You have an idea. You need a website. Now what? | Hacker News Reader

You have an idea. You need a website. Now what?

isaacsukin.com

10 pointsIceCreamYou7 comments

sigh, recurring email of a cs student at a major university that offers an MBA program.

Hi [tango],

I'm [zebra] and I am a student at the [bravo] business school. I found you through [school-directory] and I am contacting you because I have a promising opportunity in the [social|shopping|vanity-business] space, already receiving attention from potential investors. Not being technical myself, I could use some help from an [awesome|master-hacker|wizard] technical guy in order to build a [platform|app|buzz-word-flavor-of-the-week]. I was wondering if you'd be interested to chat over coffee sometime this week.

best, [zebra]

This is pretty much the flavor of many unsolicited emails CS students get. Hence, Whartonite Seeks Code Monkey: http://whartoniteseekscodemonkey.tumblr.com/

However, a lot of the people I talk to are through referrals, and they tend to be significantly more qualified. I've found that the distinction usually comes down to whether the founder considers "technology" to be the industry (e.g. I want to be the million-and-first person to create a friend-finding activity-discovering advertising-supported geolocation app) or whether technology is viewed as enabling advancements in other industries (e.g. I want to build Kickstarter for student loans).

People come to me a lot with ambitious ideas and ask me if I can help out. Very often I'll find that "help out" means "build the entire product" because while they have ideas, they can't build them. If I press about payment, they'll offer me a spot as co-founder which is perplexing because they risk nothing. Typically these ideas are incomplete, too, and I'm expected to be on call for any changes and modifications. I used to do this a lot.

Sometimes it's my friends, sometimes it's semi-random solicitation. In all cases, though, my ability to program is seen as a magic bullet. In a casual conversation they'll start throwing dates around and ask me if they're cool. Or, I'll get a large email with specifications and instructions presupposing that I'm already on board. If I say that the idea is interesting, time and again this seems to mean "I'm 100% committed."

I never know what to do. I would love to found a startup doing something truly useful and I used to feel bad for not pitching in for my friends. As time has gone on I've realized I was giving away my time too cheaply. I can't contribute something meaningful to the world if I'm constantly running around in poorly-thought-out circles for other people. Sometimes I feel selfish.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

I say No a lot. It's not fun to say No, but I just try to be honest. When you get to have these conversations a lot you gain useful insights... there are a lot of ways to help people other than building their product for them.

> If you have to hire someone, you're looking at a few hundred dollars minimum in most cases

Find me any business that became successful immediately after a non-technical founder paid a technical contractor less than $500.

Cases where you can get away with paying a technical contractor $300-500 are pretty limited, but they tend to be businesses with small ambition where just having a web presence is the important factor, not implementing any specialized functionality. A student-run startup company selling eco-friendly water bottles, for example, can probably get someone to install and set up a basic landing page with a simple payment gateway for under $500.

Tell me about it. I'm a CS major at Stanford University, and I've been asked to co-found or become the CTO of a startup 3 times this week. And that is only counting the phone calls and meetings, emails are another story.

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