Dear Programmer, I have an idea

I'm always looking for a co-founder, whether I'm the geek or the suit. When a suit approaches me to be the geek for their idea, I usually give them some simple technical task to do - like setup a Tumblr or a Twitter account for the idea. Then I'll often ask for something businessy - form a C-corp for the idea or file a provisional patent.<p>Finally, before I even consider opening my laptop to code their idea, I want some paltry measure of idea validation. Are you selling a product? Good, find someone who will pay you to do the task manually before we program it. Are you looking to give the service away and monetize the user base? Good, get 5000 emails from a landing page describing your idea, or get 1000 followers on Twitter for your idea's account.<p>If they can do all this in a day or even a week, then they're quality co-founder material. Any longer and it's a judgement call. Most won't get past step one, and you certainly didn't want them as a co-founder.

Mostly, I want to hear that they know that their idea is not the end of their contribution -- that they are going to spend as much time as I spend on technical things getting market validation, building traction, creating content, acceptance testing etc.<p>Usually, I get the sense from these kind of emails that they think the idea is so great, that just by itself, it's more valuable than the time you will spend implementing it (or even comparable).

They usually understand when I tell them that "Equity isn't tasty".<p>Some of them then offer money, which can be traded for things that are tasty. They are the ones I usually end up working with.

I don't think I've ever received the kind of email the poster is talking about. Is there something wrong with me?<p>Edit: I do get a reasonable number of cold(ish) recruitment emails, but they mostly seem to be for real jobs. I'm not seriously worried about not receiving lame proposals, although I appreciate the sympathetic thoughts :-)

I am surprised [may be even amazed] that these kind of articles are making it to the HN's front page on a regular basis.<p>There are tons of people with muddy wishful thinking that can not execute even if you put the gun to their heads. This statement covers both commercial and technical side. If these people approach you, say no... unless they can offer money for your efforts.<p>Only the minority have required knowledge, experience, focus, will and smarts to execute on any kind of idea and build a proper business. It easy to recognise such people [based on hiring 101] - look at their past successes. If these people approach you, say yes... even if you are offered shmequity [but check the legal docs].<p>I have a feeling that most of such articles are driven by the ego thing, and help people to validate their self-worth. Not sure this the most effective way for self-validation.<p>My another feeling is the SV people are living in a kind of rosy bubble and are constantly patting each other in back to help their view of the world hold together. Well, may be do something of value?<p>P.S.: of course the above does have certain generalizations, but smart people shall have not hurt feeling, yes?

It's a little like having an idea for a book or a movie, and going to an author or director wanting to "collaborate" to make the idea a reality. The simple fact is that it's hard to render ideas into any form that is <i>widely digestible</i>. Just like directors and authors, programmers "prechew" ideas. There are some surprising rewards to learning how to do this, in that much like a sculptor or a painter one realizes that the medium is actually rather influential, and how pleasant it is to "go with the grain" for any given project. But still, it's hard to learn how to prechew software ideas into reality, it is often not a pleasant task, which is probably why emails like this one have such an unpleasant character.<p>Although, wanting to have a pet geek to do your bidding is entirely understandable. Heck, I've been guilty of wanting that myself! And, I guess if I had the dough (or the charisma) I could have one. But an idea is an insulting offer - like offering $20 for your house.

I'll throw in my 2 cents as typical HN 'suit'. For background, I do have a technical co-founder and am working on something currently and we've been working together over a year and are on our second project.<p>First, I think the OP's response was perfectly acceptable. Its important as a technical co-founder to determine quickly what the "suit" can bring to the table although I do think he left out some valuable skills like marketing, user adoption, team building. He did include 'industry experience' which is critical. (edit: I also recall my co-founder then asking me situational questions like how I would market x app, who would use it, pricing, etc to see if I've thought through the process)<p>Second, one aspect that I see missing often is chemistry. Over the last few years I've attempted multiple projects with several different people and I can't stress how important chemistry is with your co-founder and/or team. I actually really enjoy hanging out with my co-founder and consider him a friend and we regularly hang out (with each other's families) and that kind of trust carries over to our work. Trust is something you can't quantify so for those in search of co-founders, don't just look at credentials but look at the person too.<p>My last thought is that although you're a 'suit' like I am, you need to make an effort. There is a general curve that says in the idea phase the majority of the workload is done by the technical co-founder. While true, I do my best to try and offset that. It gives me no joy to sit on my ass while my buddy is coding to 3am every night. How would it make you feel if you're busting your ass pitching, getting customers, and doing cust dev while they are at happy hour? So to respond to this I do my best. I've picked up basic design skills (PS/AI/FW), I've gotten his help to install ruby and learn basic HTML/CSS so I can make easy changes. I alternate every few days from doing something design centric, customer oriented (get feedback/lead gen), to thinking about our product direction.<p>So my take aways are: ask questions, figure out if you can work together, and make sure everyone is willing to put in the work to make it happen.

Partnerships are harder than marriage. I have learnt so much about successful friendships and relationships from successful partnerships.<p>Getting on the same page, and staying on the same page is the defining challenge of partnerships.<p>If reports of how much YC focuses on the co-founder relationship are true, I think it's a big part of the secret.<p>The healthiest partnership that I enjoy is based on a tough/fair love approach of mincing no words, but having a deep, deep respect and trust for the others abilities and judgement based on one thing: We know what we know, and we know what we don't know, and we don't bs.<p>We work to get the hell out of each others way and instead support and push each other forward so we keep moving, inward, onward, and upward. I want to make sure in partnership, that 1+1 = 11, not 2. If our collective footprint isn't larger than any two normal people coming together, the leaps we have to take will take that much more work.<p>When finding a partner, one relationship for me has been forming since high school, through university, and now a friend doing some consulting for me. We have solved complex problems with differing opinions for over 15 years. I have found the bliss of knowing everything that we build will be built at least as good as I would have imagined to do it. (I code or can sell, but not both at the same time very easily). If he's hell bent on doing something a particular way to be kinder to ourselves in the future, great. He's usually hell bent on avoiding premature optimization, though, so again, the balance is there in a way we both agree. Having the chance to work together on in consulting, with one of us<p>I don't care to argue details that my partner understands better. If there's a scenario I need explained until I get it, I focus on asking for input and teaching on that. Likewise, my partner treats me the same.<p>Partnerships reveal not just the good, but the bad and ugly. You need to know how your partner will be at your side and have your back in times of challenge, stress, trouble and disagreement. Stress, and disagreement is guaranteed. How you both approach resolving and being in a place of mutual agreement is critical. Really, it's about learning to communicate early, often, and openly. If you can't do that, like any marriage, the relationship suffers from what it could have accomplished. You need to know how to disagree and be able to constantly say "You might be right / I don't know / Let's find out." without fear.

Most of the "ideas" that come to me in this way are not really ideas. It's more like "a blog network", "streaming audio" or, in a few cases, more like "a blog". If it's someone I know, I discuss with them and try to give them some advice on what a situation would look like where I <i>might</i> be interested. Usually, I try to give some tips on how to start small. Usually, they don't, but keep on trying to build a team, or get someone to give them money.<p>There was a post like this on HN some time ago (a few months or perhaps a year) which I found well put, not too harsh while shedding light from the author's perspective. Does anyone remember this article?<p>Edit: I found this[1], it might be the one but I think I remember a better one. This one[2] about NDAs is also good.<p>[1] <a href="http://martingryner.com/no-i-wont-be-your-technical-co-founder/" rel="nofollow">http://martingryner.com/no-i-wont-be-your-technical-co-found...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/why-i-wont-sign-your-nda/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/why-i-wont-sign-your-...</a>

Hey, at least he told you the idea. Most of the time when I get this email, the project is suuuuper secret and I'm just supposed to take the senders word on the awesomeness.

I'm a non-tech founder (second startup) and I've had a hard time finding a tech co-founder. So I worked with programmers who are partners on the project, ie they get paid much less than they would in a normal gig, but they get their price cut "risk" paid several times down the road if it works. And since it's always a big if, I think this is the most genuine form of risk and revenue sharing short of being real co-founders. (feel free to get in touch on sversille@flirtatiouslabs.com if you'd like to see a contract template for this kind of partnership)<p>This being said, programmers tend to be the tiniest bit too full of themselves. So, besides the idea, here's a few things I've done as a non-tech founder: fundraising, algorithm writing, iterative design (with playtesting from recruting testers to analyzing results quantitatively), marketing, debugging. Also, hey, I managed the project, which with 3 devs, 1 graphic designer, 1 sound designer, and 2 creative writers accross 3 timezones does require a bit of work. Here's the Facebook game we've done on 20k€ FYI, and for which we're approaching launch: apps.facebook.com/flirtati<p>It's obviously far from perfect, but my point here is that "suits" can have valid ideas and should not just be seen as wantrepreneurs, especially by developers who are good but might still for example need me to do a search during debugging and tell them why nvarchar should be used at some point instead of a simple varchar. End of rant.

Don't fall for that idea trap. Just ask for money. If they don't have it, tell them to get funders and hire you as a first programmer AND equity if they really want you.<p>It is always better to have something in your pocket than 50% of nothing.

To be honest I might consider some sort of profit/equity split with somebody who had a really good idea (and had done the research to prove it).<p>Sometimes between reading stuff like HN and working on code all day I feel like I'm a bit too close to everything to really evaluate ideas rationally. Every time I've had I can usually think of 100 reasons to shoot it down and make it seem like more effort than it's worth.<p>The problem I guess is that most of these ideas aren't really that good because the person thinking of them hasn't really considered the effort and cost involved.<p>Reminds me of being back in school where a handful of us had learned very basic BASIC programming. Naturally we decided "shit, let's make an awesome game and be rich!". Of course such a project attracted entire legions of hangers on who wanted to be "game designers" or "level designers". Nobody thought that making a few shareware text-adventures or sprite based games would be cool, everybody came with ideas about how to make the next Doom or Sonic except <i>even more</i> ambitious.

At one point in time I was the person writing these emails. Now, I'm the person getting these emails.<p>It is hard to be an entrepreneur when you can't make things. If you're good at selling, you still need something to sell.

I have been through this a lot with a music/art interactive platform I've been working on for the past year and a half or so. My gut take on this is that programmers have the same problem musicians have; although they may be in demand, they overestimate their ability to evaluate potential enterprises. (great players have about as much trouble evaluating whether a band is worth joining as A&#38;R people did picking winners)<p>I started not only with an innovative and fun product idea which is fairly contained technically, but also very significant technical ability of my own (working professionally as everything from an SEO guy back in the day and a UI/UX guy for 10 years), niche expertise/perspective and very hard to get connections, marketing experience, a fairly coherent business strategy with potential customers expressing interest, and although I don't have a ton of funding I have never asked anyone to work for free or "just equity" ... ever.<p>And I still can't hire objective C developers. What's wrong with this picture?<p>Did I mention I live in a major US city. And I'm friendly and (usually) easygoing?<p>One conclusion is that I have an unrealistic view of what I'm offering, or that I am terrible at looking for people (probably both true) but another factor may be unexamined assumptions on the part of developers when they evaluate a potential opportunity. Perhaps they already "know" what a cofounder looks and talks like, without realizing their preconception exists. Perhaps they have a picture in their head already of what a "good" or "successful" product will be ... or perhaps they really want to be working on a idea of their own but are having trouble getting started, which creates semi-conscious ambivalence about working on the ideas of others. I don't know that any of this is true, but having spent my life around talented creative people of widely varying levels of "success" that's what occurs to me.<p>Just an outside perspective.

The first app I ever recruited technical people to was thecityswig.com. It required a ton of industry knowledge and foot work, all of which I provided, so we all felt like we were equal.<p>Now, when I present ideas I come at it from this direction: if you want to work with me, you're the boss. You decide how much I'm worth and we'll go from there. I know you're going to be more valuable, especially initially, so your ownership should reflect that. However, I'm going to work my ass of to make sure you don't have to worry about anything but building the product. What's that plus my experience and hustle worth to you?

Definitely goes both ways. "Dear Business Person, I have a side project" and I heard you are good at getting customers/funding/partnerships/employees - can we get coffee for an hour so you can tell me how to achieve these goals so I can raise some funding, or maybe you'd like to be an advisor and we can meet a couple times each week for free. Sometimes a polite no works, but often I am surprised by the degree of entitlement people seems to feel when making this kind of ask, and have to decline multiple times before they get it.

Incidentally, i had a discussion with a colleague(non techie) of mine, who wanted to learn programming so that he could make apps and earn money. People actually think if they learn programming or have an app out there in the market will get rich. At least this has been the reason I have seen quite a few people drifting towards programming, they see it as a shortcut to realize their million dollar dream overnight. But the story out here in market is tough, bro! "It takes 20 years to be an overnight success."

If you're the ideas guy--"the suit" or whatever slightly condescending term you're calling us now--I think you're almost always better off learning to program on your own. Once you've learned enough to build a prototype, and are actually on your way or have created an MVP, you've indicated a) that you're serious about this project, b) whether it's viable going forward, and c) that you're not a complete technical neophyte. Most importantly, you've flipped the script to a certain extent -- you can now be selective about who you choose to work with, and you've qualified yourself enough to be an arbiter of quality.<p>Just my two cents. I can understand why the developers here might hesitate to work with someone who hasn't proven that he's willing to put in the work. But on the other hand, if you're a serious non-technical co-founder, I'm not convinced it's a great idea to just pick the first developer who's willing to work with you. Seems like a recipe for disaster.

That is a really great response by the programmer! I think I will copy it verbatim.

I hate that font, unreadable.

<i>Idea guys</i> these days don't even bother, it used to be that they would make a serious attempt, make documentation, mockups, a .ppt, etc...<p>These days I get emails from people who don't even know how to make an executive summary, how am I supposed to believe this guy can take care of the business side while I get 5 hours of sleep a day trying to code the app?<p>And that's the problem, if your pitch email is less than three paragraphs long I don't even bother, because I know it's probably the same one you sent some other coder and you couldn't even bother to write a proper personal request.

Regarding your 4 bullet points :<p>1) Why do you assume that he is asking you to code for free or equity and not for pay ? Did he say it explicitly in email or you just assumed ?<p>2) There is not enough info here to say anything.<p>3) On the flip side, do you have considerable leadership skills as a technical person to complement this non-technical person's considerable technical skill you expect him to have?<p>4) Do you have considerable communication skills to complement this person's considerable design skill you expect him to have?<p>[Note, I have been programming since last 20 years.]

Greetings Idea Person,<p>To proceed, please sign a Retainer Agreement.<p>Kind Regards, Programmer.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retainer_agreement" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retainer_agreement</a>

There's one more thing I would like to add. Apologies if it's already discussed... Non-techie guys with ideas should not think that by offering nice stock options/equity to a techie, they can get them on board.. A simple thought - there's no value of your equity.. So, do not make the mistake of thinking that you're obliging the techie by offering him/her a considerable stake in your idea/company...

Pitching to a programmer is the best from of natural selection. Someone should make a webform that directs non programmers through The Wax on Wax Off of being an effective non programmer. There is equal contribution that can occur with non programmers but it takes quiet a bit more effort than most non techs think.

Next up, I'd like to read.<p>Dear Investor, I want some money

Wasn't this just an intro email? I occasionally get emails from friends or friends of friends who are looking for marketing advice and while most of the projects don't interest me, I at least send back another email asking a few questions before rejecting them.

unfortunately being beginner , i also came across same people as mentioned here, just offering idea and just seating next to you, doing nothing and asking for percentage in project/start up.Soon after i realized, people should be credited depending on their contribution and not just for sitting. We famously call this people as "Associate Percentage Partners" :D but this time lesson learned !

&#62;In the current tech environment, any programmer worth their salt and known to be somewhat available is also getting these emails.<p>Is this actually true?

The best kind of non-coding cofounder is a brilliant showman.

meh

there's another route. break down what you want to do and you can basically get it done for free. For example:<p>--------------<p>Requirements.<p>1. requisition an Amazon EC2 instance for me.<p>No other steps.<p>--------------<p>then a tech guy on IRC will do it for $5. Next, you want to get someone to do the following. I need a programmer to put a plain rails installation on my amazon ec2 instance.<p>--------------<p>Requirements.<p>1. Install rails on my amazon server.<p>No other steps, no configuration.<p>--------------<p>Then someone from IRC will do it for you, shittily, for $10.<p>Next, you want to do the hard part. "I need someone to create a page in my rails installation that says Enter your email address in the box below. It doesn't have to work. Like this: <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_form_submit" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_for...</a><p>--------------<p>Requirements doc:<p>1. The following code translated into a rails app that doesn't have to do anything:<p>- <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_form_submit" rel="nofollow">http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_for...</a><p>There are no other requirements.<p>--------------<p>Someone will do it for you for $5. Next you would say:<p>"I need to get this rails form working." and link to the page showing the non-working form.<p>--------------<p>Requirements doc.<p>1. Whenever a user submits their name and address on the following rails page __________ it should be added to a database connected to rails.<p>There are no other requirements.<p>--------------<p>Someone on IRC will do it for $10.<p>Next you would requisition a non-working table of other names who have used that field. Next you requisition someone to get the table working.<p>Next you requisition a change from "name and email address" to the REAL point of your form. Maybe you're building an online trading platform where people can enter information about collectable turds, and you will be monetizing this.<p>--------------<p>Requirements doc.<p>1. Change "name" and "email address" to two different fields I give you, keeping the application working.<p>No other requirements.<p>--------------<p>Someone will do it for you for $10.<p>In this way you can boil the chicken slowly, and by the time you've blown through $85 you'll have a complete turd-trading platform with built-in recurring billing and a % commission your turd platform takes on every transaction.<p>Yes, not everyone can pull it off. Your main risk is that you have to kind of screen the fifty-sixty programmers who will be comming in and out of your amazon instance.<p>But with a little dedication, you can pretty much get unlimited work for free and get to keep 100% of it. The point is to only do one super-simple thing at a time.<p>I guess you have to have some technical understanding of what's happening behind the scenes to pull this off though. Maybe enroll in a quick seminar :)<p>Good luck with your turd platform.

&#62;&#62; Have some way to pay the developer.<p>&#62;&#62; Have an impressive track record of expertise / success in the relevant industry.<p>&#62;&#62; Have considerable technical skills.<p>&#62;&#62; Have considerable design skills.<p>If I have all that, why do I need YOU to execute this idea?

Rant warning...<p>Since when are computer programmers too good to want ideas to work on from people who may have valid business domain knowledge?<p>In my opinion software and programming skills are worth LESS THAN NOTHING if they don't have a business idea to monetize them... And last time I checked, my programming colleagues rarely possessed valuable insights into what problems non-programmers are willing to spend money on.<p>Tell you what, if anyone wants has ideas like the one posted above, please send them to my email address because I would be more than happy entertain your start-up ideas in my spare time. If its not a good fit I would love to take the time to discuss it with you as it will probably be a good learning experience for the both of us if nothing else we will both make a new friend or connection.<p>email: imechura AT gmail DOT com