I wanted to share a project that was born out of a pretty frustrating experience.
Last year, I needed a specific tool: a web scraper that could function like Apify's website-content-crawler but run significantly faster. It was a complex spec, so I decided to hire a freelancer on Fiverr to build a solid foundation.
I found a developer, we had several calls, and he seemed to understand the requirements perfectly. He quoted me £250. I was surprised at how low it was, but I went ahead and paid upfront.
A few days later, he delivered the code. It was a complete mess. It failed basic static analysis, had 20% duplicated code, and was essentially unusable. While it was technically "fast," it didn't meet even 1% of the actual output requirements I had specified.
When I brought this up, he claimed he had delivered what was expected and that any real functionality would be an "add-on" that required more payment. To top it all off, after I left a (too generous) 4-star review just to end the ordeal, he messaged me to yell at me for not giving him 5 stars.
I was angry, but that frustration eventually turned into motivation. I decided to build the tool myself, the right way.
Then, I spent my nights and weekends building the tool I actually wanted. The result is DeepScrape. It's clean, it's powerful, and it does what it's supposed to do.
I've open-sourced it so that hopefully others can benefit and not have to go through the same headache I did.
I'd be grateful for any feedback, questions, or stars on the repo. I'm here to answer any questions you have.
Has anyone else had a similar "freelancer-to-founder" moment?
I wanted to share a project that was born out of a pretty frustrating experience.
Last year, I needed a specific tool: a web scraper that could function like Apify's website-content-crawler but run significantly faster. It was a complex spec, so I decided to hire a freelancer on Fiverr to build a solid foundation.
I found a developer, we had several calls, and he seemed to understand the requirements perfectly. He quoted me £250. I was surprised at how low it was, but I went ahead and paid upfront.
A few days later, he delivered the code. It was a complete mess. It failed basic static analysis, had 20% duplicated code, and was essentially unusable. While it was technically "fast," it didn't meet even 1% of the actual output requirements I had specified.
When I brought this up, he claimed he had delivered what was expected and that any real functionality would be an "add-on" that required more payment. To top it all off, after I left a (too generous) 4-star review just to end the ordeal, he messaged me to yell at me for not giving him 5 stars.
I was angry, but that frustration eventually turned into motivation. I decided to build the tool myself, the right way.
First, as a petty tribute, I uploaded the original garbage code to its own public repo: https://github.com/stretchcloud/shit-scrapper
Then, I spent my nights and weekends building the tool I actually wanted. The result is DeepScrape. It's clean, it's powerful, and it does what it's supposed to do.
I've open-sourced it so that hopefully others can benefit and not have to go through the same headache I did.
I'd be grateful for any feedback, questions, or stars on the repo. I'm here to answer any questions you have.
Has anyone else had a similar "freelancer-to-founder" moment?