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Ask HN: Can young entrepreneurs with no coding experience launch a startup?

7 points by gacxllr9 ↗ HN
Here's my situation, briefly:

A few months ago, I watched customers deal with a widespread problem in what was my industry at that time.

I researched the idea fully for a week or so and found a few services that solved similar problems. I could only ever find one blog post (someone offering up the idea) with more or less the exact idea.

For the next few weeks, I mocked up the idea, wireframed the pages, and generally envisioned how this would work and refined the business model. I asked a few people with relevant industry experience for their suggestions, and made a few minor tweaks on the mock-ups. A dozen industry leaders have already pledged to me that, if I can deliver what I have mocked up, they will definitely be interested in a long-term relationship with my company.

This idea is nearly unique (and its proposed execution definitely has not been done before), but the technology required to execute on it is not particularly complicated.

I had hoped that in the next few months, I could familiarize myself with Ruby on Rails and code this thing myself. As I look ahead, though, I'm realizing that it would be a good idea to have someone on the team who is familiar with other technical aspects of the company - like handling the servers, the bugs, et cetera.

I would love to focus on business development, networking, sales, general admin tasks and marketing, since I have experience running my own (non-technical) businesses in the past. Unfortunately, young start-up founders all seem to be programmers who brought on gray-haired entrepreneurs.

I'm wondering where I should go from here.

8 comments

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fijter
If you really want to you can, but I would recommend working together with a experienced programmer. Anyone can hack something together after a few weeks of learning and basic example code, but if you want to program something you can rely on for the next couple of years you can do yourself a favor by working on a solid foundation. You say people are interested in your product, but will they still be when it's done? If you got the time and money to work on it for at least 6 months I say go for it, you're going to regret that you haven't tried if you don't ;)
xtac
First, forget about the dozen industry leaders who pledged to you. Also be honest with yourself in the possible future of this product. Odds are you are not the first.

Make sure if this is built you can succeed without their pledges.

Second, research,research,research the idea extensively.

One you have done that do as much work as possible as you can in building it, as far as you can go, this will allow you to see your idea through.

Once you have done that if you are still interested in building it, either

1) ask a coder friend, or find a coder and put them on as co founder

2) outsource the development

If you have no $ than try to produce it yourself no matter what

- non coder

ig1
Find a co-founder with technical expertise or hire someone are the two main options you have.

If you can't afford to hire someone yourself than raise money, if you've got a solid business model with clients lined up you might be able to find an angel willing to finance. Or alternatively see if you can get some of the industry leaders who are interested to provide financing.

gacxllr9
I have $1000 that I'm willing to throw into development right now, but I'm not sure how to spend it wisely. It seems like $1000 might not be enough to code a fairly simple application. What happens if the money runs out before the project is finished? Would I end up with a non-functioning set of code, or would the feature set just end up severely reduced?
jeffepstein
This is obviously not enough to find anyone worthwhile. That being said, your best bet is to pitch a programmer who is willing to join your team for equity.

I would suggest going to local events, meetups, etc and reach out to a bunch of potential candidates..

bdickason
You should definitely, definitely, DEFINITELY find a developer. Designer can wait, but I personally believe (based on trying to do the same thing) that the time it takes to ramp up your development efforts will leave you so frustrated that by the time your idea comes to fruition, it will be 10% of what you want and take 300% longer than you expected.
mikeleeorg
I see two potential next steps:

1) I agree with the other commenters that finding a programmer would be smart. Some places to find such a technical co-founder are:

+ http://www.linkedin.com/ - Go through your network, or do a search for programmers with potentially an entrepreneurial streak. This will take some time and might even cost you some money for their premium account (so you can email people not directly connected to you). You could also join some LinkedIn groups, lurk for a bit, and see if you can find any good fits.

+ http://www.builditwith.me/ - This is a new site and I'm not sure how effective it is. But it's an interesting premise and might not hurt to try.

+ http://founderdating.com/ - This is also a new service and is limited to a handful of cities. If you happen to be in one of the upcoming locations, you could give it a try as well.

+ http://news.ycombinator.com/ - I figured I'd just throw this one out there too. I'm not sure how effective it would be, but conceivably, you could find a technical co-founder here as well.

2) ig1 also brought up a great second option. Try to raise some funding so you can hire a programmer or development team. There are lots of ways to raise seed funding: equity on your mortgage, credit cards, friends & family, investments from those industry leaders, angel investors, etc. You can do some online searches to find a plethora of info out there.

Good luck!

pw
My recommendation would be to think in terms of a minimum viable product. You said you have $1000. That amount might not be enough to build your entire product, but is enough to build something. And that something would be enough to get further feedback--feedback about demand, but also about more specific things like pricing and marketing.

While your mention of wireframes and mockups makes me think you might already be walking the Lean Startup path, I don't think it's necessary to make the leap to a full-blown product just yet, particularly since you're not in a position to build it yourself.