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Ask HN: Non-tech solo founder scored $100k to develop product. Finding a dev?

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Re: Ask HN: Non-tech solo founder scored $100k to develop product. Finding a dev?

#11

Post by thrownaway »

gizmo wrote: post #2

Congrats on the grant and the business! $5k+ a month is a really good start. Try the HN contractors list. Lots of skilled people on there. https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlD_6iEb8Ed9dGs3clV...

Thanks! I'll give it a look.

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech solo founder scored $100k to develop product. Finding a dev?

#16

Post by qeorge »

Couple of tips:

1) Look for people who are good writers (prose and such). They tend to be good communicators.

2) Look for programmers who admit their areas of weakness.

3) As always, you're probably worrying about scaling way too early.

Best of luck, and congrats on the grant!

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech solo founder scored $100k to develop product. Finding a dev?

#17

Post by jasonlbaptiste »

holdenc wrote: post #8

Here's some advice from a fellow non-developer who was once your shoes 5 years ago (sans grant money) with similar revenues and skills... Since you've managed to cobble yourself together a prototype in PHP that people will actually pay for there's a good chance you can take it to the next level, albeit slowly, with a couple books in your lap and a few long days. I suggest you challenge yourself to figure out what is…

This is really inspiring. I think it's a mix of your determination to learn how to code and the line of "... The web app that supports my family". Maybe op can get someone to help them building the app with the 100k grant, but I'd certainly suggest they learn themselves too.

Re: Ask HN: Non-tech solo founder scored $100k to develop product. Finding a dev?

#20

Post by thrownaway »

holdenc wrote: post #8

Here's some advice from a fellow non-developer who was once your shoes 5 years ago (sans grant money) with similar revenues and skills... Since you've managed to cobble yourself together a prototype in PHP that people will actually pay for there's a good chance you can take it to the next level, albeit slowly, with a couple books in your lap and a few long days. I suggest you challenge yourself to figure out what is…

Thank you for the encouragement. What you wrote out here, is what I've been doing for the last year or so. I had some good friends tell me to just man up and figure out how to make what I thought would help sell my stuff. So I did. Were it not for this grant money, I'd keep on trucking along making incremental improvements to my business. Maybe in a year I'd get up to 9-10k/month. I suspect it's quite do-able.

But with this funding, there's an opportunity to do something grander while still running my little business on the side. That's new territory for me.

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