

Ask HN: I have a good idea for a startup, but I don't have time.  What to do? - zoba

Recently I’ve come up with an idea for a website that I think is worth implementing to make money.  The problem is that I am in college and that takes up all of my time.  I don’t feel like I can just put it off until after college because, like my last idea, I’m concerned that someone will do it before me and then I won’t be able to make as much money.<p>I’ve run in to this problem before and last time I enlisted a partner to help with development.  However, things went south quickly with the partner and while we had the core of the idea done, it would have been difficult to move forward since we weren’t really partners anymore and it would have been tough to either start over or just use his work without fearing he might later try to lay claim to it.  Perhaps a partner is the way to go?  I wonder how often partnerships go bad and ruin ideas? I wonder the best way to handle partnerships, especially when the idea was basically entirely only one of the partners.<p>The second thing I’ve thought of is getting a freelancer to do most of the work, and then putting any finishing touches on the code myself.  However, the problem with this route is that it’s going to cost money I don’t have.  It solves the problem of flaky partners, but already being 20k in debt to student loans, I’m nervous to borrow money from anyone to hire a freelancer for an idea that seems like it should work, but since I’m new at this sort of thing, could easily get screwed up.<p>So far, these are my only two ideas.  What does HN’s collective wisdom advise?
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mattwdelong
I think there is something you need to know: An idea is worth absolutely
nothing, or very close to nothing. The money is a result of execution, a
direct correlation even; The better the execution, the more money.

You stated: "I wonder the best way to handle partnerships, especially when the
idea was basically entirely only one of the partners."

You should be wonder how you can find a partner who is willing to do all the
work while you are off doing your own thing at school, with no time to spare.
I am not kicking school, but if you're serious about an idea you would be
willing to execute it. If a partner is doing all the work then he should be
getting 90% of the assets, you should be MORE than happy to get 10% for your
idea. As for finding the person to do all the work for you, good luck.

What I am trying to say, is a partnership is exactly that..a PARTnership.
Meaning, you have to do part of the work, you can't just get someone to do all
of the work and try and reap the rewards. The result, of course, will will be
another falling out with yet another partner.

Give equity where equity is due and you will have your best chance at finding
a co-founder. .

An alternative solution would be paying a developer to develop the project and
pay him with the funds that you don't have. Remember borrowed money MUST be
paid back if the venture fails.

My suggestion would be doing work on the side, if you have none then make some
free time, and when you are at a percentage of completion you have a few
options. You can demo the website to someone who may be willing to invest for
X percentage, or you can find someone willing to co-found with you and do some
of the work for X percentage of the venturet. The former has more risk
associated as you are dealing with monetary involvement. The later, unless you
promise compensation, has little risk as you are only involving someones time
which they are contributing.

Best of luck

~~~
zeynel1
"An idea is worth absolutely nothing, or very close to nothing."

There are always people who say the opposite is also true. But unless you have
at least a mockup, or a prototype, I agree that an idea don't have much value.
The idea can be misleading without modeling of some kind.

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nostrademons
I don't like either of those ideas. Problem is, if _you_ don't have either
time nor money to implement the idea yourself, why should a partner/freelancer
implement it for you and then let you keep the profits?

If I were you, I'd do one of two things:

1\. If you really believe in the idea, take a leave of absence from college
and pursue it full-time. Build a prototype, put it out there, validate it, and
then if it still looks like a good idea, enlist people to help. You'll have a
much better bargaining position then anyway.

2\. If you don't believe in the idea enough to do #1, put it up for adoption
and let someone else run with it. Or just forget about it and let it die.

One of the hard lessons I've learned is that you can't serve two masters. I
tried the volunteer-website-with-classes-on-the-side in college, and I tried
the startup-on-the-side-with-a-full-time-job afterwards. With the former, I
barely managed to graduate, and the website took far longer to do than it
should've. With the latter, my job performance suffered and I found the code I
wrote for the startup was so bad that I threw it all away and started fresh
once I quit. If I come up with another good idea for a startup, the first
thing I do (after validating it and making sure it's feasible) is to quit my
job and pursue it all the way.

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JimboOmega
In summary: you need partners. Good ones. I failed to find any, and, like your
first attempt, my startup burned out.

Working by yourself is just dangerous - even if you're entirely self-motivated
(I'm not), you can only have so much perspective. Ever spent days trying to
get some small thing to work because nobody was there to tell you it didn't
matter? This goes much more if your project isn't a full time job - you need
someone there to help you stay motivated. Heck, see paul Graham's #1 startup
mistake:<http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>

On the other hand bad partners are even worse than nothing. Partnerships can
go wrong in all kinds of ways - in my case I had someone who was big on talk
but light on delivery. Doing the work I thought he was going to do took too
much time, and my project was stillborn. Cool looking, somewhat functional,
but with too many big issues to be usable. It needed another 6 months of
polishing, and I didn't have 6 months of money left.

Never mind if your relationship should become actively hostile - nothing will
kill things like a good round of lawsuits to waste your time and money. Of
course, most startups never make enough money for that to be an issue. Also,
having someone professional do your employment contracts (as I did) can help
you avoid IP ambiguity.

It's hard to tell who will be a good partner and who won't, too. I'm still
looking for someone to carry my project on with, since I do have all the IP.
If anybody has figured it out, let me know.

I thought about freelancers, too. But I think for a startup you need someone
genuinely invested. Someone who cares about the project - not just "give me my
$X/hr., and I'm out the door". A startup requires more than that. A startup
requires passion and commitment, something freelancers aren't exactly known
for.

That's what was missing in my project. Somebody - else - who really was
committed to making the project succeed. Somebody who'd sink huge amounts of
their own money and/or time to get it off the ground.

Good luck - if somebody has a better idea for finding partners, I'm all ears.

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mbrubeck
I'd try to do it as a side project if at all possible. I've never gotten more
side-projects done than when I was in college (and I went to a fairly work-
intensive engineering school). If it helps, see if you can get credit by
getting a faculty advisor and writing up some reports or papers about it.

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dusklight
Don't want to rain on your parade, but from your comments it looks like you
are vastly underestimating the kind of commitment and effort that it takes to
successfully take an idea to market.

No matter how good your idea is, you still need to be able to execute on it
and bring it into reality.

You should go ahead and do it, if for no other reason than by the end of the
experience you will have a much better idea of what you really need in order
to get it done. I would say definitely do the code yourself, just so you can
understand how much it would really cost to get someone else to do it. Hint:
it's going to cost more than $500 to some guy in India.

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jacquesm
This is almost ripe for a FAQ entry.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=774758>

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noodle
perhaps search for funding and use that process to hire a freelancer or find a
committed cofounder?

beyond that, there's not any easy way for someone here to analyze your
situation and tell you what choice is best, especially without knowing more
about the project (i.e., how much development time would it take to produce a
product, etc)

