I'm a coder who's built a lot of platforms for startups from the ground up. I have some scorn for people who are too good to learn the technical; when I hire a roofer, he's looking at me like I'm an idiot, so same goes. But. I always thought, hey, I've got the coding skill so why shouldn't I have it all - and be fabulously successful from some good idea I cobbled together with nothing but 1's and 0's in my free time? So, I built six or seven apps on my own recognizance, none of which took off, but which were all (I think) revolutionary concepts at the time, and each of which took a year or so to be fully functional platforms.
The other apps I built in the interim, to make money. These I built as a freelancer for people who were very competent in their particular businesses and were using web/mobile apps to basically streamline things and improve efficiency; I would reject anyone coming to me with a job like "I have this idea for an app..." because I have a dozen ideas for apps that are probably better than theirs, and I know how to actually build them, but what I emphatically have never had are a functioning existing business, business model, growth strategy or investment for those things. Ideas are just ideas. Even if you take years to develop the code skills to build them swiftly. In fact, if you do, it's even more painful to watch them vanish after a little while.
1's and 0's are just electrons on silicon, after all. We're writing in sand.
I've come to ...well, not exactly love or respect the fast-talking business guys, but... appreciate that maybe focusing on just how to build things (whether you code them or not) is really not the key. It's a necessary ingredient, for sure. But like I said, I've got a dozen good ideas for apps. Non-technical people have like hundreds of bad ideas for apps, and most of them want to catapult themselves to success with neither a good idea nor a functional business model nor existing investment -- they just want to entice someone like me to work for them on faith/credit, and it's always been this way, for 30 years now.
Sorry to rant. But what does work is when people have a successful business already, or the skills to set one up, which I don't have. When they have domain knowledge in their field, whether that's the food industry or hotels or manufacturing. Then, finding someone to build the software creatively or learning to do it yourself can add a whole layer of value, because you already understand the business logic inside and out.
There will be a few unicorn dream startups that exist only 1's and 0's, in the 2020s... and as sad as I am about how all those things turned out since the 1990s, I'm not totally closed to the possibility of being at the front of one. But that's not where the bulk of wealth will be created. It'll be in building usable software that acts as a multiplier for the capacity of ordinary businesses... and not necessarily in the "take a 2.5% cut" way.
You’re overestimating the importance of business people. Viewing products from a business point of view inevitably leads to inferior products, as the focus is on purely making money. It’s not about making money or about the synergy of business and development. It’s all about creating useful shit for other people to use. You need domain expertise, good taste, and the ability to create value by building things. Focus on money and you’ll be cutting corners, trying to sell useless shit to people who buy it for others to never use.
I think we're talking about different things. Take three scenarios.
1. Mediocre idea for an app with a lot of funding, raised a competent team of coders, business school grads with no experience in the lead. This will fail. Those guys will take the money and buy jeeps, degrade the product with bad ego-driven ideas, etc.
2. Great idea for an app with no funding, founded by coders. These people will work their ass off all weekend for free. Business people can't see the value; will never see the value; if they touched it they'd ruin it, but they won't touch it. The app launches, gets to the front page of HN, a week later it's dead because there's no business model. Here you could make a case that some business people should have been involved.
3. The ideal case. This is not an idea for an app. This is not really even an app. Someone has a glass factory. Or a small chain of hotels. Their employees are constantly doing things on a whiteboard in the back of the office. They want to expand to more locations and scale up, but the system they have just gets more confusing and complicated the bigger they get, it's really hard to train new employees to use this whiteboard and pass these paper slips around the factory. They come and ask you how you can make it better and you build them an app that they pay for out of pocket, which puts the system up on screens all over the facility. One-off deal. Then they grow and they ask for more apps to manage their customers, their inventory, their billing. Multi-one-off-deals, but now you have an ecosystem you maintain for them.
Those are the business people I'm talking about, not the ones who approach you with an elevator pitch where "it's like Uber but for dogs" or something.
I'm a coder who's built a lot of platforms for startups from the ground up. I have some scorn for people who are too good to learn the technical; when I hire a roofer, he's looking at me like I'm an idiot, so same goes. But. I always thought, hey, I've got the coding skill so why shouldn't I have it all - and be fabulously successful from some good idea I cobbled together with nothing but 1's and 0's in my free time? So, I built six or seven apps on my own recognizance, none of which took off, but which were all (I think) revolutionary concepts at the time, and each of which took a year or so to be fully functional platforms.
The other apps I built in the interim, to make money. These I built as a freelancer for people who were very competent in their particular businesses and were using web/mobile apps to basically streamline things and improve efficiency; I would reject anyone coming to me with a job like "I have this idea for an app..." because I have a dozen ideas for apps that are probably better than theirs, and I know how to actually build them, but what I emphatically have never had are a functioning existing business, business model, growth strategy or investment for those things. Ideas are just ideas. Even if you take years to develop the code skills to build them swiftly. In fact, if you do, it's even more painful to watch them vanish after a little while.
1's and 0's are just electrons on silicon, after all. We're writing in sand.
I've come to ...well, not exactly love or respect the fast-talking business guys, but... appreciate that maybe focusing on just how to build things (whether you code them or not) is really not the key. It's a necessary ingredient, for sure. But like I said, I've got a dozen good ideas for apps. Non-technical people have like hundreds of bad ideas for apps, and most of them want to catapult themselves to success with neither a good idea nor a functional business model nor existing investment -- they just want to entice someone like me to work for them on faith/credit, and it's always been this way, for 30 years now.
Sorry to rant. But what does work is when people have a successful business already, or the skills to set one up, which I don't have. When they have domain knowledge in their field, whether that's the food industry or hotels or manufacturing. Then, finding someone to build the software creatively or learning to do it yourself can add a whole layer of value, because you already understand the business logic inside and out.
There will be a few unicorn dream startups that exist only 1's and 0's, in the 2020s... and as sad as I am about how all those things turned out since the 1990s, I'm not totally closed to the possibility of being at the front of one. But that's not where the bulk of wealth will be created. It'll be in building usable software that acts as a multiplier for the capacity of ordinary businesses... and not necessarily in the "take a 2.5% cut" way.