Frustrated - Your thoughts & suggestions are appreciated.

[bizman]

Hey Everyone,

So here is the deal. I am a 23 year old entrepreneur from Canada and I am set to graduate university in April. I have been running my catering business offline with a friend for the past few years and we have done fairly well for ourselves. Over the past year I have become very involved in the internet reading about e-commerce daily, and scheming ideas as every entrepreneur does. The basic problem I face is one I am sure many of the less tech savvy entrepreneurs on here do. The problem is finding someone with the programming skills to bring your ideas to life who are willing to partner with you. Now before I get alot of negative feedback let me say a few things.

1. I know that good programmers never need to seek out equity jobs because they are constantly busy with paid work.

2. I know everyone feels they have the next big idea and the reality is there is just so many shitty ideas out there many programmers are just turned off.

3. Most programmers would rather do projects themselves rather than partner with someone elses vision.

4. Everyone needs money and the time, risk and consumption of resources required for launching a shared equity project are usually not worth it.

Now that I have basically outlined the reasons why it is so hard to find this sort of business relationship I have a few questions for fellow and helpful YEer's.

Have any of you ever had a successful partnership starting a business whereby you (a non-tech savvy entreprenuer partner with a programmer)?

How did you guys meet? (I have tried resources such as programmermeetdesigner and this just seems more of a place to showcase your services)

Anyways, needless to say I am a bit frustrated these days as I really want to get one of my concepts off the ground. Just in case anyone was wondering why I dont pay to get my idea launched its due to my school and living expenses, as well as the fact that I would want someone on board to help with future development and maintenence.

Anyways thanks for taking the time to read this post and feel free to bitch, share your frustrations or offer advice. Any and all feedback is appreciated. Thanks YE, I love you

[DJ Samson]

I'm in the same boat you're in. I know nothing about wed design but I have alot of business ideas. My resolution is that I'm trying to learn html and how to use dreamweaver. It may take me a while, but I'm going to continue researching.

[Newton]

I used sitepoint.com contests section for my web design and it looks ace (and it actually does look good, better than 90% of my competitors. It looks like a proper commerce site, not some pretender)

[akula]

it's a lot of questions....for me, two things have helped me to recruit programmers (i'm a lawyer by training).

1) first hand, market research survey results and contracts for delivery.

if you have these two documents in hand, you can make anybody, do anything with no money down. I guarantee it.

2) be interesting. programmers are tinkerers. make a project interesting and good programmers will choose your project over something else which pays better.

[bizman]

Thanks for your replies guys:

DJ Samson: I understand where you are coming from, and being self-taught for html myself, this will help you a great deal with designing your site and basic functionality.

Newton: Sitepoint is a great resource especially for logos and designs (templates and otherwise), but isnt the best resource for the sort of thing I am talking about being complex programming.

Akula: Your right, this is alot of questions and thanks for your response. I agree comepletely with your statements and suggestions, I guess it would just be useful if someone made a website to connect these two sides. In terms of the market research and contracts for delivery this is a very useful leverage tool to use for getting people on board, but in a venture based around advertising revenues its a little hard to get service contracts until you have reached critical mass and/or gained some traction (please correct me if I am wrong).

Thanks for the responses so far, and any more feedback is greatly appreciated.

John.

[akula]

John, that's a great question, and the answer is the same.

With recruiting people, if you don't have cash, you gotta use any and all other resources.

If you don't have access to contracts for delivery, get letters of intent from advertisers. That's what we did at studentface. It's a promise from the advertiser that they will consider buying ads on the site in case of a trigger event (i.e. once the site is launched).

but I do want to communicate an important point. markets are rational entrepreneurs are not. if no one wants to invest them selves into any particular venture (i.e. program stuff for no cash), then, the mechanism of the market - in all its wisdom - is precluding this venture from being born, and probably for good reason.

anyway....use what ever you have at hand if you don't have contracts for delivery: market research results, letters of endorsement, letters of intent, existing commitments from other employees etc etc etc

is this feedback helping in any way?

[bizman]

Hey Akula,

Yes your feedback is very useful and much appreciated. You raise some good points about getting things off the ground, perhaps I am just burned out a little, so break time and time to re-evaluate everything. Thanks for your feedback, you are a gentleman and scholar lol. Ttyl.