Ask HN: What is the opposite of Y Combinator? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the opposite of Y Combinator?

6 pointsmangeletti11 comments

Some people (Group 1) have great ideas, but lack the time and money to work on them. So, they make a napkin sketch or pitch deck, and maybe a prototype, and then they're off to find capital, as a means of executing properly on their product.

Other people (Group 2) have the skills, extra time in the evenings and on weekends (sweat equity to allocate to development), but they don't have a good idea that they're confident about.

For Group 1, there is Y Combinator, et al.

For Group 2, AFAIK, there is just twiddling with useless side projects and scratching itches. Sometimes that's good, because you can learn from side projects. Sometimes (e.g., after you've spent years doing this), it feels wasteful, and you feel like your precious time and expert skills are being put to waste. I feel that for Group 2 the answer is "the opposite of Y Combinator"; a place or website wherein business-minded people (and investors) can pitch ideas to developers, with the intention of starting a company with mostly sweat equity from the development side, and money invested from the business side. I, personally, would be willing to put in 20+ hours a week on a project for equity alone (no salary, ever), as long as I knew somebody from the business side was invested mentally and monetarily in it, and I imagine there are a lot of other folks like me out there.

What do you think?

TANSTAAFL.

If I were a pure business person, I'd let you work for equity with the intent of structuring any exit, and as business person that would be my job, in such a way that the value of your equity would be as small as possible and mine would be as large as possible for what else could "pure business" be all about?

And if it makes me sound like some kind of sonofabitch, well that's how the Venture Capital funds would probably be treating me without a guardian angel on Sandhill Road. Which to my point is what's the normative case for any naive approach? It's that the naive person walks away with nothing because "being naive" means the person is vulnerable to the wolves, and wolves being wolves and not lapdogs aren't really interested in letting you step in their pudding.

Good luck.

I, personally, would be willing to put in 20+ hours a week on a project for equity alone (no salary, ever), as long as I knew somebody from the business side was invested mentally and monetarily in it, and I imagine there are a lot of other folks like me out there.

Without making an express commitment (either in general or to 20 hours weekly), I too would be interested in donating at least some hours of work in exchange for equity, however tiny.

Interesting concept. How might such an equity employment pool be set up? I'm imagining that a part-time equity worker could either be devoted to a single startup, or could select tasks from some sort of cross-company todo list. (E.g., one person might be especially good at Task X, and does that for a bunch of companies.)

There is actually a website where you can perform such tasks on a number of projects (I can't remember the name of it for the life of me). It did a great job of turning outsourcing into a communal thing, and it did a good job at dividing labor, but it wasn't ideal for somebody like me who wants to work really hard and focus really hard on one project that I can get to know from the inside out, and have a really meaningful share (e.g., 25%) in it. In this website's (the one I can't remember the name of) case, the company owns all projects on the website, and the "founders" and workers only get essentially profit-sharing "equity".

I think you're referring to https://assembly.com/

Indeed, thanks.

Posting on here is also a good idea! Someone else might informally have a great idea and want to hook you in. Perhaps you could add something in your profile that lists what you do and how one might contact you?

I launched such a website circa 2008. While a lot of people fantasize about working on a startup on the side, most actually cave because they don't like ideas from anyone else than themselves.

Basically, motivation is hard to get if you are not 100% a believer in the vision. So shopping for other people's visions usually fails.

IMO the fundamental problem here is telling apart great ideas from no so great ones (if it were easy, the people with genuinely great ideas would easily secure funding). Unfortunately, it's generally not possible before the idea is realised - all great ideas seem very risky at the beginning, some even look downright silly. There are no safe horses to bet, and this affects both VCs and you as a developer willing to devote afternoons to someone else's idea.

You could try signing up at https://www.cofounderslab.com/. I've had a number of people reach out to me who are looking to partner with a developer.

EF (joinef.com) in London might come close, although they basically pay a stipend to make the founder team building/ideation phase a full time job for a few months.

This is exactly what I was looking for: http://www.ideamarket.com

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