Some would say that this article is harsh; I suspect that it's actually often far worse in reality. That is, I routinely get asked by "founders" who the best Rails developers in the room are, and they will then proceed to rudely interrupt them from technical discussions and offer them 1-2% equity to build their vague concept from the ground up.
This is insulting to everyone involved, even the "founder". (I keep air-quoting "founder" because these days everyone is a "founder" in the same way everyone with a Digital Rebel XTi is a "photographer". Meanwhile, none of my developer friends would ever refer to themselves as a "hacker" outside of technical circles that understand you don't mean you hack the Pentagon.)
Someone in this community could/should set up a site with an obvious URL that serves as a checklist for what someone who wants to be a hustler/product girl should have in order before approaching a technical individual:
- be able to coherently relay the meat of a concept in 5-10 words
- demonstrate how they plan to fund it and be prepared to explain what they are putting up
- explain where they are at in their efforts to learn basic coding
- show that they have done research into competition and bonus points for real customer development
- wireframes or mockups, preferably presented with the disclaimer that you're excited to see how your input will change and improve their concept
Likewise, there can be a second URL that developers can hand out that will save the same purpose as "rejection line" numbers that girls give to lame guys in clubs. You can tell a founder who isn't taking a hint to contact you and it will explain why they are wasting both of your time.
I found this rather amusing as I am technical and was at that meeting. oddly enough only one person activly tried to talk to me, the CEO of genie8, and he didnt need another technical guy (as far as I could tell). Based on that one conversation I would have happily worked on his idea.
Here is a tip, devs arent scary and wont bite. We are curious and if you show some (any) attempt to get started you gain massive credibility. Try actually talking to others and not just the mentors, especially when at these sort of events. You never know you mind be able to build the relationship faster then you think.
I honstly think had someone talked to me and had shown some interest in what I was doing at that meetup I could have ended up working on their idea or reccomended someone to them.
I'm not even technical and the quantity of those group B ideas that get thrown at me is ridiculous.
Best one so far: "ebooks, like they do with mp3s." That was in 2009, so he missed the boat by a little bit, but I bet the guy is now walking around telling people he thought of ebooks "before anyone else" and just couldn't find the right person to help him build it.
I'm not sure its really as hard as people make it out to be to find technical people to implement your idea.
IF you have a reasonable amount of money. Seems like quite a few people are looking for someone to do it on a volunteer or partial-volunteer basis (or 'equity', which in a lot of cases is practically the same thing). Or they have $500 or $1000 and think that is actually somehow sufficient.
As a matter of fact, if someone has an idea that isn't completely ridiculous, I will probably strongly consider helping them, IF they have enough money to actually pay for it AND I can build it with my favorite tools of the moment (Node.js/CoffeeScript/HTML5). I may have time starting in the next few weeks since a couple of client projects are slowing down. Send me some information about your idea and budget etc. -- ithkuil@gmail.com
This is insulting to everyone involved, even the "founder". (I keep air-quoting "founder" because these days everyone is a "founder" in the same way everyone with a Digital Rebel XTi is a "photographer". Meanwhile, none of my developer friends would ever refer to themselves as a "hacker" outside of technical circles that understand you don't mean you hack the Pentagon.)
Someone in this community could/should set up a site with an obvious URL that serves as a checklist for what someone who wants to be a hustler/product girl should have in order before approaching a technical individual:
- be able to coherently relay the meat of a concept in 5-10 words
- demonstrate how they plan to fund it and be prepared to explain what they are putting up
- explain where they are at in their efforts to learn basic coding
- show that they have done research into competition and bonus points for real customer development
- wireframes or mockups, preferably presented with the disclaimer that you're excited to see how your input will change and improve their concept
Likewise, there can be a second URL that developers can hand out that will save the same purpose as "rejection line" numbers that girls give to lame guys in clubs. You can tell a founder who isn't taking a hint to contact you and it will explain why they are wasting both of your time.