
Ask HN: Non-coding, single founders? - techless
I have a number of startup ideas. The thing is: I don't code. (I hope to eventually, but currently only know some html.) At the same time, I'm rather independent - and I don't have any coder friends.<p>I'm thinking I might outsource the coding for one or two of my ideas. I could do the site, marketing, market research, etc. myself.<p>Is this feasible? Do any of you work like this?
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czcar
I think, (being in the echo chamber that is YC) we forget the number of
successful businesses that have been created, since time immemorial by people
that _cannot_ code.

Whilst I agree that you probably couldn't solve a hugely technical problem
without a strong technical team, A _HUGE_ number of recent well known,
"startup wins", have been from business model innovations.

I am by no means successful, but I am working on it. I have outsourced some
development, and in the development of some ideas, taught myself to be a
pretty sufficient programmer, just roll with it.

Your lack of technical ability is just one constraint of many that you will
face, constraints are good, they shape your decisions.

And of course the benefit is that getting out their, with your hacked,
outsourced, barely-holding together prototype, selling your ass off is going
to go _along_ way in impressing those people with complimentary skill-sets
that you might want to partner with.

Shit, if your a good entrepreneur, you will work it out as you go, learning,
hiring and partnering with whoever you need.

As Mark Suster says, JFDI

And good luck

~~~
andrewljohnson
Your comment is a little silly when you don't cite any examples of companies
that weren't founded by technical people. Digg would have been a good one.

And also, no one on HN argues that a business guy shouldn't start a business,
they argue that a business guy shouldn't start a tech business. Anyone can
found a laundromat.

------
ankeshk
I am a single founder of my startup and don't know coding (except HTML and
some CSS.)

>I have a number of startup ideas.

Thats a bad thing to have - "a number of ideas". You need to focus on just one
idea at a time. Get it at a stage where you can either sell it - or hire
someone to run on its own - before you venture on to the 2nd idea.

>and I don't have any coder friends.

That is also a bad thing. Because you need coder friends to help you:

i. Hire coders (a non-coder should never interview a coder. You will rarely
ask the right questions.)

ii. Make sure the coders are not shoddy in their work.

You don't need coder friends who can become co-founders in your startup. But
you do need coder friends who can help you out from time to time - in an
unofficial capacity.

Networking helps. Go to hacking events and barcamps and just be friendly and
helpful. And grow your circle of coder friends.

>I'm thinking I might outsource the coding

Thats do-able. A few things to remember:

i. Hire 2 coders if you can afford. So that each coder can keep the other one
accountable - and go through his work.

ii. Keep in mind that most things will take more time than your coders
estimated time line. But getting impatient doesn't help.

iii. Never hire the cheapest coder you can get.

------
robfitz
I disagree with _every_ response so far, which boil down to either a) hire a
coder or b) learn to code.

Most businesses that get programmed up are bad. Nobody cares about them and
they fail. That's okay if you are a solo hacker because the loss is minimal
compared to the learning you get. From your situation, it's a terrible deal
(you either sank lots of time or money to get there).

I recommend you dive into customer development (start by reading Steve Blank's
4 Steps book). You can get through all of discovery and part of validation
without writing a single line of code (that takes you through "steps" 1 & 2 -
most startups never get to step 3, which is profitably scaling the customer
base).

Odds are good that your ideas are bad ("bad" as in "grounded in something
good, but currently severely flawed"). You can discover many of those holes
for free, by talking to your future customers and industry experts.

The best part is that you'll get to the point (without any code) of having a
business you can say with some confidence will generate money if it can just
get built. And you'll have the evidence (from future customers) in hand to
prove it. That makes recruiting great hackers (or raising seed money and
hiring them) so much easier.

~~~
hga
Good comments ... but shouldn't he have someone technical on tap to make sure
what he's proposing is feasible?

For that matter, while I haven't read Blank's book (but have lived its
opposite), won't you have more credibility when you step outside the office if
what you're saying is grounded in technical reality?

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maxjg
Potentially feasible, but I don't know that anything good will come of it.
Speaking as a coder, I definitely think of the code as the heart of a project,
and outsourcing it never even occurred as an option to me, personally. What
you're describing, site, marketing, research, etc are all important, but they
all seem ancillary to the project itself. Have you considered working as a
consultant or freelancer doing these things? I guess what I'm trying to say
here is that if you do what you're suggesting with your ideas, I don't know
that they'd really be YOUR projects anymore, I think they'd end up being
something you played a supporting role making. If you're ok with that, go for
it, but I don't think I could ever be happy executing a good idea that way.
I'd have to make it my own.

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RiderOfGiraffes
I believe it's not feasible. How are you going to recompense the coder doing
the "outsourced" work? How do you know you're getting value for money? How do
you assess their work? How do you negotiate changes? How do you specify what
you want?

You need a founder who can code. That can be you if you choose to work hard at
it, but it's generally assumed to be better to have a co-founder.

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bpourriahi
Give yourself 6 months without any other goal but to learn everything you can
about computer science, ad hoc, with a project in mind. I say this because
it's demotivating and dis-empowering to be a position of no power, especially
when you don't have a lot of cash parked. If you're a smart entrepreneur, I
think you'll figure it out, and then you won't be a slave anymore. This may be
overkill, but if you're passionate about what's possible in technology, you
definitely won't regret building something yourself and giving it all you got.

Just one way to look at things.

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christonog
I was in the same position as you. Your best bet is to learn to code. Not only
will you get more respect of programmers better than you, you'll understand
the mental effort it takes to program, even if it's something that seems so
"easy" to do. Trust me, there are alot of dependencies to think about when
programming something that looks simple initially.

~~~
pgbovine
amen, and you might find that some of the ideas that you thought were really
good or tractable might end up not sounding so good, once you get a better
feel for how to actually implement them.

as an analogy, i know almost nothing about teenage girls' fashion; so even if
i go to the mall one day and get inspired by some idea of how to do some
innovations on a particular teenage girl fashion item, i highly doubt that i
would be in a good position to actually make a company out of it.

------
keyle
I might sound funny, but I'd say, learn to code.

Especially if you call yourself 'rather independent'.

Dabble in most languages, pick what you like best and fit the bill and make
your way slowly to alpha.

I'm just worried that if you don't know any coders and nothing about shipping
a product, you might end up nowhere and lose a fair bit of cash.

Good luck.

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eli
Lots of developers will gladly code your app, cash your checks, and go home.
But if you wanted me to put blood and sweat and tears into this project, I'd
want equity. A lot of equity.

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nctusdk
Even if you can't learn to code, do learn to communicate with technical guys
if you've never worked with one before. I am both founder and coder and I find
some of my co-founder who graduate from business school does not know to how
communicate with technical members. This could be harder especially if you
graduate from business school, knows nothing about technology, and you're
going to work with a high-tech savvy. Their brain just works in different form
from yours.

------
ig1
It depends on the technical complexity of your ideas, if it's just going to be
a mod of an off-the-shelf CMS or something similar then you'll probably be
fine.

The greater the technical complexity the more risky it is because there are
far fewer outsourcing providers with the skills to achieve what you want.

(There are some exceptions to this: for example there are plenty of iphone app
development agencies that are capable of taking on large complex projects)

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snitko
I would also suggest that it'd be hard to find a coding co-founder. More often
than not they don't really like guys like you. At least personally I wouldn't
go for it. Many reasons - one is that I would certainly have a disagreement
with you on a certain thing because of the fact you don't understand how it
works and what really matters. Some recent posts on HN about co-founders
divorces may be proving exactly this.

~~~
ryanhuff
... and because of these issues, the idea guy usually doesn't understand (or
appreciate) the amount of work needed to develop the idea, and so its
difficult to come to an agreement on terms (equity share, etc).

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jarin
No good coder wants to work with an "idea guy", unless he or she is proven or
is willing to pay market rate for development. As developers, we know that if
the idea and code is good enough, and we have at least a cursory understanding
of online marketing, the money will come. What you need to prove to a
developer is that you have the know-how or connections that they don't have.

~~~
slance
In my experience the money doesn't just come! If only...

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DanBlake
I disagree with the other comments (mainly because I have done what you
describe multiple times with success). If you can afford to pay a programmer
to do what you need, its fine. You wont get the same attention to detail you
would get if that person had equity vs salary, but dont let that stop you. I
still think finding a technical cofounder should be your first choice.

------
lachyg
I'm the exact same type of person as you, and I've done alright so far. I
learnt some HTML/CSS, but I'd hardly call that code. It's very easy, and I
formed my business around that. I then outsourced all work to other coders,
and sold the business for mid 5 figures ($xx,xxx).

I think it is important to know what good code does look like, or be well
acquainted with someone who knows that (to protect you).

I outsource everything, I hire freelance developers for all work. This can be
extremely bumpy, but a fun journey, none the less. There are thousands of
freelance programmers in business. You know why? Because of people like you
and me :)

------
madblacker
Just learn to code, its not that hard to at least get a decent understanding
of how to do it... if you have money to pay workers then that makes it all the
better.. you can learn the ins and outs and give them technically detailed
instructions so they won't waste any of your time and you can easily seed out
people who don't know what they're doing... if you just work at learning a
language for a few months and have money to invest, pretty soon you won't have
to do any actual coding yourself as you can hire people pretty cheaply if you
get remotely based workers.

------
kaiwen1
I went from no programming skills to now working in a development shop as a
full-time Ruby on Rails coder. This took three years. To those saying "just
learn to code". Well, it is a serious undertaking, but it can be done. I'm 40
and learned programming, Ruby, a bit of other languages, CSS, unix shell, sql,
etc, etc, etc. It is a lot of stuff to learn to become productive. If you've
got the time and energy, you should do it. I'm now in a position to build what
I want and bring on a team. In fact, I've already started. Learn to code. And
good luck.

------
warp
A friend of mine wanted to go this route. I helped her look for small web
developers to implement her idea, in the end we concluded that approach is
just too expensive, and ends up being too much of a risk (she wants to
bootstrap this idea without outside investors).

While looking for developers she was lucky to come across a small web
development studio who liked the idea enough to invest some of their own time
to develop this idea. We'll have to see how that turns out, but so far
everyone involved seems passionate enough, so I think they have a chance of
succeeding.

------
coryl
If the project is small enough that it can be started by outsourcing, then you
COULD do that. But its ideal to have someone on the team who can code; your
site is pretty much useless should a bug come up, or simple feature is
requested.

So, your options: 1) Learn to code and try to get the basic version out for
yourself 2) Find a co-founder. 3) Outsource to build it out. Then see if you
can get that profitable, and recruit a co-founder.

------
DirtyAndy
Assuming that your ideas do not require incredibly technical solutions this
shouldn't be that much of a problem. I'm sure any team is better with a
business person and a coding person, but for most sites I see launched I'd
prefer business skills over coding skills, and I certainly wouldn't learn how
to code to achieve it - there are no lack of cheap coders around.

There is often a lot of talk about Minimum Viable Product. Outsource the
project for $xx and you will certainly achieve MVP. Developers working on
their own projects tend to get the wrong idea of what is important and lover
to tinker, so it is much harder to achieve MVP. Someone that has 10K to
deliver a project tends to deliver exactly what is asked for and no more. You
can certainly have a contract where bugs are fixed for free for a month etc,
and an agreed rate for future additions.

Get your idea working, prove it is viable and you might have to throw away all
of the code that was written and start again with a really good team, but at
least you know it will pay off.

Good luck

------
reynolds
I'm a programmer but I think I have a different take on this debate than most
other programmers. I know quite a few people who aren't programmers but have
started, and continue to run, successful businesses. The thing all of them
have in common is that they don't necessarily choose tech-heavy niches. There
are tons of problems that can be solved with a shitty web application written
in broken PHP. These people all know basic PHP and outsource for parts of the
apps they can't get right. If something sort of works they ship it anyway and
refine it over time.

I think there's something very valuable in that mentality for hackers to learn
from. There are a lot of businesses that start with a shitty product in a good
market and refine it over time. We hear about it all the time: release early
and often.

------
switch
That's a tough position to be in. Use odesk or another site. Hire someone from
East Europe if you can.

Read up a bit and get an idea of what's a good work rate. Work with 3 to 4
people and get an idea of relative work rates.

Your biggest problem isn't that you don't code - it's that you don't know what
a really good coder can create + the rate at which he can create.

the mythical man month book would be a good book to read.

Looking at the comments why don't you team up with vlisivka. One big reason to
pick someone outside the US is they won't just run off with your idea and
there's less of a sense of entitlement.

Coders seem to feel (and I'm one/used to be) that they create 99% of the
value, sales creates 1% and everyone else steals off the value they create.

You need to find someone in a country that doesn't have this attitude and East
Europe and even South America are perfect.

------
meric
Why not? [http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/smartphone-apps/the-
new-i...](http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/smartphone-apps/the-new-it-girl-
appy-ever-after-20100602-wxmi.html) Even a "Miss World Australia" can do it.

------
damoncali
Wireframe a B2B product, get a freelancer to evaluate it technically, and then
go sell it. One you have that first customer, it won't be so hard to find a
coder to help either for cash or equity.

------
jeffepp
I am in your situation. I think it is a tough road but doable. Remember, most
of these answers will be biased :)

Here is what I would suggest:

Learn as much about coding as you can - take tutorials, learn the process of
scoping out a project, go to meetups, conferences and learn as much as
possible. In order to make a decent hiring decision, you must know A LOT about
coding even if you cannot do it yourself.

Ideally, you should find a partner who shares your passion and who is willing
to work as hard as you are.

Feel free to shoot me an email, if you are looking for more advice..

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tezza
1\. This stituation can work

\--

I've worked for many businesses as a coder where none of the owners can code.
They've often been technology companies too.

There's no reason this won't work. The normal difficulty of starting any
business is more difficult than finding/hiring a coder.

.

2\. Divide and Conquer to keep control

\--

If you're worried about someone taking the idea or losing control of it,
consider another field... physical products where the product is manufactured
by a 3rd party engineering firm.

What is generally done is that different parts of the product are created by
different firms to prevent 1 firm making the whole product.

.

You can apply this to webapps just as well

------
duncanj
If you want to outsource your coding, you should see if you are any good at
specifying what you want and conversing with developers. Try little projects
for $1000 or so, ideally things that will help you with your business but are
not huge parts of the line of business. You should learn something about how
developers think and what they can do for you, as well as where you need to
become proficient.

------
petervandijck
Yes, it's feasible, _if_ your startup idea doesn't depend on great code. In
other words, if it's a good idea that doesn't require technical wizardry, but
fairly standard stuff. And there are plenty of those.

~~~
hga
But he'll have to talk to someone technical to know what the requirements of
his ideas are, right?

------
davidmurphy
It's feasible. I've done it before.

------
honopu
run it past these guys?

<http://www.sproutbox.com/>

------
known
If you're not a doctor, would you start a hospital?

~~~
phunel
Actually, there's a congressional moratorium on precicely this example.
Hospitals enrolled in Medicare/Medicaid prohibit practising doctors from
hospital ownership.

~~~
philwelch
I wonder why that is.

------
vlisivka
> I have a number of startup ideas.

I have too.

> I'm rather independent - and I don't have any coder friends.

I am too - and I don't have any business-oriented friends.

> The thing is: I don't code.

I can, but I face same problem - I cannot do lot of other things, like
marketing, market research, etc. ;-)

You can hire developer to teach you some programming and pay for consultations
when you in doubt. I cannot hire businessman to teach me business. :-( So,
don't worry - you are at better standing point than most of HN visitors.

PS. I am strong in Linux/Java/Perl/Bash/HTML/Server side. I am Ukrainian
(Eastern Europe). Drop me email at vlisivka@gmail.com , if you are interested
to teach me some business.

~~~
slay2k
No, I'd argue he's worse off than most.

You can hire business and marketing and PR people the same way he can hire
programmers, administrators and so forth. The difference is, even if you don't
hire those people you can still have a viable product with lots of users. He
can't have anything without paying for it and keeping fingers crossed.

In any case, I hope you guys work something mutually beneficial out.

~~~
eli
Only on HN would people argue that it's more important for a small business
owner to know how to write code than to know business.

Sure, that's sometimes true. But it's definitely not universally true. Even
for a high tech "internet company."

Craigslist didn't succeed because Craig was such a good developer. Any clown
with a PHP book could have coded the first version of that site. (In fact, I
think it was written for free by volunteers)

~~~
slay2k
I think your whole post argues against you.

Craig was a developer. Whether he was good or not is irrelevant, but he knew
enough to write a prototype. He had (and arguably still has) little business
skills. If he hadn't been a developer, there would be no Craigslist.

The same applies to Markus Frind, the google boys, and the majority of famous
tech startups. Hell, even in Sun's case, Vinod (MBA) approached Andy (PhD)
wanting to grow an existing, already-profitable business.

 _> Only on HN would people argue that it's more important for a small
business owner to know how to write code than to know business._

If the small business is a bootstrapping internet startup, then yes we'd
rather know how to code.

------
hga
Assuming you don't go the year+ path of learning how to code (note the saw of
a little knowledge being dangerous), you need to find a programmer who you
_ABSOLUTELY_ trust and respect, without reservation or hesitation. A co-
founder, hired gun, whatever. You'll need him to vet your ideas, the people
who do the actual work, the technical project management, etc.

Buy this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-
Teams-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-
Second/dp/0932633439/) and read/skim it. If you don't "get it", accept what it
says as Revealed Truth and then if you have any talent for this game you'll
understand more and more as you play it.

The Joel Test is also a good thing to pay attention to and follow:
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html>

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c00p3r
The state of the mind which is best situated for coding (literally) or system
administration is somewhere near Asperger's ^_^ so I don't think those skills
- communication and people-reading which are the must for a founder could
coexist with the narrow-focusing and persistence which would benefit a coder.
These are two opposite extremes - the social mind and technical one. ^_^

btw, dividing of the tasks and responsibility is a good thing in general, and
that is how (and why) YC works - they're searching for an appropriate state of
the mind and help them to overcome people/business related difficulties.. (in
the very polite and idealistic terms ^_^)

