

Ask HN: You have an awesome product/business idea. Now what? - overworkedasian

I am sure many of us get awesome ideas for a new product or service that we think can change the world and make us millions. Whether its a new web app, mobile app, or new design on existing tangible product.&#60;p&#62;I come from a programming background so when i come up with a new concept for an app, i am fully capable of making it. I am fortunate to be able to take an idea and turn it into a usable app.
I wanted to get some feedback from those that had awesome ideas for a product, but lacked the technical skills or financial means to hire someone to make it.<p>were you able to take your idea and turn it into a real product?<p>assuming you found someone to help you make it, whether with a technical co-founder or you paid someone to make it for you, how long did it take you to finally find that person? any personal hardships you care to share that you experienced along the way?<p>what resources/local groups/meetups did you use to try to find people to work on the idea with you?<p>if you havent been able to make your idea into a reality, what is your road block? funding? not able to find a technical cofounder? have you tried to raise money to fund your idea? did you start to learn a new skill to build your product on your own?
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leslyn
I got the idea for uencounter.me last March while talking with a good
friend... "wouldn't it be neat if ...", I asked a few more friends and we all
tried to find something that did what I was asking for but could not. I am a
trained therapist and entrepreneur with a small private practice, not a
programmer. I have two much younger brothers who are PhD students at major
universities so my first call was to them ... "Do you know any starving
brilliant hackers?" (Starving because I didn't have much money). Long story
short - One of them had a best friend who loves writing code ... wanted a new
project ... and I am awesome at selling my ideas! We brought on one other
partner to manage business development/finances and began! That was 10 months
ago. Miraculously, we have had a fabulous working arrangement. We divided the
work - so much of the front end work was on the coding side but I have spent
40+ hours a week reading and learning as if I was in grad school again. Now -
I handle marketing, PR, and manage tasks/organization of ideas every minute I
am not working as a therapist! I still have not officially met my technical
partner but we talk for several hours per week and burn the keyboard with
emails. My most personal hardship was not having any knowledge about the
technical side and being impatient while it was built but our communication
started out good and has gotten better along the way. My ambition and drive
are sometimes too highly energized for the other two partners but that is good
as we seem to balance one another nicely. We have spent less than $4,000 at
this point and have a fully functional product with several hundred users (and
growing) two months post launch. We are terribly proud and visualizing a
viable career with the application. Feel free to take a look:
<http://www.uencounter.me>

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tstegart
I finally got our app done and we're in the App Store ready for a public
launch in a few weeks with version 1.1. It took us quite a while because we
were not technical founders.

I think we got lucky because an open source option became available with just
enough documentation for me to tweak it with the skills I learned by reading
books at the library and from links on Hacker News (we're publishing a travel
magazine in the Apple App Store and we used Baker and Laker, two great open
source frameworks. Check them out at <http://bakerframework.com/> and
<http://www.lakercompendium.com/>)

I think without these we would have been stuck and would have never gotten off
the ground. From a personal point of view, as an ideas guy who never really
thinks about execution, it was very difficult. I enjoy spending my time
thinking up ideas that will change the world and getting frustrated when I
realize I don't have the skills to implement them.

Working on our magazine was a change for me. It wasn't a grand idea, its not
going to change the world. People might love the stories, but its not the
"next big thing." And I have to say, I'm ok with that. If fact, more than ok,
its very satisfying to actually get something done, to have it in my hands and
be able to say its mine, rather than just one of my ideas floating in space.

It still took a lot of work, especially on the motivational side, but I
handled that by intentionally breaking it down to the smallest task I could.
That was also new for me, and I think, a key factor. Every day I got something
done, even if it was small, and then one day 8 months later, it was done.

If I had had a technical co-founder and more money would it have been easier?
Yeah. But I didn't.

By far the resources I used the most were Hacker News (for motivation and the
stuff I learned from articles), my local library (for books on coding and
soon, marketing) and the documentation of the code we worked on (and a bit of
help from the guys who built it, once again, check them out they're awesome).

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sathishmanohar
I've have many ideas, Ranging from new Operating System designs to Clean
Energy to world changing web applications (they are ideas, So, probably many
of them may fail ). I don't have a technical education.

When I started getting these ideas, I was very confused about what to do with
all of them. But, Now I have great clarity. I'm starting from the easiest to
approach.

I started doing web design for hire before 2 years. Meanwhile I taught myself,
Ruby, Rails and Jquery. Now, I'm building two of the web apps, I wanted to
build.

The biggest challenges I faced were that, there were no immediate technical
network for me, to go to. Since, I haven't worked anywhere, nor do I have
technical education. So, For every problem, I face, I had to google my way
around it, or go in IRCs, or forums. Its not all minus in a way, this self-
service style of education, has helped me in some ways.

Here in India, I don't even know where to start, to get funding. But, I think
I won't need it, Since, I value freedom for setting my own pace and control
over the products more than anything.

In short, Haven't launched a product yet. But, will launch one or two within
this month. I'm very happy looking forward for that day. (I'm also
procrastinating bcoz, of fear of being ridiculed). But, will take a deep
breath and hit enter on "cap deploy" soon.

PS: HN for the past 6 months played a very important role in shaping my
thoughts on products, validation, launch etc.

