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Comment by baberuth | Hacker News Reader

A lot of good points in there, but it seems to be a little bit on the "developer centric fantasy" side of things, particularly on the Traction section.

Non tech cofounders that are getting 30 users before trying to find a technical cofounder aren't having trouble finding tech cofounders. Non tech cofounders that have 10 people committed to paying up to 1000/mo and signed letters of intent from the 5 of them (120k/year, 60k guaranteed) before building a product are few and far between.

These guys are gems, and betting on them is a good bet. Its like non-tech founders trying to partner with proven Facebook employee #13. Unless you're equally proven as a dev, its hard to justify asking for that level of accomplishment from your cofounder.

Much of the "find a cofounder" game is about making good decisions when its not such an obvious call.

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"This is not just speculation: from our position (Hirelite connects developers with companies looking to hire them via speed interviewing over video chat), startups value a developer about 50% more than a non-technical person with a similar level of experience/skill/etc"

They have some basis that developers are more valuable based on market forces alone, which means that you need to set your expectations accordingly.

"Non tech cofounders that have 10 people committed to paying up to 1000/mo and signed letters of intent from the 5 of them (120k/year, 60k guaranteed) before building a product are few and far between."

What? I would suggest that the abovereferenced set of cofounders is equal to the null set.

I can't imagine anyone dumb enough to commit to a $12k annual contract for vaporware from a company whose very existence is contingent on finding 9 other suckers just as dumb as you are. The closest model I can think of is games software publishing, but that exists in an area with a known customer base. Nobody in the real world, running a real enterprise, with real money on the line, would gamble like that - at least none of the people I work with.

Well definitely not the null set. Bloomberg had Merill Lynch basically fund his entire development before the product even existed.

Merill Lynch also took an equity stake in Bloomberg, which isn't the scenario under discussion here.

Didn't Oracle and every other enterprise software vendor start out by securing contracts like this?

I know of a couple of specialized financial product companies where development was funded entirely by the first customer.

This is an interesting use case, but I don't understand it.

Why fund the development of new software to a third party who will then resell it to your competitors, versus hiring a software shop to develop it and deliver it to you for internal use?

Equity split? lower maintenance costs? I can't really grok such a decision.

If you hire a software shop to deliver it for your internal use, then you're also on the hook to pay for any and all future versions, or they won't get built. If the software isn't going to be your advantage over your competitors, then keeping it to yourself just increases the amount you'll pay for upgrades.

that was my point. the part you quoted from my comment was an idea from the original post.

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