Ask HN: Where do I start in starting a startup | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where do I start in starting a startup

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I have been an individual contributor in all my career. I like to focus on the technical side, and find the management/business side unbearable. I am leaning toward the idealism side of things and as many people here would love to help a bit if possible to advance technology and innovation.

I would like to build a Data As A Service company that, in a nutshell, would crawl the internet and stream the data at almost real time. Think of it as Twitter's Firehose but for the whole Internet.

In my previous attempts, with ideas I had, I would usually spend a few months working on a functional prototype, and pray it would take off.

This time I thought I'd reach out for the wisdom of HN crowd. Where/how did you start your company? How far in investigating the idea and/or building a prototype were you before you reached out for a business co-founder? Where/how did you find them? Did you go through an incubator? Are there any rough guidelines on how to one should proceed from square one?

Thanks!

I think you're doing the right thing: you need to find a suitable cofounder.

My company developed from a University research centre. We built a prototype, and made it available for gratis usage. We built a small but enthusiastic community, and then formed a company to commercialize the product.

I would say we had a decent prototype before starting the company: it was fully functional, but had basically no integrations with any third-party systems. So it was a long way from plug-n-play usage. We built a few of those integrations for target markets as part of our commercialization efforts.

One of my colleagues at our former employer was technical, but was interested in the business side of things. He was able to take on the the CEO role of our startup, while I remained largely technical. I did however adopt the accounting side of things, which I think for many coders is fairly approachable. I think it's good to have enough exposure to be able to talk intelligently on both sides. I learned a lot about business.

I don't have any great insight into ways of finding a suitable person. I'd say that you need to have a solid relationship with them, and you absolutely need to trust them, their judgement, their commitment and their work ethic. I'm fairly dubious of trolling startup websites looking for a business co-founder, but ... having said that, I've seen a bunch of posts both on HN and elsewhere from people who are looking for a technical partner, so I guess there's market demand.

I don't know if it's a good analogy, but ... I think it's like dating. It'd take a year or two of knowing someone pretty closely before I'd be happy to commit to doing a startup with them. Maybe some more intense experience could reduce that timeframe?

Good luck!

Marketing your products and services first,the Alovez page is useful for you https://www.alovez.com/page/?id=4241073848

Start evaluating startup ideas > https://www.ycombinator.com/library?categories=Getting%20Sta...

Before doing anything else reach potential customers and talk to them.

https://startupschool.org

Cool idea!

Who is it for?

How will it help?

Why do they want it?

If it was already built right now, who would your first customer be?

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