

Ask HN: Ideas man vs  Practical Man - beholden

I've been reading HN for quite a while now, since the 'beginning' as you might say.<p>I'm ashamed.<p>I don't know how to code to a build standard and won't have the possibility to learn. Now I'm good at coming up with ideas but havn't the faintest how to put them into action. I've got a notebook jammed with ideas in different fields but no practial way of going about things. For the record I'm a CAD technician with IT support capability.<p>In essence my query to you is : How do I take my ideas for startups and run with them without turning into a pointy haired boss.<p>EDIT: You know what... it always happens at the right time.
http://paulgraham.com/start.html
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dasil003
Assuming you want to find a technical co-founder you will need to bring
valuable skills to the table. If you have truly amazing ideas this could be
_maybe_ 50% of what you bring to the table, but more likely your ideas will be
5-10% of your contribution, because once you get going on an idea you are
going to need to iterate and at that point you need everyone to be bringing
ideas to the table.

The essence of a pointy-haired boss is someone who has a lot of ideas (which
may be good or bad), but is so entrenched in middle management that they have
no idea how to actually get things done. As an engineer I love when people
have great ideas, but I hate when I'm the only one working 16 hour days
because the non-technical folks think their job is to tell me what to do then
wait til it's done.

What constitutes valuable contributions? Well, I think Spencer Fry said it
better than anyone else around here ever has: <http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-
non-programmer-to-do>

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beholden
I half remembered that post, thank you for the direct link.

If you where in my position now - what would you do?

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Mz
I would suggest you seek out a good partner that balances your strengths and
weaknesses.

I have read something (don't recall what or where) that talked about people
who were failures until they found the right partner -- like song writers that
could do one part of it but not all of it and didn't get successful until they
found a partner that was really good at the part they couldn't do but who
couldn't do the piece they could do. (I think this is the story behind Gilbert
and Sullivan.) So I would suggest you first look for information on how to
find a compatible partner and then later go find that partner.

