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You have an idea. You need a website. Now what?

by IceCreamYou on 4/21/12, 10:56 PM with 7 comments

• by mukaiji on 4/21/12, 11:47 PM

  sigh, recurring email of a cs student at a major university that offers an MBA program.

  Hi [tango],

  I'm [zebra] and I am a student at the [bravo] business school. I found you through [school-directory] and I am contacting you because I have a promising opportunity in the [social|shopping|vanity-business] space, already receiving attention from potential investors. Not being technical myself, I could use some help from an [awesome|master-hacker|wizard] technical guy in order to build a [platform|app|buzz-word-flavor-of-the-week]. I was wondering if you'd be interested to chat over coffee sometime this week.

  best, [zebra]

• by gatlin on 4/24/12, 12:24 AM

  People come to me a lot with ambitious ideas and ask me if I can help out. Very often I'll find that "help out" means "build the entire product" because while they have ideas, they can't build them. If I press about payment, they'll offer me a spot as co-founder which is perplexing because they risk nothing. Typically these ideas are incomplete, too, and I'm expected to be on call for any changes and modifications. I used to do this a lot.

  Sometimes it's my friends, sometimes it's semi-random solicitation. In all cases, though, my ability to program is seen as a magic bullet. In a casual conversation they'll start throwing dates around and ask me if they're cool. Or, I'll get a large email with specifications and instructions presupposing that I'm already on board. If I say that the idea is interesting, time and again this seems to mean "I'm 100% committed."

  I never know what to do. I would love to found a startup doing something truly useful and I used to feel bad for not pitching in for my friends. As time has gone on I've realized I was giving away my time too cheaply. I can't contribute something meaningful to the world if I'm constantly running around in poorly-thought-out circles for other people. Sometimes I feel selfish.

• by drewcrawford on 4/21/12, 11:39 PM

  > If you have to hire someone, you're looking at a few hundred dollars minimum in most cases

  Find me any business that became successful immediately after a non-technical founder paid a technical contractor less than $500.

• by benigeri on 4/22/12, 4:16 AM

  Tell me about it. I'm a CS major at Stanford University, and I've been asked to co-found or become the CTO of a startup 3 times this week. And that is only counting the phone calls and meetings, emails are another story.