Well, they could be motivated and interested, but I doubt they have the experience, otherwise they would have, with their resources, started a long time ago.
About the do it better part, a bit harder. They have resources, but if they're just now starting to figure out what to do ... I know exactly what to do, but ... kinda hard to do it. So far it's a draw outcome wise, but they're making nice salaries doing something I like, meanwhile I lose interest in my gig while I spend more and more time doing this as a side project for free.
That might work. If it doesn't, I'll threaten to publish everything online for free, thus negating their own efforts and rendering their money spent into a black-hole of no return.
Or ... Or ... OOOORRR - you just gave me another idea in a way: What if I go up to BigCo and THREATEN to publish it online for free, thus rendering their money spent on research/subsequent patent-based revenue streams completely useless? Just walk up to IBM and say, "I know what you guys researching, here's what you'll discover, now pay up or I'll write a white paper and just put it on the internet ... or mail it to Microsoft or whatever!"
And since the legal departments of most major corporations use game theory in analyzing transactions, their lawyers would easily tell them it's in their favor to pay me what I ask for just to get me to agree to shut up.
That's just crazy enough to possibly work. I wish I could up vote you like 20 times for inspiring this thought.
Well, these are good points. I guess I could do the evangelist part or let someone else do it, but really I think it could speak for itself. As for the article in your link, I could be wrong since I'm not him, but something tells me his reputation had something to do with that "I got my application built for $12,000" equation.
Even if the market hasn't changed yet, I'd say that them devoting brainpower/budgets into looking into it full-time might meand that they, too suspect it may change this way. Quite honestly I can't believe it didn't change this way a long time ago.
If I didn't care I think I would have shrugged it off a long time ago. Not trying to do it until recently has been more the result of massive amount of change in this area which I found I just barely kept up with. I just barely got to the point a year ago or so where I had time to reflect and think how this can translate into something useful.
So it was more like 6 years observation and thinking in a sort of real-world lab experiment, and only the last year or so of "apply lessons learned".
But since I'm not a programmer, and most programmers I've come across are working on their own projects, I couldn't figure out exactly how to proceed ... and based on the limited feed back I got, whether it was even worth proceeding or if I was just fooling myself and seeing an oasis.
Plus regardless of whether I cared enough, now that I found this out I realize it's a valid thing to more than just me. So now I care more. It's just been a long, unrewarding (except the intellectual curiosity part), clumsy, guideless trip so far.
My "adult" self tells me to give up and move on, or perhaps profit from it by working for "the man" ... but then again, what if I wind up 10 years ago in a situation where I say, "Dammit - I should have tried for just one more year - but instead I gave up and now look what happened - it took off right after I gave up and somebody else is doing it."
But what if on the last day of the second year, just as you were about to say, "The hell with this", you found out that people are just starting to look into it? Surely all the insight you gained over the course of your 2 years of trying is useful - question is, what to do with it? Keep plugging away, or "sell out" and go the corporate route?
One of the guys running the project works at an office on Madison Ave. I'd love to start a startup based on this, because I just know it'll be cool, yet I can't say since finding out about this recent development I haven't spent, oh, 5 hours or so since fantasizing about what it would be like to pay off all my credit cards, have health insurance, benefits, etc. and go to work on Madison avenue near Central Park every day.
And instead of arguing with people about the idea, I would be in an environment where people who understand it would appreciate the insights I have. Plus they have a pretty big budget to play with from what I understand.
Just getting paid to do what I've been doing for fun ... and appreciated for once instead of seeing the usual "What the hell are you talking about?" look on people's faces when I've tried to discuss it.
> The try and fail route is more rewarding imho.
I suppose you're right in a way. Maybe both? Maybe, "I've tried, it didn't work out because of timing, but now I can apply my insights and sell out in style!" (?)
How does that make a difference? Let's just say it's something that I know more about than however many PhDs they have looking into it and no matter how smart they are or what their budget is, it will be impossible to replicate the conditions that led to the insights I've gained about why things developed as they did and how to apply it to the business world.
Not saying it's because I'm smarter or anything, it's just a freak accident that resulted from my background and personal interests which came together in some unexpected ways to give me insight into what was worth paying to in this area while most people would have dismissed the whole area as not worth paying serious attention to to begin with.
So - question is:
a) Screw it, it's taking too long
or
b) It may be an uphill struggle but this is a good sign that it's at least worth continuing
Let's just say it's something that I know more about than however many PhDs they have looking into it and no matter how smart they are or what their budget is, it will be impossible to replicate the conditions that led to the insights I've gained about why things developed as they did and how to apply it to the business world.
Think about your life now, and your life at 75. What decision do you think your 75 year old self would wish you had made? Do what the old man tells you to do.
But that's the thing. My life now sucks because I've spent most of my spare time researching this. And progress has been so slow. Friends have drifted away, etc.
If I give up and sell out, at least I'll have a comfy position at a respectable company where people smarter than me would respect what I have to offer because I have 6 years worth of thinking about the problem on them.
But the startup route ... hell I can't even find any programmers to put a demo together ...
I could make a career out of this "there" ... or just keep fumbling in the dark making teeny tiny progress (if any) while my personal/professional life suffers.
I don't know anymore. That's why I posted this, I guess.
Quite frankly the "75" year old me is saying, "Do what you want, but keep in mind you're going to need good health insurance as you grow older."
If I give up and sell out, at least I'll have a comfy position at a respectable company where people smarter than me would respect what I have to offer because I have 6 years worth of thinking about the problem on them.
No they won't. You'll be a part of a dispirited bureauacracy, and nobody will care. They probably won't even finish the project.
Your best bet is to get a bunch of young college age programmers to work with you. They are unemployed and are ready to hit it out of the park. If I was in NYC I would hear you out and try to help. Start looking for talent where the people are hungry.
> our best bet is to get a bunch of young college age
> programmers to work with you.
Columbia couldn't seem to care less, and the entire NYU structure has so far gotten ... hold your breath ... 2 resumes. Only one of which was remotely relevant, but not experienced enough to take initiative on this.
And since I'm not a programmer, I don't have the experience to provide guidance in that department.
I don't know why, but NY is not very start-uppity at all. People here fantasize about going to work for the IT dept. of Morgan Stanley or something.
Give up. You're six years into a development project that requires programmers but you don't have any programmers. You seem to think that a company will hire you because you have experience - if your work is really that valuable why haven't they hired you already?
Get a job and continue to work on this in your spare time. Fund development and be smart about making what you build as generally-useful as possible (an enabling technology rather than a solution). If the market pans out for this other company, there will be opportunities for you... assuming you executed.
It strikes me as odd that you've been noodling for 6 years an idea that needs programmers to implement, but you haven't become a programmer yourself in all that time.
Do you have any idea how many "Learn X in 21 Days" books you can read in 6 years? :-)
If you have valuable knowledge that no one else has (or can easily get), and you need programmers, why don't you share what you can here and see if anyone wants to join you? Presumably you can share enough to give people an idea of what you are doing?
If I could find some programmers who won't dismiss my value after I've transferred my insights, I'd gladly do it. But judging from the thinking processes of what I see on posts here ...
Just to give an example, a few days ago a "bored developer" posted a post saying he was looking for good ideas. Whenever I see MBA/Financial-types posting on Hacker News looking for programmers, the response is usually, "Why should I partner with you - what value do you offer since you can't code?"
So I asked a simple question on this post: Suppose I share some ideas with you that you wind up developing. What do you offer in return? I was hoping maybe an arrangement like "I'll code on the weekends for your idea if you share an idea I like enough to pursue" or something. Instead everybody kept downmodding my post; last time I checked it was in the negative something range.
So if I can find people willing to go it on equal terms ...
You've made the mistake of believing an idea has value. It doesn't. An idea plus a good execution of it has value. If you can't convince a developer that you bring needed value to the execution of that idea, and you can't pay developers to work on your idea, then you have nothing.
In six years you could have learned to program well enough to build a kickass demo--the fact that you haven't makes it pretty clear to developers that you don't believe in your idea enough to commit your own time to it (other than, apparently, thinking really hard about it)...but you'd be really happy to have someone else commit time to it and share the results with you. Hell, with the quality of modern tools, if you started today, you could have a proof of concept running in a year, even if you've never seen a terminal or a text editor before. Python, Ruby, Perl, and even PHP, make developing simple applications, well, simple.
Sorry if I seem to be dismissing you without knowledge of your idea or your actual work in the field, but this is what you're facing in trying to get someone to write your software for you, for free. This is what you have to overcome, and I hope I've made it clear that the way you are presenting it is not going to do that. What you think you're saying, and what an engineer hears you saying, are apparently two very different things. I suspect you think you're saying, "I've done all of the legwork and research and hard work leading up to actual development, and now I just need a technical person to put these well-researched pieces together." But, an engineer hears, "I've done nothing but have super cool ideas for the past six years, and now I'd like you to implement my vague and over-reaching specifications into a product, for free, and share the results with me."
You can't really blame them for not signing on, right?
> You've made the mistake of believing an idea has value. > It doesn't.
I didn't put much credibility in this line of reasoning before, and now that I found out that major companies are putting millions into just reasearching this idea, I put even less. Crap executed brilliantly is still crap.
> and you can't pay developers to work on your idea
Actually, the money's not the problem. I can raise the money but I'd like to put a demo together as I imagine that would get far better terms. But ultimately if all else fails I'll get the money and hire. My only thought was that I'd prefer to share with a good technical partner that I worked well with than keep a lot and "hire" as you put it.
> In six years you could have learned to program well
> enough to build a kickass demo--the fact that you
> haven't makes it pretty clear to developers that you
> don't believe in your idea enough to commit your own
> time to it (other than, apparently, thinking really hard > about it)
In six years I spent most of my personal time single-handedly researching and interacting with something that it's now taking, from what I was told, a starting team of about 15 IBM research guys to just to START looking into. And that part is only half the total idea. They'll never in 10 years get to the second part. When exactly was I supposed to find the time to program on top of this?
Not to mention that it wasn't immediately obvious that it would even be feasible. And as for "committing my own time to it" ... I think actively researching it for 6 years is a lot of time to commit to anything, considering I got no financial/academic/professional compensation/recognition.
> ...but you'd be really happy to have someone else commit > time to it and share the results with you.
Share the results with me? So let's see ... I came up with it, spent years researching the feasibility of it, the market is huge, and I have the connections to get financing, and somebody who'd code it would be "sharing the results with me?" Wow. Does it get lonely up there on your pedestal?
You don't have to commit time to it. But that's what startups are about - they're not for everyone, but some people decide, "this is a good thing to commit time to". And they wouldn't be doing it "for me" they'd be doing it for the "results" as you put it, none of which would be possible if I didn't explicity explain what they should be commiting their time to in the first place.
> Hell, with the quality of modern tools, if you started
> today, you could have a proof of concept running in a
> year
You inspire me! Hell, if I start today, maybe in a year I can learn enough about combustible engines and transmissions to tell my mechanic to shove it.
And in a year I'll be having back surgery. Maybe if I get started today, I can learn enough about the human body and related surgical proceedures to tell my surgeon to go shove it.
Come to think of it, why did I just waste all this money on an Apple computer. I should pocket the money, learn to build my own computer from scratch, and tell Apple to shove it.
Hell, why did I buy these jeans? I should have grown some hemp and made my own pants. That would show Levis!
> in trying to get someone to write your software for you, > for free.
"For me for free" would mean you write it, I keep all the equity and I use the subsequent investment I can get with my personal contacts to pay myself a hefty salary.
I'd imagine there would be some equity exchange and any subsequent investment follow-on would be split, hence it's not "for me" its for themselves.
And since I'm not a programmer and this is not college, it's not "my software" as if though it was a homework assignment or something.
> But, an engineer hears, "I've done nothing but have
> super cool ideas for the past six years, and now I'd
> like you to implement my vague and over-reaching
> specifications into a product, for free, and share the
> results with me."
Well, where to start. First, considering all the crap on the internet, I'd say having a really cool idea is a good start. It's better than most people have had so far. As for "my vague and over-reaching specifications" I think you're having a flashback of some bad work experience here. I never gave you any specifications, specific or vague, so I don't know what you're refering to. And I'd imagine it to be a two way street where specifications would be arrived at as a result of communication, continuously, back and forth.
As for the "for free" part, see above. As for the "and share the results with me." part ... well, I'll tell you what. I'll keep my idea and financial contacts to myself, and you can keep all the results you get from not working with me on this idea all to yourself while I keep looking for other people. That way you make all the big bucks all by yourself. Don't spend it all in one place ...
I've seen you comments here and in other posts, and while I appreciate your posts I think there are two important things you need to learn. Please don't see this as an attack - it isn't. It's meant to be helpful and to get you moving forward.
1) You have to work on your attitude. I've noticed that you tend to look at the negative in a post and respond to it - this thread is a good example. People aren't trying to put you down, they're trying to help. And doing it for free in their sparetime. You should appreciate this. In the things I've been involved in I've been the glue that holds together the biz guys and the developers, so I can see it from both sides of the fence. And most developers don't like personal attacks. The way to handle engineers is to show them that you appreciate their work, are interested in their field, show themm that you have the capabilities and intent to carry through, and show them that they can trust you. Which you don't do by attacking them.
2) An idea isn't worth anything. I know from other threads that you have discussed this point before, but notice how most engineers stick to this point. I've had lots of people wanting to start something with me - and as soon as I hear "I've got a great idea, you just have to do xxxx)" I back away. What I need to hear is "I've done some serious research/business planning/budgetting/talking to customers/whatever and I would like you to be my partner. I basically need to see some footwork, and this needs to include some proof of concept - not a pie in the sky project.
I would go to rentacoder.com, if I were you. Why are you so eager to give away equity if it's so valuable? No one is willing to take your idea sight-unseen, but people will do it for real money on rentacoder--if you're willing to put your money where you mouth is.
Imagine I told you I had a secret that would make you 100 MILLION dollars. I'll tell you the secret, but it will cost you $10,000 to learn it. I'm thinking you wouldn't bother. Why? Because the real value of the secret in this kind of asymmetric exchange is only apparent after it has been shared, so the deal never happens. In the back of your head, wouldn't you also be wondering why I didn't use the secret to make myself 100 million and why I'm so concerned with $10,000 if I have a secret worth so much?
I have a folder of over 40 of my ideas I don't have time to get to and so your idea would have to win out over the alternatives, but it can't beat the alternatives for anyone if you never share it.
Perhaps its most valuable as a story when you're older about "the one that got away."
I'd first like to say that you've managed to wholly miss my point and turn this into an adversarial discussion. My response was an attempt to help you modify your pitch and understand the failings of how you present and, even perhaps, how you think about, your business idea. I have no desire to argue with you about the merits of your idea, or about why people (engineers or otherwise) do what they do when it comes to startups. I have no interest in your idea, or your business, except as someone who's started two businesses and enjoys talking to others who are starting a business. I'm not the engineer you are looking for and never will be, but I do believe my advice could be useful to you. I am in the category of technologist who has more ideas for businesses than time to execute them, and I'm in the middle of one that I believe very strongly in...no amount of money or persuasion would make me join your cause (or the cause of anyone else--I'm not picking on you).
"Well, where to start. First, considering all the crap on the internet, I'd say having a really cool idea is a good start."
Sure. Problem is, since you can't or won't execute on the idea yourself, you have to convince someone else that your idea is worth more than the dozen ideas they already have brewing. Engineers don't have a shortage of ideas...they have a shortage of time in which to implement those ideas, and sometimes a shortage of patience for the boring crap that surrounds making a business of those ideas. Convince a good engineer that you are capable of managing the boring crap, and have a good idea, and you might get them to sign on.
"As for the "for free" part, see above. As for the "and share the results with me." part ... well, I'll tell you what. I'll keep my idea and financial contacts to myself, and you can keep all the results you get from not working with me on this idea all to yourself while I keep looking for other people. That way you make all the big bucks all by yourself. Don't spend it all in one place ..."
And just why can't you give at least a vague sketch of your idea? Are you afraid us, the humble readers and commenters at Hacker News, will steal your idea when you plainly say that it took you 6 years of concentrated research and that 15 of IBMs top PhDs couldn't even begin to understand what you already know?
Since you say you aren't a programmer, then I assume you did consulting under IBM and your proposal is a B2B application revolving around communications, and perhaps some CRM?
If your idea is really good, and you are significantly more knowledgeable about the field, you should be able to at least give a broad picture of what this is about. What field, who are the customers, what expertise is required?
The feedback everybody gave you is really awesome. The community here is one of a kind, but everybody still has their own interest. How would anybody know if they're willing to pitch in until you at least let them know what you want to do?
I've gotten emails from fellow readers who share similar interests. But as of yet, nobody knows what you're doing.
the excessive examples of sarcasm don't help, and your other comments could be insulting, and offending the people that you're trying to get advice from doesn't give much credence to your cause. (trust me, i would know http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=127717)
I have a friend who's been through a similar position, except in the hardware world. Last year he got a full time job, and while he says he still wants to pursue his idea, the likelihood is diminishing every day. Just for reference, he's a Ph.D. just above 30, and his idea comes from something he discovered coincidentally from his research.
If it is really a good idea, find a partner who complements your skills. Assembling a team is probably the hardest part. If you can't assemble one, all odds are against you, no matter how good the idea is. If you don't have people at your disposal, you have to convince other people the idea is good; you'll have to prove it some way or another.
If you're like my friend, who has extensive knowledge beyond what competitors would have in several years, the idea is unobvious enough that even if you outline it understandably, you don't have worries about competitors. If it isn't at that level of sophistication, my bet is that even if competitors haven't thought through things as thoroughly as you have, they will have implementations that are simply good enough.
I'm in NYC. We have Central Park and lots of Barnes & Nobles and Starbucks and stuff like that. If I could get the startup I have in mind going ... which I'm trying to do, just having difficulty finding available tech talent ... hint hint ... I'd have mandatory random blocks of individual "Go out and walk around Central Park for a few hours and distract your conscious mind while your subconscious mind calculates solutions" time and random blocks of group "Go out to Starbucks, get some fresh air and discuss projects outside the office for a change of pace." time.
Also weekly company movie viewings - either outings if something good is playing or good 'ol Netflix.
Our first movie would be Office Space, as a friendly reminder of why starting your own thing is the best thing to do in life.
Mandatory "go and have ideas" time? Also, Mandatory Fun Day? The flexibility to go and cruise round the city would be amazing for me (if I got a job). Tell me that I have to do it, and when, and my reply will be my resignation.
Well, let's say "strongly suggested". But then again in my experience when this is not mandatory there are always 1-2 "I'll stay in and seem extra dedicated" people. Then other people start growing roots at their desks. Then it all falls apart.
Plus think of this way: how many times do you resolve ideas passively in the shower, out on a walk, picking up dry cleaning/doing laundry, out shopping, etc.?
There's a reason that happens and just like exercise, if you don't schedule it, it's easy to let it slide when things get busy.
About the do it better part, a bit harder. They have resources, but if they're just now starting to figure out what to do ... I know exactly what to do, but ... kinda hard to do it. So far it's a draw outcome wise, but they're making nice salaries doing something I like, meanwhile I lose interest in my gig while I spend more and more time doing this as a side project for free.