
Ask HN: I have a business idea, what now? - luksi
​I&#x27;m a finance professional with strong business acumen, currently going stale in a wannabe innovative media cooperation in Germany. I somehow have a&quot;visionary&quot; business idea, which in my opinion is solving a problem and has the potential to reshape the rules of how we do...something.<p>I this regard I have two questions:<p>In the first step, where can I go or whom to speak to to challenge my idea and find feedback? Where to find people that are experienced and see chances, risks and the big picture from investor&#x2F;scale point of view giving me confidence to start or killing the vision. How to prevent those people from staling the idea? Those people should also help me to precisely define the idea, since currently Is kind of &quot;blurry&quot;<p>I see all of this as prerequisite for starting the usual process, writing a business plan, composing a pitch presentation, pitch it to investors.<p>Second: I have zero tech experience, where to find hackers&#x2F;co-founders and where are all the really cool people that can tell me what is feasible from technical point of view? Must I move to Berlin or take a loan to spend a few week in Silicon Valley?<p>Somehow...the first and second questions also go together. :-)<p>Thank you everybody!
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brudgers
_In the first step, where can I go or whom to speak to to challenge my idea
and find feedback?_

The standard "sound" advice echoing around HN would be to make something
[analogous to a rough sketch] and put it in front of users. Obviously, it
probably won't be the finished product produced by a giant business...or even
something which can be reproduced efficiently. But it will be enough that
people who 'get it' will 'get it' if there's an 'it' there to 'get'.

For a non-technical person this means understanding enough at a high level to
make a reasonable judgement about feasibility...enough physics to know the
difference between sending a satellite into LEO versus shooting nuclear waste
into the sun. In other words, there's some level of technical due diligence
that cannot be outsourced and still be considered due diligence...just ass-
covering, and that's only useful in bureaucracy and useless for a startup.

Good luck.

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JoeAltmaier
Google for 'minimum viable product' for more info.

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brudgers
It doesn't even need to be a product at the early stage. Just a mockup. That's
why I think the idea of an artists sketch or study is useful. Internally, it's
actual work that includes process and technique and therefore learning.
Externally, points to a finished product without trying to be that product.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I've seen a landing page that asked for an email, called an MVP. Anything you
can use to gauge interest in the concept.

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JoeAltmaier
Cynical but there it is:

[http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-09-11](http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-09-11)

There's no 'economic value' to an idea until its executed. So you're in the
right direction. You need a team and funding, and that's where most of the
critical work happens.

~~~
brudgers
A better way of looking at it:

[https://sivers.org/multiply](https://sivers.org/multiply)

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nebucnaut
Currently I'm about to start a tech company myself. But I'm not on my own. I
found a great team while finishing my masters degree at the university. Even
though founding a company is a ton of work, you learn a lot by doing so. Thus,
here is the advice I can give:

Silicon Valley is a good place for you to go when you need to get in touch
with other tech companies. But in order to find skilled developers you don't
need to go to Silicon Valley at all. I'm living in Austria and I know that
there are excellent developers right here (and I bet the same is true for
Germany). You just have to know where to find them. And once you found them
you need to start talking to them. I know its hard to tell total strangers
about your big idea, but it needs to be done. You don't need to worry about
someone stealing the idea as long as you and your expertise are still
required. If the developer you told about the idea wanted to do it without
you, he would face exactly the same problem as you do right now. He would need
to find someone like you. And convince him of your idea. So why should he
bother stealing the idea in the first place if he could just join you?

So, where do you find people that have a technical background and are also
prepared to take some risks? Go to coworking spaces. That is where you find
people that may be working as freelancers or in small teams up to 3 or 4
people (if the team gets bigger than that its often cheaper to rent an office
for your own). But maybe you shouldn't just walk in there and distract people
from their work. From time to time such coworking spaces host events. Usually
they post about it somewhere on the web. And usually the people that work at
the space go to such events. So this would be an ideal chance for you to talk
to people that are both talented and not bound to a fixed job. My advice: Go
there.

And now a suggestion concerning investors and money: Consider public funding.
There are many funds that you don't have to pay back and in contrast to an
investor the funding organizations don't ask for shares.

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tpiha
You need to find some local startup / entrepreneurship community and meet some
people. You are definitely not ready to be approaching investors now, so don't
worry about that at this point. It's not hard to raise money when you have the
right idea in the right stage.

Forget that about somebody stealing your idea. That simply doesn't happen. You
know, I had software with basically same features as the first version of
Twitter at least 6 months before Twitter appeared. And look were Twitter is
today, my software is definitely not. And I'm not sorry because I'm well aware
how things work. It's not the idea that counts, it's all together, the
complete process, people and product, every single thing counts, idea is just
a tiny, tiny part of it all. There were some cases in history where idea was
everything, but they are so rare that you can easily consider them to be
statistical errors.

~~~
onedev
Let's see some screenshots of your Twitter!

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leorajapakse
I am a Senior Technology Professional with 16+ experience, 10+ in Banking
(Tech). Get in touch leo.rajapakse@gmail.com I can think of the technical
feasibility and would look at being a CoFounder

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luksi
One more thing: do you see any sense in trying to contact/meet with people
working in "near" fields which could benefit form the Idea? e.g. I have a idea
Instagram could benefit from => approach Instagram and tell them about it

~~~
christopherDam
Never do that. Instagram like company have full potential to build their own.
Unless you have some success and capture the audience than you can tell.
Initially you should resist to do that as you have nothing just the idea.

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Avalaxy
Developer here. You can contact me with the email in my profile. I can give
you feedback on your idea and maybe help you come up with a prototype to
validate and/or launch it.

