Codified startup advice | Hacker News Reader

Codified startup advice

gabrielweinberg.com

194 pointsbjonathan24 comments

I love it, Gabe. I've been running Hackers and Founders Silicon Valley for several years, and this flow chart pretty much nails it.

I would suggest at the "Have a Hacker Founder?" level, to add a "learn how to code" box. I run in to a lot of BizDev people at our events, and the business people that have had the most success are the ones that...

1. Learn how to code. It proves to hacker founders that you are serious, and every level of technical knowledge that a business person brings to the table makes them exponentially more valuable to the technical founder.

I'm not blithely saying this. My day job is as a nurse, and I went back to school for software engineering because I wanted to do the startup thing. It took me years, but I decided early on that I was going to have to build 10 startups before one succeeded. So, I learned what I had to, to be able to build 10 startups without breaking the bank. And, they key factor there was learning how to code.

2. Leave their idea behind. Instead help hackers take their too technical ideas and turn them into proper businesses.

3. Learn how the open source model works and give away their ideas and advice freely to hacker founders. Eventually, if the've helped enough hacker founders, they gain enough street cred, karma and friendships that hacker founders will ask you to join their startup.

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When I tell business people to "learn how to code" the most common response I hear is that "it takes too long". To which I say, It's going to take you at least 6 to 12 months to find a technical co founder, even in Silicon Valley, if you're lucky. You might as well start learning how to code while you're looking.

This is true. Nothing gets my attention more than non-technical people that learned how to code, and even if it's not the world's most brilliant code, it demonstrates umph and a willingness to do what they can for their business and for understanding.

Having learned how to code will also give you perspective, even if you're not going to be doing it later in the company. When you've broken your back coding, you'll realize that no feature is ever 'trivial', among other things.

It'll make you get along and understand your technical team a lot better.

I don't get why "seek advice" is the generic end point. Surely "have traction -> know how to get more users -> not seeking investment" shouldn't result in "seek advice".

I think the flowchart is there to give all the major advice to the startup, and if they get that far in the flowchart and are still looking for the next step, then that's when they should seek advice because the problem is more complex than can be shown in the flowchart.

Ah yes, I see. The only reason someone is looking at this chart in the first place is because they were seeking advice. If you have traction, know how to get more users and aren't seeking investment AND don't need advice, plz refer to the rest of the world.

I think that's actually OK, because it's basically drawing a line and saying 'outside the scope of this chart'.

The chart is presumably for people looking for advice, so it makes sense to direct the reader to seek help, rather than say something like 'you're done!'.

Symptomatic of something that there's no 'profit' node on here.

DID YOU KNOW: there are other ways to get money than from investors?

No, it is not. If you are not raising money (bc you have profit or whatever) you just answer no to that question and move on.

EVERYONE.READ.THIS. Very simple illustration highlighting pretty much all the principles I've been reading about for so long. Printed and posted on my cork-board! Thank you.

This assumes that you must get funding and investment.

Neat concept though.

Need a similar thing for 37signals style advice. Anyone?

No it doesn't. If you're not raising money you answer No to "Raising money?" at which point I suggest you seek advice (if needed). I personally haven't yet raised angel/VC money for my startups and often advise people against it until if and when they really need/want to.

Well, I read it as "If you think you don't need funding, you're wrong".

All paths go to "seek advice" except the path where you're raising money, know how much, know the terms, and know the investors.

If the author (is it you?) thinks it's ok not raise money, the diagram should be altered to reflect that.

Maybe a bit like this:

  .. -> [Raising Money?] -> [No] 
      -> [Do you need to?] 
            -> [Yes] -> (Seek advice)
            -> [No] -> [Profitable yet?] 
                               -> [Yes] -> [Cool, good luck]
                               -> [No] -> (Seek advice)

I've been doing startups for over 10 years and haven't raised any VC/angel money :). The chart is about when to ask for advice, not a chart to path your startup career.

In any case, I do think you should seek advice if you are bootstrapping. You read it as seeking advice to raise money, whereas I meant seek advice generally about your startup. I think people benefit from having mentors, which I tried to write up here btw http://ye.gg/mentors

  +-------+   +--------------------------------+
  | Start |   | Learn how to read a flowchart. |
  +-------+   +--------------------------------+
      |               /             ^          
      V              /              |           
  +---------+       /      +-------------------+
  | COUNTER |      /       | Add 1 to COUNTER. |
  |   = 1   |     /        +-------------------+
  +---------+    /                   ^          
       |        /                 +----+        
       |       /                  | no |             
       V      V                   +----+
  +--------------+                   |
  | Can you read |  +----+   +-----------------+
  | a flowchart? |--| no |-->| Is COUNTER > 3? |
  +--------------+  +----+   +-----------------+
         |                           |   
      +-----+                     +-----+
      | yes |                     | yes |
      +-----+                     +-----+
         |                           |
         V                           V        
  +-----------------+          +-------------+
  |    Proceed to   |          |   Open a    |
  | Gabriel's chart |          | restaurant. |
  +-----------------+          +-------------+

What's the start state? Is there one? I'd think to start at the top, but that has an incoming arrow...

"Are you serious" is the start. It's a loop to weed out people who aren't truly committed.

So much valuable info in a nifty flow chart. Usually I hate flow charts, but this one is good.

This really drives home the need to launch as soon as you can. Most of the actual work of building a startup actually happens after that. Great visual reminder!

"Have a Hacker Founder?" While that is a great idea if it happens to work out that way, what about "Hire a Hacker/Architect"?

Sometimes you don't meet anyone you want to be a co-founder. If that's the case and you are able to raise the funds to pay a good coder what they're worth, then hiring the right person should be an option.

What about optimizing or customizing the website later and answering technical questions about your website?

This is not criticism. I'm just wondering if you hire someone to code, what do you do about the product post completion?

Ah, I wasn't clear, apologies. I meant hire someone to code as in hire them to be an actual part of the company, not just a temp hire.

This is my situation at the moment actually. I've got the majority wireframed but will need it coded by a skilled person (I'd just butcher it). In my case I know there will be a lot of customizing and optimizing later as the first iteration is just to get it up & running, so it will be imperative to bring someone on board who will be part of the team, not just a hired gun for a few months.

The site's not loading for me for some reason. Could someone please upload the image to imgur.com or some other site? I read the text via Google cache, just can't see the chart.

I like how the flowchart passive-aggressively puts you into a loop if (for instance) you don't have a hacker founder and don't think you need one.

This is great, thank you! I am currently on the "Talk to users" step. Should I be excited to be halfway there?

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