One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup

I was looking for more "operations" closer to the day of nicely positive earnings.

Idea? Had that. Started with a problem that essentially every Internet user in the world has and that so far is solved piecemeal, with poor means, and, net, at best poorly. For a solution, the first good solution, and what should be a really good solution, invented one based on some original applied math based on some advanced pure/applied math prerequisites. The applied math makes good progress on the meaning of Internet content.

Team? Just me.

Technical Founder? Just me. I've been in applied math and computing for a long time, have written a lot of code. Did applied math and computing at IBM's Watson lab in an AI project. Once at FedEx quickly wrote some code that scheduled the fleet, alleviated some severe concerns of the BoD, enabled some crucial funding, and saved the company. My Ph.D. dissertation research was in stochastic optimal control. Since in that field, commonly the computational demands are absurdly high, some good computational experience was important. So, I made some progress in computational algorithms and wrote and ran some code that had the computational demands quite reasonable. Have written a lot of other successful code otherwise, especially for US national security.

Code? So, with my idea, I designed and wrote the code. To users, my work will be just a Web site. So, I needed to write the code for the Web pages. And the Web site needs to make some use of relational database and also, of course, my applied math. So, for the coding, I selected Windows over Linux and there selected the .NET version of Visual Basic (apparently essentially just a different flavor of syntactic sugar compared with C#). I designed the software and server farm architecture: There are several programs that communicate over a server side local area network (LAN). The communications are based on TCP/IP and de/serialization of object instances. One of the server types is for the Web pages. The software architecture is so that there is no session affinity between a particular user and a particular instance of a Web server, and for this there is a session state server; I could have used Redis but, instead, wrote my own based on just two instances of a .NET collection class. For the code for the Web pages, used ASP.NET. For the code for the database access, used ADO.NET. My code has about 24,000 programming language statements in about 100,000 lines of typing. So, about 76,000 lines have comments. So, the code is well documented, with the comments and with various external documents. The applied math is documented using D. Knuth's mathematical word processing software TeX. The code appears to run as intended: So far I know of no bugs. The code doesn't need refactoring. Execution timings show that the code is nicely fast. The code is for a serious service and company and not merely a minimum viable product (MVP). I wrote all the code.

The next operations I have in mind are (1) tweak the code to make a few small changes, (2) for the code for the crucial applied math, do some severe testing a third time, (3) gather a lot of data for the database, (4) do an alpha test and tweak the code as advisable, (5) do a beta test, (6) arrange to run ads, (7) get publicity, users, revenue, and earnings.

There are some user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) features: (1) There is no use of HTTP cookies. (2) The Web pages are simple; the pages should load quickly since the largest page sends for just 400,000 bits. (3) I wrote no JavaScript; Microsoft's ASP.NET wrote a little JavaScript for me, likely for some aspect of cursor positioning, but for the users enabling JavaScript is optional. (4) The site is interactive, but the UI is simple. (5) Many users should find the UX fun, somewhat game like. A good user might spend a hour a week using the site. That much time per week for a significant fraction of all developed country Internet users would be a lot of usage, Web pages and ads sent, and ad revenue.

The latest is that my development computer developed some data corruption and finally quit. I ordered parts for a new development computer and first server. So, I got an Asus motherboard, an AMD FX-8350 processor (8 cores at 4.0 GHz), 16 GB of ECC (error correcting coding) main memory, etc. As of yesterday, the system boots and runs the power on self test (POST) and BIOS (basic input/output) code successfully; the BIOS finds the details on each of the motherboard, the processor, the one disk drive installed so far, the CD/DVD device, etc.

The OP seemed to concentrate on the earlier operations I've already done, that is, the idea and the ability to design and write code, but the operations from the running code to good earnings also stand to be important.

For venture funding, I found that all the well known venture firms in Silicon Valley, Boston, NYC, etc. were not at all interested -- e.g., nothing about the description here is of any interest at all. So, I funded this work from my own checkbook and am 100% owner. Maybe once I have, say, $250,000 a month in revenue, some venture firm would be interested, say, write me a Series A check for $5 million. But with $250,000 a month in revenue, cash won't be a bottleneck; I won't need their check and won't want to take on the overhead and risk of a BoD, and won't accept their check. I got no meaningful response at all from YC. That I am a sole, solo founder seems to be a big negative for venture firms and YC.

Should I be able to be a sole, solo founder of a successful company with no equity funding? Sure: In the US, border, villages, town, and cities, people do that by the millions in pizza carryout, auto body repair, .... Should I be able to be successful as a sole, solo founder of a Web site business? Sure: The founder of the romantic matchmaking site Plenty of Fish did that.

this is so dumb. I'm a founder. I was chosen to be the technical co-founder of a company where the space had been selected and problem had been identified. before that I wanted to start something but because I'm not asinine nor had any useful domain experience I didn't have any notions of valuable problems to solve. i have all of the makings of a founder (work ethic, risk tolerant, creativity, people skills, etc.) and we're alive because I do. are you really going to argue because I didn't just start another Shopify clone for dogs and then pivot 10 times that I don't have founder DNA?

edit: i'm probably getting downvoted because i come off as a braggart. maybe but that was not my intention - i just meant that there are plenty of counter-examples to this claim that if you don't go out and start from scratch impulsively then you're not genetically predisposed to being a founder.

you're getting downvoted because 1 you're rambling 2 this isn't the time or place for this.

The biggest advice I'd add is to talk to users before buidling your MVP. You can potentially save yourself a lot of work.

Also, there's a ton of details in how to identify risks and validate assumptions. Four Steps to the Epiphany is a good tactical book on how to do this.

I'm not "rambling" at all. Instead very much I'm responding quite directly to the OP. I'm responding point by point on just what the OP concentrated on, the business idea, what constitutes a promising business idea, the founders, technical founders who could write code, the code, minimum viable product, the "team" of founders and the point about a sole founder, and venture funding, in particular, YC funding. Those issues were all central in the OP and also in what I wrote. So, I'm right on topic. And I went point by point and didn't "ramble".

And to be more clear, I illustrated with a project I know well, my own.

Then from my example, readers who are a natural audience for the OP can see some likely important points: (1) Getting a promising business idea can be less obscure than suggested in the OP. (2) Getting a "team" that can do the work is easier than suggested in the OP, e.g., some sole, solo founders can do all the work from the business idea through the code ready to go live. (3) Venture funding and/or YC funding can be much more difficult to obtain than suggested in the OP.

Then I made the point that the OP didn't say much about the "operations" from the running code ready for production to good earnings -- there's more to say there, too.

And for the potential of a sole, solo founder, I gave some arguments and examples why that is not unreasonable.

You noticed how what I wrote was really a direct response to the OP, right? Apparently not. What you wrote about my post makes no sense. So, your concerns must be elsewhere, and a strong suspicion has to be that you do have some bitter reactions to what I wrote but not like anything you wrote.

So, you don't know me at all but want to mount a personal attack on me. Okay, I understand.