How Does a Business Person Turn a Software Idea Into a Start-Up?
As someone who continues to have ideas and is interested in making them a reality, I am extremely curious to know the different ways that this can be accomplished. After having done some research on my own I have come up with three real options…
- Pay a Programmer / Developer to Build a Solution
- Find a Technical Co-Founder
- Learn to Do it Yourself
Each one of these paths has its own merits and downfalls, so lets examine them a little bit further.
1. Pay a Programmer / Developer to Build a Solution
This is a great option if you have the cash, but if you are like me and just graduated from college it is not that easy. Of course any Mr. Moneybags can buy the appropriately skilled engineers and have their idea built into a working prototype but that is not a good use of time or money.
Ultimately, two thirds of all software development costs are maintenance, and software development is also never done (until proven unprofitable or in the non-profit sector, useless.) If you have a solution built to your needs and handed off, 99% of the time you will have to pay much more money to have them come and provide periodic updates and additions that are really devalued if they don’t have a personal stake in the product. So in reality, that only leaves us with two choices:
2. Find a Technical Co-Founder
This is by far the best choice, although arguably the most difficult. There is a great post that is several years old in the Y-Combinator Hacker News that talks about this, but it links to a dead blog post. The resolution I have come to is that there are a few key things to look out for, but essentially networking and personal connections are the best way to go about it. You can not post a job listing for a co-founder, it will not work.
You can however, get out to the various networking events in the Bay Area and other Tech Hubs and talk to like-minded people. My finding is that the people at these events have similar goals to you if not the same, and can likely recommend someone or at least point you in the right direction. I may or may not be in the middle of doing this right now for my own idea.
3. Learn to Do it Yourself
As Paul Graham, god of start-up wisdom has said: “…if you want to invest two years in something that will help you succeed in business, the evidence suggests you’d do better to learn how to hack than get an MBA.” I think this is certainly true. As daunting of a challenge as it may seem, the proliferation of the internet and its very nature of allowing you to teach yourself have made this much easier than in any other technical industry. You can use the internet to teach you how to make new stuff for the internet — I love this concept. No more chicken in the egg.
Tools like Web2Py can really speed this along for people with a little bit of a technical understanding. If you are really a beginner then it would probably make sense to visit the section of your local bookstore that contains programming books and begin from the very basics with some light CSS and XHTML, then step it up. I have a firm grasp of CSS and XHTML but am a total beginner with python.
At this point, it is a split for me between options 2 and 3. I believe the best course would be to find a technical co-founder through networking and simultaneously learn what it would take to do it myself.
Update: I am learning to program myself. Period. Thanks again to Paul Graham and his great article on what makes a Great Hacker. He points out that in order to have good taste, you have to understand what it is you are tasting. How are you going to know how to find a good programmer, if you don’t know what it takes to be one?
Blog Services 5:10 am on September 9, 2009 Permalink |
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