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At one point in time I was the person writing these emails. Now, I'm the person getting these emails. It is hard to be an entrepreneur when you can't make things. If you're good at selling, you still need something to sell.
If you find yourself in this scenario, step one is selling yourself.
Sometimes between reading stuff like HN and working on code all day I feel like I'm a bit too close to everything to really evaluate ideas rationally. Every time I've had I can usually think of 100 reasons to shoot it down and make it seem like more effort than it's worth.
The problem I guess is that most of these ideas aren't really that good because the person thinking of them hasn't really considered the effort and cost involved.
Reminds me of being back in school where a handful of us had learned very basic BASIC programming. Naturally we decided "shit, let's make an awesome game and be rich!". Of course such a project attracted entire legions of hangers on who wanted to be "game designers" or "level designers". Nobody thought that making a few shareware text-adventures or sprite based games would be cool, everybody came with ideas about how to make the next Doom or Sonic except even more ambitious.
Is this actually true?
To be honest I might consider some sort of profit/equity split with somebody who had a really good idea (and had done the research to prove it). Sometimes between reading stuff like HN and working on code all day I feel like I'm a bit too close to everything to really evaluate ideas rationally. Every time I've had I can usually think of 100 reasons to shoot it down and make it seem like more effort than it's worth. T…
Why wouldn't you just take the idea and execute it yourself with 100% equity? The guy with the idea needs to bring something else to the table, whether it's a particular skill set or something crucial to the deployment of said idea such as a patent.
There was a post like this on HN some time ago (a few months or perhaps a year) which I found well put, not too harsh while shedding light from the author's perspective. Does anyone remember this article?
Edit: I found this[1], it might be the one but I think I remember a better one. This one[2] about NDAs is also good.
[1] http://martingryner.com/no-i-wont-be-your-technical-co-found...
[2] http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/why-i-wont-sign-your-...
>In the current tech environment, any programmer worth their salt and known to be somewhat available is also getting these emails. Is this actually true?
To be honest I might consider some sort of profit/equity split with somebody who had a really good idea (and had done the research to prove it). Sometimes between reading stuff like HN and working on code all day I feel like I'm a bit too close to everything to really evaluate ideas rationally. Every time I've had I can usually think of 100 reasons to shoot it down and make it seem like more effort than it's worth. T…
> To be honest I might consider some sort of profit/equity split with somebody who had a really good idea (and had done the research to prove it). Why wouldn't you just take the idea and execute it yourself with 100% equity? The guy with the idea needs to bring something else to the table, whether it's a particular skill set or something crucial to the deployment of said idea such as a patent.
>In the current tech environment, any programmer worth their salt and known to be somewhat available is also getting these emails. Is this actually true?
Finally, before I even consider opening my laptop to code their idea, I want some paltry measure of idea validation. Are you selling a product? Good, find someone who will pay you to do the task manually before we program it. Are you looking to give the service away and monetize the user base? Good, get 5000 emails from a landing page describing your idea, or get 1000 followers on Twitter for your idea's account.
If they can do all this in a day or even a week, then they're quality co-founder material. Any longer and it's a judgement call. Most won't get past step one, and you certainly didn't want them as a co-founder.