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Ask HN: How to find developers with NO SKILLs to work for me?
I had built 3 startups (3-4M annual revenue before I sold them) and do not have formal education. I developed them on my own, did all marketings, sales, customer service. Later, I hired a few friends and friends of friends and trained them in my style of customer service and marketing then finally sold off the startup. I've never worked as a professional programmer and learned to build everything from the internet. I am easily able to train people in sales and customer service but training someone with no technical education into development is impossible. I was stupid enough to actually try this on some friends who were unemployed and failed. Now, the trouble is that I've no developer friends and the new startup which I want to do requires 2-3 developers to build a prototype. But I don't see why will anyone work for a less skilled person like me? Sure, I can afford to pay them 1.5-2x of what they are currently get paid. But there will be no promotion (what role will I promote them to?), no colleagues to help them out. No limitation on the scope of work. I think people work for more than just money, sure I can provide money and challenging work. Most devs I talked on upwork are not brave enough to build an app from ground-up They don't even show much interest. They want me to break it down into tasks and then they'll implement it. So, what will make you work for a no name, new company as a developer where the founder is not exceptionally talented or very technically competent and no scope for promotion either?
- kevlanglois 9y agoYou don't need to be a technical genius to start learning about the software development lifecycle. Any professional programmers you speak to will require some sort of business requirements. It is your responsibility, as the business owner, to outline the who/what/when/where of each feature (and leave the 'how' to the experts). You also need to understand the impact of no defined scope. Typical business plans or MVP requirements will absolutely define a scope. This scope of work should match your best guess for a minimum viable product - based on your market research. This allows you to remain on budget and measure your success. With a solid business plan, a set of strategic business requirements, a well defined scope, and 2x salary - you will have no problem finding talented developers.
- rorykoehler 9y ago>They want me to break it down into tasks and then they'll implement it. You'd be crazy to do it any other way.
- smithmayowa 9y agoIt depends mostly on what kind of idea you want to execute on as this will determine the kind of programmers you will need, really low level software requires someone with much more theoretical knowledge and this kind of people are rare in between, and coupled with your lack of tech know how they might most likely not want to work with you. But if it is a basic web app you should find talent interested in working with you. I will advice you to try to place a lot more emphasis on your earlier success bootstrapping and selling a SaaS company as this can motivate people to want to work for you. Because take it from me you have done and accomplished what a lot of people can not and that is very impressive. If you are interested I would like to work for you, but I don't know how well that will pan out as I don't know the area of specialty your startup is focusing on and if i am even 'Not Skilled' enough to work with you in those specialties, but at least I will like to get in touch with you if only in some sort of mentorship/advisory role, because building a successful Saas business has sort of always been my dream. my email is smithmayowa20 at gmail.com I am an African developer in between.
- duked 9y agodo you have an email where I can reach out ?
- crossbow 9y agoI am interested in helping you. Do you have contact information?