

Ask HN: How do you get people to do stuff with nothing? - operi

If I had a billion dollars, I could get people to do a lot of things.  Apparently people love doing stuff when there&#x27;s lots of money and influence nearby.<p>I don&#x27;t have a billion dollars.  For the purposes of this conversation, I don&#x27;t have anything.  I&#x27;m broke, penniless, and powerless.<p>How do I get people to do stuff?  How do I get people to help make my idea a reality if my idea requires a lot of help to get done?<p>Please, no solutions that involve any fakery, theft, lying, or other immoral acts.
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anigbrowl
_Please, no solutions that involve any fakery, theft, lying, or other immoral
acts._

Then you're arguably SOL. I work in Indie film, where a great deal of people
work for free in hope of getting more work through contacts, or if a project
they worked on becomes successful, or will gain valuable experience etc. etc.
I don't care to work this way myself (ie asking other people to basically
donate to my own projects) and frankly that's a real problem. To succeed with
no resources like this, you have to be willing to bullshit a bit and
essentially sell people on the merits of something that doesn't exist, in the
hope that the whole will be more than the sum of the parts.

The best thing you can offer people when you have no resources is social
credit. In order to make that worthwhile in some fashion, then you need to
formalize it, so people can go and look up at their credit like a trophy even
if it's a worthless one. After all, if people choose to donate time to your
project, that's their right too; don't second-guess their reasons for doing
so.

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Jugurtha
Is your idea doable ? Is the gain of doing it way greater than marginal ?

Why would anyone do it ? What would they gain ? What's in it for them ?

Can they help, or are you talking with the wrong people ?

Is it a good idea, frankly ?

We see a lot of that whole "disturb" crap and help us change the world and
all... Is your idea different ? Is the problem real, or is it just a selfish
thing ? Don't get me wrong, a lot of people want to do something by pure
selfishness (I want to be famous, I want to have a billion dollars, I want to
be this or that, forgetting that if there is no problem to solve, there will
be nothing of that: fame, money, etc, are preceeded by solving a problem).

