[SatvikBeri]

That's not the point of the post. The OP is saying that a lot of would-be entrepreneurs are vastly underestimating the amount of work involved in creating the actual software, and that the would-be entrepreneurs need a technical cofounder rather than an employed programmer.

To use your analogy, this would be more like the store owners telling the prospectors, correctly, that they would also need to find legal help to protect any land they found, security to keep them from getting mugged, etc.

[etherael]

I think OP's point to this is that doing that would not be a good business move. I don't believe that in the canonical scenario simply telling the party in question that things are much more complicated than they can possibly imagine and expecting them to accept that is realistic.

I have been a part of projects where first day in discussing the basics of the project the entrepreneur in question has the design "95% complete" which then after the first four hours fluctuates somewhere between 0-20% complete. And all these numbers may as well be randomly chosen for how much of a relation to reality they have at any rate.

Sell them the picks and tents, let them figure it out themselves. When they come back to you with their problems and ask for advice they will finally actually be listening to reason without thinking that their individual case is an exception to the rules and you're just trying to drain their precious equity.

[sopooneo]

It's true. They won't listen until after the journey. See Wizard of Oz.

[noduerme]

So very right. This is why I charge by the hour and refer clients who don't like it to India. They come back eventually, defeated, but you know they're worthless dorm room hacks. Some of them will end up on wall street, and a few of them might eventually find jobs where they actually have to work to, y'know, make something. The rest will live on daddy's trust fund. We're towing them, not the other way around. Screw 'em. Let them beg on the street.

If God had truly blessed these people with big enough brains to come up with brilliant ideas, He would have given them the capacity to learn, at the very least, enough PHP or Ruby to build a wireframe. I don't see how anyone who can't do that could have an idea that would be worth wasting time on.

[saurabh]

>This is why I charge by the hour and refer clients who don't like it to India.

Why don't you refer them to people in your own country? Why India?

[facorreia]

I'm interested in how and why you would use PHP or Ruby to build a wireframe.

[larrys]

"and that the would-be entrepreneurs need a technical cofounder"

Part of the problem with this idea (as someone else commented "goes around like a windmill") is that a non-technical person is even in a position to judge the skills of a technical person (or vice versa).

At least if you hire a programmer you can fire a programmer. If you take on the wrong co-founder (who doesn't have the ability or skills you thought they had) then what do you do?

[JoeAltmaier]

Try, try again. Like anything else, you have to take risks.

People who buy into "I can't make all the judgement calls with perfect accuracy" don't become entrepreneurs.