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Poll: Did you start company in 2011?

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Re: Poll: Did you start company in 2011?

#61

I know it is a shunned statement around here but "I developed an idea for a company" this past November. Regrettably, my programming skills are limited so step 1 is learning enough to create a prototype for my project. I am really interested in shaking up the language learning industry and plan to be able to answer this poll differently in 2012 :)

Continue to better your programming skills, it's a challenging but worthwhile endevour.

Being as though I was in the same boat as you (and my programming skills are still laughable!), what I found to be really helpful is while you're learning how to program, using other skills (maybe you know how to make a webpage, or animate)to create a mock-up to more quickly and easily translate your idea into something concrete and more understandable that could attract people (read: potential co-founders) into at least looking at your idea--at the very worst they can see that you've put some time and effort into your raw idea and as I'm sure any technical co-founder here would say, that's a good start. Good luck Meng. :)

Re: Poll: Did you start company in 2011?

#67
Yep, started https://paydirtapp.com - intelligent time tracking for freelancers.

We spent 2010 freelancing figuring out the business side of things a bit, earning some money to give us a bit of a runway, kicking lots of ideas around, and working on our tech chops.

12 months in we're starting to focus more on marketing and sales than development, and we're aiming to be profitable sometime before the end of 2012.

Everything takes a lot longer than you think!

Re: Poll: Did you start company in 2011?

#68
I started Helpjuice.com a couple months ago. It's now profitable.

I had an idea, called a few companies that I thought would pay for it. Then, I skipped school (I was in high school at the time) for a couple of days and built it. After I had built the BARE minimum version (now that I look back, our "search" was using simple MYSQL LIKE "search" and I was selling it) I was able to get a few companies to pay for it. And am now working on it full-time.

Maybe I'll write a blog post one day about the process.

Re: Poll: Did you start company in 2011?

#69
Yes, http://www.industrydive.com

My co-founders and I have just quit our jobs to focus full-time on it. It's a mobile-focused B2B media company (pull up constructiondive.com on your phone for a very rough feel for where we're going). I'm working on a blog post to explain why, but the short version is we see a great market opportunity and our team is uniquely qualified to fill it. I really like working in the B2B space because there's a ton of money floating around, but it seems so unsexy that there is little competition from innovative startups.

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