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What does an idea person without software skills or business education do?

5 points by arpit ↗ HN
A very good friend of mine is an idea person and we spend a lot of time discussing our different ideas for web/iphone apps. I am (thankfully) a programmer so I can prototype my own ideas and put it on the www to get feedback and see if any of them catch on (none have yet). A recent conversation led to a discussion on what options she has. She is not a programmer and works as a part time web designer. When we discuss ideas, we are so not on the same page, so I am not super motivated to spend too much time developing an idea I am not convinced of. Her interests are very different from mine so I often pooh-pooh her ideas, but a few months later she shows me similar ideas that have been successful businesses or products.

What would you advise a person who is a good ideas person? She doesn't enjoy programming, so programming classes may be only the last resort.

11 comments

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tunera
why don't you realize her ideas, and you two create a company?
arpit
I wish, but I have too many of my own projects going on, and her projects arent interesting to me. But there is historical evidence that her ideas are good for the niche long tail community she is a member of. Some iphone apps that I dismissed later made a pretty penny for some other people
akadien
Everybody has ideas. Your good friend is no different from almost everybody else on the planet. Ideas aren't worth anything. If they were, there would be a marketplace or exchange where you could buy and sell ideas.

Implementation is everything. If she can't or won't get the skills and education to implement her ideas, then pity her.

hmason
She should learn to write well and share her ideas. Then she has well-articulated ideas that people may pay attention to.
IsaacL
Get some skills? If she already knows some web design, polishing up her skills in that area is a useful skill for a tech startup. With a few months of self-study, or finding some relevant work experience, you could probably get enough basic business education to be of some use. So you were to team up, and you were to focus on building product, and she worried about polishing up the frontend, managing various marketing channels, doing market research, sketching out financial projections, etc - it could work out.
HappySushiCo
IMHO -> ideas != product. if she could find a way to shape her ideas into actual product plans then maybe it would be easier for other people to realize their potential. more often than not, ideas are only as good as how you're able to convey them to others.
CyberFonic
Goto university, get an MBA or business degree. She needs some foundations and skills and techniques to progress ideas through innovation, market development, etc. Refer her to Steve Blank's web site and/or book.
revorad
Perhaps she could find a job in one of the companies who have built successful products matching her ideas. That will give her a chance to see up close how it's done, while building her own skillset. She might meet some new people who she could then team up with to start something of her own.

The other thing of course is to just take a chance and try making something, if she can find someone to work with. She could look into outsourcing the programming.

Generally, it's hard to say anything useful without knowing what her ideas are about.

notphilatall
If she is already working as a web designer, learning JS (with libraries such as jQuery) would be a great first step. This way, she could start prototyping her UIs to convince other people to help with the server-side components.

Also, she could take that skill to a design-challenged startup with a hot idea!