring an intern to invest
> time/money
> into and see what he/she can 'come up with' on Asterisk, but companies
> that
> charge tens of thousands to set up proprietary systems aren't worthless
> just
> yet. I think Asterisk will catch up with smart people writing the code,
> but
> there is still a way to go between 'class 4 switch' and Asterisk PBX. I
> love
> it though...
> 
> On 11/12/04 1:09 PM, "Steve Totaro" <stotaro at totarotechnologies.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> If it's so easy then why pay $1,000?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com
>> [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Rehan
> Ahmed
>> Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 2:00 PM
>> To: asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com
>> Subject: [Asterisk-biz] Starting a Calling Card Business $1000
>> 
>> Dear All,
>> 
>> Setting up a calling card on asterisk is very easy.
>>  
>> Setup an asterisk box,
>>  
>> Buy DID numbers
>>  
>> Buy termination from a wholesale provider
>>  
>> Install the asterisk calling card software which is free
>>  
>> And you are up and running
>>  
>> If some one wants us to do it, we can do it for 999$
>>  
>> This will include installation of asteris, and software, and
> generating
>> the first 1000 
>> cards, setting up the rate table, buying did, buying termination.
>> 
>> Rehan Ahmed
>> Director Business Development
>> 
>> Super Technologies Inc.
>> Super Technologies Inc.
>> http://www.supertec.com - Technologies from tomorrow, TODAY!
>> http://www.virtualphoneline.com - Get A US Phone Line ANYWHERE in the
>> world. Start your Call Center.
>> http://www.PhoneOpia.com - Pc to Phone Services.
>> http://www.MySuperPhone.com - The NEXT Generation of Telephone.
>> www.callkiosk.com - Small Call Centers Solutions.
>> Http://www.ip-pabx.com - One World, One Number, One Pabx.
>> http://www.SuperPhoneLD.Com - 3Cents State to State Long Distance.
>> http://www.SuperPhoneLD.biz - 4 Cents State to State Long Distance &
>> 1800 
>> Service
>> 
>> 
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