

No hackers in our startup group. Oh oh! - jerry951

Hi everyone, we just want your opinions (preferably from hackers and startups that have already applied or made it in the past). My brother and I have a great idea, but we're no hackers. We applied for Summer 2009 funding, kind of late but we made it before the deadline. We were very hesitate to apply cause we had no hacker in our group, but someone told us to just do it. And so we did.<p>We consider ourselves as designers only (we made a concept of the site) but with no working functions. It's basically an image of the site. I know many startups are laughing at us right now scratching their heads and going "Really? They are trying to start a company with an image of their site/product?"<p>I know it sounds funny my brother and I even laughed about it. But it's a good image and we can describe every little detail of the site inside out. It's like if a big soda company like Coca-Cola designed a really good concept of a new drink and having no idea yet how to make the actual drink yet.<p>But we have to work with what we got...=(<p>We're wondering if a concept (image) is all we really need to convince investors in funding in our company? Once we get funded we can hire a programmer/hacker to bring our dream to life or maybe use the money ycombinator gives us to find someone who can help make a convincing prototype before pitching it.<p>In the miracle of ycombinator choosing us to be one of the Summer 2009 startups, would it be hard finding ourselves a hacker in return for the same percent or even more of the company stock as us? I don't want to grab a hacker from a different group who is already spending time on their own project. That's just bad. The hacker we're looking for is someone who was rejected, never applied, or someone who was never accepted and has similar programming skills and knowledge of justin.tv and youtube. You can use open source, I have seen some that would fit our site but it needs major modifications.<p>We're not competing with justin.tv btw, it's nothing like it so you can relax Mr. Kan.<p>We're really nice people, laid back, pretty young, love bouncing ideas and we're twin brothers. We also give good back rubs. Nice to meet you!
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tjic
> Once we get funded we can hire a programmer/hacker to bring our dream to
> life

What makes you think that it's going to be easier to get a dedicated, driven
hacker with cash (which you don't have yet), rather than with stock (which you
could issue right now) ?

> would it be hard finding ourselves a hacker in return for the same percent
> or even more of the company stock as us?

As each of you individually (meaning the hacker gets 33%), or as each of you
together (meaning the hacker gets 50%) ?

Besides the design, what are you and your brother going to contribute, going
forward?

I ask, because 2 designers for 1 hacker sounds like a lopsided ratio.

~~~
jerry951
Thanks for reply.

>What makes you think that it's going to be easier to get a dedicated, driven
hacker with cash (which you don't have yet), rather than with stock (which you
could issue right now)?

I don't think anything we're doing is easy. We have no experience in business
or programming. This is a big risky move on our part that we're willing to
take. Just brothers with the same hobby and looking for help from YC. Good
point though, I would issue stocks now that I think of it.

>As each of you individually (meaning the hacker gets 33%), or as each of you
together (meaning the hacker gets 50%)?

The hacker will get more than each of us not together.

>Besides the design, what are you and your brother going to contribute, going
forward?

Everything else that doesn't require programming but is essential to get our
company known. Marketing, press, interviews, etc. Also sharing ideas and
suggestions with the coder. Oh yeah, more designs and concepts.

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pedalpete
If you've got passion for your business, and understand what needs to be done,
you could be well on your way.

You may get into the YC, you might not. But one good thing about it is that if
the idea is sound, and they think you've got the right stuff to run the
business, then YC could probably do some introductions to hackers to get the
technology built.

I am assuming here that you have some understanding of the technology, it
might be a tough sell if you have no technical abilities at all.

As a bit of inspiration, I wasn't a hacker two years ago. But when Pandora was
blocked from Canada I built a replacement service (took about 8 months - i had
to shutter it 'cause it was costing too much). But with the resouces online,
if you have the drive, it can be accomplished.

After shutting the music service, i created a live music search engine
www.hearwhere.com.

I wish I had the skills of a designer ;), the point is don't give up, if you
love your idea, you can do it.

~~~
jerry951
Thank you! I like the site you have.

We do have a little technical side to us but nothing like what you possess.
Just the basics and we know how to play around with code, but not write code
from scratch.

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juanpablo
Make a lot of images, one for each screen change, and then 'test' the
application with your friends as if it where really working. Show, don't tell.

Take their feedback and improve. Convince some friend programmer to join you
and also learn to program yourselves

~~~
jerry951
Thanks, I think we made every screen change already. We showed it to our older
brothers and they liked it. I don't think my friends would care, they aren't
programmers either.

------
lsc
hm. you are in for an uphill battle. it's hard to identify good people with
skillset X unless you also have skillset X. That's the challenge if you have
money. the problem is that you don't have money. You have to convince a hacker
that your skills are worth something (and often hackers have the same problem
picking business guys as business guys have picking hackers.) Think of it as
your first sale, perhaps?

I might be interested in a trade. lsc@prgmr.com. My experience is in
SysAdmin/Networking, but if you do want a youtube-alike, you are going to need
a lot of bandwidth, and I have that.

You say you have an 'image' do you mean a .jpg? or do you mean html/css?

~~~
jerry951
Thanks for the offer! I will wait for YC first before looking for programmers
and help.

Our idea is only about 2 week old. It's a .gif that is placed in an html page.
We will work on the html/css today.

~~~
lsc
html/css is a skill in and of itself. If you can write good, clean html/css,
writing a few perl script to substitute out stuff becomes much easier.

~~~
jerry951
I don't think I can do clean html/css. What I learn is from playing around
with other people's source codes.

