Starting you own Business "The Journal"

[AAAgent]

I own a web development company and my best programmer, by a country mile, is indian. I'd be pretty ****ed without him at this point.

Frankley, your project is too small for what we do so I'm not trying to push my compaines stuff on you but PM me before you hire someone so i can look at their stuff for you i can do that for you

If you want to go the indian route i can put you in contact with the guy you need to be put in contact with

Thanks BB for the heads up but i'm familiar with your company through my research. From my knowledge, it's what you said, web development. I'm looking for mobile app development and have been in contact with firms that focus on that, which i think is probably my best bet. I maybe be looking at web development in the future but that doesn't come into play yet.

App development from what i've been quoted can be done for 5k-100k depending on the complexity and quality. i'm definitely not paying the low end as i will pay for the quality, and i don't expect to be paying the high end as the coding (i've been already told by a programmer i know, the PhD mentioned) is not complex.

Any suggestions on how to overcome the MAJOR downside of being a single founder with no technical experience starting a technical company would be appreciated.

The startup incubators rarely fund single man companies, let alone single man tech companies without technical expertise (re-iteration of the above).

I've weighed out my pro's and con's as unbiased as i could as a potential investor and the con's outweight the pro's without a technical co founder. I do have some things i plan to do that should even things out but any other ideas would be greatly appreciated. If you guys don't know how to judge your own concept with weighted values, you should learn to do it. It has helped me in the process of developing viable concepts/businesses.

Pro's

Idea Good +1 (confirmed by 10+ people and not one person has been able to identify a fault worthy of throwing out the concept)
Invested money/has developed an MVP (prototype) +2 (this shows that i'm dedicated and focused and i will have to actually execute this to get the Pts)
Proof of market/concept that my clients are interested in this +1
Social Media +1
Simple coding and easy to build/manage +1
multiple sources of revenue for an app +1

Cons
Non technical single co founder of a technical company -10

Pros +7, Con's -10

As i stated above, i plan on turning that +7 to +11. Proof of concept/market is generally sufficient with one single reputable company saying they are interested if they investors like the team and the concept. Since they won't like my team, i plan to get 20 reputable potential clients to say yes. I believe that gives me a fighting chance and I will still be open to them recommending a technical co-founder. Also once i start to gain traction and recognition there will be more people interested in joining.




I'd like to scratch out learning to code. I will read on coding but asking me to learn to code in 2 months or less is not likely and a waste of my time at this crucial moment.

 

[backbreaker]

we do mobile app (mainly android based) development as well. that's about 30% of our work.

I would really steer clear of the venture capital route. It costs money to raise money, the more money you want the more money you have to spend sending out prospectus and stuff like that and that is going to drain you.

put your project on elance or freelancer, upload any supporting documents and see who bids on it. it will be most likely less than 10k to get what you want IMHO. IMHO you are over estimating the costs to build this.

let me explain something to you to make you feel better. I put out a proposal today for a $14,000 dollar project. It will take 2 months. 5 years ago, when we were building our portfolio up, we would have charged that same client probably $4-6k. and the quality fo work would have been the same

You aren't so much paying for quality man as much as you are paying for overhead. For me to have a flash programmer and to have a ruby programmer and 2 graphic designers all on staff at all times that costs money. And ****, i keep costs down by having everyone work at home, we don't have any office expenses. You are going to these firms and i'm not saying they aren't worth it but you aren't necessarily paying more because they are better you are paying more because they have more overhead and good programmers don't come cheap.

Now, there are things that because I have the manpower, that I can do now that we could not do 5 years ago, we can offer more bells and whistles per project. But the quality of programmers is not really any different from 5 years ago. my best programmer has been with me for 4 years now.

Do yourself a favor and put your project up on elance or freelancer and see who bids on it, do your homework. Find you someone with a small team but does quality work and understands exactly what you want.

PS- **** the cofounder ****. I would probably be on the NYSE today if not for my ****ty stupid old business partner. You want as much control as possible. Trust me.

 

[LiveFreeX]

Hey guys sorry to interrupt here but I'd like your take on it since you are both IT professionals:

Would a college diploma suffice to get a job as a programmer? I've been making my way through the code academy, have previous exp in C++ and OOP. I've been thinking I might go back to school for a 2 year Software Dev program at a community college. It has a paid co-op option and I'm too old and have too many responsibilities to tackle an unpaid 4 year degree.

As you know, I've been teaching English for awhile here and one of my hobbies has been building games with Cocos2D. Anyway, one of my friend's who is a software Engineer at home (python) has been asking me to come back and get a job so we can work on the Oculus Rift. I'm really excited for the future. Infact, I'm so excited, I'd like to get get involved in the development.

One day, I'd like to see classrooms, desks and chairs gone from the face of the earth and kids able to put on a VR headset and goto school from the privacy of their own home (there was a simpson's episode about this). I've been looking at making a demo of this with the Unity engine but that thing is $1500 just for 2 licenses... do you think its worth it to buy one for myself? There is no way I can do all this by myself so I would probably need to get a dev job with EA or some big company with loads of resources. Is it worth it to purchase a game engine and train myself or should I hold out and learn hard code engines instead? Building something like this with just one programmer and very little graphics' skills seems pretty daunting. My friend is a business coder so neither of us would be qualified to build something like this. I'm thinking the only way to build these skills 'on the cheap' would be to get on with a big company in the video game industry.

So then 3 questions:

1. Possibility of job in programming with A+,N+,Linux+ and Software Dev diploma? I have a few games done in C to pad out my resume. I have a really good job here, so I'm not especially interested in going home unless I can line up something. Also wife and maybe kid shortly... so income is req'd.

2. Is Unity worth buying or should I just go with free tools and open source SDKs? Cocos3D sux as far as 3D game engines go. I'm a fan of the Unreal/Source Engine though and I think those would work quite well with the Rift.

3. Are base level programming languages still useful in the industry or do people even bother learning anymore? I mean when I started learning C/ASM 15 years ago there wasn't much of an internet to build on. Visual Basic was the 'in-thing' and C++ was only used in games and hardware. It seems here in the Code Academy, they only offer internet related languages such as jscript / jquery / python / html5 / ruby. Is no one using C anymore? She loves puzzles, math problems, rubiks and logic games so a language that mimics that would be awesome. What do you think?

 

[The_flying_dutchman]

Why expend effort to start up a business? Why not just buy an existing business? They already have the basic foundation and customer base.

This might sound silly, but I'm just throwing out ideas. Let's say, why not just buy someone's vending machine business and improve upon the foundation that they've laid? Why does it have to be a tech business, or a app business? It can be other things.

Venture capitalists are guys who are in the business of buying up businesses and making them profitable or even more profitable than they already are. Why not steal a play from their book and do what they do?


The harsh truth about life is that just because you have an idea doesn't mean that only you will profit from it. Eventually someone with more resources will take notice and copy/clone/steal your idea and steal a piece of your business or worse run you out of business.

If I had a choice of being an innovator or an immitator, I would chose immitator because I can steal a piece of the profit without having to expend the effort to pioneer the idea.

Is this ugly? yes

Is it a fact of life? yes

Would you profit from using these dirty tactics? probably

Remember: Business is war, and war is dirty business.

This isn't meant to discourage anyone, it's meant as a different perspective and hopefully it can be helpful to you and present a new way of looking at things.

 

[AAAgent]

we do mobile app (mainly android based) development as well. that's about 30% of our work.

I would really steer clear of the venture capital route. It costs money to raise money, the more money you want the more money you have to spend sending out prospectus and stuff like that and that is going to drain you.

put your project on elance or freelancer, upload any supporting documents and see who bids on it. it will be most likely less than 10k to get what you want IMHO. IMHO you are over estimating the costs to build this.

let me explain something to you to make you feel better. I put out a proposal today for a $14,000 dollar project. It will take 2 months. 5 years ago, when we were building our portfolio up, we would have charged that same client probably $4-6k. and the quality fo work would have been the same

You aren't so much paying for quality man as much as you are paying for overhead. For me to have a flash programmer and to have a ruby programmer and 2 graphic designers all on staff at all times that costs money. And ****, i keep costs down by having everyone work at home, we don't have any office expenses. You are going to these firms and i'm not saying they aren't worth it but you aren't necessarily paying more because they are better you are paying more because they have more overhead and good programmers don't come cheap.

Now, there are things that because I have the manpower, that I can do now that we could not do 5 years ago, we can offer more bells and whistles per project. But the quality of programmers is not really any different from 5 years ago. my best programmer has been with me for 4 years now.

Do yourself a favor and put your project up on elance or freelancer and see who bids on it, do your homework. Find you someone with a small team but does quality work and understands exactly what you want.

PS- **** the cofounder ****. I would probably be on the NYSE today if not for my ****ty stupid old business partner. You want as much control as possible. Trust me.

Thanks for all the indepth responses guys.

@BB

Not sure what you mean by prospectus as i don't plan to go public and thoughts like that don't even come to mind. Nowadays, you need money to make money. You can make little money by opening up a business and running it yourself. You're a single business owner, you know what i'm talking about. I grew up with parents that did the same thing. Became millionaires and they're pretty stagnant now as the burden is too much on them. I've learned in life you need to delegate work. Delegating work comes best when you have other resources at your disposal/other partners. Also the app i may be able to develop on my own but the app requires other work behind it....i'm going to be running a company, not a program so i will have employees that will require money.

VC's although are a pain and do put pressure on people, i need their connections, expertise, and some of their money. I would be happy if they could bring on a co-founder that could help make this part of my vision happen. I have also discussed the route with my very close friends and family and i could raise additional funding through them first before the VC route. I work at for a company that is heavily entrenced servicing Investment Banks, Law Firms, and private equity firms in the M&A world. It's less for the money and more for everything else they bring.

I am familiar with Elance and the other freelancing sites out there for programmers to pickup work for cheap costs in order to gain experience. I've heard horror stories from elance of people copying code and seamingly making products that look good but no one else can work on outside of them and is essentially crap. My company has developed their product on such sh1tty coding and our front end site looks like such crap that we get complaints about it often. We can even make speedy updates because the code is such crap. We're essentially building our new products with crappy code ontop of existing crappy code. I'd rather pay a premium from a reputable company and forego all those headaches even if it does cover overhead (they run a business too). Paying for their overhead saves me my valueable time of vetting tons of programmers until i find a good one that can do what i need. Time is money.

As i mentioned to previously, i've done my research in costs and i already know what i'm expected to pay and am prepared for it. I've been quoted and have talked to developers i know.

Thanks for some of the advice but i've already weighed out those options.
----------------------

@LiveFree

I'm not a programmer and the only technical expertise i have is from working on a few startups/past business competitions/ and research.

@Dutchman

I work in the world of M&A such as PE/VC, IBanks, etc. If it were so easy to by and sell companies everyone would be doing it. Ontop of that i'd rather build a business from the ground up and become specialized and learn all the nitty gritty things myself as opposed to buying into a company and having all the problems hit me at once. If it were easy to start a business that imitated other businesses like fast food, everyone would be millionaires. In reality most imitators do a fair or more likely poor job and the ones that are out there that perform well are few and far between.

I do agree with business is a dirty business......i've seen and heard of some of that dirtyness.

 

[AAAgent]

Made 2 calls and 3 emails today trying to get in contact with the proper departments. Have yet to talk to a real person and the emails have yet to receive a response. Still very early but no results yet.

 

[AAAgent]

made another call today and got my first rejection. I was still very nervous and did not articulate my thoughts well. After much bouncing around i got in contact with someone in marketing and made my terrible pitch and was rejected by Nike. Will try other companies and continue to perfect my pitch.

 

[AAAgent]

I took 2 days off of work this week to make phone calls to public companies. Yesterday and today. I called roughly over 30 companies and not once did i reach the marketing department and speak with an actual person. I had left voicemails with marketing managers, hung up, asked to mail in stuff and was even bounce around to 3-4 different people just to try to reach marketing. Was not able to get one company to say yes but people that did hear me pitch were genuinely nice enough to help me. I guess i will call a few more companies while planning out my next route. How do sales guys get their job done? Maybe i need to do this until i call atleast 200 companies.

Figuring that i may not get the Yes i need from one of these companies in time, i called one of the development companies again to get quoted on an MVP. This is the number 2 firm in the country and they loved the idea and were surprised at the originality and simplicity of it. They told me just to develop an MVP they would require $60-70k. The finished product would cost around $100-200k. Granted they are considered an external development team that serves your company, that is too much for my budget. We discussed multiple avenues of funding and finding a co-founder as well or potentially finding people to write an mvp for me at cheaper costs (but we both mentioned that these people have a high chance of writing **** code).

These are major hurdles that i've hit. Applications open most likely in a few weeks and all i have still is a concept. Hope your week is going better than mine.

 

[AAAgent]

YEAAAH!!!!

I'm jumping for joy right now at my desk (figuratively speaking). I just sat down with my companies rockstar salesguy and pitched him my business and he's agreed to join as a co-founder.

Very small win for me but it's nice to be making some progress.

Next up, 20 yes from potential clients and find a technical co-founder.

 

[AAAgent]

applications for the competition opened today. I have talked to 3 programmers, 2 who were interested and 1 who wasn't. The one who wasn't didn't seem to care or want to work in a start-up so that isn't really bashing on the business at all. Of the 2 who were interested 1 declined previously and i'm waiting on the others response as we spoke thursday. He isn't too confident in his abilities to handle the work load but is interested and wanted to think about it.

We're going to submit our applications hopefully in 2 weeks and i'll need to sit down with my sales guy to see how his progress is. Hopefully he has some progress. I still need to secure that technical co-founder. Will post an update when i have more concrete information to update on.

 

[AAAgent]

update

I've spoken to 7 people now all who have either said not interested, too busy, or they don't have enough experience. I spoke with one person yesterday through email who is a friend of a friend who has the right experience but is too busy to work on much as he was just hired by another start-up who has already received funding of over $1m. I will try to convince him but things are looking like they will have to proceed without a technical co-founder.

 

[Fatal Jay]

^
I'm not trying to go back and read what all you posted, but what type of business are you trying to run again?

 

[AAAgent]

mobile app that functions as a business.

I spoke with the very last developer and also the best. He's working at a startup that has $1m+ in funding already as i stated above.

He initially told me "he was too busy" in email but would be happy to talk and then again "too busy" on the phone until i pitched him hard with figures. He seemed very on the fence and asked for everything in writing to re-iterate my offer to him. I re-iterated everything that i offered him over the phone in email and said the next step is to draft of a contract in writing and meet the founders in person. He has yet to respond so i think we (me and my co founder) should make another push to get him on. Maybe a follow-up email with both of us on it and a follow-up response from my co-founder sales guy to try and confirm a meet.

In a way pushing him to join and making him feel a bit more part of the team. He does sound busy though.

The verbal offer was made yesterday night and i sent him an email of all the terms (not a contract). He knows i'm on a deadline so hopefully, if i'm lucky, i'll hear back before we have to reach out to him again with positive news. This is the first time i've actually had to hard sell somebody with multiple types of incentives and seems like money does talk.

 

[Fatal Jay]

If you need a thousand in a investor get at me.

 

[AAAgent]

Thanks Fatal Jay.

Appreciate the offer but we're looking for larger investments. I've already dished out over 10k into the company and my co-founder is going to funnel in more in a few months (probably another 10-15k).

I had a long talk with him and it seems like i've been rushing too much to make the winter applications which close on October 11th. If we do get accepted they'll be taking a larger stake as we literally have nothing to show at this point besides our team (which is still officially missing technical person) and concept. He asked me to lay out our options if we don't get a bid this round and i mentioned we could apply to the summer which more incubators open up for. He agreed that we should still apply this round for experience with or without a founder which i agreed, but if we don't get a bid, we can apply next round as we would have more traction with potential clients, more time to develop an MVP, and a firm understanding of how we want to launch the product to the market.

So if this round doesn't pan out, looks like we'll be applying in March to get funding in 2014 summer. This seems more realistic but i still have hope for this October.

 

[AAAgent]

So the startup developer that i made an offer to decided to not join. A small setback. Since we decided to push back our application to late january it gives us alot more time and we don't need to rush things. I've also found another contact that used to work at our company who is not a director at Techstars boston chapter. My co-founder will try to setup a call with him since they know each other.

Current problems are. I'm not taking control. I'm a very controlling person as i always do everything myself but i understand that this rubs people the wrong way at times, but if i don't take control and tell people what to do, things don't get done. Now the issue is, the sales guy is more experienced and a rockstar. He's been on the team for about a month and has done nothing. I try to put him on equal levels with me so we can share decisions but ultimately, i came up with the concept, worked out the kinks, built our network, recruited him, and even contacted every single developer we've had. He just bought a house and is still trying to get settled in, so that is understandable but unless he's contributing and helping the business make progress, i don't want to wait for him.

I'm a great follower if there is a leader i respect or a pretty stern leader. I guess this is my project and i should take the lead, but i'm not sure how to talk to someone who is supposed to be my equal in the business (views himself as a better leader as he's headed up many sales teams), but still take the lead.

I guess this is something i will have to figure out.

 

[Eph]

Hey guys sorry to interrupt here but I'd like your take on it since you are both IT professionals:

Would a college diploma suffice to get a job as a programmer? I've been making my way through the code academy, have previous exp in C++ and OOP. I've been thinking I might go back to school for a 2 year Software Dev program at a community college. It has a paid co-op option and I'm too old and have too many responsibilities to tackle an unpaid 4 year degree.

As you know, I've been teaching English for awhile here and one of my hobbies has been building games with Cocos2D. Anyway, one of my friend's who is a software Engineer at home (python) has been asking me to come back and get a job so we can work on the Oculus Rift. I'm really excited for the future. Infact, I'm so excited, I'd like to get get involved in the development.

One day, I'd like to see classrooms, desks and chairs gone from the face of the earth and kids able to put on a VR headset and goto school from the privacy of their own home (there was a simpson's episode about this). I've been looking at making a demo of this with the Unity engine but that thing is $1500 just for 2 licenses... do you think its worth it to buy one for myself? There is no way I can do all this by myself so I would probably need to get a dev job with EA or some big company with loads of resources. Is it worth it to purchase a game engine and train myself or should I hold out and learn hard code engines instead? Building something like this with just one programmer and very little graphics' skills seems pretty daunting. My friend is a business coder so neither of us would be qualified to build something like this. I'm thinking the only way to build these skills 'on the cheap' would be to get on with a big company in the video game industry.

So then 3 questions:

1. Possibility of job in programming with A+,N+,Linux+ and Software Dev diploma? I have a few games done in C to pad out my resume. I have a really good job here, so I'm not especially interested in going home unless I can line up something. Also wife and maybe kid shortly... so income is req'd.

2. Is Unity worth buying or should I just go with free tools and open source SDKs? Cocos3D sux as far as 3D game engines go. I'm a fan of the Unreal/Source Engine though and I think those would work quite well with the Rift.

3. Are base level programming languages still useful in the industry or do people even bother learning anymore? I mean when I started learning C/ASM 15 years ago there wasn't much of an internet to build on. Visual Basic was the 'in-thing' and C++ was only used in games and hardware. It seems here in the Code Academy, they only offer internet related languages such as jscript / jquery / python / html5 / ruby. Is no one using C anymore? She loves puzzles, math problems, rubiks and logic games so a language that mimics that would be awesome. What do you think?

I'm by no means employed in anything related to IT, but I have been programming for 4 years and am currently on my way to getting an A+, N+, and Security+ to add to the certification I already have so maybe I can be of some help.

To my knowledge, employers in the IT are more worried about experience than pieces of paper (degrees, not certifications) so if you are experienced, then you have a good shot. A+, Network+, and Security+ are not very relevant when it comes to developing. You may have a shot with Security+ and Network+, but it won't necessarily be a development job.

C++ is still very much used for games, while C (again to my knowledge) is used for interfacing with hardware like robots and such. jQuery is Javascript. By "Base level", I'll assume you mean low-level languages like the two you mentioned. Assembly is far more useful when dealing with OSes.

If anything you should really be learning languages useful for mobile development. Desktops aren't going anywhere anytime soon, but mobile is the future so as for languages that are here to stay you can count on: HTML/Javascript, C#, Java, and Objective-C.

You should probably hold off on purchasing a license for any engine for a while, and get used to the "feel" of free ones for the time-being. On that note: Cryengine 3 is a great one.

 

[AAAgent]

I continue to gather feedback from friends and family and they love the concept. My friend whose always been a stickler for good feedback thinks the concept is sound and hasn't been able to find anything wrong with it when he probed me with potential flaw questions. however he decided to tell me he still doesn't like it for no reasons.

He asked me if this has been done before and i said no. He went searching the web for a similar concept but didn't find any. He asked me how'd I make money and many other questions and i answered them. I have a cousin who also told me she isn't sure if this will work and really isn't sure about anything i do. She used to tell me not to do things because she didn't believe in me but after i've proved her wrong a bunch of times, she's now changed her stance to "not sure" if i should continue on my path of being an entrepreneur.

People in life will bash you, try and hold you down, not believe in you or what it is you're trying to do, but if you really do believe in what you're doing and put forth the effort it takes to be successful, then block out the negativity and continue to push forward. Eventually, when you do prove them wrong, you'll change their minds. People are fickle and tend to go with the trend.

 

[AAAgent]

Will be discussing with my partner soon about % splits. There's always issues talking about money, but we need to get this sorted out soon before we meet with our lawyer next week. I contacted my old B-Law professor who was a Managing Partner at a few pretty large Corporate law firms. He started his own small firm advising start-ups 3 years ago. I've had a call with him already and we're meeting next week to get setup as a company with performance clauses, splits, and everything in place to make us a fully legal running business.

He asked me many questions and said has come across a few companies trying to do what we're trying to do but no one has solved the money problem. I explained to him how we've solved it and he agreed that it would work and offered to meet us next week and provide lunch for us while we sorted out the whole incorporation process.

 

[AAAgent]

Incorporating has been put till this friday. I gotten the splits taken care of and managed to partially convince one programmer to join us. He agreed to join if we can show him that our clients are interested in our service. My sales guy is supposed to do this. The problem is, i've been doing everything. I've arranged 10 meetings with programmers. From calls, to emails, to in person discussions. I've managed to find people to help mentor/network us. I've even called companies and found our lawyer and arranged for our meeting. I log all the meeting notes. Basically i'm doing what i should be doing while also writing the entire business plan.

The sales guy has been a part of the company since end of august and it's roughly coming up to 2 months and he has yet to make a call. He's sent out 1 email to someone in our network but even then, i was the one to indentify the person through our research and ask him to reach out as he knows him personally.


We agreed that end of november he needs 10 potential clients to state interest and another 10 clients to show interest by mid January. The programmer won't join us until he sees atleast some interest from our client base. So i need this guy to start making calls and i kindly tell him everytime. When we incorporate, the lawyer will be putting in performance clauses but i also need to address this issue.

It's just a weird situation. In our company (the company we both still work at and where i met him) hierarchy, he's higher than me. He used to be the head of my department and then I moved over to manage his accounts. We are also friends, although not close.

So the situation is weird as in our current job, he's in a higher position than i am but in my company i'm in a higher position than he is but i need to make it clear he needs to start working soon. I'm also trying to keep in mind that he has less of an interest in the company than i do (he has 30%), and it is originally my idea and my vision so I will most likely be working alot harder but 2 months and not 1 call is not acceptable. I will need to be careful with how I approach him as i am often very direct.