I have an idea for a software, but i don't know how to program

[Gaspa]

Hi this is Marco from Italy, i'm 21 and i have been working for two years in the construction sector.

My job is to draw projects and to control construction sites, but i want to create something on my own in this field.

I have an idea to make a new drawing/sureveying software, but i don't know how to program, so my question is:

is it worth to spend time learn to program, even thought i don't know anything about it?

The temporary solution that i found is to make fast extra money, to hire in the future someone who programs for me, but i actually don't know even how much it will cost.

(My extra money comes from this: a few months ago i started a small business in my town with a friend/colleague in real estate business and we make 3D Tours with Matterport, plans and similar things)

I am currently reading "The Millionaire Fastlane " and i'm ready to start my journey as an entrepreneur.

Sorry for my poor english,

I wish you all a good day and thank you for your time,

Marco

 

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[Knpz1]

Hi this is Marco from Italy, i'm 21 and i have been working for two years in the construction sector.

My job is to draw projects and to control construction sites, but i want to create something on my own in this field.

I have an idea to make a new drawing/sureveying software, but i don't know how to program, so my question is:

is it worth to spend time learn to program, even thought i don't know anything about it?

The temporary solution that i found is to make fast extra money, to hire in the future someone who programs for me, but i actually don't know even how much it will cost.

(My extra money comes from this: a few months ago i started a small business in my town with a friend/colleague in real estate business and we make 3D Tours with Matterport, plans and similar things)

I am currently reading "The Millionaire Fastlane " and i'm ready to start my journey as an entrepreneur.

Sorry for my poor english,

I wish you all a good day and thank you for your time,

Marco

Hello Marco my name is Kevin,
I have recently graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering in Texas USA. Your idea sounds interesting. I just started reading The Millionaire Mindset today and I too have decided to start on my journey. Contact me so we can discuss more in detail about your idea.

Email me at: kevin.perez01@utrgv.edu

 

[ChrisK]

you dont even know if there is demand for your idea and youre gonna spend months to learn how to create it?

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

is it worth to spend time learn to program, even thought i don't know anything about it?

Uh, what do you think learning means? You can only learn things that you don't know.

Anywho, if you're just looking to make a quick buck, I don't recommend software, because it takes time to learn these tools. Though, one guy on this forum went from not being able to program to building a profitable AI web app in less than a year. So it's not something that you'll make money from tomorrow, but you can make decent money with it in a year.

Maybe you could build a web app with no code ( No-code development platform - Wikipedia ) if you're just looking to test the concept.

What are your long term goals? There is plenty of money in software, but do you want to be the tech guy? Would you prefer to be a marketing guy? Finance guy? Or do your long term aspirations align with a different business model?

I have a thread on how to drastically speed up developing web apps, though it will still take months for you to learn those skills.

 

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[Beijing]

you dont even know if there is demand for your idea and youre gonna spend months to learn how to create it?

He should read the book "Nail It, then Scale It" by Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom.

In particular, this passage on the value and importance of rapid prototyping and seeking feedback from economic buyers before building a product, will be very helpful:

"ClassTop is an online learning company, and one of their early experiments was the development of a client-side interface for Blackboard, the dominant university online course system. In trying to understand what customers wanted, the ClassTop founders, Jayson and Jared, hired an engineer in India to build a virtual prototype using Flash, which contained the top twenty features customers mentioned, and then set up meetings with CIOs and key decision makers at several well-known U.S. universities.

When they asked how much customers would pay for such a product, the answer came back a discouraging $200 per month in licensing fees—not a number on which you could build a business. But the founders continued to investigate, using a tool called the $100 game (which we describe later), in which they asked customers to allocate a dollar amount to the features that were most important to them.

Surprisingly, respondents applied on average $80 to a drag-and-drop content management feature and $20 to two other features. With this insight, the team then went back to the drawing board and reduced the Flash prototype from twenty features down to four core features. With the new prototype in hand, the team went out to a new set of university customers to continue the research.

The next four universities had a unanimously positive reaction to the concept, and each requested to be a beta site for the virtual product.

Jayson and Jared then went back to the first group of universities to validate their reaction to the updated concept. Surprisingly, when they began to discuss the topic of price, the buying panels at each of the universities suggested a $1000 per month licensing fee for the simplified product. In essence, by simplifying the product down to the minimum relevant feature set, the ClassTop founders cut their development time and costs to one-fifth of their original estimate and multiplied the customers’ willingness to pay by 500%. That is the power of keeping it simple."

On the plus side, OP has the advantage that he is has ideas for a product to make doing things that he does every day easier, so he will already have some meaningful insight into what type of problems exist and what types of solutions could be real time-savers.

 

[iVictim25]

Find out if there is a need for your software.

Ask people in the construction area if they would benefit from this software.

Don't let the idea of it being hard stop you, that just means it meets the commandment of entry.

Now check if it meets the other commandments. The most important one is NEED. Find out if people NEED this. Is this valuable to the niche?

 

[Johnny boy]

Piece together a software solution with other software and api's and automations and you can create insanely valuable solutions for companies.

You can use it for a business and increase their revenue by a huge margin, then charge a shit ton of money to do it for others in the same or similar industries.

You aren't selling code you are selling solutions. Every business wants smoother systems to help them scale and make more money. I personally know people who would pay 50k+ for "systems" solutions for their complex business problems.

 

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[Jérémy de HelpIn]

I've heard of people building softwares with Chat-gpt, they just do very precise prompts and then ask an experienced programer/web developer to review the code.

That's my 2 cents.

But also I agree with some of the other comments that you should test the idea somewhat before investing so much into it.

 

[Tau Ceti]

My advice is don't learn to code straight away. First validate you idea.

You could easily spend thousands of dollars/euros on paying someone to do it for you and end up with nothing to show for it.

If you have never managed developers before, this is not something you want to start now without experience.

I wrote in another thread by someone who is in the same situation as you: EXECUTION - Frustrations with developers.

Have a read and let me know if something is not clear.

 

[Skroob]

I've heard of people building softwares with Chat-gpt, they just do very precise prompts and then ask an experienced programer/web developer to review the code.

As an experienced programmer, please don't do this. ChatGPT is decent at writing code, but not great. If you don't know what to ask for, you'll get authoritative responses that may or may not be correct/complete.

If your project is simple enough to let ChatGPT write it, it's simple enough to prototype out with a nocode solution, or some other method. And it has the added bonus of not driving your developer friends nuts by asking them to debug a project full of amateur AI code.

 

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[flyingdev]

Being 21, you have plenty of time. Learning to code and create a project is a great learning opportunity itself. In worst case you will end up with very desirable skills in the job market. It also seems like you know your way around the business - as you do these 3d tours.

 

[Dufresne85]

I have an idea to make a new drawing/sureveying software, but i don't know how to program, so my question is:

is it worth to spend time learn to program, even thought i don't know anything about it?

As someone that has spend the last 5 years learning how to code, here's my 2 cents;

If your goal is to make a business that launches a specific software for a specific niche, probably not.
Then you should focus on building a business, and leave the work of developing to a developer.
Find a good one, convince the developer of your vision and promise xx% of future profits.

If you plan on creating many different software projects and like to code them yourself, then probably yes. Just realize you are making it harder for yourself, as you then have to be both the developer (the worker) and business person (the owner) at one point.

 

[Gaspa]

Hi guys, i didn't expect all this all these answers so thank you all, this means so much for me.

Validation fo the idea: In the OG comment I forgot to mention that I've already talked about this software project with my close friends/collegues and they thought it was a genuinely good idea (maybe one day i'll tell you guys the details, but i don't wanna annoy you).
But to be honest, I could do better and ask the more experienced and old collegues and I sure will in the upcoming days.

Programming: 10 minutes ago i just finished reading charapter 27 of "The Millionaire Fastlane " that talks about the "I don't know" thing and i feel like an idiot.
In the end, I decided to learn how to program, I did some research and I want to know more about it.
@Tau Cheti, thanks for sharing that thread about the developers, it was very clear and useful!

I'll have a meeting in the upcoming days with a few guys who program just to have an idea of their point of view about all of this.
By the way, thanks to the guys who asked me to reach them privately, I just want to adjust the idea and shape it, collect the criticisms and then it will be ready to be discussed!

Conclusions: My main goal is to be the "business figure" and the "creative director" of this software: as a guy who used this kind of software for 7 years, I have lots of ideas but I'll take a few days to shape them and make an ideal product in my head.
After a few researches, I also think that programming might come handy, so I'll learn that!

Thanks again guys, you've already helped me a lot.

Thank you for your time, I'll keep ypu updated.

Marco

 

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[Tau Ceti]

Validation fo the idea: In the OG comment I forgot to mention that I've already talked about this software project with my close friends/collegues and they thought it was a genuinely good idea (maybe one day i'll tell you guys the details, but i don't wanna annoy you).
But to be honest, I could do better and ask the more experienced and old collegues and I sure will in the upcoming days.

Unfortunately that doesn't count as validation. Validation is when people give you their email addresses so you can send them a payment link and then pay you straight away while waiting for you to build your product.

Anything less than that is just good intentions. Not from you but from the people you talked to. Unfortunately few people will actually tell you the truth about your ideas. Especially people you work with, your loved ones, your friends and so on.

The real test is if strangers that you have never met are interested, and are they interested enough to pay you for it.
So get out there and build a landing page and create a waitlist. If you can get 20 or 30 email addresses and get a few payments already, then go ahead and build it.

If not, then you just saved yourself months of work for nothing.

 

[Belesarius]

Uh, what do you think learning means? You can only learn things that you don't know.

Anywho, if you're just looking to make a quick buck, I don't recommend software, because it takes time to learn these tools. Though, one guy on this forum went from not being able to program to building a profitable AI web app in less than a year. So it's not something that you'll make money from tomorrow, but you can make decent money with it in a year.

Maybe you could build a web app with no code ( No-code development platform - Wikipedia ) if you're just looking to test the concept.

What are your long term goals? There is plenty of money in software, but do you want to be the tech guy? Would you prefer to be a marketing guy? Finance guy? Or do your long term aspirations align with a different business model?

I have a thread on how to drastically speed up developing web apps, though it will still take months for you to learn those skills.

The link for the thread doesn´t work for me and I can´t find the thread on your profile, does it work for anyone else, or is ist just me?

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

The link for the thread doesn´t work for me and I can´t find the thread on your profile, does it work for anyone else, or is ist just me?

It was broken. I fixed it.

 

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[African Eagle]

Hello Marco my name is Kevin,
I have recently graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering in Texas USA. Your idea sounds interesting. I just started reading The Millionaire Mindset today and I too have decided to start on my journey. Contact me so we can discuss more in detail about your idea.

Email me at: kevin.perez01@utrgv.edu

 

[African Eagle]

Hi this is Marco from Italy, i'm 21 and i have been working for two years in the construction sector.

My job is to draw projects and to control construction sites, but i want to create something on my own in this field.

I have an idea to make a new drawing/sureveying software, but i don't know how to program, so my question is:

is it worth to spend time learn to program, even thought i don't know anything about it?

The temporary solution that i found is to make fast extra money, to hire in the future someone who programs for me, but i actually don't know even how much it will cost.

(My extra money comes from this: a few months ago i started a small business in my town with a friend/colleague in real estate business and we make 3D Tours with Matterport, plans and similar things)

I am currently reading "The Millionaire Fastlane " and i'm ready to start my journey as an entrepreneur.

Sorry for my poor english,

I wish you all a good day and thank you for your time,

Marco

Hi this is Marco from Italy, i'm 21 and i have been working for two years in the construction sector.

My job is to draw projects and to control construction sites, but i want to create something on my own in this field.

I have an idea to make a new drawing/sureveying software, but i don't know how to program, so my question is:

is it worth to spend time learn to program, even thought i don't know anything about it?

The temporary solution that i found is to make fast extra money, to hire in the future someone who programs for me, but i actually don't know even how much it will cost.

(My extra money comes from this: a few months ago i started a small business in my town with a friend/colleague in real estate business and we make 3D Tours with Matterport, plans and similar things)

I am currently reading "The Millionaire Fastlane " and i'm ready to start my journey as an entrepreneur.

Sorry for my poor english,

I wish you all a good day and thank you for your time,

Marco

Hi Marco, thank you for sharing your idea - it looks interesting to me. If you're still looking for another software engineer to join your team, I'd love to throw my hat in the ring. Please feel free to reach out to me at martinjosephlubowa@gmail.com if you're interested in chatting more about my experience and how I can contribute. Thanks again!

 

[theazizmoh_]

Hi this is Marco from Italy, i'm 21 and i have been working for two years in the construction sector.

My job is to draw projects and to control construction sites, but i want to create something on my own in this field.

I have an idea to make a new drawing/sureveying software, but i don't know how to program, so my question is:

is it worth to spend time learn to program, even thought i don't know anything about it?

The temporary solution that i found is to make fast extra money, to hire in the future someone who programs for me, but i actually don't know even how much it will cost.

(My extra money comes from this: a few months ago i started a small business in my town with a friend/colleague in real estate business and we make 3D Tours with Matterport, plans and similar things)

I am currently reading "The Millionaire Fastlane " and i'm ready to start my journey as an entrepreneur.

Sorry for my poor english,

I wish you all a good day and thank you for your time,

Marco

You could use no-code tools like bubble.io, I know some who sold a SaaS using just bubble to build his software and webflow for landing page

 

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