Personally, I find no use in people with just ideas. Not even if they have drafted their site down to the T.
This is because I'm at an advantage. I can easily learn and do whatever it is they know and do. Things such as marketing, refining the UI, feature ideas, user interaction, etc. These are things that are MUCH easier to do and learn than programming.
I would not start a company with anyone who wasn't an EXCEPTIONAL programmer. No, a weekend programmer will not do. Honestly, you'd have either provide funds, or something of extremely high value for you to receive equal ownership of any company I spend my valuable time and work on.
The only time I would recommend you spend your time learning how to program is if your roadmap includes hiring programmers better than you to improve or redo the code. You'd have to build the prototype yourself, get funds, hire good programmers and take off from there.
Other than that, I wouldn't automatically join your project, even with a prototype.
"Personally, I find no use in people with simple technical skills. Not even if they can program a time machine into a Commodore 64."
"This is because I'm at an advantage. I can easily learn or hire whatever technical skills they have. Things such as coding, databases, server architectures are trade skills and basically a commodity. These mechanical skills are MUCH easier to do or find than imagining a valuable product, finding a market and customers, selling the product, and building a business."
Etc, etc. Undervaluing the contributions of other fields such as sales or marketing is the mark of someone with little real-world battle scars, regardless of the direction of the contempt vector.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but ideas people are generally useless.
I'm not 'undervaluing' the skill I'm simply weighing them and engineers win.
'the mark of someone with little real-world battle scars....'
The opposite is more true with engineers, we hate it when we are shown products by people without the 'battle' scars to properly gauge the value of a project.
Like I said, I can more easily learn those lessons than they can learn to program.
I, as a 'technical' person find absolutely no value on someone who doesn't understand the deep technical implications of any project. As a team we'll learn the marketing. In the end, we can outmaneuver any silly person with just ideas that delegates them.
BTW, this is my opinion. Not to say it won't work, that's just how we 'technical' people see ideas people.
This is because I'm at an advantage. I can easily learn and do whatever it is they know and do. Things such as marketing, refining the UI, feature ideas, user interaction, etc. These are things that are MUCH easier to do and learn than programming.
I would not start a company with anyone who wasn't an EXCEPTIONAL programmer. No, a weekend programmer will not do. Honestly, you'd have either provide funds, or something of extremely high value for you to receive equal ownership of any company I spend my valuable time and work on.
The only time I would recommend you spend your time learning how to program is if your roadmap includes hiring programmers better than you to improve or redo the code. You'd have to build the prototype yourself, get funds, hire good programmers and take off from there.
Other than that, I wouldn't automatically join your project, even with a prototype.