Ask HN: Techy with a basic MVP, how do I find a partner?

[kriptonic]

Hi,

As I said in the title, I have a basic MVP for a product which I think is likely to be very valuable to many colleges and University. Ideally as a techy, I'd like someone with more of a business background to help with the sales, etc.

I'm also not sure whether I should be going for funding. My understanding is that you should really only look for funding if you need it, but what does that mean? I need money to survive and if I had funding I could dedicate more of my time to this and not need to worry about running out of money.

Does anyone know a good way to find someone to help me with the business side of things? Is there a good website I should know of, are meetups the way to go, or perhaps you know some better way? I'm from the UK by the way.

I have no personal contacts which would be of any help unfortunately.

Thanks.

[morpheous]

From what you've written, you are at the stage where you put in "sweat equity".

Not meaning to sound harsh, but at this early stage, you're not really investable - and other than your immediate circle of "the 3F's (Friends, Family and Fools), no one is going to invest in you - until you prove that this is more than just an idea.

You need to get your first PAYING customers, and establish some numbers that would entice an Angel or other professional investor to take a closer look.

You will have to be creative (part time job, consulting, sell your car etc., etc.),as to how you survive or feed yourself until you get to the stage where you are "investible".

If I got a dollar everytime someone approached me for money for investing in their MVP - without first having proved that it is a viable business - I'd be a very, very, very rich man.

[qwrusz]

Congrats on the work so far. Fully agree with you that diverse backgrounds among founders are a huge help. Seen too many tech founders think about the business side of things much too late.

Question: How did you determine you have an MVP and that it's likely to be very valuable to that market? Even getting that far (market research etc) requires some pretty decent business skills.

Have you spoken to a couple universities and colleges about it? If not, I would spend time to do that before spending time finding a partner or funding. It will be a bit awkward if you haven't done this type of customer research before. Additional benefit of doing this first yourself, the more you know about the business side of your future company the more you can evaluate if a potential founder has good business skills.

Heads up: the education market doesn't act like other markets (your customers are the government or close to it). A partner with education-related work/biz experience might be significantly more helpful in this case vs general biz background.

[helen842000]

What would it take to get some paying customers? Perhaps a grant or seed stage funding could come after that maybe?

I'm in the UK too and have had seed funding from a couple of schemes so they are out there. I'd be happy to help with suggestions. My email is in profile if you want to discuss.

[sharemywin]

are people searching for your idea on google? then make an ad and a landing page. or posting about the problem your solving on twitter? contact them to see if you can talk with them about it.

here's a couple links on getting first users: http://blog.lifecycle.io/how-to-get-first-users/

https://jasonevanish.com/2013/08/11/95-ways-to-find-your-fir...

Here's a good article on how grubhub got off the ground and found a co-founder:

https://mevans314.com/2013/09/01/blog-series-from-1-to-700-e...

[codegeek]

Would you mind sharing what your product exactly is ? Happy to give you some pointers. Disclosure: I have a bootstrapped educational tech. product even though we don't sell to schools necessarily.