Envec83

Usually other people approach me with their idea, asking if I want to become their co-founder. That is when the fear described above kicks in. And I wouldn't consider taking a shot at the idea alone cause it wouldn't be fair with the other person.

That being said I also think that I could benefit from having the right co-founder. I am doing fine financially, but I am still looking to hit a homerun and never need to worry about money again, and to reach this kind of success most people would agree that having a co-founder increases your chances a lot.

I am still not convinced. As Michael pointed out, the first months of a startup will be dedicated to developing the MVP, and then validating it and making the necessary changes to fit it to market. Sure, a business person can help a lot in this process, but the developer will be paramount. So it's 'can help a lot' vs. 'paramount'.

I agree. "Value created" is the metric we should worry about. Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks man. I'll consider the option of not having a 50/50 split all the time. It might work on some projects indeed.

It certainly helps. Thanks for the feedback.

This is an interesting perspective, and something I am trying to consider in my equation. I agree that the contribution each co-founder brings to the table should be based on the overall value, regardless of the hours he spent to achieve it. For instance, if one of the co-founders is able to land a big client or investor with a couple of phone calls then I certainly wouldn't worry that I am working 90 hours/week developing the product.

One problem remains: finding people who can close big clients or investors over a couple of phone calls is pretty hard. Identifying them upfront might be even harder!

I agree Michael. That is, in fact, why I said I believe that the business aspect is much less demanding than the development one, at least in the early days of a tech startup.

Very interesting topic in my opinion.

Thanks for the feedback Jason. It's good to know this is a legitimate fear, and I'll certainly work on the clear upfront communications to mitigate the problem.

Attitude. With the right attitude you can fix all other aspects, but the opposite is not true.

Quite interesting ideas.

My advice would be to dream bigger. You can't be sure if anything will work, so why not take a shot at something big then? I don't see any of those ideas becoming large businesses.

Congrats on the app. Looks pretty good.

My suggestion: make it freemium. Give away the basic functionality, and charge for extra features.

I believe this will make your app much more popular and also be more lucrative to you in the long run.

Sounds about right. Thanks.

Good point.

The problem is that evaluating whether or not an idea will get traction is also pretty tough, as it depends heavily on the team behind and its execution.

In other words, could we say that the feedback you can get on ideas before they leave the paper is very limited?

Thanks a lot for the feedback. My comments:

1. I agree, main problem would be to get users to keep using the app in the long run.

2. Yes I started researching now and think that it's probably too crowded and not enough way to differentiate yourself

3. I was thinking along the line of promo codes. Send a code in the email, and keep it in the database until the user redeems it. Then over time we could add mobile apps and play with geolocation and beacons.

Depends on the sector. If I am not wrong tech requires $1 million, but yeah could be $500k, I am not sure.

I am looking for funding mostly to be compatible with the startup visa requirements. For instance, for the US visa I would need $1 million in investing, and for Canada $200k.

If it was not for that I would certainly bootstrap all the way, even because we have some capital to fund the early stages of development.

I believe that on the early days of a project you'll need to do a lot of manual stuff. That is, instead of buying display banners or running big Facebook campaigns you should focus getting highly engaged users, and this obviously will need to be done manually as you'll need to talk to them.

Why this approach? Because in the early days your product won't have any credibility or brand name, so personally interacting with the users will be the best way to get them actually using the product.

Second, those early interactions will also allow you to get feedback and to adapt your product accordingly. You wouldn't get this with mass marketing campaigns.

Question: Do you guys agree that for the mentorship process to work both people need to live at least nearby, to be able to meet in person one a month at least?

In the past I asked for someone who is in US to act as a mentor, and he agreed, but after a while it died down because exchanging emails and a call once in a while wasn't enough to solidify the bound and it wasn't work as intended.

Thoughts?