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Ask HN: I just thought of a startup, got funding and now I am stuck...

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Re: Ask HN: I just thought of a startup, got funding and now I am stuck...

#11
The biggest hurdle you have in front of you is finding someone to build it. Reach out to your network and see if anyone knows good people working in the technologies you need. Attend local meetups that revolve around these technologies. Visit coworking spaces an ask around. Hacker News may also be a good resource for that. Also, I'd be happy to recommend some folks to you (my email's in my profile).

Re: Ask HN: I just thought of a startup, got funding and now I am stuck...

#14
No IP attorney. It's money wasted. If you're really doing something protectable, you can file a provisional patent up to a year after first public demo, and that gives you another year to file a real patent. You'll lose some international protection, but it's quite hard to stay internationally protected anyway. I am not a lawyer, please don't trust me.

If neither you nor the person who wants to join the company are developers, then I would pause until you've found one. 250k is not a lot of money to build anything non-trivial, and you'll burn through it unbelievably fast if there's not a founding member who is highly technical and can evaluate how good other technical employees are going to be. If you're paying salaries and other expenses, 250k keeps a team of 5 going for like 6 months. It usually takes 3 months to raise a follow-on round, which gives a team of 5 three months to build something exciting enough to raise follow-on investment. If it's you and one or two technical co-founders, you can run an awful lot longer. If you're just paying spartan living expenses, you can get it as low as 5k per person per month (in the valley).

If you take the money, chances are you'll fail. Are these experienced investors who can afford the loss? Are you okay with losing that money? If they can deal with it and you can deal with it, then I suggest you take it and stay very thrifty for a while while you figure out what's what. Get them to invest in you and the space, not in this particular product idea (since it will likely change and you want their support if that happens).

Personally, I'd take it. Money's great and you can get a lot done in a few months. But only if you're willing to commit. I spent 3 or 4 years working in a space I didn't care that much about because once you have a employees and investors, it's really hard to let go.

As for steps: 1) Figure out what you want 2) Find a badass developer cofounder 3) Take the money 4) Developer starts building product while you start securing first customers/users/partners, adjusting the product as you go based on your learning from talking to people

Re: Ask HN: I just thought of a startup, got funding and now I am stuck...

#15
You should definitely start building as soon as possible. The longer you wait the more time others are out there thinking of and/or building a competing product. Every week there is a post on HN about someone who thought of something and while they were thinking or building someone else launched. Getting to market first might be the guarantee success, it sure as hell helps.

Also, talk to a lawyer. If you are taking $250k from friends you need to have contracts/agreements in place. Don't take money on a handshake. One or both of you will get burned at some point.

I don't know if these friends are seasoned investors or just people with money but if they aren't familiar with the startup world make sure they know what they are getting into. They could lose all their money by the end of the week and they need to be prepared for that (make sure your agreements are in place before you start spending in case this happens).

With $250, I'd say you got about 4-6 months (assuming 4-6 engineers) of runway. That means you need to have a good prototype in 2-3 months and be ready to start pitching real investors. So I go back to my first point, start building.

Re: Ask HN: I just thought of a startup, got funding and now I am stuck...

#18
post #16

What the fuck? You have all these people ready to throw money at you but you have no idea how to execute? How does that happen.

I think HN is being trolled.

There is the possibility that this is a real post, given how insane and bubbleicious the whole mobile/social space has gotten, but I highly doubt it.

The account is 3 days old.

Re: Ask HN: I just thought of a startup, got funding and now I am stuck...

#19
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where does one go to find a really really good product builder. And no, oDesk, elance, getafreelancer are not where I want to take this. Preference would be to get a 90-120 day plan, build it with some local USA developers and get this moving fast. Is there a paddock of "Internet Guns for hire" that work on this and are proven?

Not that I've ever heard of. From my experience, your best bet is to find someone you trust that is a great programmer (even if they can't work for you), and have them vet candidates for you. The truth of the matter is that there is an amazing lack of correlation between people who seem (to non-techs) to know what they're talking about, and people who actually know what's going on .

I've been asked to do this for a couple non-tech founder friends. All I really do is have a fairly casual 20-30 minute conversation with the job candidate about the state of whatever tech the product will be built in - "what's the quirkiest thing you've found in iOS?", "which backend platforms do you like? why that one instead of this one?", etc. Throw in a question about big O notation if you think this job requires some CS knowledge.

It's generally pretty easy to see who can walk the walk, without resorting to grilling candidates with trivia or detailed hypotheticals.

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