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I'm basically in the same situation. Here is the solution I found that is working for me.

I'm assuming you have a clear vision for your product/service. You're going to have to take the lead on owning the product, there's no getting around this. There's almost no chance you're going to find a co-founder that's going to handle the product/development, etc while you focus on marketing. I've tried and each time has ended badly. I advise against co-founders unless you know the person well and have worked with them in the past.

Here's the key to getting something developed in as little time and effort as possible. Start with the design. What the user will see when they come to the site. Don't worry about the backend at all.

Search on Dribble for designers - they don't have to be front-end developers. Actually better if they're not (cheaper). For more affordable quality designers, search eastern europe/russia.

Contact a bunch of designers, see if they're available and what their rates are. See how quickly they respond, etc. Select 3 or 4 and give each one the same first task. It should be something that takes 2-3 hours. It could be taking a sketched mockup, polishing it up, etc. After each one has completed this, you pick the one you feel was the best.

A lot of good designers know good front-end developers. You can find one through the designer. If not, you can do the same process on odesk for both front-end and back-end developers.

This is the process I use after a lot of trial and error, and it works the best for me.

I will have to disagree on this, this advice is only good if your sole purpose is to make a quick buck. If you want to start a long term solid business than I suggest you treat people like humans and not like cheap interchangeable pieces as this post suggests.

Think of it this way, since you are not the one developing the application how much will you know about all its inner workings? When you will have customers and a critical bug in production who will solve it?

If you intend to outsource it I will suggest that you do not look for a cheap quick hack, but rather look for a freelancer with a decent rate, with whom you can build a working professional relationship. You want someone that will stick around for the long run and take responsibility for the software he develops, since building it is just the first step.

I agree that I should be looking for people who produce quality work, but I also think there's some flexibility to the 'interchangeable pieces' part of the argument.

Here's the thing: Building anything ends up being a very iterative process. From my personal experience, by the time one moves from the prototype/beta phase upwards of 90% of the original code/design base is thrown away, redone, etc. Since what I'm really looking for here is the first-cut that allows for the validation of the idea and the on-boarding of the first few (hundred-)thousand users, I think there could be some advantages to a little shorter-term thinking; if-and-only-if that means I'm able to deliver that first cut to market sooner than if I were to focus on the stability of the team upfront.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still wavering on my opinion of this (hence this entire thread). But I am really enjoying / appreciating the various methodologies.

I guess our experiences might vary with what happens to prototypes/first cut implementations.

From my experience what starts off as a simple proof of concept/prototype that is done quick and dirty to validate an idea, ends up being the actual production code. This is due in part to clients that come and say: "well it works, why rewrite it? you can just fix bugs if they come up", making you have to maintain what was originally meant to be a throw away implementation.

While right now your intentions might be to rewrite, I do believe that you might reconsider this decision once you have a couple hundred users to please, who all want new features or bugs fixed. Now I do not know what your idea is and how critical time to market is for you but I would recommend that you consider removing non-essential features to get it out quicker rather than skipping quality.

Who says you have to treat these freelancers "sub-human"? On the contrary, once I find someone that works well with me, I create long-term relationships and treat them with utmost respect. I have a 9+ year working relationship with one of my developers, and even gave a 50% ownership in one of my startups to him. I consider him a really close friend even though we've never met in person.

It seems like you are writing a book about me.

On the short: I hired some contractors through elance/odesk - this was NOT the right thing to do. They lack motivation in what you're doing.

My advice: build it yourself, no matter how long it takes.

Yeah, that's been my approach in the past, but I'm definitely questioning that approach right now. Founding at this stage in life is definitely more difficult. In my early twenties, I dropped out of school, working 19hrs a day and was able to produce a prototype for what would become my full-time business for the subsequent 10 years in a matter of a few months ... But with my last startup, I worked every night from about 10pm-1:30am + "nap time" on weekends, and what should have been 1-2 months of work turned into 9 - with way more compromises than there should have been. Plus, the time spent tweaking the code actually limited the time I spent on some of the critical business / positioning decisions.

(A few times I actually rented a hotel in my city just to sequester myself and jump start the dev process)

In terms of elance/odesk, yes, I thought that would be a sketchy approach. I was actually more interested in production houses (like the kinds that build full-on apps) and contracting them. I've done similar in my day job, but in that case, they weren't so much building the business for us, but just building a marketing hook or an app extension to our core offering. I'm a little more skeptical about using them to build the whole thing...

The final approach I was considering was simply hiring my first employee as a work-from-home employee/cofounder. I'm wondering if anyone has ever been in this role, how they found it and if/where things went wrong with the "non-technical" cofounder? (I'm calling myself non-technical simply because I wouldn't be playing the role of developer -- I am in fact technical ...)

I've been to this place before with my first project. As non-technical founders our solution was to outsource. Fast forward 2 years, I run a business helping startups outsource their projects, by matching them with dev teams from my curated portfolio.

To do that, we work with the founders on:

1. Properly determining the scope and technical requirements, so things can be predictable 2. Understanding their needs and creating an ideal team profile. Things get complicated later on, if you don't focus on both hard skills AND the soft side - cultural fit, communicational patterns. Also, by looking for a team that already has experience in your industry focus and project type, you can get more than you bargained for. 3. Selecting the most fitted profile. We do this by further distilling the teams, by interviewing them. 4. Providing support on configuring and helping with the relationship management.

Shamelessly, we do this for free. If you need any help, just give me a shout! :)

Sure -- would love to speak and see what you can do ...

I'm on gmail using the same username (artharrison)

Is your idea something that you think has to go into motion soon or else its not going to be nearly as successful? If not, I'd recommend the same thing I would to someone who wants to date - Go to where the co-founders are, meet people, work with people on small projects if possible, don't expect results super quicklly.

I've talked to a founder who hired external contractors for their site and they ended up with something pretty unmaintainable for $3.5k. They ended up working with a more technical advisor to vet new people working on tech. I'm not sure if such an arrangement could work for you, but if I was in your shoes I'd find someone who seems upstanding and has had success with contracted teams, and then get them on as a contracting advisor.

I have another suggestion I'd like to share with you privately if you want to put your email in your account.

Sure, I'm on gmail with the same username (artharrison)

Sounds like a case where you would usually push through by yourself, but given what happened last time I think you would be better getting some extra help and getting the product out sooner.

I know a couple of outsourcing companies so I can give you a few pointers, good companies have NDAs and other contracts in place to protect you and your IP, usually they have US presence and they have workers on aligned timezones. I can say such companies are not rock bottom cheap but the quality and security it comes with them might be worth every penny (while also being cheaper than getting a full US team).

If you like I can pass you a few contacts in case you'll like to go this path.

Would love that info - at least it would give me some concrete examples of what's available. I definitely have a budget -- willing to invest in the idea & no longer a starving student, so I certainly wouldn't want to be going the rock-bottom cheap route. Thanks.

I know of a company that works more like extending your engineering team, it's called Nearsoft, they have presence in the valley so if you live around I can drop you the contact info of one of the founders and help schedule a coffee meeting or something informal just to get to know how they work.

I recommend you them because they have several startups as their clients, some small other big so they could probably be a good fit.

I'll keep it there as this is starting to sound like an advert, so I'll leave my email: chadruva@hotmail.com

Cheers.

I'm actually in Toronto, Canada (closest I got to the valley was an invite to the YC interview round almost 6 years ago now ...), but I'll reach out via email because I would absolutely love to hear more.

honestly if the idea isnt worth leaving the day job, and dedicating 6 months or so, maybe it is not the right idea?

in any case, nothing is as important as the founder's investment of time amd focus in any new business. that said, i would also look for enthusiastic volunteers (equity based, deferred comp, experience, former employees hoping to see another success, etc) to help so that it forces you to articulate a plan, organize and prioritize, and most importantly, keeps you from losing motivation since you have people who depend on your feedback and leadership day to day

oh and stop reading HN as it kills productivity ;) time to get back to work!

1. I totally agree and am always ready to leave the day job. I guess what I'm looking at here is the optimal way to get to the quit-job state. I'm not the best developer, so quitting to take on that responsibility seems counter productive ... Leave a job that pays well, allows me some freedom to invest in others working towards my goal - just so that I can devote all my time to work that I'll never be the best at / other would do a better job of ... Part of the problem here is likely the fact that I should probably be in a "non-technical" cofounder role, but I just happen to have enough technical founder skills that prevent me from embracing that approach whole-heartedly.

I'm really trying to find the best balance of risk/reward here -- while accelerating the timeline as much as possible.

2. I'm at the dayjob - so, technicall my time on HN is helping finance the upcoming project... (note to those who work with/for me / are quite possibly reading this: -- this was a lunch break post & you all know I run a number of side projects -- don't get too scared that I'm leaving tomorrow...)

I'm in Toronto, working as a rails developer. Last year, while doing some freelancing on odesk, I saw a CTO of a startup get the minimum viable product built by partitioning the job out to a few different odesk workers. He spent about $10k for 600 hours of work - the startup was an ecommerce site that had a gift recommender based on the answers the customer provided.

You get what you pay for however, so while the site works, it's pretty ugly (needs way better design). Also, his main contractors were barely fluent in english - so communication was always bit tricky.

BTW, feel free to email me since I'm in the same town.

I have a lot of experience with outsourced development, my last couple projects have been like that and it has worked out really well (as in, profitable apps with a lot of users). So I know it's possible.

For concern about rights / stolen ideas, I don't think it should be a major problem. By and large they are interested in getting paid, if you are a good partner then things should be OK. There are things you can do to mitigate the risk, e.g. if it is an iOS app then you submit the app yourself and get the payments directly, make sure to get the source code, etc.

If you want to know more then let me know.

Ruthlessly strip out all features until hurts. Then build it yourself. Launch. Rinse and Repeat.

Put up a landing page now to gauge interest and start the marketing effort by building a list.

Yeah, that's absolutely what I've done in the past / will do again if I head this route. (Truthfully speaking though, with the time limits, it was the ruthlessly stripped down version that took me 9 month). As I said, I'm a competent hacker, but even full-time, I'm nowhere near my dev friends and designer friends who breeze through some of the data structure design aspects I'd end up meddling with for a week ...

Could you talk more about that project? I can imagine some projects that would take at least 9 months to make a beta happen (Space travel), but I can't really imagine a stripped-down-to-the-core software business that takes 9 months for a beta. (Was it financial?)

I have had a similar issue hitting bottlenecks in developing an app that would've benefited tremendously from a domain expert. I now think that a good approach would be to hire out that specific part on odesk.com or other freelancing site.

Did you ever think of skill exchange?

I am interest in your current role "Marketer". Recently I just launch my startup product(peoplelamp.com). Now I am headache on how to promote it on US market especially I am living in Asia(Taiwan). Take a look at my site and see if my skills fulfill your expectation. I build this site myself. If you are interesting we can discuss further.

Not sure if my response violate the posting rules of HN. If it did, I will remove it immediately.

I haven't really thought of a skills exchange. It's an interesting concept though...

( NOTE: for someone else who's looking for a startup idea -- there you have it: A marketplace for startup founders to exchange skills.

Skills / tasks are sold on a credit basis Design a logo == 1 credit Design a landing page from wireframe == 3 credits Develop a membership backend == 5 credits

Earn credits by completing tasks for other founders using your own skills, then posts/purchase tasks for things you can't do yourself using those credits.

Monetize == let people just straight up buy credits if they don't want the hassle of helping other :)

Obviously that's not the idea I'm talking about in this thread -- just a freebee for someone who needs a new idea to noodle around with.

)

Anyway, in terms of your website People Lamp -- I don't think your skills would be a match for the scope of what I'm talking about, but one piece of initial advice: make sure your website loads with http://<url> and not just http://www.<url> ...

Build yourself. You are motivated. You cant ask someone to be motivated about your "thing" unless you are paying them. Otherwise it should become a "we" thing.

Yes, either build it yourself, or successfully share your vision of how cool and successful this will be to a dev that makes it become a "we" thing.

This allows the dev to make small decisions several times a day that align with your vision. Meet and work together and iterate in real life as much as possible to keep bringing positive energy of how this thing is breaking new ground in this problem space.

I would personally stay away from production houses because I don't think I would be able to share my vision as direct and with the same weight, which would at least to some extent limit their motivation to make my project really stand out.

Caution. I know no thing of this problem space.

you have a unique oopportunity to learn. Hire someone on as your lead developer, and act as a developer beneath them. You can grow yourself, by getting assigned tasks and working through their code reviews, you'll have complete scope view of project, and the possibility for a cool prototype.

I would suspect that it'll take less time than you, and more time than just them; but could be an exceptional environment

It's a great question. I am in the exact same situation. The really difficult part of the equation is that every minute with your startup is time spent away from family. And as soon as you hit a snag developing (day 2) you begin to question if your time is best spent developing when you know someone else can do it in one tenth of the time. Feel free to drop me a line on gmail(danvoell). I am happy to commiserate with you or offer suggestions or help out.

Often, people forget to look a history but it's a good teacher. Applying history here, look at most successful technology companies and you'll see co-founders (Google) or a founder that hires (Amazon).

Supposing you can't build an mvp, logically, you're best to try the above routes.

You provide too little detail for anyone to give you a positive answer...

Sure, I'm happy to provide more, I just wasn't sure what details others would need... AMA

I see two big trends in building apps/sites/businesses these days.

If your product is tech light (eg. groupon) you can build an MVP relatively quickly and on your own

If your product is tech heavy (eg. fusion reaction analytics at power plants) you will probably need to quit your job and find a skilled team (and maybe some investment).

Ask HN: Startup Quandary - build myself, hire or outsource