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Word Problem

2 pointsdbosson22 comments

A recent college graduate named David decides to pursue entrepreneurship instead of employment, so he moves to the Silicon Valley. He has a big idea for a web application, $50,000, and the application designed in adobe illustrator. He does not have a technical background or a co-founder[s]. WHAT SHOULD HE DO?

"... He does not have a technical background or a co-founder[s] ..."

Find a co-founder & work on a personal problem to solve (because you have no ideas) #6 & #7~ http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html

Find a technical co-founder that can program, work on a problem that you have (hint: maybe it could be I can't find a co-founder) #1, #6 & #7 ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html There is a problem with non-technical founders having the right location, some seed money & an idea. The idea will probably change so being obstinate is a mistake #5, #6 ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html The key thing is a technical co-founder(s), pronto & see if their skillset complements yours (btw you didn't mention what area you graduated?). Think Woz & Jobs for example.

You need to find your Woz!, your idea and move from there.

"... and the application designed in adobe illustrator ..."

But this is a sketch right? There are lots of problems thinking this will be your end product. It will change. The most important one being, "is it what people want (& willing to pay for)?". Obstinacy is a mistake #5 ~ http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

I am very confident in both the idea and the design, but I am not stuck on either. The idea has already completely changed once, and has slightly changed several more times.

I know a lot of people claim to have big ideas and it is tough to believe them because talk is cheap, but this is real! Something is going to happen and if anyone is serious about doing a startup I would love to get together to talk. Even if we dont end up working together [passionate young people discussing Ideas, the future, and making life better] couldnt hurt.

The pruning method of choice seems to be evaluating developers based on their contributions to open source projects. You have to be at fairly proficient to successfully submit code to a well run open source project, because bad patches usually won't be accepted (fairly... well... bad... usually... not a very strong sentence is it :p).

AFAIK, the YC route is similar but a bit broader: ask them for any kind of interesting projects they have built. You would need to have someone technical take a look at them (or you could probably post something here and you'd get half a dozen people's opinions on the quality of the work).

Depending on how difficult the idea is to implement (and I realize that this is hard for you to gauge), you may be able to go the Guy Kawasaki route of outsourcing the development. The general rule of thumb the community seems to have agreed upon is that as long as your chief product isn't technology (i.e. technology is not your core focus), then outsourcing at least the initial build is not untenable.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you want to discuss anything in private, I give you my solemn vow not to leak your project... anyway, I have too many other things to work on already :)

Your right I dont know for sure, but I think the idea will require lots of code and be difficult to implement. I also feel the idea has some viral qualities and may need to scale rather quickly. I would be willing to take on more than one cofounder as long as we were all on the same page, and vested. I dont think outsourcing would work, because I already have some more ideas to implement down the road, plus I want somebody to share the struggle and joy with.

Thanks for your advice and the option to contact you for more. I will probably email you soon. Let me digest my thoughts. I still want to find out about provisional patents and what I should do to protect my IP as I look for a co-founder.

David seems to have put the cart in front of the horse and needs to very quickly find some top-notch programming talent. David should email me, and I can put him in touch with some excellent developers in the SF bay area. The guys I will recommend to you are Real Programmers (Hackers) [1] [2] each of whom has a wide background, from systems software to web apps. (As opposed to people who have not written much real software and who have only picked up the art from a "Teach Yourself Web Development in 24 Picoseconds!" book. [3])

You can also try attending local events and trying to meet people, e.g. at Lunch 2.0s and Super Happy Dev House (shdh.org). The problem with this approach is that since you do not have a technical background, you'll have a hard time distinguishing competent people from people who are able to just talk well and promote themselves. You want to work with someone who can communicate well, but you don't want to get stuck with someone who can only communicate well but can't code worth crap.

N.B. If your idea sucks, you're not going to get good people to work with you.

Also... why is there no contact info in your profile? If someone here wanted to get in touch with you to work with you, they'd look in your profile for an email address.

1. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html

2. http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is

3. http://norvig.com/21-days.html

David seems to have put the cart in front of the horse and needs to very quickly find some top-notch programming talent.

It would be nice to find top notch programming talent quickly, but I am not going to rush this decision. I need to make sure this person[s] has integrity, good energy, is in a position both mentally and financially to do a startup, and above all if we enjoy each other.

I will email you to get in touch with the developers you know My email is dbosson@gmail.com if anyone else want to get together.

Look at the story of Kevin Rose/Digg for some inspiration. He's pretty technical, but not a programmer and didn't do the coding on Digg.

Utilize open source projects (freshmeat.net). Stuff like the CMS Joomla and forum software like phpBB. You don't need a day job, so that's 18+ hours/day to teach yourself technical stuff.

If that $50k is tax free you have at least 1.5 years living expenses and enough cash to pay contractors on elance/craigslist to fill in the gaps.

I could spend 18+ hours a day learning to program but that is just not what I am passionate about and it would take me longer than 1.5 years to get good. I would much rather spend my time designing and working with people, and I would much rather spend my money on servers than rent.

It sounds like you're not interested in alternative approaches. I won't bother expounding further. Good luck anyway.

I am open to alternative approaches please expound.

You've had a lot of good responses. Why don't you tell us the general type of startup you want to create? That'd improve the advice you'll get tremendously.

My suggestion is that you get your hands dirty. See how much progress you can make. Be tricky: take short cuts, use open source software, use third party services, etc. If you're genuine and inventive in your effort I bet you can create at least a prototype. That's not just sketches on cocktail napkins, it's actual progress towards your goal.

The [how] of the concept is simple so I won't go into that until I have protected the IP or have developed trust in the individual. But I believe I have a way to inform people of [all] the upcoming events that they {the individual} is interested in but did not even know where happening.

Think of the application as your most popular friend in high school - the guy/girl that just knew everything that was going on. The guy/girl you would call to ask "what are you up to tonight?" "what else is going on?" And they could tell you all the fun things that were happening and what your other friends were planning on doing.

I believe I have a way to provide a more complete version of your most popular friend to the world.

I could not go into the other value proposition or sources of revenue without giving away the concept.

I greatly appreciate everyones advice. The YC community is an amazing place.

If you did not have any friends in High school because you were programming the nights away then that is why we need each other ; )

For clarification, I did not intend this last statement to be condescending. I have begun to immerse myself into the Hacker culture and have noticed that it is very different than popular culture. I think that with your skills and my knowledge of the customer we can make something wonderful.

If David is Jewish programmer and not Roman Catholic programmer ... he should visit Mr. Zuckerberg and work for him one year for free then buy facebook for those 50kilos and hang his illustration up on the wall in his new "The Architect" room.

I allready made an offer for facebook but I think Yahoo out bid me.

If he has $50,000 it shouldn't be to hard to find developers/co-founders. I really wanted to type - call me :)

It might not be that hard to find any old developer, but if he is getting ready to invest his life savings and is living out of his car because he wants it so bad he is not going to want any old developer he wants the right developer. You got to get the right people on the bus before you start driving. So how should he go about finding the right developer/co-founder?

In my opinion it is going to be very hard for a non-developer (non-geek) to judge ~ whether or not a developer knows his or her stuff. Does he know any developers?

I don't know any developers and I agree with your opinion! I thought about explaining my situation to Stanford CS professors and asking for recommendations. I still might do this, but I wanted to get the opinions of the YC community first.

I guess if it was me and I was in that situation I'd start at the book store reading a little about what other startup companies used as far as technology. I'd read as many posts as I could on this site so I could gain insight into what is happening in the web 2.0 world from both a technology side and a business side. Then I could meet a developer and make a more informed judgment about what I was looking for in a co-founder.

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