I am starting a company and was in the same situation as all non-technical founders: hire an agency, give away half the company to a tech co-founder, or learn how to build it myself.
I went with the third option. Not only is it extremely gratifying to build it with your own hands, but it means I can make quick decisions and changes on the fly, the only cost is my time, and the vision and execution are 100% aligned!
Wow, I really admire your determination to learn how to build it yourself. I can only imagine the amount of time you're devoting to it. You're in an interesting position because as a solo founder you're responsible for so many aspects of the business.
How do you balance working on the product versus acquiring customers vs operations?
Kudos either way!
Otherwise it's just a case of being efficient with time and prioritising tasks, because everything works in lock-step i.e. have idea, get feedback, refine; create mockups, get feedback, refine; build mvp, get feedback, refine etc. so I take each step at a time.
Having said that, I will be looking for a more accomplished developer to join me as a co-founder imminently because the range of tasks and the timeframe do make it impossible to do everything myself.
Best of luck with Kera by the way, it looks like a great idea.
What's your startup?
My startup is Xavy (xavy.com), it's a video discovery & distribution platform for connecting professionals and conference organisers.
Idea is to provide free/very cheap access to world-class conference content (of which millions of hours exist!) and help generate leads for upcoming events through utilising that content - all in one place, organiser-neutral, searchable/filterable by type of content.
(I have a conferences background, so I know the space).
Sign up on the landing page and I'll ping you once the MVP is up and running, which I'm aiming to be Monday morning.
Cheers!
Sounds cool - I'll check it out. I'm not a conference organizer so I don't know if I'm your target customer. We actually spun Kera out of Big Bang Technology. I guess it's time to update my HN profile!
Max
No need to be a conference organizer to test out the alpha, it would just be good to get independent feedback on the look and feel, functionality etc.
Have a great weekend!
What you do at Big Bang Technology looks great too though!