Ask HN: You have an awesome product/business idea. Now what?
3 comments
I got the idea for uencounter.me last March while talking with a good friend... "wouldn't it be neat if ...", I asked a few more friends and we all tried to find something that did what I was asking for but could not. I am a trained therapist and entrepreneur with a small private practice, not a programmer. I have two much younger brothers who are PhD students at major universities so my first call was to them ... "Do you know any starving brilliant hackers?" (Starving because I didn't have much money). Long story short - One of them had a best friend who loves writing code ... wanted a new project ... and I am awesome at selling my ideas! We brought on one other partner to manage business development/finances and began! That was 10 months ago. Miraculously, we have had a fabulous working arrangement. We divided the work - so much of the front end work was on the coding side but I have spent 40+ hours a week reading and learning as if I was in grad school again. Now - I handle marketing, PR, and manage tasks/organization of ideas every minute I am not working as a therapist! I still have not officially met my technical partner but we talk for several hours per week and burn the keyboard with emails. My most personal hardship was not having any knowledge about the technical side and being impatient while it was built but our communication started out good and has gotten better along the way. My ambition and drive are sometimes too highly energized for the other two partners but that is good as we seem to balance one another nicely. We have spent less than $4,000 at this point and have a fully functional product with several hundred users (and growing) two months post launch. We are terribly proud and visualizing a viable career with the application. Feel free to take a look: http://www.uencounter.me
I finally got our app done and we're in the App Store ready for a public launch in a few weeks with version 1.1. It took us quite a while because we were not technical founders.
I think we got lucky because an open source option became available with just enough documentation for me to tweak it with the skills I learned by reading books at the library and from links on Hacker News (we're publishing a travel magazine in the Apple App Store and we used Baker and Laker, two great open source frameworks. Check them out at http://bakerframework.com/ and http://www.lakercompendium.com/)
I think without these we would have been stuck and would have never gotten off the ground. From a personal point of view, as an ideas guy who never really thinks about execution, it was very difficult. I enjoy spending my time thinking up ideas that will change the world and getting frustrated when I realize I don't have the skills to implement them.
Working on our magazine was a change for me. It wasn't a grand idea, its not going to change the world. People might love the stories, but its not the "next big thing." And I have to say, I'm ok with that. If fact, more than ok, its very satisfying to actually get something done, to have it in my hands and be able to say its mine, rather than just one of my ideas floating in space.
It still took a lot of work, especially on the motivational side, but I handled that by intentionally breaking it down to the smallest task I could. That was also new for me, and I think, a key factor. Every day I got something done, even if it was small, and then one day 8 months later, it was done.
If I had had a technical co-founder and more money would it have been easier? Yeah. But I didn't.
By far the resources I used the most were Hacker News (for motivation and the stuff I learned from articles), my local library (for books on coding and soon, marketing) and the documentation of the code we worked on (and a bit of help from the guys who built it, once again, check them out they're awesome).
I think we got lucky because an open source option became available with just enough documentation for me to tweak it with the skills I learned by reading books at the library and from links on Hacker News (we're publishing a travel magazine in the Apple App Store and we used Baker and Laker, two great open source frameworks. Check them out at http://bakerframework.com/ and http://www.lakercompendium.com/)
I think without these we would have been stuck and would have never gotten off the ground. From a personal point of view, as an ideas guy who never really thinks about execution, it was very difficult. I enjoy spending my time thinking up ideas that will change the world and getting frustrated when I realize I don't have the skills to implement them.
Working on our magazine was a change for me. It wasn't a grand idea, its not going to change the world. People might love the stories, but its not the "next big thing." And I have to say, I'm ok with that. If fact, more than ok, its very satisfying to actually get something done, to have it in my hands and be able to say its mine, rather than just one of my ideas floating in space.
It still took a lot of work, especially on the motivational side, but I handled that by intentionally breaking it down to the smallest task I could. That was also new for me, and I think, a key factor. Every day I got something done, even if it was small, and then one day 8 months later, it was done.
If I had had a technical co-founder and more money would it have been easier? Yeah. But I didn't.
By far the resources I used the most were Hacker News (for motivation and the stuff I learned from articles), my local library (for books on coding and soon, marketing) and the documentation of the code we worked on (and a bit of help from the guys who built it, once again, check them out they're awesome).
I've have many ideas, Ranging from new Operating System designs to Clean Energy to world changing web applications (they are ideas, So, probably many of them may fail ). I don't have a technical education.
When I started getting these ideas, I was very confused about what to do with all of them. But, Now I have great clarity. I'm starting from the easiest to approach.
I started doing web design for hire before 2 years. Meanwhile I taught myself, Ruby, Rails and Jquery. Now, I'm building two of the web apps, I wanted to build.
The biggest challenges I faced were that, there were no immediate technical network for me, to go to. Since, I haven't worked anywhere, nor do I have technical education. So, For every problem, I face, I had to google my way around it, or go in IRCs, or forums. Its not all minus in a way, this self-service style of education, has helped me in some ways.
Here in India, I don't even know where to start, to get funding. But, I think I won't need it, Since, I value freedom for setting my own pace and control over the products more than anything.
In short, Haven't launched a product yet. But, will launch one or two within this month. I'm very happy looking forward for that day. (I'm also procrastinating bcoz, of fear of being ridiculed). But, will take a deep breath and hit enter on "cap deploy" soon.
PS: HN for the past 6 months played a very important role in shaping my thoughts on products, validation, launch etc.
When I started getting these ideas, I was very confused about what to do with all of them. But, Now I have great clarity. I'm starting from the easiest to approach.
I started doing web design for hire before 2 years. Meanwhile I taught myself, Ruby, Rails and Jquery. Now, I'm building two of the web apps, I wanted to build.
The biggest challenges I faced were that, there were no immediate technical network for me, to go to. Since, I haven't worked anywhere, nor do I have technical education. So, For every problem, I face, I had to google my way around it, or go in IRCs, or forums. Its not all minus in a way, this self-service style of education, has helped me in some ways.
Here in India, I don't even know where to start, to get funding. But, I think I won't need it, Since, I value freedom for setting my own pace and control over the products more than anything.
In short, Haven't launched a product yet. But, will launch one or two within this month. I'm very happy looking forward for that day. (I'm also procrastinating bcoz, of fear of being ridiculed). But, will take a deep breath and hit enter on "cap deploy" soon.
PS: HN for the past 6 months played a very important role in shaping my thoughts on products, validation, launch etc.
were you able to take your idea and turn it into a real product?
assuming you found someone to help you make it, whether with a technical co-founder or you paid someone to make it for you, how long did it take you to finally find that person? any personal hardships you care to share that you experienced along the way?
what resources/local groups/meetups did you use to try to find people to work on the idea with you?
if you havent been able to make your idea into a reality, what is your road block? funding? not able to find a technical cofounder? have you tried to raise money to fund your idea? did you start to learn a new skill to build your product on your own?