

Ask News.YC: You have an idea for a start-up. Now what? - jpsnell

How do you bring an idea to conception when you have little technical expertise but a lot of interest in the idea? I've fleshed out my web application in mock-ups and hundreds of pages of notes, but won't be able to take the idea further unless I figure out where to go from here. I'm just curious about the right way to handle this situation.
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breily
There are some threads on this in the Ask YC Wiki -
<http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive>.

As lbrandy says, if its a very technical idea you'll probably have to look for
a technical cofounder. If it seems manageable, start learning how to hack and
get coding. Its not as hard as it seems, most web apps don't require advanced
CS knowledge or anything, especially for a rough alpha release.

There are lots of threads about where to start with that (languages,
frameworks, etc) in the Ask YC wiki linked above.

Even if you do go the route of finding someone technical to help you, I'd
learn to code anyways. It will only help you in this startup and any more you
end up doing. Any knowledge of it will help you choose a competent cofounder
as well.

Good luck.

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lbrandy
It depends alot on the technical sophistication required to implement your
idea.

If it requires a good deal of technical sophistication, you are going to have
to locate a good technical co-founder and that's going to be relatively
difficult. This is a good place to start and maybe craigslist when you get
more serious.

If you really want someone to come on board, with no prior personal
connection, you are going to need to be really open and up front with your
idea, what you are offering, what would be required, and what works you've
done, and plan to do. Such a technical co-founder would need to be convinced
that you can handle any and all non-technical things completely.

And if you can pull off a sale like that, you'll probably make a great non-
technical founder :P

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apgwoz
This sort of thing comes up on here a lot and I'm sure there's plenty of
answers if you search news.yc via www.searchyc.com

~~~
xirium
Or <http://www.ycombinator.search.xirium.com/>

[http://www.ycombinator.search.xirium.com/cgi-
bin/search.cgi?...](http://www.ycombinator.search.xirium.com/cgi-
bin/search.cgi?p=0&q=ask%20yc%20learn%20hack) would be a good start.

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karzeem
One thing that will help regardless is hanging out with technical people. Go
to where they hang out. If you're in college, take some technical classes and
get to know your classmates. Go to meetups, and depending on where you work,
figure out how to meet techies in the workplace.

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jpsnell
Just to clarify things, I've been involved over the past six months in
designing a web application. I want desperately to bring the idea to
conception, but the process of seeking out others with technical expertise
seems fairly aimless.

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LostInTheWoods
Well theres alot of people with technical expertise reading this. Give us a
summary of your idea, or maybe a way to contact you.

~~~
jpsnell
contact me at gacxllr10@gmail.com if you're interested in helping to develop
this web application:

I wanted to create a site for wanderlusts - people who want to use the
internet to find exciting places to see and things to do. Contact me if you're
interested in seeing some mock-ups.If it's not overly apparent, I haven't
refined my pitch yet.

~~~
jpsnell
I want to organize the world. I don't want to organize the world's information
- as Google does, but simply the places and venues that make up our world -
amusement parks and museums and baseball fields and movie theaters. I want a
user to be able to go onto this web application and find out where the best
skate park within twenty miles of his or her new house in Portland, ME is. I
want a user to be able to come back from a vacation and create a list of the
places where they went. I want to make the world more active, taking users
away from their computers and into the thick of things.

It's sort of like a real-life Delicious.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
AKA yelp.

edit: or judysbook or (to a lesser extent) citysearch

~~~
grahamkeg
No. One way in which we differ considerably from Yelp is that the venue itself
produces the initial content. The profiles are fuller and more meaningful
because the venues are building the initial product rather than users. Very
few Yelp pages, for example, have any photos. When a venue is paying for
inclusion in this service, they are more attentive to the page than a user.

Every venue on our web application has people behind it, working at the venue,
who are reading the user reviews, adding content, creating announcements,
writing a short description of the place, uploading pictures of products or
services they offer, and describing their venue using up to fifty tags.

Users can do many of these things, too, but the initial set of content is
created by the venue.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
that's a good way to guarantee slow growth. yelp is so popular because they
made it a competitive sport to review new places and add in new information
(with the reward being elite yelp status and access to special elite parties.)
a lot of yelp's paying customers _do_ have dates and times and photos and
menus and such. in fact, afaik, the only way to get some of the info on there
is to pay yelp.

i wish you the best of luck, but i hope you have a bigger differentiator than
placing more of a burden on small businesses.

~~~
jpsnell
My pitch is ill-defined and I realize now how similar it must seem to Yelp.
However, I would like to elaborate on this point that you made about "slow
growth" with a question:

Would Facebook be as popular if anyone could create anyone else's page? They
would upload basic information - maybe a picture or two, a few interests, add
a few friends, hardly ever write in the blog.

When the person writing content for these pages has a personal investment in
the business or venue, the page becomes much more vibrant. Users on Yelp are
given points for adding and reviewing places, but the number of pictures they
upload, for example, is a non-factor in their user ranking.

Thus, I respectfully disagree with your assessment that this will slow growth.

I'm planning on starting with a small and well-defined geographic reach - say,
one small area like a city or a state. Once that user base is satisfied, then
I'll work to expand the application's reach.

One more thing, though - I would not be quick to call the profile creation on
this web application "burdensome." Most venues, including several branches of
a national chain, have difficulty reaching their customer base. The chain
"Chili's" for example, has a Web site for their national chain, but few if any
(I couldn't find any on a recent search) of their individual venues have Web
sites. That means there's very little interchange between the consumer and the
venue.

This web application was initially created so that people could not only
organize their places, but shape them to some extent. If enough people
complain in reviews of an individual Chili's venue that the cash registers are
understaffed, that venue will take notice.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
I may well be missing something, but you still haven't differentiated
yourself. Companies _can_ upload photos to their yelp page, if they pay.

The people can also put their info in google base or other directories.

What I want to know from you is: Why are ou going to beat yelp? Why are you
going to beat citysearch? Why did judysbook and insiderpages fail? How do you
compare to americantowns.com ?

I wish you the best of luck. Really, i do. I am in the minority of people who
go to the internet for everything, and hope/expect that everything is going to
be on there. if there was more than just the hipster-overridden yelp, then i'd
be a happier man. I just don't see the business case.

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morbidkk
probably reading gettingreal from 37signals would put you in right mood to
start looking for things- you need to do on priority, now

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bigbee
You have an idea for a start-up? Now work!

