Hey Randall, that's good advice. i've just started meeting people in my area. (Boston).
I'm not the technical guy because it's simply not my strength. I could probably code the thing in a year but someone else could do it in a few months with much better code. IN any case I'm building the prototype as solo founder right now.
Heh. If you want to work at a no-shot startup PM me. You'd be full co-founder along with myself and learn a crapload, as you'd be taking lead CTO role. I can't say it's better than working for a big-name startup but I do think you'd learn more because we can make mistakes as we go.
I think product visionary falls under "UX guy". The name "product visionary" by definition means he has an excellent grasp of user-oriented design and focus.
Good post. "Entrepreneurs" nowadays seem like a bunch of whiners. Maybe it's the internet that encourages such passivity and hand-holding over the internet.
You want to succeed? Do whatever it takes. Learn how to code even if you won't be the one coding the program. Learn to speak the language, whether it's VC/investing, tech, or business. Sell your idea to a tech cofounder.
I agree idea guys who can't do sh are pretty much worthless. But I worry that there's been an overemphasis on the technical side. Sorry hackers, you aren't as special as you think you are. You have some personal projects you want to work on? Most personal hacking projects are worthless and even worse ideas than the ones business guys come up with.
Also worrisome is the attitude hackers have of only working with people with successful track records. I think that's the exact opposite of what you should do. People with successful track records have more to lose, and may have just gotten lucky the first time around. We should pay attention to the idea, not necessarily past success. You don't see business guys recruiting hackers based on whether they founded twitter/facebook/google do you?
A great hacker needs to be paired with a great vision guy. If hackers were as important as they thought they were then all hackers would have made it big already, and that is very far from the truth.
Very bad marketing here. Whoever chose the name "Google+" should be fired. First, the name confuses people with google's +1 button. Second, what does "+" have anything to do with a social network? It gives you no information at all about the service. They should have called it "google circles" and emphasized that Google Circles let you compartmentalize your social network, as opposed to facebook.
Bam, instant differentiation. Instead we have a product that tries to do too much and needs a demo to make people understand.
I'm sorry but you are not the "Khan Academy of CS" until you actually have a product. There is nothing on the site yet. It's an idea, a concept, a theory. I don't like this trend of launching while you haven't developed anything.
You should look into buying "housefeed.com" and perhaps renaming your site to that.
That's what I thought I saw as your name upon first glance. My brain unconsciously filled in the details: "Oh, feeding people at a house, 'housefeed.com', makes sense".
Also, you get the benefit of the "feed" connotation: a feed of pictures of people's meals at their houses.