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Ask HN: Selling Business Idea/Source Code

1 points by gsmaverick ↗ HN
I have an idea for what I think could be a profitable business and I have the required skills to code it. The only problem I have is I am a student and would not have to time to run this business as it would involve selling advertising and managing a staff of contract workers. Is it possible to do some sort of deal where I would sell the source code/"business" in return for some equity in the result corporation? Should I just move on?

7 comments

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cperciva
Just move on.

Regardless of how fantastic your idea is, the fact remains that there are millions of people out there with what they believe are fantastic ideas -- most of which aren't. For someone to distinguish between fantastic and non-fantastic ideas takes a significant investment in time, and no sane person is going to make that investment given the negligible odds of a payoff.

Or, put into economist-talk: The friction of investment discovery is too high.

This presupposes, of course, that you don't have any special advantages which will lead an investor to think that your idea is more likely than average to be a good one. If Jeff Bezos says "hey, I have a great idea for a business", people will listen -- but most of us don't have that sort of credibility.

gsmaverick
I'm not looking for investment I'm looking to give it to someone else to work on and in return ask for equity.
cperciva
Sorry, I was unclear. By "investment" I meant the time required to listen to you describe your idea and figure out for themselves if it's worth pursuing. It's not an investment of money, but that doesn't make it any less of an investment.
joubee
Interesting :) Would you like to share any details on the concept? You can email me at: joubee{dot}com or I'll keep checking back here. It really depends on how 'big' the idea is. Is it scalable? Is there a business model? Are there other less obvious benefits to working on the project. Love to know about it though.
joubee
Also - how committed are you to this idea and why? Will you just forget about it when it doesn't magically make you a billion overnight. Will you see this through?
gsmaverick
I am a university student right now so I don't have time for this idea. I want to give it away to someone else and see what they can do with it. I'm asking if that's something that's feasible and would make sense.
ScottWhigham
I'm initially with cperciva ("Just move on") but the thought did occur to me that this might just a good student project or pet project to help put you through school. If it's such a great idea, then once you have it developed you'll be able to shop it around and get some help. Plus it might be a great resume item or even an incentive to take a few business classes.

As a student there are other reasons to code it up besides just concept of selling it. You probably already know this but, just in case, I thought I'd throw that out there.