VST Development: Salary required

[stevieoswald]

Hi guys, so I've seen a lot of people saying they have a revolutionary VST idea and just need a developer to work with, and some (occasionally understandably) dismissive comments from developers. I hope my question will be taken seriously: So, I am not a C++ developer, I'm a project manager and business person. I don't have a revolutionary idea but I have reasonable funds + some market penetration through various activities (and the potential for more). I want to pay a developer a salary to create a VST synthesizer of the calibre of Massive, Sylenth, Diva, etc. The developer will receive the salary and hand over the product. IP will then remain mine. I have received some indication from contacts as to what this might cost me and how long it might take. I would like some more insights. Would anyone be kind enough to share their thoughts on costs and timeframes, please? Many thanks.

[resynthesis]

Do you have a more detailed requirement spec for the product? Otherwise it might be difficult to estimate time. Similarly would you budget for things like JUCE licenses? I think at least one of the products you mentioned was a multi-person, multi-year project.

If you want somebody to develop a VST to their own spec and hand over the IP to you it seems more like you want to buy a product rather than employ a developer. I doubt if many people would be prepared to hand over a product of the calibre of Diva just for a salary payment I talked to a mate (who is a development contractor) about a project he worked on a couple of years ago. It was a niche product akin to VST development and he was paid £115k for 15 months work and receives about £4k a year IP for his design input.

I'm not trying to be snarky but it is a bit of a how long is a piece of string problem.

[stratum]

I will share some other info which may not be obvious: This is a full time job requiring commitment and not really suitable for freelance. Anybody who can make a synth similar to Massive, Sylenth, Diva etc is probably already employed. This will be your main problem before talking about other details and is the main reason for the dismissive comments that you see. You are asking people to switch jobs and not even revealing your identity. So you either need to post a serious job ad with adequate details or rephrase your question and ask 'I need somebody with a few spare hours per week to do some toy project'.

[Youlean]

I am not sure that you are aware what are you asking. Creating something like Diva or Massive would be huge task even for top VST companies. All this synths where in development for years. You best shoot will be to hire somebody like U-He, but if you think about it why should he do it unless you are prepared to give him a ton of money.

[Youlean]

Just for advise, be careful if somebody tell you that this will take less than year. If you got that synth in a year it will sound nothing like Diva and Massive, it will just look like it...

[stevieoswald]

Thanks guys, yes I am not really talking about freelancing. To clarify, I have funds and potential additional investors for a start -up and would like to employ a developer/ developers. They might well move on to other products (as salaried employees) following the launch of our first synth, but for now I am trying to factor in time and costs to our first product launch. As mentioned I am not relying on this forum but it is always good to cross reference info that you have via as many different channels as possible. Thanks in advance for all insights!

[quikquak]

Can they work remotely?
If not, where are you based?

[stevieoswald]

@quikquak, potentially, yes. Based on my management of other projects (in a non related field) I would think it would be preferable to have them based in Europe so we could have face to face meetings from time to time without too much difficulty

[Chaotikmind]

If you expect the work to be done remotely, for let's say 100h/month , at a hourly rate of 80€/h.
That's 8k per month.

I don't know if others here would agree with my figures, but that's what i would charge as a freelance.

[stevieoswald]

@chaotikmind and if you were to give an educated estimate on timeframes to produce something similar to any of the leading synths in the market, what would that be please?

[Chaotikmind]

Frankly ? i would be unable to estimate the timeframe.

Edit: big project , lot of potential issues, not enough infos, estimation would just be a wild guess hence of no value.

[stevieoswald]

@chaotikmind thanks, yes I hear what you're saying and it makes sense. Nevertheless I need to have some prudent figures to work with, albeit taking contingencies into account. So any pointers, however vague (eg not less than x months, etc) are gratefully received.

[FabienTDR]

It takes us about 12 month of development time for 4-5 specialists just to bring a product to maturity and offer truly competitive bread and butter effect plugins. I mean highly educated artists with great work ethics (a contradiction in itself) that you won't find on linked-in.

For a synth able to compete with Diva and Falcon, I would expect about 5 years of work for a team of 2-3 experienced product developers. In money, around 1.5 million €, with about 90% risk of totally loss. If your team never managed to build a cool sounding filter or a really competitive oscillator before, it will likely take you 10 to 15 years, if you can keep your team's motivation up that long. This is art running on cutting edge technology after all, not the cheap, trivial and often technically irrelevant moves you do in web or app design.

Meanwhile, U-HE would have released at least 2 or 3 totally new products and revolutionized the market in a way that a copycat product from 10 years before only has humorist value at best. To be clear, I wouldn't invest any money in such an unlikely outcome. This field is competitive, and you have zero experience, no community, no technological fundament, probably no sales and marketing experience in the market either. Try something small first.

[aciddose]

You're talking about 1-2 years at about $250,000 minimum, plus royalty around 20% minimum.

If you want full control of the source you're talking about 1-2 years at about $500,000 minimum, $1,000,000 is more practical.

Minimum = something someone used to wipe their ass before handing to you.

AKA: get real.

[fluffy_little_something]

Wow, that expensive
Maybe it would be cheaper if you gathered a group of ambitious experts who do it mostly for the fun and challenge, not for the money like some C++ mercs.

But if you don't have an idea for a new synth anyway, why not invest in something else? There are more than enough plugins already, the market must be fierce and saturated.