Hacker News Reader

I remember having lots of very similar questions when I first started. I'm a software engineer, so I moved to silicon valley years ago to find a CEO I could CTO for. Fortunately, I stopped looking and had the confidence that I'd be able to figure out all the business stuff. I bet on myself as the CEO.

One of the reasons why there are so many software startup opportunities is because industries are so siloed. My current startup is in Oilfield Logistics - it's literally software to aid moving sand from a mine to an oil well. I had no idea this problem existed until I talked to a friend that runs a large trucking company, and then dug into it. Key takeaway - talk to a lot of people, in lots of different locations, in lots of different industries.

As for how to get the money to bootstrap - you have to get creative, and that's what makes bootstrapping so much fun. Having a VC write you a check is so...unoriginal. If you can find a customer whose pain is more acute than the rest, you can often get them to pay in advance or have them pay to build it, but offer them a "discount" so you can retain all the IP. Now a customer is funding your startup. Or find the smallest MVP that customers will pay for and only build that. The MVP might be a spreadsheet or Zapier + Airtable. You would be surprised what customers are willing to pay for. They don't care if it's easily deployable, can be easily scaled up, or has a beautiful UI, as long as it solves their problem.

You typically have to be in the industry already and experiencing the problem first hand. If you’re technical the best opportunity is usually to partner with someone in the industry 50/50 cofounders. In the later stages you will become an expert because if you’re technical usually fast at learning.

If you have ideas for products or services to improve technical workflow that could also be a space to innovate too.

>I heard about startups that do something like make medical insurance billing easier. That raises a lot of questions, actually. * How does one even learn that is an issue?

Try figuring out how much a medical procedure or visit or lab will cost before you have it done, and you will find out very quickly.

> How do you know what type of company to start and how much of your own money did you invest when bootstrapping a company.

I get random ideas all the time and usually deciding to do a project will lead to something. I started with an idea where I wanted to do web analytics initially. Turns out that people liked my app more for the cool graphs that could be easily exported into slideshows and pdfs. The idea changed a lot from talking to people and I found something I never thought people would pay for.

> * How does one even learn that is an issue?

> * It seems like something where getting started is driven entirely by having contacts in the industry.

Get a job in an industry and learn the domain. It's that simple, in theory at least. The "advantaged" have friends and family who educate you on these industries, but it's hard to really get domain expertise without doing the work.

You aren't "only good at programming." If that is the case you underestimate yourself, are lazy, etc. That's not meant to be mean, but you can achieve more.

The challenge is that domain expertise can be a significant investment when:

* You could be doing more fun things

* It might be location specific

* Might impact your earnings

* May result in your settling down to a different life than you expected.

> Say you're really only good at programming and want to start a ...fashion business. How do you even start?

Get a side hustle. For that exact scenario see https://twitter.com/donasarkar and http://donasarkarbooks.com/fashion-design/.

Become a technical co-founder for someone with a deep knowledge of some valuable business, who has a great idea for a startup but lacks the technical skill to make it work. There are lots of them.

Be careful: signal/noise ratio is extremely low here. There are lots of people, particularly in SV, with vague ideas and a general desire to be a "non-technical cofounder", but far less that have the deep, valuable domain knowledge being discussed here.

Well, yeah. Vet your partners. They need to have a realistic and achievable idea that makes sense to you. "Business plan" becomes their responsibility, and it needs to be better than "collect underpants, ???, profit!", or "Facebook for cats" or whatever.