A Fool’s Bargain: Building Software for Free (or, An Idea Ain’t Worth Squat)

The first thing start ups should do is show evidence that people want what you are offering. Afterwards, figure out if the cost of customer acquisition < price they will pay (or advertising or whatever). Then you have a good business idea.

Viaweb, for instance, let businesses get a web presence easily at a price they could afford. The advertising cost to get new customers was lower than their price and cost of the product, so they were profitable.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. But good ideas are not. If you already have the skills as a developer, and good, marketable, monetizable ideas are really as easy to come up with as you say, why aren't you a multi-billionaire 15 times over by now?

I suppose I'm a bit biased because I've approached people before as the "idea guy", only to be turned down by developers who insist that ideas are a dime-a-dozen and that they're too busy working on their own wonderful get-rich-quick idea to make billions of dollars by starting a company which loads YouTube flash videos up 2% faster or some such technical marvel.

You know what? Year after year, same developers, same cocktail party, same meetups, STILL working in poverty and obscurity, 100% certain that any day now Google will come along and offer them billion$$$ for their one-man company centered around an algorithm that loads YouTube videos 2% faster.

I highly doubt that you're a several-time succesful entrepreneur as you claim on your site.

Startups are just plain hard and you need all the good thinkers you can get and they're not all programmers.

Good luck competing with the luxury of snobbery.

BTW - suppose this non-existent guy's business idea (I say that because it seems like every programmer these days is posting a blog about, "The other day, this stupid guy came up to me asking to develop his stupid idea.") took off and made billions.

Do you have experience developing products for startups that go on to make billioins?

Did Pierre Omidyar have experience programming for startups that go from $0 in sales to become Fortune 500 companies in less than a decade?

Let me know how your holier-than-thou attitude works out for you financially in about 10-15 years.

I'm going to guess you'll either still be programming or putting up some blog whining about how Indian and Chinese programmers are stealing your opportunities.