[AmitinLA]

I come from a similar situation and faced similar challenges, especially after trying to launch a web startup with no financing and no developers on board. It failed. I'm determined to stay in tech, so here's some of my (occasionally conflicting) thoughts.

1) You call yourself a business guy, but are you a product guy? If you're a product guy -- if you can understand the soul of a product and how it interacts with people -- that can be inherently valuable. In my experience, most people I've met may be "tech" or "business", but they're not product people.

2) Get an internship. Beg. Show up, prove why you're valuable, send unsolicited resumes with advice and biz dev/product suggestions. Be humble, but not too much. Work for free for a couple months, or at minimum wage or whatever is legal. Just get your foot in the door.

3) Read. The Elements of User Experience (http://amzn.to/aFNjSn), The Mythical Man Month (http://amzn.to/cFLDlB) -- these are just to get you started. Learning to code a little bit will be good as well. The point is not to become an expert developer, but to learn how developers think. Think of your reading as travel literature and learn about different cultures.

4) Look for non-sexy opportunities. Twitter, FB, 4SQ, Zynga etc., get all the hype, but there's tons of need for software development and product design in what I call the "iceberg industries." The trucking industry brings in $250 billion dollars in revenue every year. That's almost twice the size of the airline industry and yet a typical website of theirs looks like this: http://www.highwayfreight.com/index.php

5) Think about CPG (even though it's not tech, it still can be a startup). It's a risky, tough move and faces lots of market forces, but can be incredibly lucrative. You could find a small local product that you believe in, invest some cash to get equity, and try to make them big. As a consultant, your skills may be valuable because the problems in these types of entrepreneurial efforts are operational problems, not innovation problems.

6) Don't worry too much about the idea or where you're working right now: your goal is to build professional and personal credibility. Give away your great ideas. Most people who have them don't tend to have just one.

7) Don't worry about home runs. Most entrepreneurs I know have small lifestyle businesses and love their companies no matter the size. It's kinda like having a kid. S/he's probably not going to grow up to be president, but you're going to love 'em anyway.

[palish]

It's interesting that you imply http://www.highwayfreight.com/index.php is bad design, when you consider the design of the website you're typing into. :)

My point is, you have to find actual opportunities. A shiny website may not be one, but you might manage to convince yourself that you could convince others to see that a new website is a necessity, or even very valuable.

[AmitinLA]

I should have been more clear. My point is not that it's a bad design per se; as you point out HN isn't the best designed site in the world either. My point is more that these industries are old, established industries that haven't yet built up innovative approaches (whether from the consumer side or the business side) to their business models.

I used trucking because I did some research on the industry and found that they have a fair amount of logistical innovation but still have major inefficiencies in the way that their customers book business. It's not the perfect example. But I think my point stands.

[palish]

My point was that your fundamental assumption is wrong. HN has a fantastic design. I believe the trucking site is just as effective.

[AmitinLA]

Interesting. I'm somewhat inclined to agree with you w/r/t HN, because the UX of HN is great, though at this point we may be disagreeing definitionally over "design."

As for the trucking website, I would completely disagree for the following reasons:

1) You have to receive a quote over email. Why? Either their systems are built that way, which is ridiculous, or they require a human to look up values and quote a price, which at this point is also ridiculous.

2) The form design is terrible. Eye movement/focus is all over the place.

3) There's absolutely no reason to use this company vs. other companies based on their home page. What's their selling point? They have the same boilerplate as everyone else.

4) Amateur hour: They misformat their own phone number: "(256) 852-553 5." That nav bar. That frequent shipper link.

[palish]

Ah. This is a pretty interesting discussion, I think, so let's try to figure it out.

One of my points -- disregarding whether the concept of quoting a price is good or not -- is that there isn't anything fundamentally wrong about this form: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/random_pics/free_quote_form.png

They provide a phone number, office hours, and a satisfaction assurance.

About whether manually quoting prices is a good idea or not... I think overall it facilitates the sales process, not harms it. It's a fact of the industry, for one. For two, communicating verbally is much more engaging than via the internet. It seems like you would attract more customers in this instance, unless your company did something fundamentally differently from the competition.

) Amateur hour: They misformat their own phone number: "(256) 852-553 5." That nav bar. That frequent shipper link.

But does that really matter? What matters is that they provide a specialized service to move an item from point A to point B. Sure, an extra space is a typo, but not a serious one.

I'm really not trying to be nitpicky. I'm trying to point out that people often make fundamentally wrong assumptions. And that will have a direct negative impact when deciding what to spend time on, which is one of the most precious resources.

[AmitinLA]

...there isn't anything fundamentally wrong about this form"

I think the only way to definitively prove either of my points is with A/B testing, etc. But one way I can try to make my argument is to look at forms from other successful companies. Almost every single long web form I've seen or filled out goes down where there is a clear sequential order. Think about long forms on SurveyMonkey or the product selection form on any computer manufacturing website. The main exceptions seem to be for very short forms (~4 fields).

They provide a phone number, office hours, and a satisfaction assurance.

None of that is different from the competition.

About whether manually quoting prices is a good idea or not... I think overall it facilitates the sales process, not harms it. It's a fact of the industry, for one.

There may very well be good, or more accurately, rational, reasons for manually quoting prices but the ones that I can think of (there's human judgement involved, etc.) are all business opportunities. From a buyer/consumer perspective, this pricing uncertainty and lack of information can be confusing and even bad. Imagine having to do this for airline prices, etc. Even FedEx will quote you a price for a similar service (and they use vertical forms: http://at.fedex.com/QX58q).

An aside: whenever I hear something along the lines of "a fact of the industry" I usually smell money. That doesn't mean I know how to get it, but it's somewhere out there.

But does that really matter?

Absolutely. This is not an industry where there are one or two or three players. There are dozens of competitors and if I'm entrusting my business -- and goods worth thousands and thousands of dollars -- I'm going with the "most professional" people. I may pay more for it, though I don't want to. I'm not going to go with the firm that has so little attention to detail that they can't correct typos on a website that has likely been around for years. The fact that they didn't even notice bugs the crap out of me.

Here's a way to test this, if you'd be interested: Take screenshots of this site and I'll pick another site that I think is better designed but that offers the same services. We ask people to pick one based purely on sight. Some third party has to be willing to set up the survey though and email it to some of his or her friends to ensure impartial results.

I'm really not trying to be nitpicky.

I don't think this is a bad thing. I think if you're really passionate about this stuff you care about it to the core or it's not worth caring at all.

[petervandijck]

If you love products, being a product guy is indeed very valuable. Learning to work with developers is very valuable too, but that's much easier if you learn developing yourself first.

Also: what is CPG?

[AmitinLA]

Consumer packaged goods.

[blackguardx]

That trucking website seems more usable than most airline websites.

[AmitinLA]

Ha, yeah I completely agree. I wish I'd picked a different example.