

Ask HN: I have a good idea.  Now what? - hcurtiss

I'm sure this has been answered before, but I'm having a hard time finding the right search terms.  I have a good idea for a startup and a little money to get it off the ground.  Question is, how do I find a designer/developer to build the website?  Can I just hire a web developer, or do I have to offer them a piece of the action?
======
mindcrime
_I'm sure this has been answered before_

Something like that...

[http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-develop-an-idea-into-a-
start...](http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-develop-an-idea-into-a-startup)

[http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-get-an-idea-
dev...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-get-an-idea-developed-if-
you-do-not-have-the-technical-skills-to-create-it-yourself)

[http://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-way-to-build-and-
execute...](http://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-way-to-build-and-execute-a-
test-version-of-a-consumer-facing-web-idea-if-youre-not-a-developer-and-have-
limited-funds)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=199825>

<http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive>

 _Can I just hire a web developer, or do I have to offer them a piece of the
action?_

You can setup whatever kind of arrangement you can negotiate with someone.
Just hiring somebody straight up, no equity stake involved, is certainly one
option. Whether or not it's the best option depends on a lot of things. Is
this idea something you see growing into "The Next Big Thing" ala Facebook? If
so, you might want one or more actual co-founders to help get things going. Or
is this just some "4 hour work week" inspired idea to bring in a few hundred
bucks a month of passive income? If it's the latter, it might be best to just
pay to have the development done.

The other option, in any case, is to buckle down, learn to code, and do it
yourself. Actually, taking a stab at doing it yourself, first, might not be a
bad idea period. If you do hire somebody, whatever you do can act as a
prototype, proof-of-concept, whatever, and help whoever you do hire, to
understand exactly what it is you want. Same for talking to potential co-
founders, investors, etc. A demo you hacked up yourself is better than
nothing, or just a powerpoint deck.

If you don't code at all currently, go pickup a Groovy on Grails, or Ruby on
Rails, book or tutorial and give it a whirl.

~~~
hcurtiss
The quora links are great. Thanks, man.

I'm a young attorney. While I'd say I'm among the more tech savy attorneys
around, that's not saying much in the HN community. While I have plenty of
money to get a site designed/developed, and money enough to fly around talking
to investors, I intend to keep my day job as long as possible. Though I think
it would be fun, I simply don't have the time to learn a programming language.
Hopefully I won't need to.

------
sidmitra
1\. Your idea is just a hypothesis at this point. So goto
<http://unbounce.com>, sign up and put up a landing page that describes your
idea. A lot of people are worried about people stealing their ideas. But
imagine if there's a guy that is smart enough to understand, adapt, build,
execute, market, scale your idea... then he probably has hundreds of his own
ideas jotted down somewhere on his eternally long TODO list.

2\. Throw some ad words and redirect to your landing page(saying Coming Soon
etc.). See if anyone is even willing to leave you their email address. If not
then move on to the next idea.

3\. Iterate on your landing page, some people even take a survey of potential
features. Find a reasonable product/market fit.

4\. Then make some rough mockups explaining your idea.

5\. Then hire someone to do it, but you need to put in the same amount of time
as the dev/designer. So beware!, quite a lot of outsourced work fails because
the client isn't as invested in his idea, and wants someone else to fill in
the gaps. You can decide on paying someone or offering equity. But to be
honest, you won't find good devs interested in equity right now. The market is
in a boom, so your idea better have a definite appeal to the dev.

If you need help with Step 5, ping me at <http://www.sidmitra.com> :-)

~~~
hcurtiss
Thanks for the input. I've thought about unbounce, but as you guessed, I'm a
little reluctant to share the idea. The barrier to entry is fairly low.
Success will depend on the domain name (which I have) and the relationships
with certain third parties (which I'm developing). My idea isn't one that will
require a terribly sophisticated back-end. The tech is all pretty straight
forward. My thinking is that if I do it well, and affiliate with large
national organizations, that it will gain momentum others won't be able to
easily replicate. For that reason, I'll probably require confidentiality
agreements from third parties involved until launch.

Is there some reason I should change my approach?

~~~
petervandijck
Yes, two reasons. Confidentiality agreements a) will drive a lot of really
good people away, and b) will make you believe in your idea even more, when
you should be doubting it and poking holes in it and testing its assumptions.

b) is the bigger reason.

------
senko
First, validate your idea. Do you _think_ it's good, or do you have people
outside your circle of friends and family saying it's good (and ideally,
telling you they'd use/pay for it)?

If not, that's your first step: <http://swombat.com/2010/12/20/how-to-
validate-a-startup-idea>

If you're beyond this, hire someone to make a minimum viable product (MVP).
You can either pay somene's market price (odesk, elance, forrst and similar
are okay places to find'em, although be careful in selecting/vetting the
people), or offer them some partnership. In the latter case, keep in mind
you're asking them to _invest_ in your idea - you have to convince them (why)
your idea is good and that you can execute on the business side (or whichever
angle you'd be covering).

And whatever you do, please don't try the "do it for free, there will be more
work coming" or "it's going to look good in your portfolio" route.

------
markca
You could try using <https://www.odesk.com> to look for designers or
developers. If you're looking for a step by step, I suggest
<http://www.launchbit.com/>

~~~
mindcrime
Don't forget Craigslist either. It's hit or miss, but definitely a resource
worth considering.

------
poissonpie
if you can get away with a very small MVP to test the idea out, then why not
try something like <http://www.weekendhacker.net> \- I realise you don't want
to share the actual idea if it is fairly simple, but hey, you could word it a
little obtusely.

You can, of course just hire a web developer - some advice from Derek Sivers
<http://sivers.org/how2hire>

