7OAD, SpewingIsMyMove did make some assumptions. HOWEVER, maybe you should rethink your responses because....we all have been limited to making assumptions given you original post and all responses. Pretty good assumptions; pretty good advice. He did give you a quasi-number...and with his experience, I would think there is a very good chance he DID get you in the ballpark of an estimation. Finally, I linked you to two forums here on 2+2 that are read daily by guys who undoubtedly have started websites...maybe along the lines of exactly what you are concocting. Yet..... I don't see any progress by you to ask "the experts".



Open the thread. Toward the top of any of the pages in that thread will be a Search This Post tab. Click it and type in "Sciolist"*. Results will follow.

*not sure if my spelling is correct

I am planning on it, but I want to phrase it correctly and more clearly, I should have something up in a few days.

I did go through the entire thread you linked me though and I just read through Sci's posts.

Good luck. I can tell you from experience, and I am not saying this to be a jerk or feed my ego, that your understanding of the market is not mature enough to be talking about funding or launch. The mere example that you keep referring to Pokerstars et al as a website, and don't understand what a service delivery network is, or why it is critical to delivering web based services (think about what happens if you have a spoke and hub topology with single paths from each entry point, and you have a network wide routing issue causing a net split. If you do not have a robust service delivery network, half your users just got knocked offline, and your games may be out of sync.)

You really need to step back and be able to better articulate what you are trying to do, at each phase, and what the milestones are. Sorry if you think I am trying to make this philosophical, that is actually the furtherst from what I am trying to do. Your notions and questions are all over the place, and I am trying to give you the questions and considerations you will need to be able to answer before you can ask the 'how much does it cost'. As you take on partners in this venture, you need to be able to be extremely tactical in your goals, and that means being able to say exactly what you need to accomplish to get past the next hurdle.

Based on your later responses, I can't tell if you are asking the cost for a functional alpha version that you can use to generate angel money to go to market, or the cost for a small, low volume version to put in a limited market to prove the market. Your original request 'build a site like the market leaders' clashes with your later statements that it would be stupid to build a site with the capacity and capabilities of the market leaders, which is why I am pretty unclear on what you want cost on.

The fact that you keep saying that you just want the cost of the site is very confusing. This is not turnkey software where you can buy Microsoft Poker Server 2018 and install it and go, this is custom built software that requires developers and administrators dedicated to just this platform. Those specialized people have to be included as your cost if you actually intend for the site to be running.

Anyway, I wish you luck. If you actually want to talk further to understand the types of questions and analysis that usually needs to be done before a launch, let me know. I do enjoy helping people harden their ideas, though it is not always a fun process for the person with the idea.

I fail to see what perfect terminology has anything to do with the/an idea, there's a huge difference between a technician and an entrepreneur, I have no delusions of being a technician. There are also many modern examples of people who did not understand the depths of their field who did quite well.

I thought it was self evident, clearly it is not as straight forward, I worked in many industries and generally costs were quite straight forward for a variety of things. I did not imagine that asking for what the cost of software being built would snowball to these in depth discussions that seem to me to have very little to do with the original question.

Although I guess it can be said, people are trying to give me a 360 or full scope view which is fine, but simultaneously not really helpful or insightful, I understand that you can spend unlimited amounts on anything and I also understand that you can get anything very very cheap (although the quality is often garbage), the idea I was trying to get would be some insights on general costs all together, especially for software development. I've done sales in nearly 10+ fields and all of them, you had a good idea of approximate costs for just about anything, even though things COULD span into the high numbers, it was never really "infinite" per se.

As I said though, I imagined some flux, but I did not think this question would be as elusive as it's proving to be, I guess "hard numbers" are not as readily available as I thought. But, that's why I created this thread, so I can learn and glean knowledge from people who know better.

The idea itself is very hard in terms of knowing what I want, I even know exactly who I want to pitch, I just wanted to get an idea of some basic cost questions before I made a complete fool of myself.

With all that said though, I don't take this very "seriously" in the sense that I believe this has a high likelihood of going anywhere at all (1% chance is highly optimistic), but having extra knowledge can never hurt and even if I just gain some insight on the costs of software development in 2017, that would be great. Even if this thread can act as a bookmark for insight into the topic, that would be even better, it's all in good fun.

Do you think a system can be built cheaper than the $10M that has been put forth as a cellar floor? If so... go for it. If you don't like the $10M floor that an experienced-in-the-field poster gave you because it sounded like more BY FAR than you wanted.... sounds like you will not have problems raising $4M...that should entice a software company that writes bare bones codes. GL and let us know how that works out for you.

Would you like me to move this thread to either the Programming or Business/Finance forums for more opinions? Let me know where you would like this to land.

I can't remember if he said anything interesting/useful in the Galfond thread, but posts by Josem are also worth reading. He used to work for Pokerstars, but now I believe he is involved in the Coin Poker startup. (Don't quote me on that, though. I could be mistaken).
When Andrew/Sciolist was doing the Unibet thing (after working for Stars for several years, where he learned how the business works), his team consisted of just 6 people at the start (many more are involved now, and he obviously had access to the pre-existing Unibet customer service and anti-fraud departments which served the much larger sports betting and slots arm of the company). Those six staff members obviously had to be paid while the client was being designed and built. Pokerstars is a monster in comparison. It has about 2000 employees in its IoM office alone. (It might even be the island's biggest employer).
Lock Poker, by contrast, was run from Jen Larsen's kitchen table. It ripped off its customers and does not exist any more. If you plan on making a poker site, please make it more like Unibet or Pokerstars, and not like Lock.

I have no idea, it sounds like nobody else does either. I guess getting pricing is so dependent on what I want done that any vague answers may as well be non-answers in the software oriented person's mind as what they would be telling me would end up being just as far away from the truth (if not further than) literally saying "it depends."

I guess because of my prior experiences in a variety of industries, I thought that pricing would be as straight forward or in the least, not as elusive as it seems to be. My original thoughts were: how hard can programming something like frigging poker software really be? I guess I was quite wrong, but it's good to learn regardless.

I guess that wouldn't be a bad call, viability was high here, but perhaps it has run it's course. Either or is fine, maybe we can try in business first and see if we have better luck there.

Thank you for that, I definitely will and perhaps I will shoot him a PM.

Very interesting and I absolutely have no desires to do anything like that (although what would I say if I did....I'm sure I'd be shouting it from the top of the world!!). My main goal with this if it were to ever come to fruition would be to improve poker and my ideas do just that, hell I wouldn't even mind if it was "stolen" and someone else executed it, not because it wouldn't suck, but because I want the features that I plan on having on the website to use myself!

Let me know if you want me to move this...and where....,,, or would you prefer to start a new thread in another area of 2+2?

Yeah dude, you can put it in the business area, cheers!

Here you go

It won't tell you the cost but you'll learn the value.

While I would tend to agree with the overall premise of the thread, that sort of oversimplification does nothing for people:

80% of businesses go busto in 5 years, does that mean ALL businesses are bad ideas?

Most poker players do not make money, does that mean ALL poker players should quit?

That sort of unbridled pessimism wrapped in the veneer of "realism" is only afforded to people because of the unbridled optimism of their ancestors who through all odds survived and on some level perhaps even thrived.

A more nuanced and realistic position would be as follows:

1.What is your IQ?

2.If your IQ is below average, why do you think the idea you've generated will somehow out compete the ideas of higher IQ people?

2a.How do you know they haven't already tried it?

3.How industrious and curious are you?

3a.What is your USP and why do you have an advantage over others?

4.If you have a low IQ, are not industrious, are not curious and have an unimpressive USP, why do you think what you're saying/thinking or generating has any value?

Moving forward to your idea(s) assuming you made it through those questions with some semblance of confidence:

5.What are the axioms your idea is built on, how are they different to what is already out there?

6.Are the axioms so simple to verify that even a layman with a 5 minute explanation would be able to grasp it?

7.Are you simplifying or complicating? Adding or subtracting? Combining or reordering?

That sort of thinking is much better and more intricate than just extrapolating the general poor quality of the totality of "ideas" produced by all peoples to mean the same thing for individuals who are not at all like the aggregate or average.

Obviously none of us can tell you whether your idea has merit if you're worried about sharing it.

If you have any hope though you're obviously not going to build your own site from the ground up and since im sure there's nothing proprietary about what you want to do you can't pitch it to an existing site, so your only real option is to buy into an existing company - preferably one that's on the verge of collapse so you can get it for very little.

http://www.pokerscout.com/

Look at how many sites there are up and running that have zero traffic. The software is functional in many cases too. You'd need to get in touch so you can have a couple of software guys give you an estimate as to how much it would cost to add the functionality you have in mind (as well as testing it to make sure you're not getting a lemon) and a lawyer to take a look to make sure that they actually own the rights to everything, but this should not be in the millions. Fortunately there're some supremely incompetent business people out there who've spent millions developing software with no clear game plan - let their loss be your gain.

Oh it does something for people. It seems you missed the point though.

Cheers mate, I will check out the sites using PS and go from there.

Seems like you missed the point though, that's ok, some people are fine looking at life through a 2D lens as long as they know there are people looking at it through a 1D lens.

I love how all these people always come in here asking for advice on terrible business ideas, and then do it anyway when everyone comes up with amazing logic why it is terrible.

I looked at this in 2013, set up some bitcoin poker site, do a bunch of marketing with some semi known pros. But the start up costs even for a mediocre site were too high. I think like 50k a year for renting crappy software that was probably buggy as hell, not to speak about all the other stuff.

And I was planning to do it from some 3rd world country off the radar. If you do it by the book, it is A LOT more expensive. And you would have to charge rake that is too large, and probably run a loss for the first 3-4 years even if you are successful. And all that in a dying industry.

/thread.

you may have a hard time getting investors. Investors arent exactly looking at online poker and salivating about the opportunities, so you'd have to have something fairly mind blowing to get traction unles you happen to be rich and fund it yourself

I don't know much about the other companies, but Netscape was acquired by AOL for $4.2 billion and its source code essentially turned into what is now Firefox. If that's getting crushed, sign me up.

With these type of things, first movers advantage is pretty large. I also looked into setting up a bitcoin regular gambling site (again without licenses in some third world country). And found others had done it already.

Usually the first ones to do it had the skills already and it is sort of a 'where preparation meets opportunity' type of thing. If you are the first and you got the skills to build something solid (or find others to do it quickly), you often save a lot of money on marketing. Because people simply go to your thing because it is the only game in town and for the novelty of it, and it then snowballs from there.

To quote the movie margin call:
You are not first, you're not smarter (else you wouldn't have to ask some internet strangers), and by the looks of it you don't seem to plan on cheating (where being first and being smart would probably be a good idea).

They got completely crushed by Microsoft. It was one of most epic beat downs in the history of business. In 1995 the Netscape founders were not looking for a $4.2B exit.

Nobody is asking for advice, I'm asking for numbers, big difference.

And what part of my business idea is terrible? OH THAT'S RIGHT, I DIDN'T TELL YOU MY BUSINESS IDEA.

But I will give you credit because you included a number and discussed an actual venture which is on topic and appreciated.

According to a recent podcast with Doug Polk, the industry actually stabilized at 2.5 billion dollars this past year from just over 3 billion in 2010 when it declined afterwards. Online poker is also coming back in America slowly, but surely and we have yet to truly see what will happen in India and China, so to say it is dying is rather hyperbolic and no longer based on actual hard numbers showing decline year after year.

Right. And I'm suggesting that OP probably doesn't have the same aspirations as the founders of Netscape, and he might be content with simply becoming fantastically wealthy at a sub-billion dollar level, even if his business gets "crushed".

I'm not saying this business venture is likely to make him fantastically wealthy; I'm only saying that using a past business venture that made its founders wealthy* as a prime example of how things could end up badly is stupid.

*I assume Jim Clark was already wealthy from Silicon Graphics, but Andreessen wasn't.

The only stupidity here is people who're trying to forecast the costs of building a site from the ground up or for some reason believe that you need to be an industry leader to make money.

You can find people happy to charge you 50k/y to rent their software - that doesn't mean that's the lowest they'll go.

A quick google produces a site like this:

http://www.enterra-poker.com/

They don't quote a price on the website probably because they'll try to feel you out to see how much they can squeeze you for. The cost to them is negligible though so the floor of how much they'd be willing to sell it for is very low.

Actually it was a perpetual license:

http://pokerfuse.com/news/industry/s...in-site-16-04/

Cost $40k for a custom built client, operating costs of only about $1400 a year with no marketing. But they were the first one it seems. And this was several years ago.

I remember looking into it and finding the client kinda ****ty. It also did not scale very well due to limits in the software.

They were the first one though. And now the site has closed. Generated approx $15k in revenue that year. With about 5k players.