No Technical Co-Founder

[SalesGod]

Myself and a friend/colleague were having a beer and discussing all the issues/nonsense there is within our department (we are both SAAS sales reps who sell millions worth of software to business across all industries)

We stumbled upon a problem which is universal across almost every large and mid sized B2B tech company that we feel leaders within those companies will be willing to pay to solve. They currently try to solve the problem but it takes much longer, has additional steps and is quite costly in terms of both dollar value/time wasted.

We need to build a web based application but we have no idea what programming language would be best suited and neither of us are technical outside of communicating the value of the solution we currently sell for the company we work for.

Is the best step forward to just speak to a full stack dev on upwork etc? Or is speaking to an engineer more appropriate to get big picture answer?

Rather than paying 50$ per hour or whatever it costs to someone, would it make sense to offer up 10-30% to a stranger we find on LinkedIn who seems talented just so we can have them on board and their advice on retainer? From my understanding these guys are getting 150-300K per year at their day jobs so I am not too sure if the idea of 50-100$ per hour would be appealing to them unless we go offshore to Asia etc.

In an ideal world we would have a third colleague/friend who's a techy but we don't know anyone who has real experience other than 1-3 years as either dev or engineer.

If we can spend a couple hundred to pin down the steps to build then another few thousand to pay a dev I would consider that a win.

 

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[amp0193]

Rather than paying 50$ per hour or whatever it costs to someone, would it make sense to offer up 10-30% to a stranger we find on LinkedIn who seems talented just so we can have them on board and their advice on retainer? From my understanding these guys are getting 150-300K per year at their day jobs so I am not too sure if the idea of 50-100$ per hour would be appealing to them unless we go offshore to Asia etc.

Equity is the only way to get an extremely talented technical cofounder unless you raise capital upfront and can pay them the salary they need.

If no capital, then they aren't getting $50-100 per hour, they are getting $0 per hour until the thing is built (with the hope of a big payoff down the road).

So then it comes down to flexing your sales skills. Can you convince someone of that caliber to leave their golden handcuffs to work on your project? Can you convince them of the upside? Do you believe in it yourself?


If I was in your shoes, my first step would be to hire a consultant on Upwork to just have an hour conversation with you to help you understand how easy/difficult it would be to build what you want to build. You might learn that you could use outsourced contract labor to put together an MVP on X coding language.

In the long-run though, I don't know how you build a successful SAAS company, without someone technical on the team. For that matter... you and your buddy are both sales guys. Do you have complementary skill sets? Are each of you bringing something unique to the business? Before adding the 3rd, make sure it makes sense to have the 2nd as well.

 

[BertenK]

Myself and a friend/colleague were having a beer and discussing all the issues/nonsense there is within our department (we are both SAAS sales reps who sell millions worth of software to business across all industries)

We stumbled upon a problem which is universal across almost every large and mid sized B2B tech company that we feel leaders within those companies will be willing to pay to solve. They currently try to solve the problem but it takes much longer, has additional steps and is quite costly in terms of both dollar value/time wasted.

We need to build a web based application but we have no idea what programming language would be best suited and neither of us are technical outside of communicating the value of the solution we currently sell for the company we work for.

Is the best step forward to just speak to a full stack dev on upwork etc? Or is speaking to an engineer more appropriate to get big picture answer?

Rather than paying 50$ per hour or whatever it costs to someone, would it make sense to offer up 10-30% to a stranger we find on LinkedIn who seems talented just so we can have them on board and their advice on retainer? From my understanding these guys are getting 150-300K per year at their day jobs so I am not too sure if the idea of 50-100$ per hour would be appealing to them unless we go offshore to Asia etc.

In an ideal world we would have a third colleague/friend who's a techy but we don't know anyone who has real experience other than 1-3 years as either dev or engineer.

If we can spend a couple hundred to pin down the steps to build then another few thousand to pay a dev I would consider that a win.

Do you have any knowledge / know-how on building a platform or totally not? Why I am asking is because we also started our company without a developer. We build an MVP ourselves with a low code platform to get traction, first sales and secure a first investment to use that money to hire a dev team.

If you want I can always help in finding a solution.

 

[canone]

I'd personally get a cofounder. Reason:

If you hire some freelancer, when the work is done, it's done. He is gone. I don't know what kinda webapp you're building but if you need to do changes, having an in-house programmer, who knows the business inside and out, is best! Especially a local one.

I'd give him 33% of the shares personally so you guys are equal partners (and he feels equal to you guys). With a 3-4 year vesting period and 1 year cliff.
That way he'd be motivated to work. And since you guys seem to be great salesmen, he would even be more motivated to join.

As Cuban says "10% of a water melon is far better than 90% of a grape" haha

Hope that helps in some way.

 

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[Mr.Nichan]

We might be able to help each other since I’m in a similar place abut I’m the tech guy with a nearly finished product with no sales skills. I’d be willing to go through a couple of calls with you to discuss what you might need and how much work it would entail if you could discuss sales with me and ask me the right questions to get me into the right gear, perhaps suggest any systems that’s might benefit me in my situation.

I’m a full stack developer with 4ish years of experience in web and mobile development and I have been involved in all processes of product development from requirements gathering to shipping and automating deployment.

I have enough self studying in sales to not be clueless when sales comes up in discussion and I have a good mind for monetizing and finding product possibilities.

All the best,
Nicklas

Edits: typos cause of iPad keyboard

 

[EngineerThis]

We might be able to help each other since I’m in a similar place abut I’m the tech guy with a nearly finished product with no sales skills. I’d be willing to go through a couple of calls with you to discuss what you might need alone how much work it would entail if you could discuss sales with me and ask me the right questions to get me into the right gear, perhaps suggest any systems that’s might benefit me in my situation.

I’m a full stack developer with 4ish years of experience in web and mobile development and I have been involved in all processes of product development from requirements gathering to shipping and automating deployment.

I have enough self studying in sales to know to not be clueless when sales comes up in discussion and I have a good mind for monetizing and finding product possibilities.

All the best,
Nicklas

Sent you a PM Nickolas!

 

[SalesGod]

If I was in your shoes, my first step would be to hire a consultant on Upwork to just have an hour conversation with you to help you understand how easy/difficult it would be to build what you want to build. You might learn that you could use outsourced contract labor to put together an MVP on X coding language.

This is the conclusion we came to yesterday. Consult with someone to understand how many man hours and what technologies are needed to build a minimum version. From there we can pitch to a co founder who gets a stake.

Do you have complementary skill sets? Are each of you bringing something unique to the business? Before adding the 3rd, make sure it makes sense to have the 2nd as well.

We are both highly educated on the industry. I contributed more in terms of the exact problem we need to solve, the outcomes, pricing models, how we sell it and why anyone would buy it etc He is more creative and product driven so has come up with several good ideas about feature sets etc. where I have over engineered. It is also good to have someone to bounce ideas off so even if I come up with something key, it is only because he guided me that way via conversation and challenging me. And I think that is worth an equal stake to me.

We build an MVP ourselves with a low code platform to get traction,

This is something I realised after using chat gpt. Any good no code platforms you recommend? How complex an app can these tools build? Any good resources on the topic?

If you hire some freelancer, when the work is done, it's done. He is gone. I don't know what kinda webapp you're building but if you need to do changes, having an in-house programmer, who knows the business inside and out, is best! Especially a local one.

I'd give him 33% of the shares personally so you guys are equal partners (and he feels equal to you guys). With a 3-4 year vesting period and 1 year cliff.
That way he'd be motivated to work. And since you guys seem to be great salesmen, he would even be more motivated to join.

Agreed, I think giving up a 20-33% is needed unless we secured investment from the get go to waste money on devs/engineers.

We might be able to help each other since I’m in a similar place abut I’m the tech guy with a nearly finished product with no sales skills. I’d be willing to go through a couple of calls with you to discuss what you might need and how much work it would entail if you could discuss sales with me and ask me the right questions to get me into the right gear, perhaps suggest any systems that’s might benefit me in my situation.

Sure I'll take you up on that offer. Send me some background into the problem your product solves and who you sell to and I will get some ideas and we arrange a call. I assume it is a B2B product of some sort? As I specialise in selling IT/SAAS solutions to companies of all sizes.

 

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[BertenK]

This is the conclusion we came to yesterday. Consult with someone to understand how many man hours and what technologies are needed to build a minimum version. From there we can pitch to a co founder who gets a stake.



We are both highly educated on the industry. I contributed more in terms of the exact problem we need to solve, the outcomes, pricing models, how we sell it and why anyone would buy it etc He is more creative and product driven so has come up with several good ideas about feature sets etc. where I have over engineered. It is also good to have someone to bounce ideas off so even if I come up with something key, it is only because he guided me that way via conversation and challenging me. And I think that is worth an equal stake to me.



This is something I realised after using chat gpt. Any good no code platforms you recommend? How complex an app can these tools build? Any good resources on the topic?



Agreed, I think giving up a 20-33% is needed unless we secured investment from the get go to waste money on devs/engineers.



Sure I'll take you up on that offer. Send me some background into the problem your product solves and who you sell to and I will get some ideas and we arrange a call. I assume it is a B2B product of some sort? As I specialise in selling IT/SAAS solutions to companies of all sizes.

There are plenty of tools available like Retool (more suitable for a complex back end) and bubble.io (more suitable for a more complex front end), but also if it's for a POC or MVP a lot of startups use PowerBI or Tableau to create something. You can send me a DM and I am happy to explain the benefits in more detail and see if it's do-able yourself.