Premise 1: Investors/Incubators over-estimate their ability to pick good ideas/startups.<p>Premise 2: Software by a lone developer is not pragmatically different from software by a big A-team. It’s the market fit and marketing / sales that makes or breaks the project.<p>Premise 3: Most freelancers will not build and/or follow-through with their ideas, because they are not sure it will sell.<p>Premise 4: HackerNews has a decent number of people who know how the world works, and how a little glue would make it better.<p>Based on these premises I present The Proposition 2.0 (following version 1.0 [1]):<p>I’ll pay you $500 for your “real-life problem that needs a software fix” idea and market validation / research. I will build the MVP and give you another $1500 to bring us our first paying customer(s). We split the resulting product 80-20 as co-founders.<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694 [2] https://www.simonnouwens.com/hn
This doesn't make much sense. A 20% royalty is an absurdly high price to pay for an idea, for which you'd do all the execution; meanwhile, if you expect them to do substantial work as a "co-founder", 20% is absurdly too low.
I love building. I’d do an MVP for much less equity if I’d actually get it. But I won’t. One of my MVPs turned into a $500M acquisition. Got $0.<p>This is normal in Silicon Valley. So many unicorns hiding skeletons of enthusiastic side-project coders.<p>I’d say don’t do it, but... to be honest, I never could have hyped my own prototype the way they did. I didn’t have the rich kid VC connections that they did. And I needed my day job. So really I lost nothing. At least I got the story.
This seems like a doubly losing proposition. If you created my idea and I only get to keep 20%, I wouldn't assist you very much in maintaining the business. If I were to partner with someone, I would resent shelling out 20% to an absent partner. Ideas aren't worth a fifth, and a fifth isn't a suitable carrot/stick.
How did the first[1] offer went?<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694</a>
Premise 5: My expectation is that you don't have anything close to what I would expect -- especially for an 80% share -- so why should I waste my time with you?
There is a lot to running a business beyond the first MVP and customer. Being a cofounder is as intense if not more intense than being married. I would almost flip it around so you take a 20% passive stake with an priority to a dividend or a royalty on revenue so that you aren’t expected to manage multiple companies as a “founder”.<p>I am assuming that you are trying to get multiple ideas off the ground.
So you'll pay $500 for an idea you like, pay $1500 after first customer, and then pay a 20% royalty after that. Seems like a potentially good deal.<p>Can you elaborate a bit more about what type of projects you are looking for? Any specific markets?
I like how some people are complaining that he'll take 80%... for what amounts to just giving you an idea and the first client.<p>Usually we hear the opposite side on HN. "Why would VCs own so much if all they offer is money when we (programmers) do all the work".<p>I think people should take him up on it.
Out of curiosity, what was the outcome of The HN Proposition 1.0?<p>Edit: <a href="http://www.simonnouwens.com/hn/index.php/2019/03/31/init-commit/" rel="nofollow">http://www.simonnouwens.com/hn/index.php/2019/03/31/init-com...</a> answers the question
Shit I’ll pay you $10k and only keep 10%. Finding real life problems that (truly) require a (tenable) software fix are getting harder and harder to find.
This is perfect idea. Here's usecase.<p>At our startup, our main cashflow is reselling on Amazon. The current business model we are using shares a lot of similarity with other Amazon sellers. There are a lot of workflows that are cookie cutter across other sellers/companies that can be automated/improved with custom tools.<p>There's demand for what we need (automation tools, api tools to request specific materials from Amazon), we will even pay and be the first customer ourselves.<p>If we can get equity for you to build this tool, this is a no brainer idea!<p>You can reach out to me in my profile, love to setup a call to discuss a bit more on this.
Further information here: <a href="http://www.simonnouwens.com/hn/index.php/2019/03/31/init-commit/" rel="nofollow">http://www.simonnouwens.com/hn/index.php/2019/03/31/init-com...</a><p>After reading that, I'm interested. Emailed you.<p>Also, to the person who asked about who gets bigger share of equity: as mentioned in the link above, it looks like you get 80%, the OP gets 20%.<p>Nevermind: It's OP 80%, you 20%.
Short version:<p>I'll buy 80% of your idea for $500.<p>In case first customer(s) will ever come - i'll give you another $1,500.<p>Not clear: if no customer(s) will ever come after X days - who owns the idea?
This proposition's assumption is that there's something <i>special</i> about ideas. Reminds me of the kind of person that might make you sign an NDA before telling you a "cool idea I had last night." It's no secret that YC -- like basically all incubators -- invests in <i>people</i>, not <i>ideas</i>. Teams will sometimes fumble for years before they find product-market fit.<p>There are no shortcuts.
I posted a similar proposition <a href="https://webuild.tools" rel="nofollow">https://webuild.tools</a> (build the software for free and retain the client as the first customer)
I have time/interest to build side projects and built many too. But nothing takes off as it is never backed a solid business need. And I am no where close to solving this problem.
Premise 1: I agree, many investors have more money than sense.<p>Premise 2: I completely agree; in fact I think that solo side projects are coded more efficiently than commercial software.<p>Premise 3: I disagree. I code most of my side projects, because I have too much free time. I just don't follow through on the documentation/uploading part. This may be because of market fit, or copyright worries, or because I like coding more than writing up. Nevertheless I do still add projects to Show HN, especially when trying to apply for jobs.<p>Premise 4: Yes, I agree, Hacker News is a wonderful community.<p>I'm not a marketer, so I can't provide your market validation/research. Rather, I'm a maker like you! But I have no shortage of ideas that I'll talk about for free. For example, my most recent script (27 March) was a rewrite of VideoSubFinder that runs in 5 minutes instead of 2 hours. It's all part of my Pingtype Chinese learning project, which still hasn't taken off, but I keep building on it because it teaches me so much better than textbooks.
My idea is to build a digital giving economy. You get to keep 100% of everything given to you through the site. If successful, you can retire comfortably with little money while being held by the giving community and go forward in a life of service, if you so choose.<p>As the site produces no money, you can keep 100% of all revenue.
I’m currently pondering how strange it is that I would take either side of this deal.<p>I have half baked ideas I’d love someone to take and run with and me collect a bit of that.<p>And I’d love to hear profitable ideas in industries I’m not familiar with and put some code together.<p>Yet I don’t have an idea I’d want to build into a business myself. Weird.
Here's the math: If OP can speed up the rate of hitting acquisition and/or increase valuation by >= 5 times, it's a good deal. Say if it would take you 20 years to do something, and this cuts it down to 4 years, it's a good deal.
This proposition probably needs further refinement, but I like it because it will explore an area where there's little historical data or real world examples.<p>I think that the first few dozens of "pitches" will give a much clearer sense of what kind of ideas you can attract, and also what's the friction in the interaction between the "producer" and the "idea person".<p>Keep going. And please, if you can, share more once you've been through this for a while. Very curious to see where this will go.
half the comments here think you're offering to do the mvp, the market research, and find the first customer, all for 2k+80%.<p>when i read it it looks like you're offering to do the mvp but you're buying the idea, market validation and first customer for 20%.<p>which is it?? the first option makes sense, but its not how i read it. if thats what you mean you should clarify.<p>if in fact you are just offering the mvp, you are <i>terribly undervaluing</i> the work involved in validating the idea. the 80-20 split is backwards.
I like this idea; I had a company based on this premise (we took 20, owner took 80 and we did the dev and seed invest); I would like to go back to that now that I have a much larger network of investors and business development partners. I am looking for cofounding full stack devs to join me as I am now much more on the business side.
! I have a couple Ideas both a wedding subcontractor platform...and mindfullness reminder app.<p>As for the wedding platform , I even have the people who would be available to signup as sub-contractors.<p>Venues could signup we get a percentage for advertisement we handle all payment processing, hmu if you are interested working together.
Let me propose a hypothetical? business arrangement where my startup selects and screens applicants and their ideas to you / your team. How would we arrange the split funding in this case with a similar spirit?
We are working on an exchange and wallet solution that provides an insurance feature similar to US FDIC.<p>Evermint Exchange
<a href="https://evermint.com" rel="nofollow">https://evermint.com</a>
hakim@evermint.com
Hi Simon, I sent you an email with the subject the same as the title of this thread. I am concerned that it will be filtered into your spam box, so kindly check for an email from me. Thanks!
I feel like these sort of mvp type ideas work great for software only, as soon as you involve a physical device how do you go about avoiding capital risk? I don't think you can!
What language(s) do you prefer using? How about databases? I’d be interested in starting a dialogue with you. My email is jwheeler726 at googles email service.
Idea: A platform for general discussion that takes what's best about HN, Reddit and even 4chan/5ch etc. while eliminating most of their flaws.
1. I like the alternative to the status quo for "starting a company". Even more so b/c you're addressing the unmet implicit desire to finish side projects.<p>2. Premise 1 is agreeable. P2 doesn't hold past the initial VC demo, let alone MVP stage. P3: probably approximately correct. P4: I would agree.<p>3. Skimming the comments here and seeing mixed/confused feedback, I assume those taking this more seriously are keeping silent.