Ask HN: Ideas man vs Practical Man | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Ideas man vs Practical Man

4 pointsbeholden3 comments

I've been reading HN for quite a while now, since the 'beginning' as you might say.

I'm ashamed.

I don't know how to code to a build standard and won't have the possibility to learn. Now I'm good at coming up with ideas but havn't the faintest how to put them into action. I've got a notebook jammed with ideas in different fields but no practial way of going about things. For the record I'm a CAD technician with IT support capability.

In essence my query to you is : How do I take my ideas for startups and run with them without turning into a pointy haired boss.

EDIT: You know what... it always happens at the right time. http://paulgraham.com/start.html

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Assuming you want to find a technical co-founder you will need to bring valuable skills to the table. If you have truly amazing ideas this could be maybe 50% of what you bring to the table, but more likely your ideas will be 5-10% of your contribution, because once you get going on an idea you are going to need to iterate and at that point you need everyone to be bringing ideas to the table.

The essence of a pointy-haired boss is someone who has a lot of ideas (which may be good or bad), but is so entrenched in middle management that they have no idea how to actually get things done. As an engineer I love when people have great ideas, but I hate when I'm the only one working 16 hour days because the non-technical folks think their job is to tell me what to do then wait til it's done.

What constitutes valuable contributions? Well, I think Spencer Fry said it better than anyone else around here ever has: http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do

I half remembered that post, thank you for the direct link.

If you where in my position now - what would you do?

I would suggest you seek out a good partner that balances your strengths and weaknesses.

I have read something (don't recall what or where) that talked about people who were failures until they found the right partner -- like song writers that could do one part of it but not all of it and didn't get successful until they found a partner that was really good at the part they couldn't do but who couldn't do the piece they could do. (I think this is the story behind Gilbert and Sullivan.) So I would suggest you first look for information on how to find a compatible partner and then later go find that partner.

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