Non-programmer founders: learn code first, find tech co-founder(s) after?

[evac]

I've been thinking for a while on the best way to bring a web start-up idea to life (or at least to prototype stage) and, being a non-programmer myself, I spent the past couple weeks reading up on a lot of articles, blogs and discussions about finding tech cofounders.

Through these, I noticed that most of the non-programming/business/MBA types seem to have the lowest success rate as original founders (unless they already had tech friends/acquaintances) simply because they depend so much on finding a tech cofounder to build it first, and that's assuming they can persuade prospective tech cofounders to drop their own ideas to join theirs.

Another common method I heard of was to pay a team of developers to build the idea, but I haven't heard much success stories from these kinds either. There's networking events to match people up as well, but I might be limited to networking events at my university since I'm still a student with little formal experiences; and since it's winter break for us now, I'll have to wait until spring semester for the networking events anyway.

Overall, it seems that finding a good tech cofounder can take a good while, if at all. Therefore, I decided to learn coding first to at least build a rough prototype, which I could hopefully use to pitch to prospective cofounders along the way. One reason is so that I could at least be learning and working on something in case I don't find someone until six months later. The second reason is because, since I come from a business and psychology background, I felt that it'd be useful to better understand tech business from the programmers' perspective. And lastly, in some ways, it's also about the credibility of how seriously I want to pursue my idea, because it seems like most of the business types with just ideas but no technical understanding are taken the least seriously.

I'm aware that it seems like I'm going the long way (though I actually think I'm taking the short route), but I'm pretty patient when it comes to long-term benefits, I have a strong habit of self-learning things, and I'm pretty confident I have time because I doubt many, if any, competitors could work on this idea since it draws heavily on a field-specific knowledge (psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, etc). Or perhaps most of all, I just plain don't want to let the idea die without it ever being given a chance just because I don't have a tech cofounder yet. (And admittedly, I want to do it because if I start putting time and efforts into it, I have less of a reason to drop it later down the road if I get frustrated.)

So what I want to ask is, how successful do you think this route could be for non-programming people? And by success, I’m referring to at least getting the first prototype out and attracting a good tech cofounder.

Who else have gone this route and how did turn out for them?

(Sorry for the wall of text!)

*Correction: maybe it's not right to call myself a complete newbie to programming since I took AP Computer Science (basic Java programming) back in high school and learned some rudimentary HTML and CSS in middle school. So the fact that I have some idea of what to expect probably helps.

[tzm]

I walked the same route as you about 8 years ago. I picked up programming out of necessity, but I always had an interest. It seemed that I couldn't get traction unless I showed people some tangible example. This was the catalyst...

Today I'm a full stack programmer, graphic designer and business guy. These traits give me a major advantage where I can build out web services, mobile and voice applications. With my finance background I can also structure financial contracts, etc. I often act as CTO for startups taking a significant position in the early stage.

I say this to encourage you to keep walking the path. You will gain a major competitive advantage, especially without a CS degree.

One caveat: with your growing capabilities comes more opportunities. These opportunities can distract you. Stay focused on execution. Just my two cents.

[evac → tzm]

Thanks, your story is definitely encouraging!

[raspie]

I was in your boat. Learning to code enough to make a prototype is the right thing to do, people will just take you way more seriously. Not that there are many alternatives when you don't have much tangible experience or success stories...

[aiurtourist → raspie]

As a programmer, I would be much more inclined to help someone with an existing coding project than to build a prototype for somebody else's idea.

I can't nail down exactly why, and I'm just a single data point.

[okaramian → aiurtourist]

I think with myself it has to do with how invested someone is in a project. If they're really into it they'll have some kind of prototype put together and it shows they invested serious time in the project. I don't really like putting together a prototype for someone else, then having everyone else abandon it.

[evac → raspie]

Thanks for sharing, how did it turn out for you afterward? And even if it doesn't work out for the first idea, did you find your skills useful for later prospective ideas and partnerships?

[raspie → evac]

So far I made one iPad game which turned out to be pretty decent considering that I didn't even know what I wanted it to be when I began. Now I am myself sure I can build a prototype of pretty much anything not insanely complex (and I barely coded at all 5 months ago). Not sure I am going to do games further because I don't really understand how to market stuff that does not solve problems, but still it was a valuable experience.

[bcrawl]

I am in a situation similar to yours. This is how I am doing it, I dont know if it will help you or not. I hired a developer to build the prototype. Me and the developer discussed the technologies and framework which will be used. Upon getting the info, I did some background research on every thing. From which OS to run, which database/webserver to choose, which language/framework to choose,which version control to use, where to develop, where to host, details such as those. Just to get used to the above stuff took me a while. Now that I am comfortable with the set up of the prototype, I believe it will be a more focussed learning if I wanted to start writing code. I dont really want to start coding yet because I believe it will take up a lot of my time. I plan to use this to sell my product. Like you, I do know basics of coding. I do plan to fire up Eclipse and start debugging code in the future, but only when I have found a business model/customer :)

[evac → bcrawl]

Thanks, it's definitely helpful as a comparison to my own activities the past month. Though in my case, I talked to an acquaintance about what I wanted to do and got his advices on what would be needed to build my idea, such as the languages, database, hosting, etc., so that I had an overall idea of how everything should work. Afterward, did a lot of background research too.

As for coding, part of the reason I'm not hiring a developer is because I don't have the money, so I'm making it up with having a lot of time and effort to spend.

[bcrawl → evac]

Can you tell us more about what kind of market this app is going to be? B2B/social etc? And what stage your product is in? Such as, have you designed/developed mockups/prototype etc? Since they take up a lot of time aswell if you are not familiar. And its not even coding. Just curious.

[evac → bcrawl]

Sure, it's a consumer app intended to help people with productivity and goal-achieving by directly influencing their behaviors through a psychological/behavior economical approach. Too many apps focused on technological efficiency (ie. a better way to list your goals, how to track your time, etc) and not much on the psychological aspect (ie. maintaining long-term motivation, getting started on chores you hate, etc).

In terms of stage, I'm pre-mockup at the moment since the last 2.5 months were spent on researching and designing the psychological framework before I could get started on the technological parts. It took up a lot of time but necessary since there was no previous framework for guidance.

I don't have a visual mockup yet, which I plan to start working on next week, but I do have a very fleshed out textual description of what was needed for the prototype to work.

[tapiwa]

I think it really depends on the type of product you want to build.

My take on the matter is to learn just enough tech to be almost dangerous. Or put another way, you need to understand enough about technology to (a) understand that it is hard. This alone will make you a better manager/cofounder. (b) be able to sift the wheat from the chaff. The problem with business only types is that they are more likely to pick 'coders' who promise the earth than those who can deliver.

Learning to code is great. Learning a lot about the various technologies out there is great. Building simple programs is great.

That said, programming is hard. You will not be a great coder in 6 months, or a year. If your problem is non trivial you will need far more knowledge than you can pick up in a year of dabbling.

I suppose my point is that you need to balance the need to come up to speed with technology with the need to actually deliver a working product.

[evac → tapiwa]

I agree it'll largely depend on the product I want to build. Fortunately for me, what I want to build is relatively simple technology compared to what I see a lot of programmers capable of making, and the most complex part is probably the psychological framework that I spent the past couple months researching and designing before I could even get started on the technical part.

I'm also aware that my coding skills will never outmatch someone else who probably started when they were 12 or something, at least not in a year. At the back of my mind, I know that programming will be hard, but at the front of my mind, I think my ignorance would probably be very useful for pushing me into something I can't turn back on.

[nickfromseattle]

It took me over a year from when I had the idea until I found a technical co-founder. I was committed to the project 100% from the beginning. So I started building value by doing stuff that I was capable of doing, stuff that would have to be done anyways.

I wrote the business plan/financial statement, I figured out the features and had wire frames made up, contracted out the graphic design and then the front end code, incorporated, business license/tax paperwork, set up a landing page, started pre-launch marketing via twitter, etc. In all I spent ~$5000, 14 months and 1 false start before I my (tech) partner.

[gopi]

If your idea is just a CRUD type and not tech intensive (like a search engine or something) i would say just hire someone from odesk to create the prototype...You can create a MVP for just $10k and may spend another $10-20k until you find a product/market fit.

Yes this initial code will be messy and not scalable. But after you zero in on the right working model it will be easy to hire good programmer(s) to rewrite the entire thing from scratch!

[evac → gopi]

I agree that it would be easier to just hire someone since my idea isn't tech intensive, but for a college student like me, I don't have $10k at my leisure for hiring someone, must less $30k to get to product/market fit. Which was why I decided to learn coding myself since I have time and labor, just not money. But like you said, the initial code would be messy and unscalable at first, so my goal at the moment is get to a working prototype and attract/partner up with good tech cofounder afterward who could rewrite the entire thing.