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Thank 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

by bks 16y ago

Thank 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".

by bks 16y ago

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".