Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by notenoughbeans 1698 days ago
I want someone that can sell what I've built.
5 comments

This is what I thought I had. But in reality both cofounders need to be hard sales people first and foremost and building shit becomes a distant 2nd priority.

But I agree with you a hundred percent. That's the ideal situation for someone that likes to build

I've met (and worked with) people who built something, and were looking for someone to sell it.

The unfortunate truth is that this usually doesn't work because of two reasons:

1) If you can't convince anybody to buy your product, you also won't be able to convince anybody to sell your product. You need to be able to at least sell your idea to the cofounder.

2) If you've never tried selling your product, and have never interacted with your customers, chances are that what you built doesn't solve anybodys problem. I've never seen a successful product that was a hit right away without any user testing and iteration based on user feedback, but some people are convinced their product is different.

1) You want someone who can tell you what will sell, if you build it.

2) Also, it's never clear. So you want someone who you can work with to forge a path through the jungle.

This. I love developing, marketing, and branding but I have no connections.

I want someone to handle people and let me handle product.

What have you built?
I have created some low-code, zero-code devtools for personal use I want to polish and get on the market.
Hot market right now -- have a (public) readme / repo / anything?
Still a work in progress. I'm planning on sharing it once it's more ready.
Don't pay attention to the other "just ship it" comments, it'll be ready when it's ready. Too many people like to walk out that trite phrase when they have no knowledge on what you're doing or where you're at yet want to seem like they know something you don't. It's annoying.
First, at least in regards to my comment -- that's entirely reductionist. Second, I commented because it's one of the hardest things, in my opinion as an engineer myself, to overcome. You're interpretation of people wanting to seem like someone knows something they don't is at best uncharitable. My comment comes from a place of hopefully being helpful and giving someone a nudge for a thing that is definitely uncomfortable (showing your baby to the world) and showing some sense of camaraderie that a lot of us have been there.
As they say in the start up world "Ship It!"

I've seen lots of advice that says people ship too late. I'm not sure if that's the case here, but something to consider.

In my experience that's a trap, if you have a small set of useable features, release it now and get feedback from real people.
What have you sold is a far far more important question