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Dear Programmer, I have an idea

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Re: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

#111

Post by wethesheeple »

padobson wrote: post #30

I'm always looking for a co-founder, whether I'm the geek or the suit. When a suit approaches me to be the geek for their idea, I usually give them some simple technical task to do - like setup a Tumblr or a Twitter account for the idea. Then I'll often ask for something businessy - form a C-corp for the idea or file a provisional patent. Finally, before I even consider opening my laptop to code their idea, I want so…

Does the suit ever give you some technical task to do to test your execution or some other criteria (what if he actually wanted to see some code you've written)? What if the suit has some preferences on the technical side, sort of like how you have preferences on the "businessey" side of things? (e.g. C corporations and provisional patent applications)

Re: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

#112

Post by SoftwareMaven »

Evbn wrote: post #54
Swizec wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't 5000 emails a bit steep to ask for in a day or even a week? A conversion rate of 5% is pretty respectable, that means the landing page needs to be seen by 100k people to collect 5000 emails. That's quite a bit for having nothing more than a landing page to offer, I can see that happening for a MVP, but not for just a landing page.

A post on Reddit, HN, etc, can get plenty of views for an interesting idea.

Views are not email addresses. Worse, views are not real people expressing real interesting (e.g. would pay or be willing to change their habits) in your product. Views are a pretty meaningless indicator, overall.

Re: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

#113

Post by j45 »

philhippus wrote: post #97
j45 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a neat way of doing this, thanks for sharing! I'm going to try this out if I get the chance, any irc network in particular you found effective?

Sounds like something you could do through Odesk for about the same cost and probably more conveniently than IRC.

That's fair, but on irc you filter out people who don't get it much quicker and not necessarily looking for work.

Re: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

#114

Post by its_so_on »

shuw wrote: post #93
its_so_on wrote: post #41

there's another route. break down what you want to do and you can basically get it done for free. For example: -------------- Requirements. 1. requisition an Amazon EC2 instance for me. No other steps. -------------- then a tech guy on IRC will do it for $5. Next, you want to get someone to do the following. I need a programmer to put a plain rails installation on my amazon ec2 instance. -------------- Requirements.…

sure, this will work if what your doing can be generated essentially off templates. this will start breaking down when you start building components which are inter-related. every incremental change now requires understanding of the ball of spaghetti that exists.

which is why the guy above is so very, very wrong that these steps actually take five minutes, as opposed to just looking like they do :)

Re: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

#115

Post by tobyjsullivan »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #112
Evbn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A post on Reddit, HN, etc, can get plenty of views for an interesting idea.

Views are not email addresses. Worse, views are not real people expressing real interesting (e.g. would pay or be willing to change their habits) in your product. Views are a pretty meaningless indicator, overall.

I think the point was the parent post was saying you'd need 100k views w/ a 5% conversion which would be challenging. Evbn was saying reddit could get the 100k views.

Re: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

#116

Post by tobyjsullivan »

danielweber wrote: post #61
claudeshannon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any early stage startup where there's so much polarization between geeks and suits at the outset is in trouble. Basically geeks need to learn to sell and suits need to learn to code. I could elaborate on this in a longer post. But I have to go back to working on some new channel capacity ideas. Stay tuned.

Honestly the suits don't need to code, but they do need to be comfortable discussing software and the limits/possibilities of technology. Similarly, the geeks don't need to know all the aspects of selling, but they do need to know how to tell a customer that their product is awesome and all the advantages it has and why it's silly to not have use it.

Tell me the limits of a miter saw as they relate to project X without ever touching one...

I don't actually think suits need to learn code either but the knowledge is worth its weight in gold if they can.

Re: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

#117

Post by dasil003 »

ryanmolden wrote: post #95
cstejerean wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a feeling that might be the case when I started reading about the 500 people in one day bit. The second half however, about assessing whether the future technical co-founder can actually build a prototype over a weekend, seems like reasonable advice. Programmers aren't immune from overestimating their competency, and if you are about to get into a venture with someone you don't know well, I think it makes sense…

>Programmers aren't immune from overestimating their competency I would actually phrase it differently: programmers quite often overestimate their competency. I am not sure if it is unique to programmers or just an instance of the general inability to objectively analyze ourselves, but I do notice that the vast majority of programmers I have met (myself included :)) have a tendency to consider ourselves a smidge more…

The reason is because the skill appears as magic to others, whereas business skills are something that anyone can at least imagine themselves doing. This is completely orthogonal from how difficult these jobs may be under varying circumstances.

Re: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

#118

Post by adambenayoun »

Swizec wrote: post #75
cstejerean wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite a bit to get from a landing page, but I think that's the point. If something can get 5000 people on a mailing list in 1 day then it shows that there's a strong interest in the idea, so it's worth investing time in developing it further.

Man, if you can get 300 in a single day, you have my attention!

I got 300 in 1 hour - I used HN! :D

Re: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

#119

Post by Dylan16807 »

its_so_on wrote: post #114
shuw wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure, this will work if what your doing can be generated essentially off templates. this will start breaking down when you start building components which are inter-related. every incremental change now requires understanding of the ball of spaghetti that exists.

which is why the guy above is so very, very wrong that these steps actually take five minutes, as opposed to just looking like they do :)

But you don't have that problem if you used a single competent coder.

Re: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

#120

Post by its_so_on »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #119
its_so_on wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which is why the guy above is so very, very wrong that these steps actually take five minutes, as opposed to just looking like they do :)

But you don't have that problem if you used a single competent coder.

a competent coder will not build a person's turd-trading platform in five-minute increments for $60 per 12.
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