Ask HN: I need a co-founder Where do i start?
I am 18 years old and a student in university. I have built 3 web apps in the past and allowed them to die because of school work. I build web apps because i love coding (hobby). I recently built poplytics.com and still working on it but i don't want it to die off. I have no idea how to market it and do customer development. I have had a bad run with bloggers when trying to get them to review my service.
How do i get a cofounder who would focus on marketing? Advice pls..
19 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 55.4 ms ] threadYou may not like this answer, but the actual hacking and coding is a very small part of launching an independent software company. Your "marketing cofounder" is really in for more like 90% of the work. If all you want to do is code, well, you're in competition with millions of coders worldwide who are willing and able to work more cheaply.
patio11, one of HN's most respected members and best contributors, makes his living on a product that he himself characterizes as "hello world hooked up to a random number generator." His business building was all in figuring out and optimizing AdWords and email responders and the payment pages and logos and colors and so on. Does that truly hold your interest to dive into?
Back when I was running my own consultancy I had this belief that if I made something "cool" then it would become a hit almost (as I understand now, in retrospect) by magic. And it was easy to just move on to something else when the magic didn't work.
I've spent some time working in a bureaucratic organisation for nearly 3 years now and, despite all the obvious downsides, this has been a positive experience because I now think I have more of a "business head" to think with. (The regular salary helps a lot too!)
Coming up with ideas for web apps is, I think, fairly easy for the the type of person who hangs out here on HN. Not all of those ideas will be good, of course, but one in ten might be. It's probably also very easy for you to make the damn thing.
But the only way to ensure you give an idea its best shot is to really stick at it and spend a lot of time and effort on the things that don't traditionally come easily to us programmer-types: marketing, design, sales, customer support.
Disclaimer: I make hardly a penny from stuff I've made in the past (and I've abandoned more ideas than I care to remember) but I'd like to think that my work experience (and the experiences shared by fellow HN members) will help me ensure my next venture is more successful.
It will be very hard to reconcile school, hobby and actual entrepreneurship when they are all in diverging areas (and "coding" has very little to do with entrepreneurship). My advise would be to find better alignment in your activities. Otherwise you will end up doing all three just well enough to fail.
For example, you could do an internship in a bioinformatics start-up. Learn about entrepreneurship, network and still get to practice your interests/skills - all in one shot. Not everything has to be about Web2.0...
Don't set yourself up for failure from day one by shooting in all directions. If pharmacy is your passion then try to weave it into all your activities. Always remember, Web2.0 entrepreneurship accounts for 99% of online buzz but less than 30% of actual investment activity. In fact, biotech is currently the largest investment and M&A sector if memory serves from the last PWC Moneytree report. If you like coding then by all means code, but don't feel like the only possible entrepreneurial experience comes from hacking websites.
Disclaimer: I am not a biotech guy, nor am I saying that Web2.0 ventures aren't a good choice. They are just not the only choice.
At the risk of breaking some kind of HN rule, I have a bit more info on how to achieve such alignment on an old blog post: http://bit.ly/hJmCEQ