Ask HN: Non-coding, single founders?

I might sound funny, but I'd say, learn to code.

Especially if you call yourself 'rather independent'.

Dabble in most languages, pick what you like best and fit the bill and make your way slowly to alpha.

I'm just worried that if you don't know any coders and nothing about shipping a product, you might end up nowhere and lose a fair bit of cash.

Good luck.

I believe it's not feasible. How are you going to recompense the coder doing the "outsourced" work? How do you know you're getting value for money? How do you assess their work? How do you negotiate changes? How do you specify what you want?

You need a founder who can code. That can be you if you choose to work hard at it, but it's generally assumed to be better to have a co-founder.

I disagree with the other comments (mainly because I have done what you describe multiple times with success). If you can afford to pay a programmer to do what you need, its fine. You wont get the same attention to detail you would get if that person had equity vs salary, but dont let that stop you. I still think finding a technical cofounder should be your first choice.

If the project is small enough that it can be started by outsourcing, then you COULD do that. But its ideal to have someone on the team who can code; your site is pretty much useless should a bug come up, or simple feature is requested.

So, your options: 1) Learn to code and try to get the basic version out for yourself 2) Find a co-founder. 3) Outsource to build it out. Then see if you can get that profitable, and recruit a co-founder.

Just learn to code, its not that hard to at least get a decent understanding of how to do it... if you have money to pay workers then that makes it all the better.. you can learn the ins and outs and give them technically detailed instructions so they won't waste any of your time and you can easily seed out people who don't know what they're doing... if you just work at learning a language for a few months and have money to invest, pretty soon you won't have to do any actual coding yourself as you can hire people pretty cheaply if you get remotely based workers.

I would also suggest that it'd be hard to find a coding co-founder. More often than not they don't really like guys like you. At least personally I wouldn't go for it. Many reasons - one is that I would certainly have a disagreement with you on a certain thing because of the fact you don't understand how it works and what really matters. Some recent posts on HN about co-founders divorces may be proving exactly this.

Even if you can't learn to code, do learn to communicate with technical guys if you've never worked with one before. I am both founder and coder and I find some of my co-founder who graduate from business school does not know to how communicate with technical members. This could be harder especially if you graduate from business school, knows nothing about technology, and you're going to work with a high-tech savvy. Their brain just works in different form from yours.

Potentially feasible, but I don't know that anything good will come of it. Speaking as a coder, I definitely think of the code as the heart of a project, and outsourcing it never even occurred as an option to me, personally. What you're describing, site, marketing, research, etc are all important, but they all seem ancillary to the project itself. Have you considered working as a consultant or freelancer doing these things? I guess what I'm trying to say here is that if you do what you're suggesting with your ideas, I don't know that they'd really be YOUR projects anymore, I think they'd end up being something you played a supporting role making. If you're ok with that, go for it, but I don't think I could ever be happy executing a good idea that way. I'd have to make it my own.

It's feasible. I've done it before.

I think, (being in the echo chamber that is YC) we forget the number of successful businesses that have been created, since time immemorial by people that _cannot_ code.

Whilst I agree that you probably couldn't solve a hugely technical problem without a strong technical team, A _HUGE_ number of recent well known, "startup wins", have been from business model innovations.

I am by no means successful, but I am working on it. I have outsourced some development, and in the development of some ideas, taught myself to be a pretty sufficient programmer, just roll with it.

Your lack of technical ability is just one constraint of many that you will face, constraints are good, they shape your decisions.

And of course the benefit is that getting out their, with your hacked, outsourced, barely-holding together prototype, selling your ass off is going to go _along_ way in impressing those people with complimentary skill-sets that you might want to partner with.

Shit, if your a good entrepreneur, you will work it out as you go, learning, hiring and partnering with whoever you need.

As Mark Suster says, JFDI

And good luck

Give yourself 6 months without any other goal but to learn everything you can about computer science, ad hoc, with a project in mind. I say this because it's demotivating and dis-empowering to be a position of no power, especially when you don't have a lot of cash parked. If you're a smart entrepreneur, I think you'll figure it out, and then you won't be a slave anymore. This may be overkill, but if you're passionate about what's possible in technology, you definitely won't regret building something yourself and giving it all you got.

Just one way to look at things.

A friend of mine wanted to go this route. I helped her look for small web developers to implement her idea, in the end we concluded that approach is just too expensive, and ends up being too much of a risk (she wants to bootstrap this idea without outside investors).

While looking for developers she was lucky to come across a small web development studio who liked the idea enough to invest some of their own time to develop this idea. We'll have to see how that turns out, but so far everyone involved seems passionate enough, so I think they have a chance of succeeding.

> I have a number of startup ideas.

I have too.

> I'm rather independent - and I don't have any coder friends.

I am too - and I don't have any business-oriented friends.

> The thing is: I don't code.

I can, but I face same problem - I cannot do lot of other things, like marketing, market research, etc. ;-)

You can hire developer to teach you some programming and pay for consultations when you in doubt. I cannot hire businessman to teach me business. :-( So, don't worry - you are at better standing point than most of HN visitors.

PS. I am strong in Linux/Java/Perl/Bash/HTML/Server side. I am Ukrainian (Eastern Europe). Drop me email at vlisivka@gmail.com , if you are interested to teach me some business.

No good coder wants to work with an "idea guy", unless he or she is proven or is willing to pay market rate for development. As developers, we know that if the idea and code is good enough, and we have at least a cursory understanding of online marketing, the money will come. What you need to prove to a developer is that you have the know-how or connections that they don't have.

Why not? http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/smartphone-apps/the-new-i... Even a "Miss World Australia" can do it.

Assuming that your ideas do not require incredibly technical solutions this shouldn't be that much of a problem. I'm sure any team is better with a business person and a coding person, but for most sites I see launched I'd prefer business skills over coding skills, and I certainly wouldn't learn how to code to achieve it - there are no lack of cheap coders around.

There is often a lot of talk about Minimum Viable Product. Outsource the project for $xx and you will certainly achieve MVP. Developers working on their own projects tend to get the wrong idea of what is important and lover to tinker, so it is much harder to achieve MVP. Someone that has 10K to deliver a project tends to deliver exactly what is asked for and no more. You can certainly have a contract where bugs are fixed for free for a month etc, and an agreed rate for future additions.

Get your idea working, prove it is viable and you might have to throw away all of the code that was written and start again with a really good team, but at least you know it will pay off.

Good luck

I'm the exact same type of person as you, and I've done alright so far. I learnt some HTML/CSS, but I'd hardly call that code. It's very easy, and I formed my business around that. I then outsourced all work to other coders, and sold the business for mid 5 figures ($xx,xxx).

I think it is important to know what good code does look like, or be well acquainted with someone who knows that (to protect you).

I outsource everything, I hire freelance developers for all work. This can be extremely bumpy, but a fun journey, none the less. There are thousands of freelance programmers in business. You know why? Because of people like you and me :)

It depends on the technical complexity of your ideas, if it's just going to be a mod of an off-the-shelf CMS or something similar then you'll probably be fine.

The greater the technical complexity the more risky it is because there are far fewer outsourcing providers with the skills to achieve what you want.

(There are some exceptions to this: for example there are plenty of iphone app development agencies that are capable of taking on large complex projects)

I disagree with _every_ response so far, which boil down to either a) hire a coder or b) learn to code.

Most businesses that get programmed up are bad. Nobody cares about them and they fail. That's okay if you are a solo hacker because the loss is minimal compared to the learning you get. From your situation, it's a terrible deal (you either sank lots of time or money to get there).

I recommend you dive into customer development (start by reading Steve Blank's 4 Steps book). You can get through all of discovery and part of validation without writing a single line of code (that takes you through "steps" 1 & 2 - most startups never get to step 3, which is profitably scaling the customer base).

Odds are good that your ideas are bad ("bad" as in "grounded in something good, but currently severely flawed"). You can discover many of those holes for free, by talking to your future customers and industry experts.

The best part is that you'll get to the point (without any code) of having a business you can say with some confidence will generate money if it can just get built. And you'll have the evidence (from future customers) in hand to prove it. That makes recruiting great hackers (or raising seed money and hiring them) so much easier.

If you're not a doctor, would you start a hospital?

Yes, it's feasible, if your startup idea doesn't depend on great code. In other words, if it's a good idea that doesn't require technical wizardry, but fairly standard stuff. And there are plenty of those.

The state of the mind which is best situated for coding (literally) or system administration is somewhere near Asperger's ^_^ so I don't think those skills - communication and people-reading which are the must for a founder could coexist with the narrow-focusing and persistence which would benefit a coder. These are two opposite extremes - the social mind and technical one. ^_^

btw, dividing of the tasks and responsibility is a good thing in general, and that is how (and why) YC works - they're searching for an appropriate state of the mind and help them to overcome people/business related difficulties.. (in the very polite and idealistic terms ^_^)

I went from no programming skills to now working in a development shop as a full-time Ruby on Rails coder. This took three years. To those saying "just learn to code". Well, it is a serious undertaking, but it can be done. I'm 40 and learned programming, Ruby, a bit of other languages, CSS, unix shell, sql, etc, etc, etc. It is a lot of stuff to learn to become productive. If you've got the time and energy, you should do it. I'm now in a position to build what I want and bring on a team. In fact, I've already started. Learn to code. And good luck.

Assuming you don't go the year+ path of learning how to code (note the saw of a little knowledge being dangerous), you need to find a programmer who you ABSOLUTELY trust and respect, without reservation or hesitation. A co-founder, hired gun, whatever. You'll need him to vet your ideas, the people who do the actual work, the technical project management, etc.

Buy this book: http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-S... and read/skim it. If you don't "get it", accept what it says as Revealed Truth and then if you have any talent for this game you'll understand more and more as you play it.

The Joel Test is also a good thing to pay attention to and follow: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

If you want to outsource your coding, you should see if you are any good at specifying what you want and conversing with developers. Try little projects for $1000 or so, ideally things that will help you with your business but are not huge parts of the line of business. You should learn something about how developers think and what they can do for you, as well as where you need to become proficient.