[senior_james]

I'm a developer and have helped bootstrap a couple of SaaS. The problem is that in most partnerships like this, the other person can usually only offer ideas or something very minimal with regards to the success of the business.

I usually end up just doing everything myself. Unless you offer something besides just the idea (money, contacts, industry experience). The partnership will not work.

I've had to quit a few startups over the years myself because my co-founder ended up only offering some ideas. This starts to become a perceived manager->employee relationship (since as the developer, you are doing the majority of the work) and because the idea is their only contribution, it's a problem when it needs to be changed.

This also smacks of someone that loves the romanticized idea of running a startup, but isn't willing to actually put the work into it.

Now, I will only go into business with other people that have at least a couple of years of business experience.

[bigiain]

Similar experience here.

If the other person in the proposed partnership cannot demonstrate equivalent-value skills and equivalent previous success in critical-to-the-business areas where I'm weak (or uninterested) like sales, marketing, biz-dev, enterprise sales, acquiring VC - then my answer is almost certainly going to be "Sure, $8k/month is my usual rate - discounts of 20% for 3 month or longer block bookings. When would youy like me to start?"

If the other person refers to themselves as "An ideas guy!", my rates double, and require 50% up front.

Software development is serious time consuming and often difficult work. Do not ask me to do it for less than market rate without making it very clear that you are going to work just as hard with equivalent skill and experience to make the idea succeed.

[senior_james]

I've been interested in running my own business since I was 20 (I'm 37 now). When I was in my early 20s, I was the developer in a partnership. My partner was the 'ideas' guy and was going to finance anything we needed to launch the site. I figured because my friend and business partner was already running his own company, it would make for a better co-founder.

I worked on our idea for 3 months and finished it. At the end of the 3 months, he told me that he needed to concentrate on things that made him money and he just wasn't interested in pursuing any new ideas. Since I was poor and still living with my parents, I wasn't able to do anything with my code except use it on interviews when looking for a new job. Another company came out with almost the same idea a few years later and made millions.

The main problem was that he had no skin in the game. I had poured my life into our idea and thought about it every day. He put nothing/very little into it and was easily able to move onto something new because he wasn't losing anything. Everyone needs to take the same amount of risk in a business partnership. This is usually either time or money.

A few years later he continued on with his door-to-door computer repair company and wanted to hire me for $10/hour as a technician. At that point, I was making a salary and had a great position as a junior software developer and pretty much laughed in his face.

Our personal relationship never really recovered. We were good friends before this and at this point, and I haven't talked to him for 10+ years.

[joe563323]

> If the other person refers to themselves as "An ideas guy!", my rates double, and require 50% up front.

This is logical from a developer standpoint, but has it ever worked. Has any one ever paid 50% upfront.

[TallGuyShort]

Not in my case, but if you just say no, they think you don't have faith in their amazing idea. If they refuse to put their money where their mouth is, they realize they don't faith in their amazing idea.

[scotu]

sometimes a sticker price is not about being paid, but it's about clearing out you are rejecting an offer before even the negotiation becomes a waste of time

[bananaboy]

Yeah in a startup or small business I think every founder needs to do work. You can't have people who only essentially generate work for others. There are so many things that need doing when you're small that aren't directly related to development but still need to be done: applying for grants, tax concessions, marketing, building communities, competitive analysis, market research, payroll, accounting.

[kaspm]

But this is the fundamental point of the article. It's very difficult to do marketing, communities, competitive analysis market research payroll and accounting when you have no money and no product. So what can non-technical co-founder bring to bootstrapping a SaaS platform with just ideas? May not be possible.

[rublev]

>But this is the fundamental point of the article. It's very difficult to do marketing, communities, competitive analysis market research payroll and accounting when you have no money and no product. So what can non-technical co-founder bring to bootstrapping a SaaS platform with just ideas? May not be possible.

You hustle? You sit there and think what is the literal next step, then you try that thing, reevaluate, and repeat. Then keep doing it until you're rich, broke, or dead. There is always something you can be doing.

[alextheparrot]

For some reason the image of a mouse in a cage running on a wheel with a person shouting at it popped into my head here; it reads like the transcript of YouTube motivational videos that on the surface has substance, but are actually hollow.

Doing something is a strict superset of doing something valuable, the key is to bring value, which the quoted comment was addressing.

[macNchz]

That period of time where a MVP is in development is prime time for a nontechnical partner to be out there talking to potential customers, putting together marketing materials, building an email list. Even without a working product you'll learn a lot and be able to hit the ground running later on.

Waiting until the product is 'ready' to get the wheels turning on sales and marketing can lose you valuable early insights and make it take longer to see if your product fits the market.

[bananaboy]

I agree it may not be possible! I think you need money, or you need to convince someone of the value of what you are building and get them to help you for equity. That's a super hard sell though.

[traviswingo]

> You can't have people who only essentially generate work for others.

This 100% true and an almost unavoidable occurrence when non-technical and technical individuals attempt to start something together. I'd say it's extremely important that if a non-technical individual is coming to a technical one to build literally everything they dream up, said non-technical individual absolutely must be doing an equivalent amount of work in other areas of the company. Sending emails and taking calls/meetings only gets you so far and will eventually be perceived as "0-net" tasks by the technical individual if they don't result in anything.

[NicoJuicy]

This.

Also, non-programmers don't understand how much work goes into building applications.

Never go into sea with someone that doesn't has any experience and just an idea. You will hate it and waste a lot of time.