
A Fool’s Bargain: Building Software for Free (or, An Idea Ain’t Worth Squat) - rwalling
http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2008/02/21/a-fools-bargain-building-software-for-free-or-an-idea-aint-worth-squat/
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jyu
I can relate to this article, but he's missing something. If you're building
something people want, selling software over the internet can be figured out,
and you can find developers to make it.

The first thing start ups should do is show evidence that people want what you
are offering. Afterwards, figure out if the cost of customer acquisition <
price they will pay (or advertising or whatever). Then you have a good
business idea.

Viaweb, for instance, let businesses get a web presence easily at a price they
could afford. The advertising cost to get new customers was lower than their
price and cost of the product, so they were profitable.

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NSX2
You know, this smacks a bit of "Me thinks the lady doth protest too much."

Ideas are a dime a dozen. But good ideas are not. If you already have the
skills as a developer, and good, marketable, monetizable ideas are really as
easy to come up with as you say, why aren't you a multi-billionaire 15 times
over by now?

I suppose I'm a bit biased because I've approached people before as the "idea
guy", only to be turned down by developers who insist that ideas are a dime-a-
dozen and that they're too busy working on their own wonderful get-rich-quick
idea to make billions of dollars by starting a company which loads YouTube
flash videos up 2% faster or some such technical marvel.

You know what? Year after year, same developers, same cocktail party, same
meetups, STILL working in poverty and obscurity, 100% certain that any day now
Google will come along and offer them billion$$$ for their one-man company
centered around an algorithm that loads YouTube videos 2% faster.

I highly doubt that you're a several-time succesful entrepreneur as you claim
on your site.

Startups are just plain hard and you need all the good thinkers you can get
and they're not all programmers.

Good luck competing with the luxury of snobbery.

BTW - suppose this non-existent guy's business idea (I say that because it
seems like every programmer these days is posting a blog about, "The other
day, this stupid guy came up to me asking to develop his stupid idea.") took
off and made billions.

Do you have experience developing products for startups that go on to make
billioins?

Did Pierre Omidyar have experience programming for startups that go from $0 in
sales to become Fortune 500 companies in less than a decade?

Let me know how your holier-than-thou attitude works out for you financially
in about 10-15 years.

I'm going to guess you'll either still be programming or putting up some blog
whining about how Indian and Chinese programmers are stealing your
opportunities.

~~~
mtts
The confusion between you and this guy is that you seem to be talking about "a
business idea" and he's simply talking about "an idea for an app, but with no
idea behind it for turning it into a business".

It doesn't seem like you and he are talking about different things at all.

