
Why Developers Don't Want to Work on Your Idea (2011) - charlieirish
http://swombat.com/2011/6/5/golden-opportunity
======
Swizec
As a guy specialising on developing MVPs for people with ideas, here is the
general list of rules I use before taking on a project:

1\. Are you willing to pay my normal rate?

2\. If so, can you convince me the market is there and you know how to address
it.

3\. Can you convince me _you_ are the guy who's going to be able to bring it
all together?

I know that after rule 1 I shouldn't care, but with so many potential projects
out there, I like working on ones I think will amount to something rather than
spending two months coding and then having it all thrown away. Call it a
personal satisfaction thing.

Fundamentally, the rules amount to _equity isn't tasty_.

~~~
kami8845
You're ignoring a powerful aspect here: Founders are cash-poor, but equity-
rich (almost infinitely so).

I don't know whether you have enough money to cover your costs (I assume so,
you sound quite successful), but I think it would be interesting to seek out
promising founders and take a little bit of equity, instead of another "bunch
of money"(tm). That increase in money is not going to significantly change
your life, getting an early in at a startup might though. And in addition to
that, you'll probably enjoy building that umpteenth MVP a little more if you
have the feeling that the quality of your work has a potential stake in your
future.

There's of course a lot of my making assumptions here, but I think it's an
interesting thought to consider.

~~~
Swizec
This is where my other rule comes in: "I am either a freelancer or a
cofounder".

To be your cofounder you must also convince me that this project is something
I want to spend the next several years of my life on and it must be great
enough to convince me to drop other projects and start working on this full
time. I don't believe in part-time cofounders, that way lies burnout and
failed projects.

And despite all that, equity still isn't tasty so I will need to earn at least
some of my normal rate anyway.

~~~
badatmath
Would you ever consider being a cofounder before the MVC is built?

I guess you're saying that you'll only build MVCs for cash, but then will
consider joining as a cofounder afterward if the project looks promising and
you can work out a fair equity agreement?

~~~
Swizec
I guess it depends. I usually have enough of my own pre-MVP projects that
would love some attention and often some that are MVP's and would also require
attention.

But building a MVP together before jumping into a full blown partnership is
also rather important in terms of finding whether there's a general fit in
working together, you're actually able to deliver on the non-technical aspects
of the project and so on ... MVP's are also incredibly good at confirming
assumptions about the market.

------
chrisbennet
"You'd be crazy to have me work on this for a few months for 50% equity when
you could just spend 6-12 months yourself learning to code and doing it
yourself and have 100% equity. Of course, if you don't think it is worth
spending a few months of _your own_ time why should I take a chance on it?"

~~~
jrogers65
6-12 months learning how to code? Good luck building a business on top of
software written by a junior-level programmer. Even better luck expanding and
scaling it if/when the time comes.

It takes years to reach a reasonable level of competence in software
development and on the order of a decade to master it.

The problem with taking people's word on how much work they do when they are
involved in marketing and the soft sides of business is that they have a
disproportionaly (as compared to tech specialists) large amount of experience
in marketing, negotiation and soft skills. Hence, they market themselves and
over inflate how important their contribution is. In my experience.

~~~
badatmath
Novice with 7 months of learning here. Quit my strategy consulting job to
focus full time on learning to code, and am currently working on this project,
built in Rails, on Heroku (it's all in Japanese, but the concept is similar to
Hacker News/Reddit) <http://www.daidake.com>

Is this a bad idea? Would like to hear your thoughts. I have to admit I do
feel like I'm in a little bit over my head, in that once/if I start getting a
lot of users, I really have no idea how to scale this thing. I figure I need
to start networking to find a brain that wants to team with me.

I'm glad I've learned to program though, even if at a beginner level. If this
fails (I already have a previous project that was a resounding failure), I can
test out new projects easily.

~~~
jrogers65
I appreciate that resources are always tight in these situations so I would
recommend that you hire an experienced developer to review your code. It's
cheaper than hiring someone full time and you should still be able to get a
lot of value out of it. They will know about nuances and gotchas that only
years of working on code can teach. Addressing those early rather than late is
probably a good idea.

A cheaper (no money but more time spent) alternative is to use forums and IRC
channels to get advice. There are plenty of knowledgable people who are more
than willing to help if you ask.

Some basics which are vitally important to cover are ensuring that the object
model and database schema are solid and extensible, that there are automated
tests in place (especially for business critical functionality), that
everything is documented (otherwise you will waste inordinate amounts of time
explaining how things work to any developers you hire in the future and/or
relearning parts of your own code after forgetting what it does) and that
everything is backed up to multiple locations. Addressing those concerns puts
you well ahead of the pack.

~~~
badatmath
Thanks. Really appreciate the feedback.

It's so tempting to keep build quick and sloppy, but I know I need to be more
diligent with testing and documenting.

I'm setting a relatively low target number of users to acquire just to make
sure this idea has a chance, before bringing on a developer.

Very broad question, but how does one find an experienced developer? I live in
New York, but have zero tech connections.

~~~
jrogers65
> It's so tempting to keep build quick and sloppy

That's normal when you're starting out. The only reason more experienced
developers do not give into this impulse is because they've learned of the
consequences through painful experience.

I would recommend looking at the people who contribute to Rails, Ruby and
related projects on Github. The core developers will be far too expensive but
people who throw some code out every so often (assuming that their pull
requests are usually accepted and nobody is shouting at them in the comments)
will likely know their stuff and may have reasonable prices.

IRC channels on Freenode such as #ruby and #rubyonrails will likely prove
useful too. Look out for people who answer a lot of questions (and get them
right). One strategy is to try to design a solution for a feature by yourself,
then summarise the design (i.e. show the relevant code snippets) in a Github
Gist or pastebin page and ask for feedback. If there are any glaring faults or
simply better ways to achieve the result then they will be pointed out to you.

~~~
badatmath
Thanks for the info. Very helpful. Will check out those sources!

~~~
invalidOrTaken
Re: where to find experienced developers with no tech connections, that's not
really a problem. Here's why: It's similar to a man asking, "Hey, know any
models I can date?"

Actually, beautiful women are hardly rare. But it's the qualifier that's
important: "models _I can date?_?"

Good developers might be _rare_ , but they're not _hard to find_. They are,
however, _hard to woo_. You know the drill on how to woo them, it's just
inconvenient/hard/expensive. But at least it's pretty well laid out.

~~~
badatmath
Nice analogy. I'm hoping to find a girl that doesn't yet realize she's pretty
enough to be a model, and hasn't yet developed that diva attitude ;)

------
Wilya
If you're trying to recruit Swombat when looking for a developer to build your
idea, then yes, you probably won't be very successful. On the other hand, if
you're bringing something to the table, and try to contact developers who
are.. well.. mainly developers (as opposed to expensive consultants with
decades of experience), your success rate might be higher.

And by "something", I don't mean code (nor the idea, but there are things
beside those). Seriously, I'm a developer, I don't give a damn if my potential
cofounders could code or not, that's redundant. I would look for someone who
has what I can't easily get. Someone having an accurate view of the state of
an industry, or being nosy and/or well-connected enough to be able to get this
view. Or someone some marketing/sales skills. Or someone with some proof that
people (preferably people with money) are interested in the product.

~~~
amikazmi
I can value the skills of another developer. I can't value "well-connected" or
"marketing/sales skills"

So if a developer comes to me with an idea, I can evaluate the partnership
better- it is less risky then to go with a partner with complementary skills
(not saying it's better to do it, it's just easier to figure out what you are
getting into)

------
Hawkee
I think it really comes down to the initial monetary investment of the idea
guy. For the idea guy to approach a developer with a $200 software package and
$8/mo web hosting they've got very little vested. Asking the developer to
invest what amounts to anywhere from $60-$150/hr of development hours is
unreasonable. Now if the idea guy has invested thousands into data, a nice
piece of co-located hardware, exclusive partnerships with reputable
advertisers, etc. we might have something. The idea is worth very little in
terms of investment. I think the equity breakdown can be broken down as such:
5% for the idea and the dollar for dollar investment by each party.

------
cammil
The antidote to this is a well formulated requirements document.

If you can define precisely what you want, then you will have much more hope
in recruiting developers.

Why? 1\. The lack of ambiguity of the scope gives developers the opportunity
to determine their costs with some accuracy. 2\. The requirements define the
benefits of the project. Either the developers are convinced your logic is
correct, and therefore will make money, or they do not. The former lot are
those that you can convince.

------
kephra
I always call it the programmers curse:

infinite ideas vs. limited time

~~~
sek
Yeah I just realized that when Seth Godin mentioned it in a talk.

There is an unlimited amount of ideas out there, so these are not the scarcity
at all. So they are pretty cheap.

Being able to execute them is the big thing. The ideas that sound really worth
something, like patents are created by the Engineers themselves with an
incredible amount of work.

Why should anybody care about your shower idea?

This also annoys me about the "idea guys", they are often incredibly simple.
They didn't do any market research to validate anything, or thought about all
the possible risks.

When somebody comes to me and says: "I had an idea and spent the last 2 months
doing research about it. So I modified it and now have something where I am
pretty confident there is demand for it."

This is something I would take serious.

------
OafTobark
Should note that another major issue not mentioned in this post (of which I am
sure there are more) is what the idea guy brings to the table beyond the idea.
Majority over estimate their abilities, skills, knowledge, background, and
even work ethics to such a shameful degree...

~~~
mmahemoff
This is the crux of it. In other industries, the "idea guy" would usually be
an investor bringing $$$ to the table. A random hustler can't just approach a
civil engineer with "an idea" to partner on a new bridge and expect the
engineer to quit working and give up the next few years. They have to offer
major value.

I think the best thing a non-technical founder can do is follow lean
principles and bring actual data to the table. Show they've actually done the
research - MVPs, letters of intent, etc - and make it clear they have a vision
they can execute on. All of that is in the realm of possibility for someone
who's not a programmer, and would help to make the case they're serious and
capable.

~~~
coopdog
Definitely. Anyone coming to me with an idea I say that's great, just follow
the lean principles to develop a non-technical MVP, and I'm in. Haven't had
anyone come back with a proven MVP yet : P

------
benjamincburns
I never thought I'd find myself repeating this.

A chicken tells a pig that they should start a restaurant together. The pig
tells the chicken no. "Why?" asks the chicken. "Because you'd be involved, but
I'd be committed."

Revenue share is a great idea, but there's no way I'm working on your idea for
free while you just sit around and wait for me to make you money.

------
patman81
Love it. I'll keep this post handy, so I can link to it in my next reply to an
"idea guy".

If someone comes along with a great idea and suggests a revenue share,
reminded him about the old truism that the idea is 1%, while execution is 99%.
At least that will give you a starting point to negotiate the percentages of
the revenue share...

------
georgespencer
Eternal September has arrived for Hacker News. A post of this type or a loose
twist on it (generally "engineering > ideas") appears every year.

------
lifeisstillgood
Maybe I am doing something wrong but I have never been approached by such an
idea guy - the last closest was running an insurance brokerage and just got
fed up with poor delivery from his current devs yet had a laundry lost of
features needed in his site

Maybe if you are getting approached by morons a lot you might want to review
where you are hanging out - just there mus be _some_ reason

~~~
joshcrews
If you want such calls, but up a website with a title tag of "Ruby on Rails
developer in <your local city> | <your phone number>". I'm not trying to
parody anyone, that's what my website says and I get contacted frequently by
idea guys.

------
orangethirty
Here is why I decline work offers:

\- They cannot pay my rates.

\- The client seems shady.

\- The team/person will not agree to my terms.

\- We have a chemistry clash.

\- Red flags regarding the way they talk about people.

------
dhimes
_Ideas are easy, execution is hard_

But _good_ ideas are quite rare.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
The catch is that you don't know if the idea is good or not before validating
it in real life.

------
pknerd
So true! Almost every week an entrepreneur contacts me and wants me to come
his _Next Big Idea_ and that on equity basis. I usually ask: If it's such an
awesome idea then why doesn't he get funding and pay to developers. Usually
they have no answer.

------
gesman
The client who tries to give his own clueless estimate of complexity of the
job - automatically gets into no-reply/spam list:

"...and i think it's not that complicated"

"...it shouldn't take more than ... to complete"

"...Joe Blow said it's simple and let's assume that"

~~~
radio4fan
IME, that's pretty much all of them.

But then I think that nearly everyone has a tendency to think that anything
they don't fully understand must be simple.

You don't have to hang around here or on Slashdot for long to see that
programmers suffer from this too...

------
lampe
the first point is the most matching. "Ideas are easy, execution is hard."

I often get requests of ideas but they are so hard to execute that you would
need a bigger team to do it and a lot more money then the idea holder has...

------
rwaliany
I thought I’d weigh in my opinion as a developer-entrepreneur who has worked
with various business and technical co-founders.

I wrote a post covering 'Business Product Responsibilities' with a graph here:
[http://simplyryan.com/2013/01/19/business-product-
responsibi...](http://simplyryan.com/2013/01/19/business-product-
responsibilities/).

I have found that I don't want to work with non-technical founders because
they often don't take ownership of their responsibilities.

------
nimrody
"The idea being proposed is often very unrealistic"

For some reason developers/engineers tend to be _pessimistic_ while
leaders/idea people tend to be _optimistic_.

In order to produce really great products you probably need both sides -- so
don't dismiss the "idea guy" without giving the proposed idea at least some
thought. Perhaps the original idea is too broad but can be the basis for a
useful product.

------
FollowSteph3
Another good criteria is have you done something before? Doesn't matter so
much if it succeeded or not, but what you're looking for is will you follow
through. Someone who has tried and put real effort, past the initial first few
months, is likely to at least be worth further investigation. This little
criteria removes over 99% of ideas only people

------
yoaviram
It boils down to this: startups hardly fail because of technology (they do
because of marketing). So no matter how good a developer is, he/she still has
a very limited affect on success. Therefore taking equity, event a 50% stake
is not a smart investment. Unfortunately startups can rarely afford to pay
normal rates.

------
jamesjguthrie
"People approaching developers often dramatically underestimate the amount of
development work, or the complexity of it."

I'd add underestimate the cost of a decent final product to that too.

------
snoonan
Make options vest (or accelerate anyway) on product milestones, not time and I
think it would help highlight where and when the value has been created.

------
lifeisstillgood
Also to be fair I don't want to work on the idea of the guy paying 350-400 a
day - but at least they pay.

I want to work on my idea - and that's hard enough

------
lifeisstillgood
Engineering is not the solution Ideas are not the solution

Feedback and willingness to be flexible are the solution

Who cares if the original idea sucks - is the prospective idea guy willing to
invest time effort blood and tears making _something_ happen - constantly
measuring and validating ideas as they go

If yes leap in with both feet.

------
realrocker
I second it. This is much nicer response to keep away the "ideas guy".

------
sutro
Some writers are OK with being ghostwriters, or copywriters. They can apply
their craft within the confines of other people's ideas.

Great writers work on their own ideas.

~~~
StavrosK
Ugh, what does that even mean? What's a "great" writer, other than a writer
who works on his own ideas, and why can't a "great" writer be a ghostwriter?
This analogy doesn't even apply here, it's just a self-congratulatory remark
to make some other readers feel better about "sticking it to the man".

------
TommyDANGerous
Great to know, thanks. I've always had trouble dealing with Time zones and
offsets, it's a headache dealing with time. Sign, I just don't got the time!

------
marklit
Lots of contracts in London are paying £350 a day. £350 / day * 48 working
weeks of the year * 5 days a week = £84,000 / year. £55,498.64 in your pocket
after tax. Compare this to ~5 - 10 years of working for peanuts in a startup
hoping for an exit. Keep your eye on the clients who agree to short payment
terms, forget the dreamers.

~~~
kami8845
blah blah blah. Same contracting comparison that gets thrown into seemingly
every thread. As an employee you get work guaranteed, as a freelancer you have
to work for every hour of work twice (once to get it, once to actually do it).
You also have to do your own taxes, basically run your own business, but with
only the shitty parts of it (no potential for growth, bureaucracy, scheduling,
negotiating your pay all the time, often stepping into completely unknown &
WTF code, solitude, the list goes on and on).

Also who gives a fuck about money above 50k GBP? If you're young work a cool
job, meet interesting people and learn lots of new stuff. Freelancing is
almost never that. Working at a startup is, provided you pick the right one.

~~~
mgkimsal
"meet interesting people and learn lots of new stuff. Freelancing is almost
never that."

Not my experience. Freelancing is what you make of it. To get some experience
you may do some boring stuff early on, but if you've got no or little
experience your 'startup' will likely fail.

90% of the freelancing work I've done over the last few years has generally
been 'learning new stuff' and 'meeting interesting people' in somewhat
challenging problem domains (trucking logistics, education, etc).

"Working at a startup is, provided you pick the right one."

Freelancing is what you make of it. Find interesting projects.

~~~
kami8845
Yes, I agree that freelancing can be fascinating work. I mainly wrote from my
own perspective (and since HN was once called "Startup News", I imagine also
from that of others), where I do not have the right credentials or connections
to get very amazing freelance work. I'm 20 and without a degree. If anything I
could maybe get slave-trade $20/hr Odesk work or something, but not
considerably better.

Now, since (good) employers often manage to look past a lack of credentials
and connections, I was able to get a great job at a YC startup (run by
entrepreneurs with past successes/exits). They're taking a chance on me, which
almost never happens with freelance work (especially not if there's a dude
with 10 years experience competing with you).

And also I would argue that is much easier and quicker to find a good startup
(just go down the list of YC companies) than to find amazing freelance work.

~~~
mgkimsal
"Connections". You worked on connections to get in a YC startup (an amazingly
small number of potential opportunities in the universe of opportunities).

I'm suspecting that you had a hankering to work at a "startup" and that
colored your behaviour. I know many people without any major credentials who
are doing just fine in freelancing, making good money doing what they like to
do.

Never bother with odesk - you wouldn't have gotten a YC-startup gig on odesk -
why look for anything else there? Work your network/connections - if you don't
have any, build them up - that's what takes time and effort.

I also suspect many people on this forum (and on specific topics) are
'startup' focused. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, I do feel
it sets a lot of people up for failure ("fail fast! fail often!") when many of
them aren't psychologically or financially prepared for so such failures. We
rarely read about the failures of people who attempt 'startups'. Even when we
do, it's _often_ a post-mortem look from someone who's now writing from a
position of success, reviewing their own failures in public for others to see.
The implicit (sometimes explicit) message is "see, even if you fail, you can
be successful later in the same space".

Good luck to you on your journey.

~~~
kami8845
Thank you for the good luck wishes.

>Work your network/connections

That's exactly the issue. I didn't have that. At all. Before that I just
hacked on stuff because I thought it was fun / interesting. I also came from a
tiny country without a tech scene.

>I'm suspecting that you had a hankering to work at a "startup" and that
colored your behaviour.

I do love startups. But I before starting my job search I spent about a month
trying to figure out freelancing. In the end I decided against it (for reasons
listed above) and went onto what I -- at the time -- considered the second
best option: employment.

It was a great success. Instead of trying to cold-email people for dev-scraps
that are so un-important that they'll let someone with no degree and no
industry experience and no references work on it vs. someone with a CS degree
+ 5-10 years of industry experience + heaps of people with impressive business
titles who can recommend his work and doing whatever crappy work I can get my
hands on just to "work on connections", I now get to work every day among a
set of incredibly smart, compassionate, warm, successful people who want to
invest in me and want me to become the best programmer and contributor that I
can be.

That's why I chose the employment route: Once you're in, you're in and you can
focus on what you love and growing yourself instead of constantly having to
worry to put food / contracts on the table.

------
venomsnake
I was approached with an idea it was by a guy that had years experience in the
industry, connections to sell the thing and solid ideas how to market and fund
the enterprise.

So far it is going fine. I think that this approach will see a lot of
interested developers.

~~~
eps
Did you know him before that?

~~~
venomsnake
We were introduced by a friend.

