Not sure what to do with my startup idea | Hacker News Reader

Not sure what to do with my startup idea

12 pointscoingig25 comments

I have a pretty good idea for a mobile app that I want to develop that is based on musicians and their news feeds, it is not something revolutionary but it is missing in today's world and actually something I would use everyday.

I am not a coder but my forte is in digital marketing as I have been doing it for 8 years and pretty damn good at it.

Building an app today is something that is all the rage so I know hiring a coder is going to be very costly once programming and design are included.

Anyone have advice on how I can go about doing this, should I partner with someone that can code, take the risk and invest the money to have it developed?

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hiring a coder is going to be very costly once programming and design are included

You should start learning about coding now, not with the intention of building the app yourself, but with the intention of becoming more knowledgeable about what the developer's job entails. If you find a developer and say "build me an app" you might get estimates like 12 months and $50k. If you know that you just need a news feed, you can say, "can you take this jQuery mobile template and wrap it in Phonegap, and create a simple database to store a data feed from the following sources, you might be able to get it done in a few weeks for $300 [1].

https://medium.com/@morphmail/the-first-300-a-startup-launch...

Good idea, I have some basic programming language but not enough to code something like this completely on my own. I'll start reading up on Phonegap and seeing how I can narrow down exactly what I want to get it a cheaper price as well.

That Medium story is awesome, thanks for that!

I made this free tutorial series for PhoneGap/Cordova (http://app-o-mat.com) -- it assumes you know HTML/JS (but not too much)

As always: That depends. ;-)

The most important question is: Can you make a sustainable business with you app and will you generate money from it? If this is the case, you could either find an investor (which may be very, very hard at you current stage) or invest some of your savings on your own.

Then, how are you used to work currently? Do you prefer working with others or on your own?

Finding a co-founder is often a good choice for startups because you find like-minded people which (hopefully) share the motivation for the project with you. However, doing something together requires a lot of trust in each other and empathy. If you find yourself comfortable with another guy at your project, go for it, that's the best solution, in my opinion. If you disclose some more details about your idea, I am sure, HN could be a place to start searching.

If you find yourself uncomfortable with that and you're not willing to learn to program, go for oDesk or something similar as some other comments already suggested.

I was able to make a mockup app, if anyone is interested in seeing what I'm doing you can reach out to me by twitter @kmetral

In an ideal world, you could partner with a developer who would built it in exchange for equity. There are ways to make that happen...go to meetups, put an ad on craigslist, etc. Just remember that developers get these sorts of offers ALL THE TIME. Make sure you stand out.

Personally, I'd be wary of spending my own money on paying a contractor to build something. It will be expensive and there is no guarantee of a good outcome.

Good luck!

Thanks for the help! Yea this would not be my first startup so I know developers are approached everyday with tons of ideas to get involved in.

I got accepted into Startup School so I'm looking forward to seeing who I can meet up with that could help me out.

As for as spending my own money, you are right, I have done this before and ended up being super expensive and outcome was not that good.

I know there are many of talented coders on here so if there is anyone that is interested in hearing more I'm more than happy to speak with them.

See if there's a way for you to implement a simple version of the idea without writing any code, and just using a blog or email newsletter.

so build a website to create hype and collect emails? I have seen some apps do that

No, I mean a simplified but still useful version of your idea. You haven't shared what your idea is, so I don't know if this will work for it.

I understand you pretty well because I'm in the same situation now. So what I've done? I've created something like a prototype using Prottapp (design was made by my wife in Adobe Illustrator). Another tool for this is Balsamiq. After this I'm going to create a crowdfunding campaign for further developing as I don't have enough money for it. May be you can try to do the same

I just signed up with Prottapp and I'm going to do some designs so I can see what I want exactly, thanks for that recommendation.

I appreciate your help, this is definitely going to help me a lot.

If you've been doing digital marketing for 8 years and are pretty damn good at it, I'm surprised that you're having trouble paying for a coder. Digital marketing is typically closer to sales and revenues. The effect your work has has (and thus your compensation) can be orders of magnitude higher than programmers.

I think you'll find salaries are about the same. Without going into executive level management, a senior digital marketer will earn around $70k to $160k in western markets in my experience.

Building an app like what I want would cost a lot, maybe 10-20k which is a lot of money go invest for me. I will either build the app myself or hire a good freelancer.

We could use a good digital marketer to help with Codective.com and we could also build your app. Anthony@prmatch.com

Sam has a great blog post about this: http://blog.samaltman.com/non-technical-founder-learn-to-hac...

The title says it all - learn to hack.

That was a great blog post, thank you for sharing that with me. I'm going to start learning how to build my own prototype.

Not a startup guru here, just a coder. Please take into consideration that a good programmer wouldn't put best effort for cheap as well. I think you should search for programmers with enthusiasm + skill combo. Good luck!

I definitely agree with you, to get a very good coder to put their best effort it will not be cheap so maybe looking for a partner could be my best option.

Before you put a lot of money into development, don't forget to validate your ideas first. I highly recommend the lean startup methodology.

Maybe you can start with a web app that is much cheaper?

that was something I thought about as well.

I would go with Odesk.

Have you had any luck finding a developer on Odesk that can deliver good work? I have used Odesk for other sites I had built and it was pretty bad.

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