
Got a million but what now - chamboo
I worked in oil and gas for 6 years.  It paid well, and I have over a million in my bank account, I'm still 29 years old.  I love reading and learning about startups, and it fits my personality so much better than O&#38;G.  I finally made the leap and left my job yesterday to focus full time on trying to steer my life in a new direction.  My current plan is to learn enough about programming (Python and front end) to develop a prototype and try to get some traction. At some point I would like to acquire a co-founder, and try my hand at developing something that the world wants or needs.  This sounded really good before I left, but the doubt level increased significantly after leaving my job.  Am I crazy to think I can compete with all of these brilliant people?  I really don't want to be damned into working at something I don't enjoy just for money, but I'm having a hard time seeing my way through this.  I would like to work for a startup (even for free), but right now, I have no earthly clue why they would need someone with 0 programming skill sets.<p>Edit: I'm overwhelmed with the amount of high quality advice and different perspectives offered here.  It's very inspiring and mood lifting to be surrounded by people like you, and I'm really grateful for all of you.  Thanks.
======
hornbaker
Have you considered starting something in your wheelhouse? If you worked in
oil and gas for six years, you probably know that space cold. I don't know
much about it, but I'm guessing there is lots of money in it, and it has room
for further disruption by technology.

If you take time to learn programming first, you may miss the current window
of relatively easy seed money. Think of an angle, use $40-50K of your nest
egg, and get a contractor to build a nice prototype quickly.

If/when you do go out to raise money, you'll have far more success if you can
tell a convincing story about why you have an unfair advantage in your chosen
space. Leverage your history and experience to its fullest; that's something
others cannot compete with you on.

~~~
poppysan
I would second this. This is a lucrative field, and being from the inside may
offer you an insight that not many others have.

You also don't need to know how to code to begin a start-up. I would take the
time to learn, but you can get the ball rolling with freelancers. Then,
validate your idea and build a prototype.

------
thaumaturgy
If you really have zero programming experience, then the first thing you
should do is read Peter Norvig's "Teach Yourself Programming in 10 Years":
<http://norvig.com/21-days.html>

You love startups? Then get into them and try them out and see if it's a good
fit, absolutely. Develop a prototype on your own? It really, really depends on
what you want to build. You could probably pull off a simple web app in a
reasonable amount of time. But, be wary of the excitement that gushes from all
of the self-taught programmers out there; they have a tendency to kinda forget
just how long they've been doing it once it becomes second-nature to them.
Programming, systems administration, software engineering are all different
disciplines with lots of breadth and depth and it can take a while just to get
a handle on the basics.

Are you crazy to think you can compete with brilliant people? Hell no. I think
most people have at least one talent that can make them one in 1,000. The
trick is to figure out what your talent is, and then use it to compete. It
might turn out that programming isn't actually your thing -- it takes a
different mindset, a very fundamentally different way of thinking -- but
there's something else you can do, technical or otherwise, that could make you
shine in the startup scene. (I know a guy that _hates_ programming anything
from scratch, but he's a great maintenance programmer -- exactly the sort of
thing that a lot of startup guys hate doing.)

You've got a nest egg that would make any ramen startup green with envy. So,
make sure your expenses are minimal, relax, dive in to programming, try it
out, talk to lots of people, meet some people, build some things. Don't get
discouraged if you try one thing and it doesn't work; just try another.

~~~
chamboo
Great link, it helps put things in perspective.

------
smokinn
Don't worry too much about the "brilliant people" that may or may not be
competing with you. I've never heard of a startup failing because of
competitors. At the beginning you aren't competing, you're trying to get
traction. Only once you have a product, once you're making money, once you
have customers can you have competitors. Most startups fail before this point.

The second part is the fact that you seem to think startups are full of
brilliant people. Some tech-oriented ones might (ones that are working on
something like building a new database) but most aren't. Most have pretty
horrific code quality and manage just fine because your customers won't ever
see the code and if they stumble across your source they wouldn't be able to
tell the difference between good and bad code anyway so they don't care. At
all. All they care about is whether you solve a problem they have and whether
it's worth the cost (even free products have a cost: the customer's time).

Find a problem worth solving, solve it the best way you know how and put it
out there. If it's a problem people have they will use it. If it's helpful
they will continue using it and give you feedback on how to improve it. Listen
to your customers and iterate.

~~~
chamboo
Thank you. It helps to remind myself of this.

------
paulsutter
My best advice:

\- Buy some rental properties with your money. This will prevent you from
burning through your cash based on your passion for your startup ideas, give
you income to live on, and give you a certain secure, prudent confidence.

\- Use your own cash very sparingly to create and test your MVPs. That's a
plural.

\- Other People's Money is very important validation of what you're working
on. Investors give little meaning to how much of a founder's own money has
been spent on a project, so why burn down your savings?

\- Learning Python and front-end coding is a great idea. Even if you dont
become a great developer, it will increase your understanding of developers
and increase your cred with them.

\- Read lecture 9 in Peter Thiel's Stanford course, and the excellent article
posted here on being a "Growth Hacker".

\- Be courageous, fail fast, break things, and enjoy. Keeping your financial
house in stable order is a great way to feel confident and stay on an even
keel through the rollercoaster that is startupland.

------
IsaacL
Another option in your situation would be to become an angel investor.

(cf Venkatesh Rao's answer to this question:
[http://www.quora.com/Startups/I-want-to-start-a-tech-
startup...](http://www.quora.com/Startups/I-want-to-start-a-tech-startup-No-
experience-with-coding-what-are-my-options-other-than-finding-a-technical-co-
founder)

"Find a couple of other older people with some experience and their own
warchests, form an angel group. 200k will allow you to participate in like 4-5
good ideas within a year, and as an investor with good partners, you'll learn
far faster than on the founder side. Founding is for people with no money, or
people who've done it before. Money can buy you into the game in smarter ways.
In particular it gives you the luxury of portfolio diversification which most
founders lack.")

If you want to succeed in the startup game, a portfolio approach is best.
That's possible for investors and employees (who can try several jobs until
they find one that takes off), but not for founders, most of whom will spend
years on a venture that likely doesn't go very far. So angel investing might
be a better route.

Of course, that depends on how much you want to be playing the game yourself
as a founder or just taking on an advisory role.

Heck, if you really want to ramp up your coding skills, I wouldn't mind
tutoring you for a reasonable fee. Let me know if you're interested (email in
my profile).

~~~
chamboo
Great link, thank you. I did look into investing a little bit via angel.co, it
did seem that in order to join their list, one either had to know someone, or
have prior founder or angel investing experience. I really like the idea,
purely from a learning standpoint, I would love to be even a silent partner if
I was still offered the chance to sit in and learn.

~~~
syedkarim
I'm listed on angel.co as an accredited investor--I'd be happy to recommend
you to get approved for an investor profile. I do early stage deals for an
impact investment fund, specifically around news and information; glad to talk
about how we work and evaluate deals (most are in emerging/frontier markets,
but some in the US, too) and if there's anything you could participate in. My
email address is on my profile page.

------
mchannon
Attitude is everything when it comes to startups. Your post suggests you've
got a good attitude.

There are no shortage of programmers with a lot more experience who have
completely useless attitudes. They code well, but don't care for anything more
than working as little as possible and earning a salary. Much easier to teach
someone to program than teach someone entrepreneurial drive and determination.

If you're willing to trade a small measure of that cash stash to cofound a
company (and be willing to keep an open mind), there are thousands of
deserving startups (including mine) who'd probably love to have you on board.

------
carterschonwald
Seek to surround yourself with people who think differently than you and who
you'll learn a lot in every or most conversations. Take some time to just
collaborate with folks recreationally. Figure out how to make sure you're
around people enough day to day for your own personal happiness. Make sure you
have habits that keep you sane and healthy even when busy and stressed.

Also: let me tell you a secret-- most tech startups aren't that technically
interesting! :) Most are just a web shop for a thing, though some of those get
interesting engineering challenges at the "web scale". Some startups do have
amazingly interesting challenges at their core, but not all.

If you can come up with a product or service that has immediate value even if
it has only a handful of users, go for it.

Learning to program isn't some mystic art, though like all parts of computer
science there's a certain magic and mystique until you learn exactly how a
thing works. To repeat what other folks have said, learn several languages and
do a mini learning project in each. Pick up enough basic algorithms and the
like so you can avoid odd performance problems, and maybe pick up a wee bit of
scheme and haskell to stretch out your set of conceivable abstractions for
your coding. ( so read things likes the structure and interpretation of
computer programs and perhaps also something like learn you a Haskell)

Im also guesstimating that youre currently based in Texas. Take some time to
do a teeny of lowkey travel and explore places like SF and NYC (NYC wooo!).
Variety in environment helps the brain think better. Take advantage of that

~~~
carterschonwald
Also feel free to drop me an email if your in NYC, there's a lot of really
cool stuff going on in NYC in and outside of the eye of the press

~~~
chamboo
I absolutely will, thank you.

~~~
carterschonwald
just to double check, the email i just received is from you, right? :-)

------
gavanwoolery
I would say become an angel investor. A small amount of money can make a big
difference to some people. Most Y-combinator companies start with under $20k.
If you need help evaluating what companies to invest in, get a multitude of
opinions (I will give you an opinion for free, just shoot me an email:
gavanw@gmail.com -- I enjoy criticizing companies!).

I would recommend investing in companies that most VCs won't fund - namely,
game companies (naturally I am biased here). Games are the "easiest" products
to monetize and get traction for, assuming you have a capable team that is
making something interesting (i.e. not a clone). Think of it this way: how
many users look forward to a particular game coming out? Now how many users
look forward to a given Web 2.0 product? Kickstarter is hard proof that users
are more interested in games than other types of products. There is a lot of
room for innovation in games -- whereas it is very hard to think of good ideas
for typical startups.

The time it will take you to learn to code well enough to create a decent
startup (read: nontrivial) is at least 1 year (and even that is a stretch),
and that will cost you maybe 50k depending on the salary you give yourself. On
the other hand, you could buy an experienced software engineer (with 50k +
good equity).

On the other hand, you can start a business outside of software. Some of the
most obvious businesses make buttloads of money: cleaning services, car washes
(I know a guy who runs a carwash and makes over 3 million a year).

I am obviously not the leading expert on any given matter, these are just my
humble opinions. :)

------
thedillio
Congrats. You are in a great position that many hackers would kill for (no pun
intended). My advice echoes and negates several of the comments already
posted:

\- I agree that, at best, you should launch something in a space you know
about (ie oil) or at least in a vertical you are very interested in. However I
would be less concerned about how "lucrative" the market is (as one commenter
suggested), other than the fact that there is a market. Many businesses have
been started in markets one wouldn't typically associate with "lucrative" -
selling to teachers is one example. \- Instead focus on creating value or
solving a problem. Seems obvious but so often startups try to find problems
for their solution that they've built. I've been guilty of this myself. \-
Don't angel invest. That is a good way to lose your position and some money.
Plus you imply that your more interested in entrepreneurship anyway. \- Learn
how to code a little, even if you plan on finding technical co-founders or
paying someone to build your product. It gives you perspective and depth while
making you better at properly scoping projects for others.

Best of luck

------
kitcar
A piece of honest advice - having money doesn't somehow qualify you to start /
run a company.

It is great that you don't have to worry about working for a few years, but
that can actually be more of a crutch slowing you down than a true success
factor - one of the things I believe made my first company a success was not
just the desire to succeed, but the need to succeed as "the farm had been
bet".

I know this is not the specific question you were asking, and I don't presume
you believe this, but just thought its an important distinction to make.

Also as an aside, I would hide the nature of your net worth when talking to
other entrepreneurs / startup people until after you have built up a good
relationship with them based on other factors (shared-interests, mutual
intellectual respect, etc...) - as the goal of many "Startups" is not actually
to find customers, but rather to find investors - and what you're looking for
are people to learn from / partner with, not fund.

------
gopi
Its takes a lot of time and effort to become a good programmer. But you don't
need to become one to have success.

1, Give yourself 2-3 month time and try learning basic php. mysql,unix and
javascript/html/CSS. Also develop basic photoshop/fireworks skill. Lynda.com
level skill is enough .This is not to code on your own but so that you can
atleast understand other peoples code and maybe able to hack something quick.

2, Read everything you can about SEO, PPC, Open Graph and Viral marketing.
This skills are more important for you than coding.

3, In the next 3 months develop atleast 3 web ideas. Go for simple ideas not
tech intensive like a search engine or something. Hire a programmer or two
from odesk to develop the most promising idea (not necessarily the most
ambitious). Only hire highly rated coders for atleast $20/hr. Most web
projects shouldnt cost more than $10k to develop (and maybe another $10k to
market).

------
givan
Why learn programming yourself? You have enough funds to hire people to build
the thing "the world wants or needs", Learning programming takes time and it
takes even more time to be able to build great stuff.

You should start thinking like a programmer, find the shortest path to your
goal, just by learning python and front end will not take you too far.

You can get into startups in many ways, knowing how to code or have a great
idea is not enough, and these are easily available.

Maybe is better to find a small startup that tries to build what you are
trying to achieve and invest into it so you can share the fun and learn
everything you need along.

Find your greatest strengths and use them to build the startup you want,
starting from scratch by learning programming will take too long and when
something takes too long it can be frustrating.

Good luck.

------
tomasien
You're going to do great! You only need to do 2 things 1\. Figure out your
strengths, and play to them. Love that you're learning to program, and that's
a great start so that you'll be able to contribute, but once you feel like you
know the basics, go out there and get yourself a co-founder. Pay him/her BUT
2\. Keep your expenses low. With $1mm in the bank, try to figure out a way to
be extremely productive only spending, let's say, $200,000 a year. Is that
possible given your expenses? I don't know. But is it POSSIBLE, let me tell
you: yes it is. That gives you 5 years to make this work into something
reasonably successful (at least you'll have built something: that counts for a
lot) and you'll be able to go from there.

Set a good pace, don't overspend, and find someone awesome.

------
pooriaazimi
You first need some CS background ('CS', for lack of a better term. I don't
mean Automata, just something deeper than, say, lynda.com!). Check out Harvard
CS50 (cs50.tv), MIT OCW (ocw.mit.edu), see.stanford.edu, udacity, coursera,
academicearth.org and Khan Academy (and in a few months,
<http://edxonline.org/>). Start at the basic courses (CS50 is the best
starting point).

That's the best thing you can do. Sure, you can start coding right now but you
don't know what you're missing. You have the luxury of not having to worry
about money in the sort term, so make the most out of it and _educate_
yourself. You'll get nowhere if you don't know the fundamentals of how
computers/web/operating systems/... work.

------
vibrunazo
I would highly recommend taking a quick look at udacity.com. It's probably the
most time-efficient means of getting started into developing code for a
startup.

For your startup business skills, I highly recommend looking for meetups near
you. Participating in those, talking to startup people, understand what they
do, why they do and how they do. It can be even non-tech meetups like Startup
Weekends or technical stuff like Hackathons (don't worry about having no
technical background at hackatons, those who do will love to help you).
Generally, the entrepreneurship community is very open and helpful, and kind
of meetup will get you get a better grasp of things.

~~~
chamboo
Thanks for the link, first time I've seen this.

------
mirceagoia
Check this out, Chamboo: \- [http://www.quora.com/Career-Advice/Im-about-to-
quit-my-job-t...](http://www.quora.com/Career-Advice/Im-about-to-quit-my-job-
to-learn-to-program-What-should-I-do) and [http://www.quora.com/In-Mircea-
Goias-journey-from-coal-minin...](http://www.quora.com/In-Mircea-Goias-
journey-from-coal-mining-in-Romania-to-web-consulting-in-the-US-what-were-
some-instances-where-he-felt-like-giving-up-but-persevered)

You are in a better situation today than me 10-12 years ago.

~~~
Estragon
Thanks, these are some interesting links.

------
ArekDymalski
At the beginning you won't be competing with anyone:
<http://cdixon.org/2010/06/26/competition-is-overrated/> And before you invest
time in learning to code, you still have plenty of options to verify your
concepts (interactive mockups, landing pages etc.) I believe that learning
about them first is better investment and a good foundation for further
learning (assuming that you really have zero skills).

------
Intrawebs
Spend 20-30% of it to buy gold coins (not the collectables). Rent the cheapest
apartment you can get. Sell all the crap you dont need and wait out the coming
storm. Then, after the storm, buy up everything you can on the cheap and
profit by doing something with what you buy. Much eaiser than learning how to
code and rolling the dice, dont let this whole "web and app paradise" fool
you. Im running away from the mob, what about you?

------
cocoflunchy
What about applying to a code school? I mean something IRL, 4 to 8 weeks of
intensive programming with good teachers and most importantly other people
like you who are willing to learn and may turn out to be potential cofounders.
I believe there are quite a few options available, even though I can't
remember the names right now.

Most importantly: don't stay alone or you have good chance of not doing
anything at all.

------
pragmaticAlien
Got a million put 500k in bank Use 500k for your idea. don't learn
programming(you are going to waste your time), instead hire couple of good
developers, see how viable your idea is for a year, if it works,good, if not
at least you are not begging somewhere. You should know about limited
resources, sine you've worked in the oil biz. Your limited resource is your
time, don't waste it.

------
freshfey
I might get downvoted for this, but don't learn to program if you don't have
to. Do it for a few weeks, try it out and if you like it, keep going,
otherwise, don't even bother. Try to find your strengths you could bring into
a startup after prototype stage, and build those.

------
cymrocymraeg
I have the opposite problem: the ideas, skills and not the cash. I've wanted
to join a startup that will allow me to work the way I do best, but how do you
actually find people? I've not found a "startup match" site. Do they even
exist?

~~~
chamboo
Try angel.co. Create a profile and check out the startups and incubators. I've
also met quite a few helpful people by reaching out, just like this post.

------
tferris
Great starting position. Important is that you stay always active.

1.) Never worry. You have enough money to pay your rent for years

2.) Do anything to get quick experiences and success (important for your state
and self-believe). Coding is very important and you will learn it soon enough.
But to get started I would take any good idea you have and like and to try get
a MVP (minimum viable product) on the markt. Getting a tech co-founder is hard
and time consuming. So, try to find a contractor who builds you the a MVP for
few bucks (1000-5000USD). Take this first project to learn: how to convince
and sell ideas to people, how to lead people, how to lead tech people. If you
work good together try to make a cofounder out of him and offer shares. Very
important: don't take this too seriously, it's just something to get started
and to make experience. If you like and want to speed up you personal
development as an entrepreneur you can do multiple of such projects with
different contractors and the odds that you find a talented cofounder are
higher!

3.) You should quickly learn to code. There are many ways. You can ask your
contractor if you can help on the frontend code and if he can teach you there
(frontend code is dead simple and a good starter). Important is that you don't
learn alone and buy a book or study CS and so on (there is too much to learn
and the probability that you learn wrong stuff or focus on irrelevant things
is just too high. That takes too long and is demotivating and frustrating. You
need a real problem to solve and people who can help you. Just learning a
language for the sake of learning a language won't work: you will read one,
two books, do many exercises and then stop. Get a real problem to solve. Maybe
it's just a simple website of your new identity as an entrepreneur or the site
of your legal entity. Another idea is to code as an intern undercover in some
startup (just start to learn some html and css and apply as frontend dev
intern, should work). But don't start to study CS, takes too long and getting
a really awesome coder doesnt work this way.

3.) Working in a startup CLOSE TO THE FOUNDERS (very important) is another
good idea. You learn lot and maybe how to raise money. But do not do this for
too long.

4.) Of course networking: go to every networking event and tech meetups in
your area. Often you will think, what am I doing here, but carry on and visit
really every event, you will learn a lot.

5.) Do not invest your 1 million in any venture!! You are too unexperienced
yet. Just spend it on your living costs and really small stuff like building
prototypes (max. 5000USD per prototype). After a while (12-18 months) you will
get a much better feeling what works and what not. But then it's still better
to raise money than taking your own.

Again, do something, don't stand still. Start tomorrow morning. Why is this so
important? The earlier you have any kind of success the more you will thrive
being an entrepreneur and carry on. If you waste time on the wrong idea/co-
founder/place/whatever for years you get too intimidated by all this stuff and
maybe you will never try it again (and starting something is _easy_ if you are
experienced and had few successes before—it's all about doing, doing, doing.
Don't fear or doubt, just do it).

And btw, how did you save 1 million?

~~~
chamboo
Thank you, definitely feel a lot more relieved after reading this. Actually,
this is pretty much what my plan was while I was convincing myself that I
should leave my job, and it made enough sense to do so at the time. As for the
money, it was a combination of living like I had no money, having a really
good CPA to manage my funds (and getting lucky after the 2008 crash), and
receiving a large amount of company stock options that fortunately did very
well over time. I also was fortunate enough to have my college paid for, and
so I have never been in a debt situation. Also, the company I worked for
matched 10% into a 401k, and I converted the mutual fund stock into company
stock, and just got lucky that we did well. On top of it all, I was paid well
for what I was doing. Counting all the benefits, it wasn't uncommon for
someone to gross 200k+ in a low profile leadership position. Thanks again,
this is all great advice.

------
netmau5
What are your other skills that might be useful to a startup? Want to grab
coffee sometime?

------
zobzu
teach me how to make 1 million in 6 years and ill teach you programming, deal?
:p

~~~
chamboo
ha, more like 10 years when you count the engineering degree and
apprenticeships. Also, unless you really enjoy the work, it can be a very hard
grind (as it was for me). The hours were not 9 to 5 (I was on call 24/7), and
when I was a drilling foreman, I would sometimes be up nearly 3 days at a time
trying to manage a team of not so friendly people who didn't necessarily care
about the project at hand. Also, I just got lucky. There was really nothing
extraordinary about what I did. I was never proud of what I was doing.

------
peteretep
So quit bitching, move somewhere nice, and teach yourself how to program.

------
hackula
Would you consider investing in a small start-up with a mature product? Our
company is going into its 6th year of business. I have been lucky to be
working with some very talented people.

------
JohnHaugeland
Learn several very different programming languages. Make sure to include at
least lisp, c, a scripting language (eg perl or php,) a parallel language (eg
erlang or mozart-oz), something funky (prolog's nice this time of year,) and
sql. These will give you a set of semi-compatible worldviews that'll let you
start doing a better job of choosing tools than blub. If you dig in hard, you
can do a pretty decent job of learning the wheel ruts of each of those in two
months.

Spend the following year crapping out weekend projects to learn fast. Use that
time to see what reaches customers, to see what breaks under load, et cetera.

After that you'll be in a much better position to take on founding.

~~~
seanmccann
I don't agree with this. He's not trying to become an all-star programmer, he
just wants to learn how to build a prototype to get a startup off the ground.
He should just jump right into what he will likely use. That's probably going
to be Ruby on Rails or similar.

~~~
JohnHaugeland
It's a little hard to believe that you'd be comfortable building your future
on something you've only just learned to do, without getting to know the
basics of your toolchest to the point that you can even make decisions well.

All I know is that when I've hired, the number of genuinely different
languages that someone speaks has been a very strong predictor of whether
their code can be kept in the long run.

But sure, picking a language without even knowing what the product will be?
That could work too.

~~~
steventruong
I know plenty of amazing devs who do extremely well either as an entrepreneur
or as an employee who know none of what you originally suggested. I agree with
Sean. He just needs something to start off with.

