Hello everyone, I would like to bring to your attention the many doubts and questions that we have on our mind concerning the foundation of a new web startup. Since September 2015 I’ve been working with my business partner on a web product on which we believe a lot. Conscious about the possible success of our idea we decided to launch a new company and make tangible what is for now just a bunch of ideas on our mind and notes on our desks. We are already facing the reality that neither me nor my partner have the technical competences needed in this field although we have economics and business expertise. Initially we thought about outsourcing the whole development of the product, by assigning it to a third party. However after a short time we understood that this wasn’t the right path to follow. We then decided to create an in-house team that will fill in for the holes in our knowledge. This is where the majority of our problems come from. Since we only have a fledgling of the product, our idea was to set up a company, rent an office and start to hire the professionals that we need to develop the business. Initially the idea was to hire 2 programmers and 1 web designer. We were not conscious about the job market for these kind of positions so we were not interested about the age or the experience of the candidates, especially because we didn’t want to invest too many financial resources in such an uncertain environment. However after researching this particular field we learnt that the development team was very important to reduce the risk of failure in the early stage. We have decided that the best move is to hire a senior programmer with proven expertise on web development and coding languages. We want him to help us select the right candidates to hire for the development of the product. • Where can we find this kind of expereinced programmer? • The main concern about the idea of hiring professionals for our entrepreneurial project is the risk of exposing our business model to professional figures who could steal the idea and develop it by themselves. How can we reduce this kind of risk? We thank you all for your time and really appreciate your help. Feel free to give us your advice on whatever seems wrong or incorrect. Best regards. Jacopo
First of all, don't be afraid to share and exposing your business model. The Fear of stealing ideas is limiting you.
I don't know your business model, your idea, your service or product, but no one of these will be the key of your success.
The people, and how you talk to your market, will be.
You don't sell product or service, you sell yourself (people) ... especially in the first time of your startup, when no one knows you.
Every day someone builds a product or service that is a copy of another. The difference is the market and how he/she talks to the market.
Back to your question.
Hire one senior, skilled person, that after will be in charge of hiring other people is a right way.
I didn't understand the reasons of why outsourcing wasn't the right way to follow. Costs? Was it a firm?
Don't know. But...
I can share a simple process that I follow every time in my business, even if I'm a developer and I could write all the code, I didn't write a line of code for software that serves my clients.
You have to sketch your solution (application).
Do it with tools or pen and paper (the right tool is better).
I use keynote for mac or balsamiq is also a great tool.
You have to have the entire application designed. Every page, every feature is running in the sketch. All the elements.
It'll take a lot of hours or even days.
Don't care about design and "looks good" now. Be fast.
Don't care about "is it possible this?" question. Sketch it and write a note or doubts in a post-it.
Now you don't have only a clear vision in you mind, you also have something that you can share with a developers.
Developers are strage guys.
They can build and make things from nothing but it's not easy when the product is placed only in a corner of your mind.
"Rock Star" developers loves to work on UI (user interfaces). There is no-way to get off the road.
And when they perfectly understand your application, they can give you advice, clear your doubts and build it faster.
The key point here is to get the version 1.0 as fast as you can. Give it to your market and get feedback.
To overcame the fear of stealing ideas, you could split your big application in a lot of smaller pieces.
You should search and hire rock star freelances from website like upwork.com and give to a single professional only a small task.
Then, hire a trusted person that put all together, like a puzzle. This works, I know a few friends that do this strategy.
I can't tell you more than this, because a lot of decision depends of what are you trying to build, how much money you can invest and what are getting you stuck.
Answered 8 years ago
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