
Codified startup advice - bjonathan
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/03/codified-advice.html
======
iamelgringo
I love it, Gabe. I've been running Hackers and Founders Silicon Valley for
several years, and this flow chart pretty much nails it.

I would suggest at the "Have a Hacker Founder?" level, to add a "learn how to
code" box. I run in to a lot of BizDev people at our events, and the business
people that have had the most success are the ones that...

1\. Learn how to code. It proves to hacker founders that you are serious, and
every level of technical knowledge that a business person brings to the table
makes them exponentially more valuable to the technical founder.

I'm not blithely saying this. My day job is as a nurse, and I went back to
school for software engineering because I wanted to do the startup thing. It
took me years, but I decided early on that I was going to have to build 10
startups before one succeeded. So, I learned what I had to, to be able to
build 10 startups without breaking the bank. And, they key factor there was
learning how to code.

2\. Leave their idea behind. Instead help hackers take their too technical
ideas and turn them into proper businesses.

3\. Learn how the open source model works and give away their ideas and advice
freely to hacker founders. Eventually, if the've helped enough hacker
founders, they gain enough street cred, karma and friendships that hacker
founders will ask you to join their startup.

\-----------

When I tell business people to "learn how to code" the most common response I
hear is that "it takes too long". To which I say, It's going to take you at
least 6 to 12 months to find a technical co founder, even in Silicon Valley,
if you're lucky. You might as well start learning how to code while you're
looking.

~~~
iamwil
This is true. Nothing gets my attention more than non-technical people that
learned how to code, and even if it's not the world's most brilliant code, it
demonstrates umph and a willingness to do what they can for their business and
for understanding.

Having learned how to code will also give you perspective, even if you're not
going to be doing it later in the company. When you've broken your back
coding, you'll realize that no feature is ever 'trivial', among other things.

It'll make you get along and understand your technical team a lot better.

------
dools
I don't get why "seek advice" is the generic end point. Surely "have traction
-> know how to get more users -> not seeking investment" shouldn't result in
"seek advice".

~~~
frsandstone
I think the flowchart is there to give all the major advice to the startup,
and if they get that far in the flowchart and are still looking for the next
step, then that's when they should seek advice because the problem is more
complex than can be shown in the flowchart.

~~~
dools
Ah yes, I see. The only reason someone is looking at this chart in the first
place is because they were seeking advice. If you have traction, know how to
get more users and aren't seeking investment AND don't need advice, plz refer
to the rest of the world.

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idlewords
Symptomatic of something that there's no 'profit' node on here.

DID YOU KNOW: there are other ways to get money than from investors?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
No, it is not. If you are not raising money (bc you have profit or whatever)
you just answer no to that question and move on.

------
codeslush
EVERYONE.READ.THIS. Very simple illustration highlighting pretty much all the
principles I've been reading about for so long. Printed and posted on my cork-
board! Thank you.

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hasenj
This assumes that you _must_ get funding and investment.

Neat concept though.

Need a similar thing for 37signals style advice. Anyone?

~~~
epi0Bauqu
No it doesn't. If you're not raising money you answer No to "Raising money?"
at which point I suggest you seek advice (if needed). I personally haven't yet
raised angel/VC money for my startups and often advise people against it until
if and when they really need/want to.

~~~
hasenj
Well, I read it as "If you think you don't need funding, you're wrong".

All paths go to "seek advice" except the path where you're raising money, know
how much, know the terms, and know the investors.

If the author (is it you?) thinks it's ok not raise money, the diagram should
be altered to reflect that.

Maybe a bit like this:

    
    
      .. -> [Raising Money?] -> [No] 
          -> [Do you need to?] 
                -> [Yes] -> (Seek advice)
                -> [No] -> [Profitable yet?] 
                                   -> [Yes] -> [Cool, good luck]
                                   -> [No] -> (Seek advice)

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I've been doing startups for over 10 years and haven't raised any VC/angel
money :). The chart is about when to ask for advice, not a chart to path your
startup career.

In any case, I do think you should seek advice if you are bootstrapping. You
read it as seeking advice to raise money, whereas I meant seek advice
generally about your startup. I think people benefit from having mentors,
which I tried to write up here btw <http://ye.gg/mentors>

------
edw519

      +-------+   +--------------------------------+
      | Start |   | Learn how to read a flowchart. |
      +-------+   +--------------------------------+
          |               /             ^          
          V              /              |           
      +---------+       /      +-------------------+
      | COUNTER |      /       | Add 1 to COUNTER. |
      |   = 1   |     /        +-------------------+
      +---------+    /                   ^          
           |        /                 +----+        
           |       /                  | no |             
           V      V                   +----+
      +--------------+                   |
      | Can you read |  +----+   +-----------------+
      | a flowchart? |--| no |-->| Is COUNTER > 3? |
      +--------------+  +----+   +-----------------+
             |                           |   
          +-----+                     +-----+
          | yes |                     | yes |
          +-----+                     +-----+
             |                           |
             V                           V        
      +-----------------+          +-------------+
      |    Proceed to   |          |   Open a    |
      | Gabriel's chart |          | restaurant. |
      +-----------------+          +-------------+

------
nostrademons
What's the start state? Is there one? I'd think to start at the top, but that
has an incoming arrow...

~~~
zyfo
"Are you serious" is the start. It's a loop to weed out people who aren't
truly committed.

------
yuvadam
So much valuable info in a nifty flow chart. Usually I hate flow charts, but
this one is good.

------
rmundo
This really drives home the need to launch as soon as you can. Most of the
actual work of building a startup actually happens after that. Great visual
reminder!

------
MrFlibble
"Have a Hacker Founder?" While that is a great idea if it happens to work out
that way, what about "Hire a Hacker/Architect"?

Sometimes you don't meet anyone you want to be a co-founder. If that's the
case and you are able to raise the funds to pay a good coder what they're
worth, then hiring the right person should be an option.

~~~
entangld
What about optimizing or customizing the website later and answering technical
questions about your website?

This is not criticism. I'm just wondering if you hire someone to code, what do
you do about the product post completion?

~~~
MrFlibble
Ah, I wasn't clear, apologies. I meant hire someone to code as in hire them to
be an actual part of the company, not just a temp hire.

This is my situation at the moment actually. I've got the majority wireframed
but will need it coded by a skilled person (I'd just butcher it). In my case I
know there will be a lot of customizing and optimizing later as the first
iteration is just to get it up & running, so it will be imperative to bring
someone on board who will be part of the team, not just a hired gun for a few
months.

------
chime
The site's not loading for me for some reason. Could someone please upload the
image to imgur.com or some other site? I read the text via Google cache, just
can't see the chart.

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philwelch
I like how the flowchart passive-aggressively puts you into a loop if (for
instance) you don't have a hacker founder and don't think you need one.

------
bryanhun
This is great, thank you! I am currently on the "Talk to users" step. Should I
be excited to be halfway there?

