11–20 of 161 posts
Seriously, if somebody could cull 2 or 3 of these a day and deliver in a weekly or monthly format? It'd be worth a subscription.
Thanks for the article!
Lesson N+1: Hacker News can break your blog's webserver. That's one you only learn through experience. [ETA: which is sad, because I want to read it!]
Damn Bluehost, hehe. I wish I knew how to fix it, but a few refreshes seems to go through.
This is a fantastic writeup (and like nearly all worthwhile writing on the subject, I don't necessarily agree with all of it). Two elaborations: 1) General advice to non-technical founders, not specific to this post: If sales is one of your primary skill sets, and you cannot sell one developer on working for you, you may want to have a brief heart-to-heart with yourself on whether you are sufficiently skilled at sell…
> 1) General advice to non-technical founders, not specific to this post: If sales is one of your primary skill sets, and you cannot sell one developer on working for you, you may want to have a brief heart-to-heart with yourself on whether you are sufficiently skilled at selling to build a company which will live or die based on your sales ability. But I think "selling" the product to a developer is a difficult sell…
OP, your biggest mistake is not taking the time out to learn how to code yourself. You said it went on for 2 years, that was plenty of time.
This is a fantastic writeup (and like nearly all worthwhile writing on the subject, I don't necessarily agree with all of it). Two elaborations: 1) General advice to non-technical founders, not specific to this post: If sales is one of your primary skill sets, and you cannot sell one developer on working for you, you may want to have a brief heart-to-heart with yourself on whether you are sufficiently skilled at sell…
You are absolutely right on both comments! And additional comments: 1) I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers". 2) Absolutely agree. When I say "I should build that", in fact what I wanted to say was…
Does anybody have examples of successful startups that proceeded in the way Sergio describes and became successful -- starting out with a business person/team, selling the goods first, then manage to find developer(s) to build it? (It's not rhetorical, I'd love to hear such examples -- the usual stories seem to be revolving around a gang of programmers, or at least a programmer co-founder.)
Lesson N+1: Hacker News can break your blog's webserver. That's one you only learn through experience. [ETA: which is sad, because I want to read it!]
Damn Bluehost, hehe. I wish I knew how to fix it, but a few refreshes seems to go through.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 1) General advice to non-technical founders, not specific to this post: If sales is one of your primary skill sets, and you cannot sell one developer on working for you, you may want to have a brief heart-to-heart with yourself on whether you are sufficiently skilled at selling to build a company which will live or die based on your sales ability. But I think "selling" the product to a developer is a difficult sell…
Cash or no cash, I believe the key for a developer is working on an interesting problem + having impact. If you have real companies offering real money for a product that don't even exist, at least the developer can be convinced that his/her work will have impact.