(Left: Me fiddling around on the internet and not learning how to program. Photo by Tony Noecker.)
Since gaining a serious interest in the tech industry just over four years ago and having lamely remained just an “ideas guy” since, my appreciation for those who either know how to code or pick it up as they go has grown exponentially.
I often think about one day dumping my bucket of ideas into a post on Silicon Prairie News – from a service I want to start called “Worth the Price” to a Mint-like aggregator for individual’s media bills and consumption (think cable, Netflix, Hulu, etc.). Today, I’m more than willingly to share my ideas, which I used to protect like Gollum guarded the One Ring, because I know the value of my idea is nothing without execution. And ironically, when I used to think about destroying or changing my ideas, that notion seemed just about as hard to do as trudging through Isengard to destroy the One Ring.
With that in mind, the obvious next step presents itself: I should execute my idea by asking, pleading or paying a developer I know (and I know plenty of them) to jump on board with me and give him or her equity – you know, the usual offer. Pretty easy, right? Nope.
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In Eugene Wallingford, PhD‘s excellent blog post today, “I just need a programmer,” he plays out this scenario to a T (when reading, replace “students” with “degree holders” or “self-taught individuals”).
Most of these projects never find Computer Science students to work on them. There are lots of reasons. Students are busy with classes and life. Most Computer Science students have jobs they like. Those jobs pay hard cash, if not a lot of it, which is more attractive to most students than the promise of uncertain wealth in the future. The idea does not excite other people as much as the entrepreneur, who created the idea and is on fire with its possibilities.
Wallingford (left, photo from twitter.com/wallingf), who is associate professor and head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Northern Iowa, wrote this blog post in response to the high volume of e-mail and phone calls he receives from people with “The Next Great Idea.” As I’ve already described it, it’s an excellent post, and I must give credit to Matt Secoske for tweeting about it (I follow him, do you? You should: @secos.), and Brandon Gray (bgray) on Y Combinator’s Hacker News for sharing it (Do you read Hacker News? You should: news.ycombinator.com.)
At this point, I strongly encourage you to read Wallingford’s blog post:
“I just need a programmer”
By Eugene Wallingford, PhD
As head of the Department of Computer Science at my university, I often receive e-mail and phone calls from people with The Next Great Idea. The phone calls can be quite entertaining! The caller is an eager entrepreneur, drunk on their idea […]
Next, I’d encourage you to browse through the community discussion on Hacker News in response to this post: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962008.
And now back to myself. In the time I wrote this post, I still haven’t learned how to program, I haven’t bought a book off of Amazon, and I haven’t blocked time off on my calendar to do either of the aforementioned. Sadly, it’s a safer bet to predict that I could write this post a year from now and start out with the same shameful admittance: “I’ve lamely remained just an ‘ideas guy.’”
Here’s my challenge to you – you other “idea guys and gals” – take foursquare founder’s Dennis Crowley‘s advice and “stop sketching and start building.” That advice recently appeared on Quora in a post Crowley titled “What are your top 5 pieces of advice for entrepreneurs?” Notice, this is his “#1.”
#1. Stop sketching and start building. Pre-dodgeball I went thru 3-4 years thinking I was going to meet some magical engineer who would build all the stuff I was thinking about. But I never met that person, so I taught myself ASP and MS Access (yikes! eventually PHP an MySQL) out of a book and got to work just hacking stuff together. I’m still a really shitty programmer (ask Harry Heymann) but I know enough to hack a prototype together (which is what you need to get other people / investors on board).
And I’ll leave you with this quote from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman (it’s one of Dusty‘s favorite quotes and has become one of mine, as well):
“If you are not ashamed by your product when you launch it, you launched too late”
Good luck, and make sure to send me an email (danny@siliconprairienews.com) when you launch your prototype, no matter how it looks. If it works, you’re on to something and we want to cover it on Silicon Prairie News.