<div class="bbWrapper"><blockquote data-attributes="member: 97393" data-quote="Pharez" data-source="post: 975793"
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1. From the number of people you identified, who had the specific skills needed to start & run the company; how did you decide who should fill the seat of cofounder? Was it based on the chunk of work the particular individual was going to be doing for the company?<br />
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2. Must equity be 50/50 between founder and cofounder?<br />
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3. Is 2% - 5% equity okay for an initial employee or should it be more or less?
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</blockquote>1. I initially coded a very bad prototype myself after buying a c++ book. I knew I needed a technical co-founder who could actually build the product.<br />
2. We did 60/40 (i got 60%), then for future employees we both diluted equally.<br />
3. Sure it's fine, in some cases maybe too much. I gave away too much in my opinion but whats done is done.<br />
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<blockquote data-attributes="member: 98579" data-quote="SalesGod" data-source="post: 975807"
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Great thread, I just have one main questions regarding your technical background. <br />
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You mentioned you don't code but at the same time you seem to able to understand what makes a good programmer/understand what programmers are talking about in a discord?<br />
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How would you rate your technical ability? And do you believe having a solid technical background is needed for software founders?<br />
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Reason I ask is because I sell database software to the techiest of IT departments without any real deep understanding of how our company's product works. I just know the problem customers have and how our product solves it, but if I were to go out and build a duplicate product I wouldn't know where to start in terms of what coding language experts I need to hire, what infrastructure I need to even build it on etc.
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</blockquote>I can code a little bit but theres a zero percent chance of me being able to do what my team can. I haven't coded for the company since 2016. My technical ability is definitely on par with my programmers in terms of terminology and understanding. Our software is very technical by nature anyway. Having a technical background can prevent you from asking your team to do stupid shit that most likely isn't possible or having unrealistic expectations on how long something takes. I hired people who had similar projects and that made it easy.<br />
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<blockquote data-attributes="member: 101364" data-quote="Isaac9916" data-source="post: 975808"
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Congratulations. I'm Isaac living in Africa, I have a master's degree in software engineering. I want to become an entrepreneur but I don't know where to start. What advice can you give me?
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</blockquote>Solve a problem and provide value, don't make something just because it seems like a good idea.<br />
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<blockquote data-attributes="member: 88314" data-quote="joshuajwittmer" data-source="post: 975847"
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<a href="https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/members/12271/" class="username" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" data-user-id="12271" data-username="@Ravens_Shadow">@Ravens_Shadow</a> Thanks for responding to all those rapid-fire questions. Just to clarify: Even though they’re almost useless in your opinion, you still have a patent, right? Almost useless, but not completely useless?
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</blockquote>I don't have any patents, they are completely useless for software, hinder development, and you literally give out your "secret sauce" to everyone. Someone only needs to change a few things and have a few alterations to clone it *and* possibly do it better after you publish your patents. On my end I feel that it's morally wrong to patent software as it stifles innovation via patent trolling.<br />
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<blockquote data-attributes="member: 88314" data-quote="joshuajwittmer" data-source="post: 975848"
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What would you say are the most important keys to your success in terms of preparing yourself and doing the work that needs to be done?
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</blockquote>Reference my expectation thread here: <a href="https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/managing-your-expectations-is-everything-expectations-an-integral-piece-to-your-first-million-in-sales.97827/" class="link link--internal">NOTABLE! - Managing Your Expectations Is Everything! Expectations.. An Integral Piece To Your First Million In Sales.</a><br />
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And figuring out what you want: <a href="https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/a-fundamental-question-for-any-entrepreneur-what-do-i-want-from-my-business.88221/" class="link link--internal">NOTABLE! - A fundamental question for any entrepreneur: What do I want from my business?</a><br />
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<blockquote data-attributes="member: 88314" data-quote="joshuajwittmer" data-source="post: 975853"
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Aside from exercise, what other stress management strategies do you employ?
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</blockquote>Racing gokarts, yoga, going out for drives, venting to friends or my coach. I'm not the best at stress management right now though.<br />
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<blockquote data-attributes="member: 88314" data-quote="joshuajwittmer" data-source="post: 975886"
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Does your team still discuss programming on the same discord server, and can you recommend any other forums where programmers discuss this stuff?
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</blockquote>Not sure on forums, but I'm sure they're still active in those programming servers yeah.<br />
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<blockquote data-attributes="member: 52245" data-quote="Phikey" data-source="post: 975875"
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Awesome thread.<br />
My questions:<br />
1. Do you know how to code, yourself? How much do you need to know in order to hire developers?<br />
2. What resources do you recommend for someone to learn and go down the same path? (podcasts, courses, books, communities)<br />
3. What does your acquisition funnel look like? What's the split between channels (organic, PPC, email, affiliates, etc)?<br />
4. What were the first 5 hires (in order) you made?
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</blockquote>1. I'm alright at coding as mentioned above. <br />
2. I didn't read a whole lot other than TMF. No other books inheriently stand out to me as recommendable other than "How will you measure your life?" by Clayton Christensen<br />
I religiously read all of <a href="https://successfulsoftware.net" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="noopener">Successful Software</a> before starting. In general, the journey has been pretty lonely and devoid of advice that applies to me as we're a desktop software company, not an online SaaS product.<br />
3. We're all organic (YT, Twitter, FB group, Reddit, etc) and capture emails, we have never purchased emails or spent money on advertising. Most of revenue comes from people trying the software or through an email campaign. No affiliates as I want to control how content is presented to keep our brand on point.<br />
4. I run the business, Co-founder (lead programmer), other 3 were programmers we needed for specific tasks relevant to our application.<br />
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<blockquote data-attributes="member: 85168" data-quote="Phil Yu" data-source="post: 976002"
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My question is, at the beginning, what did channel you use to sell? what was your initial market plan?
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</blockquote><br />
Twitter and YouTube. Got us really far due to the "nature" of our software. Probably wouldn't work for a lot of SaaS products etc.</div>
