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I'm a 30 year old with no experience, I want to build a startup

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Re: I'm a 30 year old with no experience, I want to build a startup

#21

Post by bones6 »

chamboo wrote: post #9
JimWillTri wrote: post #8

I was in your position financially and career-wise - just hated what I was doing. Gave a little thought to coding but decided I had plenty of money to just hire people to complete the project. Went to every dev firm in the US who I thought had the skills. Most quoted around $25k - which would be great but I dint believe they could do it. Instead went to a firm in SV that wanted $54k. They had worked on a large prior…

I'm very happy to hear that you're doing it. For a very long period, I started to give up hope (and I had never even attempted anything). I would very much like to find some people here. Can you say what you are working on building?

Depending on what your project is, there are plenty of coders to be found overseas. If you want to be a programmer, be a programmer and put in the time to learn what you need from the beginning. If you want to build your idea now, hire a team and manage them best you can. With your money, I personally would have already hired a few teams to work on different projects. None of my ideas I would outsource are exactly super-ambitious or groundbreaking but are things I would like to have as sources of passive income that would give me a bit more freedom. I've got to say Trello makes it so easy to handle projects like this, from the few small projects I have managed with outsourcers.

Re: I'm a 30 year old with no experience, I want to build a startup

#22

Post by chamboo »

klaut wrote: post #19
chamboo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thanks for the support. I admit I don't know enough about what was going on in that vid to make it exciting, but the thought of being able to make a website do whatever I want to sounds incredibly fulfilling.

you can start with Ruby Koans: http://rubykoans.com

Thanks for this link. :)

Re: I'm a 30 year old with no experience, I want to build a startup

#23

Post by filvdg »

If i was in your situation i would move to silicon valley, visit coding events and finds bright coders and offer them your time , not your cash to help them to get traction , you will develop plenty of other skills you will need to succeed and you might find an activity you really enjoy that is not coding

Re: I'm a 30 year old with no experience, I want to build a startup

#24

Post by whichdan »

chamboo wrote: post #11
kevin_rubyhouse wrote: post #4

Hey how's it going? Sounds like you're in a great spot to pursue a goal, as soon as you've settled on what you'd like to do. How did the programming go over the past 276 days? ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3964837 ) How did your prototype come out? I somewhat agree with cjbenedikt about investing. The issue though is that without actually experiencing startup or being in the trenches with technology it is har…

Hey Kevin, I never committed to it. I spent time questioning whether this was right for me, wavering between this and that, giving up, almost going back to work at what I was doing before. There have been some very dark days between then and now. I know nothing more about programming now than I did then. Every time I would sit down to start, I became overwhelmed and then didn't do anything. The recurring thought is '…

Honestly, if you can afford to spend a year learning to code, put the startup on hold, and just write some code! Instead of focusing on "I need to build blog software," try to think about it as more of an iterative process.

Part 1:

1) Create a database

2) Manually input test data

3) Make a page to list all of your posts

4) Paginate your posts

5) Give your posts permalinks and their own pages

Part 2:

1) Create a simple login system

2) Create a page that lists all of your posts

3) Create a page to add new posts

4) Create a page to edit posts (you can reuse the "add new posts" code)

5) Create a page to delete posts

6) Allow posts to be scheduled in the future

Part 3:

1) Use the same method above to allow users to sign up for your blog and post comments.

This is exactly how I learned to code. I started with a small core problem ("I want to display posts from a database") and started tacking on features one-by-one. There was no end goal, no todo list, no lofty requirements -- just me seeing how many features I could build by myself.

While you could certainly find a benefit in moving to the Bay Area and networking or joining a "learn to code" program, I think there's a lot to be said for just sitting down and churning away at a project like this. Once you get the hang of things, you can pick up contract work, which will both offset your living expenses, and let you improve your skill on someone else's dime. It has the added benefit of forcing you to work on problems you might not normally encounter, like parsing email sent to your server.

Mainly, before anything else, coding should be fun. If you get yourself into the swing of things, you'll have a hard time not working on your startup.

Re: I'm a 30 year old with no experience, I want to build a startup

#25

Post by chamboo »

whichdan wrote: post #24
chamboo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Kevin, I never committed to it. I spent time questioning whether this was right for me, wavering between this and that, giving up, almost going back to work at what I was doing before. There have been some very dark days between then and now. I know nothing more about programming now than I did then. Every time I would sit down to start, I became overwhelmed and then didn't do anything. The recurring thought is '…

Honestly, if you can afford to spend a year learning to code, put the startup on hold, and just write some code! Instead of focusing on "I need to build blog software," try to think about it as more of an iterative process. Part 1: 1) Create a database 2) Manually input test data 3) Make a page to list all of your posts 4) Paginate your posts 5) Give your posts permalinks and their own pages Part 2: 1) Create a simpl…

First, thanks for the specifics here, it is very helpful to someone like me who is grasping at a starting point.

Second, I so want to believe that this is true. Even if I could just make 1k/mo, my stress level would go from 9.5/10 to 0. I've been told so much by my parents that I'm a fool to pursue such a thing, that I'll fail etc... I think it's really ingrained in me that it would take nothing short of a miracle for me to succeed doing this. It doesn't seem at all rational, but I fear it for some reason.

Re: I'm a 30 year old with no experience, I want to build a startup

#26

Post by whichdan »

chamboo wrote: post #25
whichdan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, if you can afford to spend a year learning to code, put the startup on hold, and just write some code! Instead of focusing on "I need to build blog software," try to think about it as more of an iterative process. Part 1: 1) Create a database 2) Manually input test data 3) Make a page to list all of your posts 4) Paginate your posts 5) Give your posts permalinks and their own pages Part 2: 1) Create a simpl…

First, thanks for the specifics here, it is very helpful to someone like me who is grasping at a starting point. Second, I so want to believe that this is true. Even if I could just make 1k/mo, my stress level would go from 9.5/10 to 0. I've been told so much by my parents that I'm a fool to pursue such a thing, that I'll fail etc... I think it's really ingrained in me that it would take nothing short of a miracle fo…

I spent most of my free time in middle and high school programming. My parents would threaten to take away the internet when I did poorly in classes, and routinely encouraged me to spend more time playing guitar instead of "wasting so much time on the computer." They meant well, but essentially discouraged me from pursuing programming.

Last month I launched a startup, which I built during my free time while working as a senior full stack web developer.

What it comes down to, like any other pursuit, is that you have to spend a LOT of time programming. But the great thing is that every 6-12 months, you'll look back and think "wow, I sucked at programming compared to now." And as soon as you know enough to build a blog from scratch, you'll be able to start taking small contract jobs. After two or three years, charging $50/hr++ is absolutely easy.

One small tip to get started: For each project, create todo.txt and todo_future.txt. The first file is a scratch pad to keep track of what you're working on this week. The second file is for keeping track of ideas you want to work on in the future. It's a great way to prevent "scope creep" or giving yourself too much work to handle.

Re: I'm a 30 year old with no experience, I want to build a startup

#27

Post by lifeisstillgood »

1mm liquid implies you are actually a lot better at the "reality" thing than you might think.

And being a programmer is a necessary but not sufficient part of being a founder.

I would suggestto you the HN Proposition approach:

http://hnproposition.blogspot.co.uk/ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694

Basically - you seed a hacker with 5000 USD to build their MVP, then you seed yourself to promote it, SEO it, sell it basically. Its essentially a way to buy an MVP. It may work really well - it may not, but whatever, you seem in the right place to do it.

You will benefit from learning to code no matter what, but right now I suspect you need to hustle. And trying to sell three or four new startups, birth them into the world, is certainly going to do that for you.

Re: I'm a 30 year old with no experience, I want to build a startup

#28

Post by shail »

Hey

Would you be interested in joining another startup, like mine, as a cofounder? I am the only founder.

As a suggestion, you should join a startup (not necessarily mine) and since you are not burdened by the thought of securing your next meal, you can really take much bigger challenges, much higher risk (in terms of time, not necessarily money).

For instance, I see a lot of people saying release early, go to market asap, but I somehow feel the otherwise and I agree that's a risky approach but not totally unworthy.

Just a suggestion.

I am looking for cofounder currently, someone who is willing to take risk (a lot of it) so if it suits your appetite, then you are welcome. I do not expect any money from you, will not pay you ad expect you to take care of your expenses until we secure a round or go profitable.

As far as what I am working on, I am elaborating a lot on it because that does not matter. Personalities should match first.

Contact me: shail2@live.com if interested. I am based in India.

Re: I'm a 30 year old with no experience, I want to build a startup

#29

Post by segmondy »

Ha, we have the opposite problem, we have experience programming, delusions of being elite programmers, we have great ideas or so we think. Got debt, house, cars, bills, and no cash. Trade you idea for idea. How did you earn your cash? Teach me, and I can teach you how to code.

Re: I'm a 30 year old with no experience, I want to build a startup

#30

Post by JimWillTri »

chamboo wrote: post #9
JimWillTri wrote: post #8

I was in your position financially and career-wise - just hated what I was doing. Gave a little thought to coding but decided I had plenty of money to just hire people to complete the project. Went to every dev firm in the US who I thought had the skills. Most quoted around $25k - which would be great but I dint believe they could do it. Instead went to a firm in SV that wanted $54k. They had worked on a large prior…

I'm very happy to hear that you're doing it. For a very long period, I started to give up hope (and I had never even attempted anything). I would very much like to find some people here. Can you say what you are working on building?

It's very difficult to find good programmers. I would suggest finding someone on HN that has a very good rep and using him to sort through and find quality ones. One of the biggest challenges is that, even when you find quality programmer(s), most will attempt to outsource to crappy devs. I found out that the sv dev firm I hired, outsourced to $4.50 hour ukraine devs on odesk.
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