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Ask HN: How to get an idea funded?
Okay, so I've been trying to take my start-up from it's earliest possible stage to getting ready for Angel Investment.
With a low budget, what would be the key things to show investors about my start-up? Ex. Powerpoint, etc.
My start-up is based off of an application on the iPhone, so providing a demo of my start-up would be a demo of the application, me having no experience in programming applications, it would cost me a lot to get a demo done, so are there any other choices?
Are there any mentors that would be willing to help me out?
- dave1619 15y agoFind a partner who can code.
- shahedkhan30 15y agoWhere would a good place be to find this partner? I've been looking around, and didn't find anyone.
- BrainScraps 15y agoThis is what I'm saying. Everyone who is worth anything has got a ton of irons in the fire. Probably projects from people in their network. It'll be a long shot to get someone to take your project on without some serious incentive. You may be chasing devs for a long while and have nothing to show for your effort. Learning to code may not pay off for this particular project, but it just might come in handy later. I'm just sayin'.
- dave1619 15y agoHang out where they hang out. Check out hackathons, startup weekends, HN meetups, tech meetups, ask friends for referrals. Take initiative.
- BrainScraps 15y agoIf you don't know anyone who can code already, you might be better off learning to code. Rather than spending the next 6 months trying to impress some iOS dev enough for them to give you the time of day, spend that time learning a valuable skill. If you have the funds, just outsource it.
- shahedkhan30 15y ago6 months seems like an awful long time to get this company started, I'm interested in finding a programmer who we can collaborate with, I'm more of the Business guy, where he/she can be the Programmer, if you know what I mean.
- ryanburke 15y agoI would start mocking up your idea in something like Balsamiq (http://balsamiq.com/ http://balsamiq.com/). This will make it easier to find a hacker to partner with and to show the concept to potential investors.
- dave1619 15y agoAgreed. Balsamiq is pretty awesome to do quick mockups that look decent. They really can help get the concept across.
- sohailprasad 15y agoBalsamiq is pretty intuitive - if you don't want to buy/install it, try out the online (flash) demo at: http://builds.balsamiq.com/b/mockups-web-demo/ http://builds.balsamiq.com/b/mockups-web-demo/
- Osiris 15y agoTry http://www.findahacker.com/ http://www.findahacker.com/
- blrgeek 15y agoHave you looked at Customer Development? So you have an idea for an app. Customer Development tells you what you need to do to see if the app actually has a market & what the market is worth. Things you need to do - and you can do all these without having the app ready, or even the mockups (although mockups are needed for 2nd half of the process) 1. Do the first approximation business model (http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/downloads/business_model_canvas_poster.pdf http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/downloads/business_mo...) Learn how at ^1 2. Get out of the building. Talk to prospective customers IRL. Iterate and define, product value prop, market segment, channels. From this identify how big the market is & how much it'll cost you to reach this market. Rule of thumb - for every 100 customers you need a year from now, talk to 10. If you're B2B and need a hundred customers, make sure you talk to 10. If you're B2C and need a thousand customers, try to talk to a hundred. 3. If the market is big enough and possible to reach, you now know how much you can afford to spend. Bonus, you should now have a list of beta testers who will be interested in trying this out. 4. Build minimum v0.1 of the product or all mockups. Validate/Test. Beta roll out. See traction as expected. 5. Raise angel money to build v0.2. What angels would like to see - clear identification of large enough market, clear validated value prop by talking to enough prospective customers, mockups or preferably initial version. 6. Build product & Win! ^1 To learn how to build the business model, use Steve Blank's classes - http://en.wordpress.com/tag/lean-launchpad/ http://en.wordpress.com/tag/lean-launchpad/
- gettinstarted 15y agoYou are on the verge of sounding like any number of listing on http://whartoniteseekscodemonkey.tumblr.com/ http://whartoniteseekscodemonkey.tumblr.com/ and that's bad. The advice on learning to code is the best...but clearly you don't think it's worthwhile or can be circumvented. If you are going to "get funded", which sounds like your goal, learning to code (just enough to hack something out) will go a long way in both recruiting others to join you and convincing investors you'll do what it takes. In terms of getting ready for angel money, you have to get something out there and get people using it. I strongly encourage you to come up with an app that does one thing well and delivers value...see my post at http://www.startupsanddowns.blogspot.com http://www.startupsanddowns.blogspot.com Having too grand of a vision upfront is overwhelming to build, shows a lack of focus and more stuff doesn't make your product better. Think how simple twitter is and what their MVP probably looked like. Asking for a mentor won't attract the right people either. As a matter of fact, asking for investment is a sure fire sign investors look for...to know when to pass. Investors invest, people that know their ass from their elbow in your field advise. Once you start showing your product and explaining your vision for the next steps...preferably with some user data, investors will ask if you are looking to raise money (if they are interested) and potential mentors will ask what they can do to help you out. It's really that easy...I'll use this paragraph as the thesis for my next blog post.
- shahedkhan30 15y agoAnyone else got any other ideas?
- filiwickers 15y ago"investors do not fund ideas" This was an often repeated remark at a recent angel investing conference I attended. Sorry that is not what you wanted to hear. Unfortunately it is reality. You need to create some concrete representations of your idea and demonstrate why people need it.