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Needing a CTO

news.ycombinator.com

11–18 of 18 posts

Re: Needing a CTO

#11
Unless you're a proven company, it's nearly impossible to get people to sign onto a secret project you can't tell them about. Apple was able to do it with the iPhone, and DEKA had similar success with Segway/Ginger. But you're neither Jobs or Kamen, so it's going to be a lot harder, especially with a sloppy webpage.

Re: Needing a CTO

#12
Hey guys. I only have five years web development experience, but I am totally amped to work with you guys. Email sent!

I am just a technical guy, so I am obviously going to need a lot of help from you three business guys to understand what is going on. (Thanks in advance for the help.)

I cannot wait to get to work on your Facebook/Twitter/eBay/Google clone.

The world will never know what hit it.

Re: Needing a CTO

#15
Thank you everyone for your criticisms. Yes, we are all business types, but we've thought of this idea and as business people want to take whatever actions necessary to get this thing up and running smoothly. It's essentially a new idea that really hasn't been touched upon. Yes, maybe we're going about it wrong and don't have the best design, but we're trying and we want somebody that can help us do that. Why we don't release what we are, is because people have told us, this is uber-simple to do for web-devs and so putting out that information, someone could easily snatch it up and put us out.

Re: Needing a CTO

#16
Another note: All three of us are really busy, we all have families, go to school full time, and have other jobs. We're motivated to keep on keeping on, but we've got other things on the agenda with little time to put on Ampley. Yes, that's probably not a very good excuse, but at least I'm not lying here. We understand there are multitudes of things we could do better, but with limited time, it's hard.

Re: Needing a CTO

#17
post #15

Thank you everyone for your criticisms. Yes, we are all business types, but we've thought of this idea and as business people want to take whatever actions necessary to get this thing up and running smoothly. It's essentially a new idea that really hasn't been touched upon. Yes, maybe we're going about it wrong and don't have the best design, but we're trying and we want somebody that can help us do that. Why we don'…

I'm going to be harsh here, just to translate how what you're saying reads to everyone else:

"We're three guys that don't actually have any time for the project, can't help with the development of the product, are pretty clearly startup first-timers since we don't know how to do this sort of thing, we won't tell you what we're doing or what we've done, and none of the three of us noticed a basic mistake on our homepage. But we'd like you to join! (Presumably unpaid.)"

Would you jump at that offer? Do you expect anyone you'd want to call your CTO would?

You need to say what you're doing. If it's as simple and important as you think it is, then it'll be copied as soon as you launch anyway. You need to say who you are and what you've done. If you're business guys, have you founded companies before? Have you written a business plan? Are you connected to angel investors? (With four mouths to feed from day one that's going to hurt.) Have you already done market research? Do you have special access to distribution channels?

You can't recruit a good CTO by saying, "We're three guys with a domain and an idea."

Re: Needing a CTO

#18
post #16

Another note: All three of us are really busy, we all have families, go to school full time, and have other jobs. We're motivated to keep on keeping on, but we've got other things on the agenda with little time to put on Ampley. Yes, that's probably not a very good excuse, but at least I'm not lying here. We understand there are multitudes of things we could do better, but with limited time, it's hard.

So, you'd like to have a web-dev, preferably one who doesn't ask for pay, to do all the work for you. All the while you smart business-men [who can't even spell properly] stick to your cushy dayjobs and reap the benefits later?

Congratulations, I'm sure you have made it onto many people's blacklist today.

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