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Ask HN: I have an idea. I have the money. I moved to SF. Now what?

64 points by jiganti ↗ HN
I've been reading everything I can from HN and elsewhere on the tech startup industry and have done what seemed necessary so far. But I don't code and would be looking to find a good technical co-founder.

I have what I think is a good idea for a web app, it's a pretty simple concept and while I expect the equity split to be most of the motivation for the technical cofounder, (I would deal with the business side of things) it seems that I would have a better chance of getting a good programmer on board if I offer some cash in addition. Ideally it would be someone looking for experience but also with the ability to have a guaranteed paycheck as well.

And I'm in San Francisco- what now?

75 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] thread
cperciva
Now what?

Start writing code. Don't know how to code? Go to amazon and buy a "learn X in Y days" book. Create a prototype of your web app. Announce it somewhere. See if anyone uses it.

Yes, it will suck. But it will (a) give you some idea of whether or not your idea will ever go anywhere, and (b) give technical people an idea of what it is that you're trying to build.

That second bit is very important. You won't get anyone good by saying "I'm looking for a technical cofounder to help me create the Google of cooking". They won't share your vision and won't have a clue what you mean. Putting up a prototype website allows them to understand your vision and start thinking about how they would fix things.

If your website is interesting, you'll get people coming to you saying "I love this site, but...". Most of them will just be offering suggestions. Some will be looking for work. Find a co-founder from this pool.

Now get out of the way and let your new co-founder rip up your code and replace it. Don't even think about keeping your existing code: No matter how hard you worked on it, trying to keeping it will just slow your co-founder down. Let your technical co-founder make all the technical decisions. That's what he's there for.

Congratulations, you're now the CEO of a startup company.

flipp
Honestly thats probably a waste of your time.

Go to startup events, get involved in the community. Meet people and let them know you're looking for a co-founder. If you find someone who you think might be a good fit ask technical people who you've met to evaluate them.

But chances are you're not going to find an amazing co-founder this way. Good luck.

workhorse
Completely agree. You're in San Fran, so startup events are plentiful.

Networking is the best way to find a co-founder. Spend some time and get to know some people.

Then follow your intuition.

alain94040
Bad advice. Some people are just not meant to code. What do you expect them to accomplish with a book and 3 weeks of effort? A lot of junk.

My advice: go out an meet people.

True, you can't test coders, but you can validate how good they are through social validation. Good coders are respected.

Shoot high: find out who the great coders are. Pitch them your idea. That's going to be the challenging part. Find the one great coder who gets excited. The fact that you can pay them just removes a headhache down the road, but don't open with that. Close with it instead.

nostrademons
That's exactly what he expects them to accomplish: a lot of junk.

The thing is, junk that exists is much better at convincing top-notch coders to join than vaporware that doesn't. It shows them you're serious. More to the point, a good coder will instantly pick out a dozen ways in which your prototype sucks, and want to make them better. Because that's something virtually all top-notch software engineers I've met share: the urge to make something, once they've seen it, as good as it possibly could be. If they can't see it, they have nothing to work with. If they can, you might be able to snag them.

tansey
Why not meet half way?

Everybody can't code, but everyone can make mockups. Use a tool like mockingbird (gomockingbird.com) and literally sketch out every single page/screen. When you make the mockups, you should be sure to know where every link/button goes, otherwise there's a page missing in your mockups!

Just this task alone would stop 95% of people with vague ideas. It also shows the coder that you have taken it as far as you reasonably can without learning to program.

nostrademons
A prototype is halfway. :-) All the way would be learning to code well enough that you could launch the product yourself.

If you can communicate your product vision in static mockups, that's great. But for most products, there's a world of difference between seeing something working - even if it's held together with string and wires and only works for the inputs you're demoing - and seeing a bunch of pictures.

cperciva
As nostrademons said, I'm expecting junk code. But that's fine, because junk code still conveys the idea of what you're trying to create far better than the English language ever will. There's a reason why the YC application form asks for demos.

Pitch them your idea. That's going to be the challenging part. Find the one great coder who gets excited

Better to have two or more excited coders so that you can pick the best one; and your odds of having multiple coders excited by your startup are vastly higher if there's actually something for them to look at.

nrr
The only problem is, well, being able to pick the best one. From what I'm gathering, the OP is the not-software business type, and as such, he really doesn't have much of a metric to use to determine whether or not the person he decides on dragging into the whole mess as a co-founder will be up to snuff.

Worse yet, he's in an unfamiliar town, and as such, the trust metric he'll be using for people that he meets in SF is probably going to be out to lunch for a while until he can get his bearings down. This is the most troublesome part for the simple fact that it doesn't matter how much networking you do if you can't willingly place enough trust in the people you meet.

For now, to the OP, do everything: Network with people, kludge a project together, and do business development. Welcome to the club.

CaanaCast
This is the route that I am taking, except I am capable of coding to an extent, I am designing the prototype and getting some help (paid from an offshore very-part-time programmer to design some classes, mostly only to speed up the process) and I think I am ready to launch soon, however I am lost about how I would find a co-founder (who's interested enough and that I can offer enough to stay and lead the company in the right direction)
aristus
Many times I've tried to convince my friends about an idea, but they almost never take it seriously until there is something they can see and touch.

That's possibly because I'm unpersuasive, or maybe my ideas suck. :D But it's a recurring theme. People, even good friends who respect you, rarely jump in on the first moment.

jiganti
This is probably because they can't really see the vision, at least for some ideas, that is required in order to get excited about it. I've been working on my elevator pitch when I dream up some new idea, but as excited as I get sometimes about some new app that I think can be great, I understand that if a number of other perspectives (peoples' opinions) disagree, I'm probably deluded.
petervandijck
Or possibly because a vision that's not concrete doesn't mean much (too easy to overlook important stuff).
il
Advice like this baffles me. Everyone says you need to find a cofounder with skills that are complementary to yours who can compensate for your weaknesses with his skills.

If the OP is good at the business side, let him focus on the business parts and find someone who's good at the technical stuff. Dealing with the mundane business stuff, marketing, raising capital, etc is very valuable and eliminates potentially massive distraction for the technical cofounder.

Business is selling, so if he's any good at it he'll be able to sell himself and his idea to a cofounder without writing a single line of code.

dasil003
Of course, but the problem is that you can't just show up in SF with some cash and an idea and expect to find a good cofounder. He doesn't have any connections or technical skills. Potential cofounders have no way to judge him or vice versa.

However just because someone doesn't have a proven track record doesn't mean they won't make a good entrepreneur (neither does the converse). The first step to getting a track record is just doing it. Just power through. It doesn't matter if you suck at coding. The business guy who tries to learn and builds a shitty prototype is way ahead of the guy who "just needs the right person". You have to be a problem solver one way or another.

Maybe the solution is to just bite the bullet and hire someone. Maybe it's to go work for a startup for a while. Maybe it's to settle for a shitty cofounder. Maybe it's to build it yourself. Who are we to say what someone's path to success is? The "learn to code" advice is good because it's actionable, shows commitment, and will give the guy infinitely more perspective on all aspects of operating a tech startup.

Business guys with grandiose plans are like professional NNPPs—they talk a big game but they never get anything done. Just start executing.

kranner
I don't think you can assume that anyone who's never coded can build even junk good enough to attract a programming co-founder in a few weeks of reading their first programming book. Some can, but surely not all.

My suggestion would be to build a clickable wireframe/mockup using Balsamiq, Flash Catalyst or whatever. That is something a non-technical guy can feasibly accomplish, and it will distill their ideas down quickly and it will be instantly shareable online with potential partners.

elai
A detailed mockup would probably a much better use of his time than possibly making something that would take a technical co-founder a few hours which for him would take weeks.
robryan
I think it's excellent advice, I'm a programmer but with the idea I'm perusing I defiantly have put a lot of time into understanding our target market, how people will use the features and all kinds of business things.

I have a business cofounder which will deal with the details of it all day to day but I think that not at least knowing the overview isn't very smart in a company with size 2.

Ideally you going to want to know a decent amount of high level stuff about the code and how it all flows together, especially the abstract idea of how a web app on you chosen platform/ language works. As a company grows you can safely step away from this but in a team I find it very valuable.

jiganti
I am interested in learning at least the basics of programming based on the nature of tech startups, even if I never end up doing any. Even if to simply communicate to a cofounder on a slightly higher level, rather than being completely ignorant of the ramifications of certain adjustments the app needs, etc.

I understand that people with an idea are a dime a dozen, but I think my time is better spent on other aspects of the project rather than actually writing code, even if it's the initial version.

Thanks everyone for the advice.

tlrobinson
Hiring a cheap freelance programmer from one of those freelancer website would probably be a better use of time and money. As long as it's just for the prototype.

Just don't be fooled into thinking freelance programmers can replace a technical co-founder, unless perhaps your application is effectively a simple CMS application.

Even if you don't build a prototype, at the very least you should have mockups and/or designs for a basic version of the application.

nostromo
I see these types of posts and it astonishes me that people will look for cofounders "on the street."

I can't imagine that increases the odds of being successful -- but maybe I'm wrong. Employee number 5 can be an unknown quantity, but employee number 2? That would terrify me.

And since you're not a technical person that can code, it's going to be doubly hard for you to validate the person's technical knowledge.

In any case -- you're here now -- what better place to start looking for talent than this community?

nrr
I think the fact that the OP doesn't have the skill to write code is an even more imperative reason for him to pick it up in some form IMHO. As several commenters have already poignantly pointed out, in a company of this size, it really is best that everyone involved becomes an "everyman," so to speak.

For the business types, this means hacking software (or hardware!). For the software (or hardware!) types, this means hacking business.

It's way, way, way too early to specialize.

mahmud
I have given my all to someone, even though I was employee #1, and the only one at that, for a few hundred dollars a week. Because the person who hired me: 1) knew what he wanted but not how. 2) was so honest, that he paid me without even being able to evaluate my work. I could have shown him anything I wanted as a "deliverable" and he still would have paid me, and because of that I went overboard, and made sure to do the best job I could. I billed for 5 hours a day while putting in 12.

Btw, he is someone who I firmly believe has the midas touch. He can't write a line of code, but he has the makings of a top-notch tech CEO. He is an average medical equipment salesman from an average mid-sized U.S. city. But everything about him; intelligence, attitude, knack, foresight, etc. just screams Future Fortune 100 CEO. He is someone I would forsake dreams and fortunes for, just to be part of his team again.

signa11
would you mind sharing some more info on 'someone' / nature of work etc. thanks !
mahmud
I wrote the first version of a social network for him, which he is selling to niche departments of universities.

I got my first chops as a web application architect there. I had freedom to write my own web framework, implement everything from fine-grained security to pluggable application architecture for 3rd party apps, API, and had to design the whole thing to be scalable.

andrewacove
Add some details to your HN profile. That was the first thing I looked at after reading your post, and there isn't anything there. (Not that mine's a particularly epic tome).
mahmud
You worked for Naughty Dog! How do you sleep at night knowing my dream job is your ex-gig?

Prick! ;-)

ctb9
You'll have to ask him tomorrow.
mrbird
Have you already contacted everyone you know? Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. You never know who might know somebody else. I've seen a lot of good connections happen this way. Even if you aren't connected to that many people in the Bay area, once you go out a couple degrees on your network, you might be.

The best part is the connection can come with a recommendation as well.

jiganti
This is a great idea- I have connections in the business world, a number of people with money who will certainly be interested in helping me out if I get something started, but I haven't been utilizing the fact that they can refer people THEY know to me.

As for networking here, it's something I'll certainly start to do.

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jarin
If you can pay a modest salary and the idea is good, you probably won't have that hard of a time finding a good programmer. If you can't find a good programmer within a few months, it might mean the idea isn't as good as you think.
jiganti
This makes sense- I have a lot of confidence in my ideas but if people aren't responding it's likely not going to work.
stretchwithme
come up with a price and ask a bunch of people if they'll pay it
failquicker
My method for getting a great coder even though you can't evaluate coding skills -

Hire a great coder to HELP YOU INTERVIEW. Find a great coder who's work you respect, who is currently employed and not looking to leave his position. PAY HIM his going rate to help assess your candidates.

Find candidates through local meetups, friends of friends, and this lovely community here. Above poster is correct, Good coders are respected. If you actually start becoming a part of the community you will start to find folks who might work out.

petervandijck
That's a great idea. That would be a good service, too, if you can get the trust thing (someone else hires your key employees) right.
callmeed
Are you looking for a full-time commitment from your technical co-founder (initially)? If not you might be able to find someone who can survive working for equity. Just don't come off as one who's simply trying to get some contract work done for cheap. That means get some documents in order and do some customer development. I personally would only consider something like that if the person had done research and demonstrated some hustle.
jiganti
If I can split 50/50 with someone solely on equity, that's fine. It would be a full-time commitment initially. I'm willing to do everything I can, and am hoping to find someone with a similar obsessive personality. I've gotten positive feedback from close friends about the idea but it's a pretty simple concept and so I think it's prudent to use some discretion with whom I pitch it to.
fauigerzigerk
I think it depends on what the main difficulty is in making the idea work as a business. Some ideas are technologically difficult to solve but don't need viral network effects to be useful.

Some ideas are very simple to implement but are dead in the water without a great communicator who goes out and spreads the word, sells it, creates a buzz around it.

If your app is in the second category then you should learn to code and bring more people in later on. If your idea is in the first category then I think you are in a difficult situation, because if you find a good technical co-founder, he (or she) will be more important to the business than you and you don't even have the skill to judge whether he's good or not.

thentic
Buy balsamiq. Create a prototype. Get it in front of prospects.
mahmud
The "lean startup" way to go might be to use MockingBird for free :-P
kranner
Their free plan is limited to 1 project and 10 pages after Sep 1.
ziadbc
Get a domain name, put up a description of the product, start collecting emails on that page. Interview potential users/customers of the product. Collect information (primary research) to show that the idea has legs.

Show this info to potential technical cofounders. Find someone who is interested in that space already.

If you don't have a personal interest in coding, don't spend much of time on that. The one exception I would give is simply mocking up the interactions in html/css. This is much simpler than writing full blown apps, and can communicate the idea quickly. To go even simpler, sketch the idea out on paper.

dannyr
Go to Hackathons like Startup Weekend, Google Campout, iOsDevCamp, etc.

You'll find some developers there to collaborate with.

One of the YC startups in Winter 2010 met through Startup Weekend. We were all in one team and continued hanging out even after the event. Later on, the business guy had an idea for a startup. One developer from the same team decided to join him as cofounder. I ended up working with them for the prototype and also during the YC session.

hsuresh
You could outsource development of a "0.5" version of the application, and use it to start hiring and selling. There are a lot of part-timers who can easily build that initial version for some money. Potential co-founders would have a much better idea on what they are getting into when they see your app, and building it this way will also help you refine your thoughts on what you are getting into.
mahmud
Shoot me an email, and a description of your idea, and I will take an hour of my time to draft a road-map for you that you can take to any developer to execute. Gratis.

[My commercial interests are online advertising, education software, semantic web, data-warehousing and everything middle-east. My Open Source interests/hobbies are Lisp, Android and the JVM. If you're not doing any of these, your ideas are guaranteed safe with me, at least for the next 24 months. And you have the whole of HN standing witness to this.]

nrr
If I were the OP, I'd seriously jump on this opportunity. Having someone do this gratis for an hour in this community can, in some circumstances otherwise, cost an awfully pretty penny.
jiganti
I'll send you an email in a minute, I appreciate this a lot.
mahmud
FWIW, there are about ~5 startups, all started by HNers that I have done this, or something similar for.

(if anybody I have yakked at over the phone is reading this, tell the poor guy what he is in for.)

jacquesm
You can't go wrong with Mahmud.

He's spent quite a bit of time trying to get me to understand some obscure stuff that I'd like to know, the guy is honest to a fault. Be prepared for take-off though, a 10 line email from Mahmud will expand in to a month of reading ;)

jules
You should put your email address in your profile.
jules
Or drop me an email. Address is in my profile.
jiganti
Ok, I put my email in my profile- I had it in the "email" box but apparently that's not visible to other members. Thanks for making me aware of this.
anemecek
Do you think that you could eventually post this road-map online? I'm sure more people would be interested. Fell free to remove any sensitive data.
nl
I'm not trying to be rude, but replying to questions and comments on this thread might be a good idea.

Right now, there are 25 comments, and only one is a reply by jiganti.

jiganti
Sorry, I'm still learning proper HN etiquette. I have erred on the side of silence in terms of comments, I try to avoid cluttering up the forum. I really appreciate all the advice and I'll try to clarify things when appropriate.
mkramlich
Ideas are worth pennies. It's time, energy and execution that are worth something. I have notebooks and notebooks full of ideas. But while it takes a minute to have an "AHA!" idea or perhaps hours to refine it, it can take weeks to years to bring it into existence in a successful form.
jiganti
Since beginning to learn about the startup community I have heard this mantra pushed over and over, and I continue to disagree. There are many ideas that require good execution for their success, but being first in a new space is extremely valuable. I've heard and agree with ideas being a multiplier of execution.
mkramlich
I think everything is multiplier:

idea X execution X timing X who-you-know X "luck" X previous-audience X how-early X market-size X etc.

michael_dorfman
In that case, you may want to revisit your original formulation, Ideas are worth pennies. It's time, energy and execution that are worth something.

Time, energy and execution thrown at a bad idea will not be worth much more than a good idea sitting in a notebook.

mkramlich
idea: web search that gives the best results, fast, combined with ad space we sell

time/energy cost to have that idea: minutes?

execution: none

revenue: 0

now same as above but:

executed in late 90's:

   revenue: $billions for Google
executed in 2010, once Google exists:

   revenue: hard to say, but prob OOM's less than Google
idea: i'll go work for McDonald's

time cost to have idea: seconds/minutes

execution: 20-40 hrs/week, no prev experience needed

revenue: ~$1000/month

another example:

idea: cold fusion!!!!!!

execution: no follow through

revenue: zero

VS.

idea: classified ads ... but on the web!!!!

execution: pretty standard, obvious, simple, blah (Craigslist)

revenue: $millions?

another one:

automatic file syncing across machines? useful idea, not revolutionary

most execution? blah

DropBox execution? golden

Amazon. Idea: you can buy things on the web and we'll mail them to you! Duh/blah/meh. Amazon's execution & timing: nailed it.

some ideas have the potential to make more money than others, sure. but execution is way more important, and arguably timing has a bigger OOM effect as well.

michael_dorfman
idea: web search that gives the best results, fast, combined with ad space we sell

First of all, that's two ideas. Second, each of those ideas was far more precise than that-- remember that AltaVista and Lycos, for example, had very different ideas about how to "give the best results" and "sell ad space".

In other words, getting from the vague wish expressed in "best results" to an actual algorithm capable of being executed is worth quite a lot.

For every "Dropbox" you can name, with a "not revolutionary" idea and golden execution, I can name you a "Pets.com" with a crappy idea and golden execution that failed.

I'm not by any means discounting the importance of execution (or timing), but some ideas have the potential to make more money than others is a hell of an understatement, if you ask me.

We don't need to minimize the importance of ideas in order to remind people that the ideas aren't worth anything without good execution.

nostrademons
Actually, I think that being first in a new space is a bad place to be in. Being the first good entrant in a space is worth something, but almost all ideas are shitty when they're first dreamed up, and coming later gives you the ability to look at other people's failures - in some cases, lots of other people's failures - and see how you can make them better.

Google was not the first search engine. Microsoft was not the first microcomputer OS. Facebook was not the first social networking site. Netscape was not the first web browser. Flickr was not the first photo-sharing site. OKCupid was not the first online dating site. The Apple II was not the first microcomputer, the iPod was not the first MP3 player, and the iPhone was not the first smartphone.

mkramlich
Agreed. It may be a little better to be the Nth entrant, but still be fairly early, but just be way way way better (or have the luck of your market is perfectly timed for when a large gob of new consumers are ready and demanding your thing) than the first N-1 contenders.
ct
First thing you should start with is find potential customers and have them sign letter of intents, which while non-binding is better than nothing. If you can't accomplish that "business" side of things forget about trying to find a developer. Sorry to be harsh, but that's the real way to see if you have an actual "good idea".
tlrobinson
First of all, by far the best way to find a co-founder would be someone you already know, and ideally have worked with before. Second best would be a referral through someone you already know. That's probably pretty obvious.

But if you're starting from scratch, my advice (which hasn't been tested at all) would be to attend lots of meetups and other events, and just meet lots of people (off the top of my head: Startup School, Startup2Startup (invite only? also mostly people who already are in a startup), GitHub meetups, [insert technology here] meetup)

Or maybe hang out at some of the cafes frequented by hackers, if you're the kind of person who can strike up a conversation with random strangers (Coupa in Palo Alto, Red Rock in Mountain View, Epicenter in SOMA)

Oh and for the love of god avoid the "I have an idea, all I need is a coder" mentality. The kind of technical co-founder you want will hate that and run away, fast. Related: expect an equal (or close to equal) equity split with a technical co-founder in a technical company.

If your co-founder needs a small salary, then maybe make a small "investment" in your own company and adjust the equity split that way? I don't know how young startups handle that sort of thing.

mahmud
Oh and for the love of god avoid the "I have an idea, all I need is a coder" mentality.

Now that I am privy to his idea, I can tell you that he is not one of those people. He just needs some business debugging and tough love to get a few things sorted out; but for actual execution, when he has the idea fully crystallized in his head, he will need about 2-3 months of developer involvement.

He is one of those people who are interested in a domain that developer types rarely pay attention to.

ReginaldJeeves
This extract from a recent blog post[1] by the OP suggests he may have a slight touch of the said mentality:

There’s another interesting paradox regarding the people who make many of these social websites, and the people who use them. The people who make them are the programmers. These are the quirky geniuses who took an interest in computer science, math, and other inherently geeky fields from an early age. Their peers looked down on them for this, and as a result they tended to have uneventful social lives. But in their 20′s, they realized there was a killing to be made in online social networks, and so they went to work, armed with the technological know-how to make whatever application their more social peers desired. So what we have is the people with the ability to create, but no understanding of the market, and the people with the understanding of the market, but no ability to create.

While certainly a generalization, the point remains that those who developed an understanding of technological evolution (the computer) tend to have a poor perspective on those whose understanding is limited to biological evolution (humans), and vice versa.

[1] http://zachjiganti.com/2010/08/01/why-groupon-is-successful-...

astrofinch
I don't have any experience with it, but rentacoder.com might be worth a try.

If you're trying to hire a good programmer and you don't know anything about programming here are a few hacks you can use:

1. http://codility.com/ (these guys hurt my feelings)

2. Go to http://therighttool.hammerprinciple.com/browse and look at rankings like "I usually use this language on solo projects". Hire programmers who list experience with those languages on their resume.

That's all I've got for now. Oh yeah, you could google for interview questions, I guess. Or look on the "hiring" sections of web 2.0 companies and rip off their interview questions.

anamax
> (I would deal with the business side of things)

Remember that technical people are interviewing you too.

You need to demonstrate that you can do said biz things.

For example, you may not be able to build a demo, but you better be able to explain the idea and its utility and experience to both technical and non-technical folk.

hibiscus4
Speak to the good folks at Pivotal Labs. Seriously.
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