To be honest I might consider some sort of profit/equity split with somebody who had a really good idea (and had done the research to prove it).
Sometimes between reading stuff like HN and working on code all day I feel like I'm a bit too close to everything to really evaluate ideas rationally. Every time I've had I can usually think of 100 reasons to shoot it down and make it seem like more effort than it's worth.
The problem I guess is that most of these ideas aren't really that good because the person thinking of them hasn't really considered the effort and cost involved.
Reminds me of being back in school where a handful of us had learned very basic BASIC programming. Naturally we decided "shit, let's make an awesome game and be rich!". Of course such a project attracted entire legions of hangers on who wanted to be "game designers" or "level designers". Nobody thought that making a few shareware text-adventures or sprite based games would be cool, everybody came with ideas about how to make the next Doom or Sonic except even more ambitious.
> To be honest I might consider some sort of profit/equity split with somebody who had a really good idea (and had done the research to prove it).
Why wouldn't you just take the idea and execute it yourself with 100% equity? The guy with the idea needs to bring something else to the table, whether it's a particular skill set or something crucial to the deployment of said idea such as a patent.
Some of those points are valid (#1 especially). But when you run a business it's important that all parties are happy and feel like they have a fair deal.
You need to ask yourself that 6 months down the line, when the other person really isn't contributing much because they can't, and you're working long days sweating, working hard and putting a career on hold, and you've got 50% equity, are you going to be happy? It's not going to be a sustainable relationship for very long and has a good chance of being doomed to fail before you've written any code.
Like culture, marketing, market validation, generating press buzz, interviews, recruiting, and so forth. If the idea guy can't do a lot of those business-y things, you don't have a business so the 6-month question is premature.
I don't think it's premature, a lot of people will want a product (MVP) before they go ahead and formalise the entire thing. You're going to be the guy doing all the work in that department. Up until the MVP is developed there's really not much else to do.
Pretty much everything you listed is most effectively after you actually have a product.
Up until the MVP is developed there's really not much else to do.
As a guy that straddles the line between "tech guy" and "business guy" (I've done both of them), my opinion is that there is a lot that can be done before the MVP is developed. In fact, if the business guy isn't out validating what the tech guy is building from day one, it is almost guaranteed the MVP is going to be wrong and/or it is going to land with a resounding splat.
As the business guy, my job was getting out, meeting with potential customers, understanding what they would buy, what they wouldn't buy, and why. My job was getting early interest in our idea that could translate into (eventual) early use of the product. My job was making sure we understood who else was in the space and how we were going to differentiate our product.
In short, if you practice "throw some code out and start selling", you are going to have a really hard time getting traction.
Wouldn't you want to see that the idea guy had done his legwork before even thinking about MVP? I sure would. The lines-of-code to hours-talking-to-people ratio in the early weeks would be something crazy like 1:400.
Good point. Just to addd to this - I find most "hacker" types don't realize how much work goes into building a business. Execution is much more than just product build (but can, or cannot be a large part of it).
I find a lot of "idea" types don't realize how much work goes into building a business.
In their mind, they are already running a successful business where they just come up with ideas and delegate anything that resembles work. And everything everyone else does is "easy".
To an extent though couldn't that also be an argument against an investor buying equity in a startup rather than picking up a bunch of contract programmers and building the idea themselves?
Yes it is, which is why being skilled at what you do, establishing a brand, getting traction are all key ingredients in raising the barrier to entry for investors.
Sometimes between reading stuff like HN and working on code all day I feel like I'm a bit too close to everything to really evaluate ideas rationally. Every time I've had I can usually think of 100 reasons to shoot it down and make it seem like more effort than it's worth.
The problem I guess is that most of these ideas aren't really that good because the person thinking of them hasn't really considered the effort and cost involved.
Reminds me of being back in school where a handful of us had learned very basic BASIC programming. Naturally we decided "shit, let's make an awesome game and be rich!". Of course such a project attracted entire legions of hangers on who wanted to be "game designers" or "level designers". Nobody thought that making a few shareware text-adventures or sprite based games would be cool, everybody came with ideas about how to make the next Doom or Sonic except even more ambitious.