Great Idea - Zero Skills/Experience

onrail

Hi All,

Long time lurker, first time poster - looking for some advice.

So I have a great idea for a website (I'm sure you hear that all the time) and really think that it could take off. There are a few significant barriers to me developing a website and business. I have:

• Little or no experience/education with coding or web development;
• Little or no experience/education in starting or running a business;
• Very little cash - my total savings are approx 13k euro.

My background is that I'm pretty well educated in an irrelevant field (engineering) and have a full time, interesting (but terribly paid) job.

Without going into detail, my idea would be much more than your run-of-the mill website and would require extensive set up and maintenance. Think along the lines of Amazon (but no-where near that scale obviously).

Is it possible to set up with these limitations and even if I did, what value would I add to the resulting company!?

This is probably a common enough problem, but I'm looking for advice from people on here who have encountered similar barriers to setting up.

smash

13k is enough to get your website set up. Get in touch with some agencies for quotes.

Fr_Dougal

I would develop your idea a bit further before getting any quotes from web developers.

• Do you have a business plan?
• Is your idea scalable?
• Initially will you be focusing on the Irish, UK or EU market?
• Is anyone else doing it, or doing something similar?
• Is your idea easily copied?

IF its a viable business you can always contact some government agencies for funding, possibly Enterprise Ireland.

onrail

Fr_Dougal wrote: »

I would develop your idea a bit further before getting any quotes from web developers.

• Do you have a business plan?
• Is your idea scalable?
• Initially will you be focusing on the Irish, UK or EU market?
• Is anyone else doing it, or doing something similar?
• Is your idea easily copied?

IF its a viable business you can always contact some government agencies for funding, possibly Enterprise Ireland.

Thanks for this.

To be honest, the idea is in it's infancy, so a business plan is a bit off yet. However following a good deal of casual research, I do believe that it is an original idea and have yet to see something similar being done. On the downside, the idea could be copied, but no more so than any web based service.

I suppose that the reason for my post is to figure out whether it is worthwhile for me to spend hours/weeks/months doing the relevant market research, networking, and drafting of a biz plan if I could not viably set up and run such a company.

Say the idea was viable, and I secured funding etc, what would the mechanism of the relationship between myself and a nominated 'web developer' be like?
Could it give rise to a situation where they see an idea (which is still in it's infancy and is an unknown brand), and because I bring nothing to the table skill-wise, 'steal' the idea and set up themselves under another guise?

Ultimately, my current 'idea' could be useless, but it would be nice to know whether I (or others like me) could ever bring a technically challenging concept to reality without the necessary skills, experience or resources.

Government agencies seem to be a good place to start though.

Corkbah

onrail wrote: »

Thanks for this.

To be honest, the idea is in it's infancy, so a business plan is a bit off yet. However following a good deal of casual research, I do believe that it is an original idea and have yet to see something similar being done. On the downside, the idea could be copied, but no more so than any web based service.

I suppose that the reason for my post is to figure out whether it is worthwhile for me to spend hours/weeks/months doing the relevant market research, networking, and drafting of a biz plan if I could not viably set up and run such a company.

Say the idea was viable, and I secured funding etc, what would the mechanism of the relationship between myself and a nominated 'web developer' be like?
Could it give rise to a situation where they see an idea (which is still in it's infancy and is an unknown brand), and because I bring nothing to the table skill-wise, 'steal' the idea and set up themselves under another guise?

Ultimately, my current 'idea' could be useless, but it would be nice to know whether I (or others like me) could ever bring a technically challenging concept to reality without the necessary skills, experience or resources.

Government agencies seem to be a good place to start though.

in theory .... yes !

in the same way that if you eventually launch there's always the possibility that someone will copy/improve what you are offering and create their own version.

I could safely say that there are a lot of us out there who have had "ideas" but fail to bring it through to the market, there are hundreds of reasons why it wont work but it all depends on how much you believe in your idea, if you believe it can and will work, if you are willing to invest TIME and MONEY into developing the concept, paying people to create your vision....then go for it.

I have had a similar concept for the area in which I work but due to lack of finances and time I cant commit to the idea, I believe that I have done enough market research on the idea but the final plan shifts every now and again to incorporate new/fresh ideas which I discover on other sites, at present there are a few others who have started a similar idea - but none that I know of are exactly like my idea, unlike you I do not fear someone stealing the idea as its a small niche which will not yield profits for a number of years (possibly 8-10years) - but if my ideas/plans were successful the concept could create a system which would mean I have exclusivity on the sector, I have a handwritten copy of the original idea in a sealed envelope which I mailed to myself about 6yrs ago to prove I had the original idea (slight paranoia but what can ya do about it)

I havent developed my idea and would not be in a position to do so for a while - by which time the other ideas which are out now may already have a foot in the door.... I have seen where it could possibly fail and where it could possibly flourish, it will require a fair amount of marketing and promotion but ...it can work.

and so can your idea !!..... if you have the time to dedicate to its development .. go for it, you can get the developer/programmer to sign an agreement that they will not disclose the idea or its workings to anyone and they will not assist/create a similar product aimed at competing with you for X amount of years.

The Corinthian

onrail wrote: »

So I have a great idea for a website (I'm sure you hear that all the time) and really think that it could take off.

It might be a great idea, but more likely it's at best a great angle on an existing idea; Monster for porn actors, Twitter for pensioners, Amazon for whatever. Execution is king and you'll find that the vast majority in successful ventures in history were not run by those who had the idea, but those who implemented the idea best.

First thing I would do, were I you, is research the fundamentals of your idea:

How will it generate revenue and is that a viable source? A lot of ideas I've found are so caught up in the product or service itself that little effort is put into the most important part of the venture - making money - and it is very often presumed that the idea is so good that it naturally will.

Researching your market is incredibly important. People make terrible presumptions about market behaviour (especially if your business works on a B2C model); they presume consumers will part with money (even though a free alternative is available), or get the margins or price points totally wrong, or that they'll be able to turn a profit on tight margins in a small market (like Ireland), and this is almost always because at the start they did very little real research to test these presumptions. So research them.

Is it technically and legally viable? Can it even be done, is a question that sometimes does not even get asked until the venture is under-way, resulting in a gotcha that basically kills the idea before it's off the ground. This isn't always a technical fly in the ointment - sometimes laws can scupper an idea as a result of regulation (statutory monopolies are a bitch) or even criminal law (your really cool online investment community might be classified as pyramid selling).

Put together a plan. How long before you need to go full time on this? How will you support yourself financially when you do? How long before the venture is likely to break even (including salaries)? How much capital will you need and/or rounds of investment - and how much T&M will such rounds eat up?

What human resources or partners will you need? To begin with, unless you can simply hire an experienced technical resource, you're probably going to need to accept one as a partner. And when I say partner, I don't mean "I have an idea (and little else), you can have 10% of the company" partner. You're going to want to have more than just an idea under your belt when you approach someone, otherwise in their mind, you'd be little more than dead weight with 90%.

However, technical resources alone may not be what you will need. If you're setting up a Web site, online marketing skills are going to be just as important, if not more-so. As also may someone who is more of a business-accountant type. Choosing whom you need and when is also a big part of the planning and research process.

In practical terms, to summarize, I'd model your research around a business plan that you should write as if you were looking to convince yourself of the ventures validity.

HTH and good luck.

Graham

onrail wrote: »

I have a great idea for a website (I'm sure you hear that all the time)

Yes, search for 'great idea' here or in the Design/Development Forum

onrail wrote: »

I have:

• Little or no experience/education with coding or web development;
• Little or no experience/education in starting or running a business;
• Very little cash - my total savings are approx 13k euro.

Your lack of experience/education can be overcome with one of two things:
1) Time & effort - there is an abundance of free resources to enable you to learn, test, trial, play, practice, research.
2) Money - you can pay someone who does have the experience/training.

onrail wrote: »

I suppose that the reason for my post is to figure out whether it is worthwhile for me to spend hours/weeks/months doing the relevant market research, networking, and drafting of a biz plan if I could not viably set up and run such a company.

If you don't have the confidence in your idea to invest hours/weeks/months in it, then I would respectfully suggest you made this post several hours/weeks/months too early.

ykc08

I'd suggest start investing in your most important resource, namely yourself.

Take a bit out of your savings, go to a Start Your Own Business course where you can ask experienced people questions and get some insights into your idea. The best part of it you get a 3 hour session with a mentor, worth the money alone.

Also start reading a ton of books and articles and whatever you can find on business, websites etc and talk to people in your industry if you can find them.

I'd guess that you won't learn the skills to build the site yourself anytime soon so that will need to be outsourced. This means you need to cover as many of the other angles as you can to make your cash last as long as possible.

fishbun

I'm echoing Corinthian's answer because I love it so much. Please print it out and stick onto your bedroom mirror; you should learn it off by heart!

To start with I'm going to quote Derek Siver's theory: "To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions." See also Thomas Edision's thoughts on the matter: "Vision without execution is hallucination"

Right now you have an (OK?) idea and no way of executing. I'll swing around (eventually) to how you as a non-technical founder can add value to a startup, but first I want to tell you about the most decisive factor in business execution that all founders should focus on: Customer & Market Development. Most of us aren't used to thinking about how to obtain customers and study markets in a disciplined way. The best book I ever bought on the subject is Steve Blank's Four Steps to the Epiphany. It's a bloody dense book that I flipped through when I bought it, couldn't get into it, regretted it until I sat down and read it properly.

If it happens to you have a gander at his Customer Development Videos and its complimentary slideshow. If you STILL can't get it I'll summarise the key points below and then you'll realise how awesome it is (p.s. just in case you were suspicious I'm not Steve Blank or his publisher)

1) Go Outside
Forget about the underlying web technology or the latest in typographical trends. The basic step is to attempt to learn about your customers. In the beginning there is only opinions and guesses about how your business will operate, and until you actually get out of the building and start finding out about them; you won't know who they are, what they will need, and how you should reach them.
It's a chance to find out very early on if your guesses and hopes and dreams are delusions. It's an attempt to minimise risk by testing your hypotheses against realities. (It's also a reason not to dedicate too much of your resources in drawing up a detailed business plan until you have spoken to customers - they'll rarely survive first contact with the real world!)

2) Market Type Theory
This part explains why different startups face very different challenges. There are three situations that change your company's execution: (i) creating a new product or (ii) bring a new product to an existing market or (iii) resegmenting an existing market.
I have no idea what you're planning but if you're introducing a new product sure you might enjoy a complete lack of competition, but then again it might take 2 years to actually get customer traction. Read the book to do the workpages to find out what market you're in.

3) Find The Market For Your Specific Product
Great you've converted to this "customer listening" religion and they've given amazing feedback and given you tons of ideas about new features. The only thing next is to abandon your product and build this new site and then rinse and repeat with customer discovery. Right? Wrong!
This idea blends with Lean Product Development - try to build your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and find a market (any market!) for this. Remember the whole point of this stage of a company is to test your beliefs as a founder.
Yes you can iterate and test progress against the facts you've discovered, or you could leave the MVP alone knowing that it will be a hard graft. Either way you'll learn loads.
The point is to set up a rational discussion about customers and build up your list of facts rather than assumptions.

4) Phases Of Company Growth
The book's name from the stages of growth a startup goes through;
(i) Customer Discovery [when you're just trying to figure out if there are any customers who might want your product];
(ii) Customer Validation [when you first make revenue by selling your MVP];
(iii) Customer Creation [like a traditional startup launch, only with strategy involved];
(iv) Company Building [search Amazon for Crossing the Chasm]

It's a pretty useful roadmap for the early stages a startup goes through.

5) Learning And Iterating
Rather than going through the steps in detail (just buy the book you jerk), I'll talk about the insights I got from it.
In the beginning, no one has a clue what's going on and it's all guesses. Most of the time founders launch companies here (out of boredom or impatience maybe) and could succeed but will likely fail spectacularly. Only when they've failed in a spectacular and expensive fashion will a company try a new iteration, and probably try a couple more iterations until the company just rolls over and dies.
The root of this failure is a company blowing its wad too early, so to speak. The book gives you a framework for making sure this doesn't happen by getting you into a mindset of learning and iterating before launch. It's a disciplined approach into gaining facts and changing direction without expensive or embarrassing repercussions, and gives criteria for when to move on only when you have a repeatable and scalable business execution process in place (i.e. when customers are actually buying your MVP)



Why am I bringing this up? Because I think it's the only way to evaluate a non-technical founder. You're more than useless if you're not focused on customer development at the start, and any developer you'd be interested in partnering with right now could squirrel away your 13k in no time at all and work on their own ideas. But you would be amazed at the amount of entrepreneurs don't even talk with the people who will be potentially their first customers / users. Or if they do, then the interviews sound more like product pitches rather than discussions. Having any kind of early validation will help you recruit your team -- technical co-founders, investors, and employees all love to be part of a winning team.

But you have bigger problems. You feel like once you disclose your idea you’ll have no value in the company. Think instead about the set of capabilities the leadership at your company needs:

• Great network and reputation to get you intros to investors, partners, employees.
• Ability to sell and evangelise the idea to recruits, press, customers.
• Leadership and management ability. Ability to create a strong culture.
• Knowledge of the market, your desired positioning, strategy to get there.
• Strong sense of product design, passion about building a great product, knowledge of the latest and greatest in design in your market.
• Ability to create wireframes, HTML mock-ups, other product artifacts that you use to flesh out ideas and test them.
• Ability to reach users, get ideas in front of them, survey them, get feedback, iterate.
• Building a scalable, profitable, customer acquisition engine.
• Building and managing a technical team.

Agreed? OK, a few things follow:

• You do not get to automatically be good at these things just because you are "not technical." I’m terrible at hurling, but that doesn't automatically make me good at maths. I suck at that, too. Work on developing yourself and what your company needs.
• You can be great at almost all of these things without a technical degree. How many things on this list require technology? Building HTML mockups and wireframes does not require technical chops. Nor does building a Wufoo or Survey Monkey form. Nor does picking apart 200 web products and analyzing what works and doesn't. Or reading books. Or going to design classes. Or starting a launchrock page.
• Be great at these things, look for co-founders who also are great at what they do, and you'll have a good company.

This seems like a lot of work outside of your comfort zone, and it is, but you are talking about starting a web business. In a startup, there is a lot to do, and never underestimate this fact. As you are a non-techie, learn to appreciate the role of technology in your business. Much like you wouldn't ask Google employee no. 13 to help start a dairy farm in Cahirciveen; a programmer wouldn't ask a non-technical, non proven "business guy" to start a web company.

The simple answer is that one person is rarely enough to be called a whole business, which means you will eventually need a team. And, the proper team should bring as many of the company's needed capabilities to the table as possible. A purely technical founder's company will not reach its true potential until someone joins who knows how to create partnerships, drive customers, speak to different audiences, and motivate different types of employees.

The biggest con of a non-technical founder is that they have nothing to sell until they find someone to build it. The difference is, a really good leader can go out and sell a vision long before a product exists, and inspire people to make it happen. I’m not a really good leader so I just learned how to build mockups and MVP of MVPs. My biggest successes came from building on the Customer Development Model, gaining traction and convincing smarter people it was worth pursuing.

Ask yourself if you truly believe that your company can be satisfactorily profitable. Ask yourself if you're willing to work hard over the next 2 years (at least) to make it happen. If it is then I think your plan should be:


1) Really understand your target segment on an intimate level. You should be the master of the user & business domain that the product is going to serve. You should know what the right strategic goals of the business should be, given the target user. You should know exactly what problem you're trying to solve, for whom, and (roughly) how.

2) Learn to code the MVP, but instead of continuing its development, build it to a level where you can release to beta users. Forget about advanced features. Basic functionality in a working interface, with the promise of advanced functionality, can get enough signups to take you to the next step. You can also get a proxy for your customer acquisition costs online by running landing page tests.

3) Focus development on rapid iteration. Prioritize your feature list by simplicity and usefulness, and either split your attention between adding small, useful features one at a time while working on the larger improvements or focus solely on the larger improvements.

4) After the six months – a year the above should take you, take stock again and consider if you are ready to get a co-founder (if there are some really large improvements that need to be made that are out of your coding league completely), and/or seek more funding.



If you ever need book suggestions or want to discuss how a non-technical guy can learn enough programming to be dangerous (it doesn’t take as long as you think!) send me a PM and I’ll respond in email. This stage of fleshing out an idea can all be done in your spare time while being underemployed in your current job, but even if you need quit work to focus 100% on your idea remember it’s pretty much impossible to starve in a first world nation with a social welfare program. Internet startups are amazing because they allow people like you and me with little capital or previous reputation to leverage all this readily accessible knowledge to put our ideas out there and potentially build them into a worldwide businesses. Best of luck & let us know how it goes!

dozy doctor

If you are looking to get a website built, go to www.freelancer.com and put your job up there.... It will cost you a fraction of the price that it would host to get built in Ireland..... Worth checking it out....

The Corinthian

dozy doctor wrote: »

If you are looking to get a website built, go to www.freelancer.com and put your job up there.... It will cost you a fraction of the price that it would host to get built in Ireland..... Worth checking it out....

Caveat emptor.

Bigus

Is there any way to roll this idea out small scale and expand slowly

or does it all have to released up front?

If can in anyway be done slowly or say trade only , just do it and learn as you go part time.

If it in anyway proves itself it'll be much easier to get backing.

If it has to be a big launch and development , get a partner.

onrail

Really excellent replies lads - thanks for your time. If anything, I've realised how much work I have ahead to convert an 'idea' into reality. There are far more barriers to me setting up an enterprise than three bullet points!!

CelticRambler

Beware of unhidden traps too! It's relatively easy to get "sound advice" from people experienced in your area of interest - and include "starting a business" in that - but if your idea is significantly different to anything else, you might find that your mentor just doesn't get it. This could be because your presentation was rubbish, it could be that the idea is rubbish, but it could also be that you're thinking so far out of the box that your advisor's experience is obsolete and he doesn't know it yet.

The other thing to watch is market research. Take a lesson from Henry Ford and Steve Jobs - don't ask people what they want, just give it to them! This is where fishbun's point No.1 comes in: get out of the office and listen to what people are saying. Provoke them if you have to with a contrary argument, but collect up as many "What we need is ..." and "You know what they should do ..." comments as possible.

And finally, the worst trap of all: time. Don't spend huge amounts of money (not even small amounts, come to think of it) until you've done everything you can possibly do to figure out what still needs to be done. Building a fully-functional website is quick and easy - you can leave that till the very end. There's nothing worse than having to spend money on constant revisions because circumstances outside your control cause a six-week - or six-month - delay and the market changes in the meantime.

Other than that, go for it and good luck!

dozy doctor

The Corinthian wrote: »

Caveat emptor.

I understand what you are saying about freelancer but you can get a great deal and lets be honest if you don't do your homework properly when sourcing a designer or Web Team, then shame on you.... In fact I have heard of Irish Website company's who outsource their work to Freelancer....

Graham

dozy doctor wrote: »

I understand what you are saying about freelancer but you can get a great deal and lets be honest if you don't do your homework properly when sourcing a designer or Web Team, then shame on you.... In fact I have heard of Irish Website company's who outsource their work to Freelancer....

Which is all well and good if you have the experience to know what a good designer/web-tem looks like and you are able to make a call on the quality of work they are providing.

The Corinthian

Bigus wrote: »

Is there any way to roll this idea out small scale and expand slowly

Yes. In many cases this is eminently possible. Daft.ie or even Boards.ie are both examples of Internet-based businesses that began on shoestring budgets and grew organically.

The only caveat is that this is a much slower approach and it does leave you open to imitators who'll put their hands in their pockets and overtake you, so even if you begin with a shoestring budget, you're faced with the dilemma of doing the same - stepping up a gear or three - to head this danger off, even though your venture could otherwise happily trundle along modestly for years.

CelticRambler wrote: »

Beware of unhidden traps too! It's relatively easy to get "sound advice" from people experienced in your area of interest - and include "starting a business" in that - but if your idea is significantly different to anything else, you might find that your mentor just doesn't get it.

Honestly, that doesn't happen. Many people with 'ideas' like to think that theirs is revolutionary, but the reality is that 99.99% of the time it's just a new angle on something that's already out there; Monster for porn actors, Twitter for pensioners, Amazon for whatever - the last of which is actually the OP's 'idea'. Reality is that I've heard over 300 'ideas' over the last fifteen years; the last, even vaguely, revolutionary one I came across was probably around 2000.

This does not mean that a technical consultant will completely 'get' what your 'idea' is straight off; if you're doing (to use one of the above examples) a new 'Twitter for pensioners', then they're unlikely to be experts on that market. Then again, that's not their job and neither should it be - that's your job.

However, any technical consultant worth their salt will recognize that they are not experts on everything - something which is often a rare quality in techies - and follow up by doing their homework in that area accordingly.

And finally, the worst trap of all: time. Don't spend huge amounts of money (not even small amounts, come to think of it) until you've done everything you can possibly do to figure out what still needs to be done.

I agree, but with one caveat. Even the best researched business model will require refining and change - not least of all because the market does not remain static itself. But certainly, don't jump in until you've done your research and design to a very high degree; there's a big difference between inevitable refinements and changes and having to redo everything because you rushed in.

dozy doctor wrote: »

I understand what you are saying about freelancer but you can get a great deal and lets be honest if you don't do your homework properly when sourcing a designer or Web Team, then shame on you....

True, but employing or otherwise bringing aboard a local developer or team is much easier to assess and manage than some outsourced developer or team based in the People's Republic of Elbonia.

If you're outsourcing for the first time, it's a bit like Russian roulette, in that there are as many (if not more) cowboys out there than gems. If you lack the IT skills, then spotting the cowboys becomes harder. Even if they're not cowboys, communication is a major issue, given lack of direct local contact, language barriers and cultural differences.

Do you think your average Joe Bloggs can put together a functional specification clear and accurate enough that a Webdev outfit in Pakistan will follow without issue or misinterpretation?

In fact I have heard of Irish Website company's who outsource their work to Freelancer....

Increasingly common model. The Irish Webdev firm effectively becomes a sales and project management office for offshored work. Inevitable consequence of everyone wanting things done on the cheap.

onrail wrote: »

Really excellent replies lads - thanks for your time. If anything, I've realised how much work I have ahead to convert an 'idea' into reality. There are far more barriers to me setting up an enterprise than three bullet points!!

Well yes; who said that entrepreneurship was easy? If you want to get rich without effort, play the Lotto.

Seriously though, I think, whatever development strategy you take, most here seem to agree that doing a lot of research on your idea beforehand is essential.