
Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder - nicdc
I have an idea and want to move it forward. Details below. Any advice?<p>(Given HN&#x27;s technical inclination, I am aware that most will frown on this from the start. Yet another &quot;ideas man&quot;.. ;-))<p>Background: I have never developed an app or website. I come from a non-tech project management and statistics background. I&#x27;ve dabbled in Python and R for statistics and academic-type research. So nothing really useful for app&#x2F;web development. I also don&#x27;t have any entrepreneurial credentials.<p>Current inclination: learn the necessary tools myself to code&#x2F;develop my own product. My rationale is that the more I know the ins-and-outs of my product, the better I can sell it. Plus, this path may even help me attract technical talent, or a technical co-founder. But truth be told, part of this inclination is also to ease (at least partially) my imposter syndrome. I know outsourcing the product would save me time in the short-run, but I would feel like a total poser doing so. Also, worst case, the project fails but the technical skills I acquired make me more marketable for tech-type jobs.
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ekidd
I co-founded a startup that had a technically-solid product that people swore
they wanted. It failed. I've also worked for a number of successful startups.
And I've consulted for startups that succeeded, and ones that sank without a
trace.

If there's any pattern I can see with the non-technical founders, it's that
some knowledge of coding is certainly nice, if only so the founders can talk
to the actual coders. But coding's not the most important thing. The two most
important things for a non-technical founder are (1) understanding their
market, and (2) closing deals.

Steve Blank (a respected startup expert) proposed a way to prove that you can
do (1) and (2): Collect _non-binding_ letters of intent from future customers.
These letters should say something like "If you can produce software that does
X, Y and Z acceptably well, we would would like to negotiate a contract with
you for $1000/month." (See Blank's classic "Four Steps to the Epiphany" for
more details.)

If you can collect 10 of those letters, then you should have no problem
finding a technical co-founder, and you'll be bringing strong assets to the
table.

(The details might be different for your startup. Maybe your product is only
worth $200/month, or whatever. But the key point is that you can go talk to
customers and close deals.)

~~~
fny
Don't forget that MVPs don't need to be apps.

I'm a technical guy, but the first start up I joined started selling sheets of
paper to clients at a premium before we scaled to an app.

If you can get a business running with spreadsheets, you'll have a lot of
leverage bringing devs to the table.

~~~
ta17711771
More details on that first startup?!

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johnmcauley
I’m a CTO in a 20 man startup and have been through the ringer on several
different projects through my career.

This is a difficult situation as positive founders that you can build a
company with are hard to come by (been there) and outsourcing is a minefield.
I would suggest not to engage with an offshore outsourcing company, I have had
terrible experiences here (they may tell u they are under NDA so cannot share
any of their ‘successful’ projects, of which there are probably none), and if
they know you don’t know tech, it’s a free for all. The other issue is they
will try to bleed you up front and most startups are based on iteration, but
you will probably have no cash left to incorporate the feedback into another
version. Also, the quality will be terrible and they will not care about your
project. What could Work, to get you started, is to find a single engineer you
can work with (and pay) to get an MVP up and running, this could be a young
guy or an off shore engineer but someone who will to work with you. This can
keep your costs reasonable. The only issue here is that you have to think
about how to move that MVP into a real product so you are really kicking the
can down the road, but this can get you started.

In summary, avoid out sourcing like the corona virus.

~~~
rtx
Your comment comes off as xenophobic. I know it's acceptable in tech circle to
talk this way, but not cool.

~~~
beering
OK, so how do we talk about the prevalence of awful off-shore software-
development firms without being "xenophobic"? If you're going to lecture us on
how we talk, at least offer an alternative?

~~~
dragonwriter
> OK, so how do we talk about the prevalence of awful off-shore software-
> development firms without being "xenophobic"?

We don't, when the problem under discussion is endemic to _outsourcing_ firms
and has no particular connection to their location. The fact that there are
lots of outsourcing firms that are, relative to where the demand for their
services is, also offshore is _completely beside the point_.

Raising that irrelevancy is the problem.

~~~
gfodor
Offshore outsourcing tends to be by far the cheapest, hence assuming people
will use offshore firms isn’t xenophobia its based on a relatively likely
assumption.

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pier25
I once read that if you open a restaurant and know nothing about running a
kitchen then the cooks own the restaurant.

With tech it's similar. You could supervise the end result but there are so
many decisions taken "in the kitchen" that will have an impact in the product.
Maybe 6 months from now you will want to implement a feature and because the
developer decided to use XYZ it's not feasible to do it and you have to
rewrite that from scratch.

I'm not saying all founders should be technical, but at least one should be.
It's a software company after all.

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Alex3917
> Also, worst case, the project fails but the technical skills I acquired make
> me more marketable for tech-type jobs.

This. The chances of hiring folks to build an MVP and getting enough paying
users off that to bring them on full time or getting enough traction to raise
money are absurdly small. If you're already both very wealthy and are the
single most famous person in your industry then maybe there's like a 10%
chance of it working, if neither of those things apply then the chances are
much closer to 0%. What will happen is that you'll spend a ton of money to
build something, not really validate any assumptions or de-risk anything, and
then be stuck with this poorly constructed prototype that's too complicated
for you to modify yourself.

Spend six months learning to code, then try to build your product. If you're
not making progress at a reasonable pace then just get a job as a full stack
developer and spend a couple years learning from the best people in the
industry while getting paid for it, and then finish your prototype on nights
and weekends. After a couple years of working professionally as a developer,
things that would have taken you a month you'll now be able to do in a day.

~~~
nicholas73
"The chances of hiring folks to build an MVP and getting enough paying users
off that to bring them on full time or getting enough traction to raise money
are absurdly small."

What about the chances if you build yourself? Any better?

~~~
dragonwriter
> What about the chances if you build yourself? Any better?

If you have the skill to build yourself you avoid (really, reduce by some
amount) the portion of the risk attached to getting people to build it (skill
and counterparty and other risks) but you still have the market risk.

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lefstathiou
Hello - exciting times. I would reconsider learning to do it all from scratch.
The economic law of comparative advantage, I believe, also applies to people
allocating their time. Pair up with 1-2 people who have complimentary skill
sets so you can each bring your best to the table, motivate each other and
drive toward your final outcome faster. Time is your enemy.

I’m a non technical cofounder and CEO of a 70-person SAAS company (that’s
bootstrapped). We could not have gotten where we are with without the other
cofounders (there were three) and me pretending I could do everything and
doing nothing well. We each were responsible for doing a job the others hated.

Anyway just food for thought. Email me if you want to hop on a call.

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hitech_dude
I would.like to help/advise/interact with a non technical founder(s)

I do not want payment or equity. I have my own promising thing going on. Let's
just make sure there is no conflict - I am in ads/algos/gaming.

Just looking for someone with strong references/connections/SV-background who
might be willing to return a favour later on.

I can commit to ~1hr daily for the coming month to help get someone started.

------
joeyspn
Learning to program will give you resilience. As a founder you are "the last
resort" of the project. You will find yourself in this scenario many times and
it's better to not depend on anyone.

When it comes to starting up, resilience and determination are much more
important skills than outstanding programming skills. Or at least that's what
experience has taught many of us.

Nowadays you can do a lot with few resources thanks to no-code tools [0], try
to keep it simple and reduce LoC as much as possible. If you need a backend,
tools like Firebase/Netlify/Saasify [1] are enough to build an MVP and get the
ball rolling. And of course, do not try to build something that has 0 demand,
just try to build the MVP that meets the demand you have identified and then
take it from there.

[0] [https://nocodelist.co/](https://nocodelist.co/)

[1] [https://saasify.sh/](https://saasify.sh/)

~~~
ilamont
_As a founder you are "the last resort" of the project. You will find yourself
in this scenario many times and it's better to not depend on anyone._

So glad you said this. Applies to other kinds of ventures, not just software.

I learned this lesson the hard way in my first venture. Co-founder flaked,
left me swinging in the wind.

Vowed to start something new on my own as a solo founder where I could at
least prototype and iterate early versions AND revenue was coming in the door
from the beginning. This enabled me to hand off things that tested well to
contractors and grow that way. Goes against YC "you must have a co-founder"
dogma but it works.

------
agustif
As someone previously on your shoes, and. who now is able to code. do it
yourself, seriously it's not that hard and you won't regret it, you can get an
excellent CTO later when you need to scale and have already gained some
momentum/traction/product-market fit.

------
arkadiyt
There is an explosion of no-code tools these days - companies have gotten
paying customers and become profitable without writing a single line of code.
I'd try making a PoC and seeing if you can find interested customers.

~~~
tchock23
Glad someone mentioned this. Tools like Bubble.io can help a relatively non-
technical person get a MVP up in a matter of weeks. It’s particularly useful
for any kind of CRUD app (which most SaaS apps are at their core).

As a bonus, using these no code tools forces you to learn how to architect an
application at a high-level, which can be useful if you choose to learn how to
code “for real” someday.

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newusertoday
It looks like a win-win i.e. you develop a product and also develop technical
competency however it is not, my suggestion is to keep them separate, you can
always delve deeper into technology if you wish to do so. Learning technology
will just put additional constraint on what you can deliver and when you can
deliver your product. Decide one thing whether it is developing product or
tech competence and give it 100%. So for example if you decide to go for
product than take the most efficient path to develop it either by using no-
code tools or using laravel saas template or whatever language template that
would make your job easier to get the product out. If you decide to go for
tech, to maximize your chance of getting hired you should go for leet code and
associated sites to make sure that you are able to clear the interview, there
are countless tales of technically competent people not able to clear the
interview because the interview process in industry is rigged in favor of leet
code type interviews.

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pg_bot
Some questions to flush out some more details.

1.) Are you planning on making this your full time job?

2.) Who is your target customer?

3.) Do you know anyone who will be a customer the day it will launch?

4.) How much money are you willing to devote to the project?

5.) Will it do one thing well, or does it need have to have a lot of features?

6.) Is there already competition/is there already a piece of software that
handles this problem?

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jitendrac
I would say, Lean to code.

Divide your SaaS project in small unit of task, explore each section unit by
some video tutorial at first-good for first. try on youtube, freecodecamp or
udemy. gain knowledge of subject and make small function to demonstrate the
part of your saas products capability. Explore and learn, you can later hire
some dev, co-founder or CTO of tech background.

For coding, I would say put your efforts in some nice language Eco-system.
Python is just fine no offense, but If I were at your place I would use PHP or
node. My reasoning: PHP is language of my personal preference. For node, Its
basically javascript at server-side, so It requires you to learn just a single
language, its features and tooling. if you are writing web app you can share
codebase of many part of frontend and backend.

~~~
jbverschoor
If he’ll starts to learn how to code, he won’t be good at coding nor business.

~~~
ta17711771
I've long thought this. Could you elaborate?

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ultrasounder
Hi I am actually on the same journey as yourself though I am engineer from a
different domain. This has been stated so many times here on HN but I will
repeat myself again. Please ensure that you are solving a problem that exists.
It could be a problem that you face in your own domain or a persistent friend
that a friend has. Recently I phoned around 50 coffee shops that run on
Shopify to see if they have a problem that needs solving. Talk to your
customers and know them inside out. Know where they hang out and devise a plan
to reach them.once you know your customers and where to find your first 10 you
can then apply the frameworks presented by lefstathiou and others to go about
building something either solo or with a co-founder. Email: vsap78 at
gmaildotcom

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sideproject
What have you tried? I've been talking to quite a few no-code people in
regards to a little tool I built called Newsy

[https://www.newsy.co](https://www.newsy.co)

Basically, it turns an un-used domain into a content aggregator (e.g. Reddit).
But it does have quite a lot of features to build..

\- contents via RSS and keywords \- membership, subscribers, automated
newsletters \- traffic via sharing on twitter, tumblr etc \- monetization
through ads \- SEO with sharing links with other users and building backlinks

The reason I mention is that many no-code people I spoke to found it an
interesting way to "test out" the particular interest market and build some
traffic (or at least try out) before diving in.

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the-dude
Register domain, build nice looking landing page claiming what you are working
on, harvest emails and start talking to these people.

Only proceed if there is some kind of traction.

I have never done this myself, but I have seen people claiming this here on
HN.

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ahpearce
I also have a background in statistics, but landed a job as mostly a software
engineer (though technically my title is Data Scientist... buzz words!). I've
been building basically a cookiecutter framework for the base of a SaaS app
(basic pricing, user auth, etc.), and brainstorming ideas.

As others have said, the ideal route is to validate the market first, and
guarantee customers before effort is committed.

If you'd like to tag up, just to chat casually about the idea or just
entrepreneurship in general, feel free to e-mail me (in bio).

------
bcx
I have no idea what stage you are at for your idea, but I'd recommend trying
to line up customers who love the product based on something you sketch out on
a notebook (piece of paper) as a step one.

I'd also validate that the problem you are trying to solve is a really strong
pain point for whoever is running into it. Having someone offer to pay you
lots of money to solve it as a consultant is a good sign.

You can actually get pretty far with validating an idea before writing a line
of code. You can even get potential customers to commit to paying you once
it's built (some will renege later)

TLDR: \- there is a ton you can do before writing a line of code. In many
cases since you are new on this journey, and your background is technical
(stats, dabbling in code) the EASIEST part of the journey will be learning to
build saas apps and/or finding a technical cofounder.

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jbverschoor
Very simple. Start a busyness. Sell a concept. Get signatures or advanced
payments. Then hire someone who can do execute.

You want to start a business. Not start an “app”.. right?

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dyeje
If you feel learning to code would be a worthwhile end in itself, sure build
it yourself. Just recognize it'll take much longer and you may have to scrap
it when you bring someone more technical on.

Otherwise you should outsource the absolute minimum necessary to prove the
idea has legs in the market and use that to attract a technical cofounder.

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amlida_james
I’m a non technical co-founder and CEO of a SAAS company. We were unable to
have gotten where we are with without the other prime supporters (there were
three) and me imagining I could do everything and doing nothing admirably. We
each were answerable for carrying out a responsibility the others abhorred.

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BennyH26
I’m a technical founder and would be happy to chat. Glad to try to point you
to the next step, give a big picture overview of technical requirements, and
possibly even be involved if we are a good match. Feel free to drop me a line
bhakim@wirepulse.com

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rimjongun
I’m in the exact same boat!

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peignoir
Check bubble.io

