Physician transitioning to Start up. Completely lost. Advice needed.

[DrPills]

Hi HN, I am a long time lurker, and I have learned immensely over the last few years. With all the knowledge and advice found on HN, I thought I could solve a problem I encountered in medicine by using the internet and technology.

I did all the research in this particular segment of the market and started on my journey to create my first MVP. I realized I didn't know how to program, so I sat down and learned how to use Drupal. Drupal became too restrictive for my needs. I started learning Ruby and Rails. Learning how to program from scratch was not getting anywhere.

This is where I need your advice. I really want to get this product completed. Even if it doesn't make me any money, I think it fills a need and I think it would be great for society in general. I don't have the programming skills at the time to do it myself.

This brings up a few questions: (Please bear with me, I am new to this field)

1) I really believe in this idea and will invest to get a developer/programmer to do this for me. I looked at elance but there are wide ranges in prices. What resources do you guys use to get developers, or does everyone make their product by themselves?

2) I honestly believe in my product and I have the expertise for the medical part of it, however I would love to work with someone who has the other skills necessary for a start up. How do you guys find a cofounder?

3) I am willing to leave my high salaried physician job for this endeavor but how do you guys get mentors/investors/cofounders. I looked into RockHealth, etc, but they all seem to cater to 20 something out of college students with multiple founders.

Thanks in advance. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks again.

If anyone is interested in chatting, email me at admin@pillbox.me

[orangethirty]

As a consultant that builds such systems under similar circumstances:

- The cheapest option is not the best option.

- Chemistry is more important than price.

- A very busy consultant will not be very fun to work with. Will miss deadlines.

- Find someone who is good, but does not take a lot of work at a time.

- Don't stick to one languge/framework. Let the consultant help you pick.

- Pay for a sit down. This is when you talk to the consultant in order to weed out any details about your goals. Well worth the money.

- Don't focus on hourly costs. A weekly or monthly charge ends up being easier for both sides.

Now, in #3 you let me know that this is a busines syou believe will get traction. How good are your business skills? If you are like most physicians out there, then you don't have a good clue as to how to market a product. This is the most important part of the business. If you havent thought about marketing then do so now. Don't invest a penny until you have proven beyond reasonable doubt that this will actually sell.

If you'd like, we can chat more about it privately. My email is in my profile.

[davismwfl]

I would say notahacker gave you some good advice. My other comments are based on knowing nothing of what you are trying to put together, just some personal experience and some knowledge.

Having spent 7 years doing development and consulting in healthcare, you can't underestimate the cost to building and deploying products in that space. Unless it is consumer oriented, the adoption rates are slow in the enterprise space but pricing is better. It is better now than it has ever been from my knowledge, but 6 months to a year is still not out of the question on an enterprise product sales cycle. Individual physicians are also feeling squeezed so they are anxious to get new tools, but at the same time many of them are very price focused from what I have seen. I know a couple of people doing startups in healthcare and it took the better part of 6-8 months for them to get a few paying clients, so having funds saved was critical for them (as was consulting).

Also, don't underestimate how much HIPAA and FDA rules play into what you do in the health care software space. Nothing is insurmountable and honestly good common sense gets you past 80% of the rules/laws. Unless you are doing something with medical device + software, in which case the FDA clearance gets to be a pain if you have never done it. This is probably stuff you know about. Just mentioning it, as I have been through it.

My email is in my profile if you want to chat. I love the healthcare space, it is just a tough place to be without the proper team and reasonable funding or smart bootstrapping (my personal choice).

Either way, I say notahacker gave you the best advice so far, keep your day job while you get that MVP built.

[notahacker]

- In the long term you should be more interested in developers you can work with than their ability as programmers.

- You're a skilled professional attacking a specific problem relevant to your profession, and you've bothered to try to learn to code even though it's probably not your strength. You're not as much of a timewaster as the other "idea guys" developers run into, which means that people who are genuinely good at what they do and ambitious will sit down and talk with you.

- In the short term, you should build something and test something before you leave that highly salaried physician job. Luckily, with your high salary you can pay someone before you go about forming a company.

- Pay someone you'd think about forming a company with - the sort of person that's not afraid to suggest ways of changing your idea to make it better. Even if they cost a lot more than an Indian outsourcing firm on elance. Get round to forming the company and giving them equity once they've earned their money and proved you want to work with them.

[drelihan]

Congrats on digging in and trying to learn coding for your MVP. That will go a long way to helping your recruit a co-founder.

+1 on orangethirty's "A weekly or monthly charge ends up being easier for both sides." Hourly wage isn't a great way to hire. For an MVP, focus development items in terms of days and ( at most ) weeks. Go to a developer and tell them what you are looking to do. Then, ask them what part of it can they implement in one day or one week. If you like what you hear, hire them for that time frame and see how they do. If they're terrible, you'll know quickly and won't be out a terrible amount of cash.

I'd be interested in chatting. I'll shoot you an email

[frendiversity]

As a developer, I don't dislike this guy. He is investing his own experience-based career skills into the bargain, which is a whole lot better than guy-with-idea-wants-half.

[zekenie]

You could consider going to a hackathon... Its a good way to meet people, kick your idea around. There are sometimes health based hackathons. I don't know where you are based, but every fall there is a Hacking Medicine event at MIT.

[DrPills → zekenie]

Awesome idea. I am actually moving to boston this July. I will definitely check that out. I always thought hackathons were programmers hacking out a MVP in 24/48 hrs etc and I wouldn't have anything to contribute.

Thanks.

[zekenie → DrPills]

Each hackathon is different. Often there are industry experts, etc. Its probably better if you have a partner who can code going into it, but at the Hacking Medicine event there was a pitch time where people could share ideas and try to get a team together.

[codyguy]

You may want to check out http://www.theprotoshop.com for creation of MVP/prototype.