What progress can I make on my startup before outsourcing it or finding a CTO?

[hichamine]

Hello guys, As I believe the era of the napkin pitch is bypassed. Today, most talented technical people are hard to convince to join you in building your startup idea, unless you have enough data and evidence of its success, in other words traction. As a non-technical founder, I'm working currently on my tech startup idea. In fact, I didn't even try looking for a CTO co-founder as I believe there still much work to do from my side as I've built nothing yet, which makes me not entitled to try convince a developer to join me. On the other hand, I'm also thinking of outsourcing the MVP dev to a dev shop but before that, I'm trying to figure out what kind of progress I can make before taking that step. Therefore, would love to get your feedback on this.

Q: What kind of progress and milestones can an idea-stage founder achieve before outsourcing to invest in the dev (financial risk) or having enough data to convince a CTO?

Thanks,

[davismwfl]

Validate your idea first. You do not need an MVP or any software for this. Go to businesses/consumers, pitch the product and find if there is a fit. See if they would be willing to sign up for it, what features they need, what makes it compelling to them (is it cost savings, revenue generation etc).

If you can find say 20-30 businesses that say yes then you probably have an idea. If it is consumer focused spend some money on advertising it on social media see what the response is. You can setup a signup page without any technical know how, just some clicking around on a website that generates/hosts landing pages.

Once you have this you have an idea. Then, personally, mock up the idea in some wireframe tool, take it back to users and see what they say. Does it make sense, is it easy to follow are they more likely to buy now. Go back to ones that said no thanks, they are even more important then the ones that said yes. Redesign and evolve this features/wireframe model to something people seem excited about.

So if you do that, by now you have a basic design, an initial feature set and you have defined a market opportunity with real feedback. If you have this you will find people that want to help you make it real.

My 2 cents, do not focus on learning how to write code. Sorry, I love what I do, but almost every time I started a company/project by writing code it fails. When I start with market, people and opportunity I have had 10000 times more success. You can hire your weaknesses. Amazingly engineered products wind up on the floor going no where more then they go somewhere. Why? Simple, they didn't do the market and research first, they built something before understanding the opportunity.

[tlb]

If your ambition is to run a software company, you should learn how to write software. There are many programming courses that can teach you enough to build prototype web apps in 2-3 months.

When the startup succeeds and you hire a technical team, knowing how to program will continue to make a huge difference in your ability to recruit and manage that team.

[hichamine → tlb]

Thanks for the advice. I do believe it's the case, yet at this stage I'm more likely to focus on the market and the users "Getting outside the building" as Steve Blank coined the term. But I take " building a prototype from your answer ". Do you think there any other milestone(s) to achieve ?