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You're very different from most "idea guys" as you've done something others haven't: you've proven you can raise funding. Take the funding. Now, be ready to do
by strlen 16y ago
You're very different from most "idea guys" as you've done something others haven't: you've proven you can raise funding. Take the funding.
Now, be ready to do something difficult: if you want somebody to stick around, you'll need to make them an owner. You've done one part, raise the money, but now you need somebody who can implement this. As such, be willing to offer them over 50% of your equity (what they're doing is more valuable than what you've done, honestly) and make them an actual co-founder. Let them make complete technology choices, even if he says the application will be written in Erlang and Haskell. Give them input equal to yours when it comes to product direction, not "I come up with all the ideas, you implement them". Anything less, and they're an employee and not a founder.
That's very important: you will not get a top notch employees unless a) you have technical founders b) you can pay them above market rate and give a significant equity chunk c) challenge them in a way that grows their technical skill.
Take a look at a successful engineer at a top-notch Silicon Valley company: they have a job with brand name recognition, they do something they love (a _very_ important motivating factor for an engineer: they will not stop working on say garbage collection algorithms and start working on "GroupON for X" for a paycheck), they have a technical manager, they're earning above market rate (with performance based bonuses), they have stock which may not be a significant percentage but is 100% certain to be worth something.
The money you have isn't sufficient to pay an engineer a market rate salary. The problem you're solving is likely not very technical. The upside potential is likely unknown and it's almost certain than an employee will see very little in the case of a typical exit. The only kind of employee you can hire in this case is somebody who can't get a stable job elsewhere: you'll be giving him legitimate experience to put on his resume in return for his work. That isn't a bad deal if you can accurately identify potential (and if you are unable to give them more responsibility and a higher salary in a year, ready for them to leave as soon as get find something else) or have enough money to hire and fire many times (with "trial periods" and the like), but this isn't your case. You can't identify potential, you can't afford to try and fail until you luck upon somebody with potential.
What you need is another founder, who can insert the critical technology DNA, re-state your problem as one technology can be (intelligently) applied to and who has the same stake as you in the company. This person can also identify further talent (including the kind of talent you will need: engineers who have great potential, but are green and need _any_ kind of experience; they need experienced hackers to mentor them).
Where do you find this person? Problem is that you can't, unless you already know them. That's why companies like YC are very fuzzy about founders who have known each other and have a strong bond. Is there an engineer you've worked with (in a business role) who the company has pulled all stops (before) to keep, but who secretly yearns to have more of say in the product (and not just do what a product manager tells him)? Is there a classmate from college who absolutely wowed you? Is there an engineer you hear great things from your unknown-quality engineer friends? That's the person you want.
Again, I'd also like to state this isn't just about the money, other than the fact you've been able to raise funding has set you aside from most "idea" guys (to whom my general response would consist of a crude ASCII drawing). Just having money, doesn't mean you can get great talent: you must be ready to offer is challenge, responsibility and product ownership (and that means giving up a large part of your mental and monetary stake in the startup). Expect most people you reach out to to reject you (but I'd imagine you are ready for this and have experienced this plenty in the process of raising funding).
- bks 16y agoThank you for your reply. I agree money is currently the easy part, the biggest issue is execution. The ideal is fools gold if I can't transform it from a pitch deck into a reality. You gave me some really great ideas here about reaching out to other engineers that I have worked with and some siblings of friends with CS degrees and startup mentalities. Cost structure is really low right now - I already have a succesfull Internet marketing business that is doing 500,000 per year with 2 USA full timers and 11 full time off shore resources. This team took a long time to build over 3 years now with trips to India to work out some of the bugs. Right now, I just don't have the time for missteps or mistakes. The problem that is being solved is "somewhat" technical, some social integration, some dollar tracking, some analytics tracking, fraud detection, recurring payments etc. But I am not trying to re-invent the world. Basically I KNOW of the companies that do everything that I need, I just need to glue it all together and add some special sauce.
- strlen 16y ago> You gave me some really great ideas here about reaching out to other engineers that I have worked with and some siblings of friends with CS degrees and startup mentalities. Reach out to engineers you've worked with, the ones who already know what you can offer and the ones where you know what they can offer. As I said, make them a founder along with you. Even better, ask them who the best engineers they know are and then in turn ask their friends. I'd avoid hiring younger siblings of non-technical friends. They need mentoring to reach their full potential (they have to learn how to use version control, how to write clean code, how to test code, how to deploy code to production -- even if they know the fundamentals; you can't teach them that); presence of this potential is something which you (or your non-technical friends) can't tell. College grades do not correlate with programming ability. They are the ones to hire once you already have somebody who can identify those with strong potential (and not those who want a higher salary and a nicer desk than what IBM or Microsoft will give them as a "college hire") and mentor them. As a side note, when you talk to people, ask for advice on a specific technical problem, not "I am seeking technical co-founder".