Ask HN: questions from a tech/start-up newb

2 points by dschmidt11 14 years ago | 2 comments

Good afternoon everyone,

I'm new to the game (I will not call myself a hacker), but my interest and self teachings have been giving me a lot of insight into the hacking world.

With that being said, I sprung this idea 6 months ago and have been working at it since. My efforts towards this project have been very time consuming and I feel like I've hit a few barriers. Being a full time student I have zero capital, and what I need done requires advanced programming (php).

I am hoping the following questions can be answered.

How do I find a good partner/co founder?

Should my programmer/designer be local?

Is crowdfunding a good source for raising capital?

Any advice will help as I am the only person working on this at the moment. Thanks all.

Dave

mchannon 14 years ago |

How do you find a good cofounder?

Asked and answered many times, but I like this answer the best:

http://www.humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-h...

Should your programmer/designer be local?

I think your programmer should be you, to begin with. Don't know PHP? I think you can learn it in the next six months at minimal expense. You may groan and discover you hate PHP, and end up moving to another medium because there's a reason you hate it. If you're going to try and get a technical cofounder, presumably with equity only, you'll significantly expand your available talent pool if you can get the talent to take you seriously. That can be done by either having money to throw at the project (ruled out already), or being able to at least carry on a conversation on how to get things done in the medium you've chosen.

You can often find programmers in far-flung regions of the world that work for cheap, but probably not many work for equity. That leaves your immediate surroundings or whoever you can travel to get an audience with.

Is crowdfunding a good source for raising capital? Yes. That's why it's illegal.

Other than end-runs around the system (crowdfunding a loan you're personally liable for like with prosper or lendingclub, or crowdfunding a project through direct sales of finished product like kickstarter), you're stuck with friends, family, and fools.

ohashi 14 years ago |

Cofounders; http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=fin...

programmer/designer: there is no real answer to this. It depends on what you can manage. Local is easier for most people.

I am not sure where you are, but in the US I don't think the crowdfunding bill has even passed yet.