The best part is when people give you an idea that has already been done, talk about it like it's completely novel and then mention "you know, kinda like. . ."
I've had people approach me saying things like "I want to make this great site. It would allow people to buy and sell things online and the prices would be determined by auction and we could have user feedback on the sales, you know, kinda like Ebay". They came up with the idea (and by came up with, I mean saw Ebay) and it was my job to develop the site and figure out why people would use it over Ebay. They had done their part, but when I said no, it was in their mind because I was a crappy programmer.
Why not just say: "Well, I can build the site, but will have to charge extra due to the fact that [reasons]."
Also, you could have just customized an auction script over a few days.
For argument's sake, let's say you built their site and they say it's not half as good as eBay or has even 1% of its traffic, then they'll call you a crappy programmer.
But, even if you built an exact copy of eBay at the time, with a team of 10 costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, it would lack the social capital and trust that eBay retains that no competitor could easily capture no matter how smart (unless maybe an online giant who'd have more valuable opportunities to pursue than go into a war of attrition with eBay). Is Ebay such a poorly run business that it has invited competitors at any point in its life? There are only niche auction sites AFAIK.
Hype is a form of denial or aversion to some deeper truth, that in your situation was a way they could get you to buy into their fantasy.
They also offered me 50% of the business in return for codeing it - I refused. (and no, it didn't turn out to be eBay itself :P)
All these wannabe entrepreneurs, I know I should applaud them at trying, but they are missing the main thing a entrepreneur should have - good unique ideas.
Wait, I thought the hard part was execution? Weren't they just trying to get their ideas executed? Why does it matter if it wasn't unique or first? Ya'll need to make up your mind, is it 90% ideas, or 90% execution? :)
How do you know people won't want it unless it's built? I understand not doing it if you're offered equity and you think the idea sucks, but if you're just being paid to develop a site, even if its a bad idea, why do people refuse that? This sounds like graphic designers I know who refuse clients because the client wants something ugly.
We had a guy come into our animation studio to pitch his "next great startup" idea to us to get us involved. He refused to even give us an outline of the idea until we all signed NDAs, in fact mid-conversation another producer came in to drop off a message and the guy made him sign one too, "My lawyer would kill me if I didn't make everybody sign them".
The idea ended up being something extremely basic - literally something I could have coded up in an afternoon. After he left and took his buzzwords with him, it was my pleasure to assure everybody else that the guy was full of as much BS as it sounded.
Hope his lawyer was cheap, and whoever his "rockstar developer" is must be laughing his way to the bank.
Edit: I think part of the problem is born from people trying to attack niche markets without doing their research or understanding their users. This guys idea was basic, but still good - but he was pitching to the completely wrong crowd. I tried to gently convey that I thought maybe smaller studios would be looking for something like his product but studios of our size would likely recognize it as unecessary... alas, everybody thinks they have beautiful babies - and I guess you can't fault him for trying.
He did have more than an idea, though. He had a huge audience. And that is why digg didn't follow the usual path of startups that begin as this cartoon.
I don't think the audience was that huge (he was about to be laid off, presumably because the ratings sucked). He did have enough of an audience to get critical mass. Beyond that, there was a lot of luck (and SEO).
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Funny.
It's not necessarily part of the same. But it seems likely to be.
The thing that is missing is what do 'you' do. If I am thinking up, designing, promoting & running the site. The sit = the business, what's are you for?
BTW, there might be a his part. But it's not mentioned.
All this aside, suppose you really do have a new and novel idea that really could be useful and make money. How would you go about finding a web programmer?
On the one hand, you can't really afford to hire a good one because you don't have any money yet, but on the other hand you can't afford to put up a crappy web site either. Seems like a Catch 22.
It's not really a Catch-22; if you can't sell your idea well enough to get a coder interested in being your cofounder, then the fault lies in either your idea or your pitch, not in some insurmountable market force.
There are a lot of talented developers out there who haven't come up with a billion-dollar idea of their own yet, and who would be happy to hitch on to someone else's if they're getting a fair piece of the action.
However, if you're trying to convince them to do work for hire (i.e., give up any rights to their own work) at far less than market rate with some vague promise of more compensation later, you deserve to fail. The developers who will fall for that argument are going to be inexperienced and/or just plain incompetent; the rock stars (who you really want to work with) know the value of their work, and are unlikely to jump on a bad deal.
I know a number of non-developers who have had an idea, pulled together a team with no funding and built pretty impressive products, which they've then used to raise funding.
The reason they pull this off is because they don't expect 50% just for having an idea. That's ridiculous. If you're not a developer, you better figure out what else you're providing and what you'll be doing so everyone feels like you're justifying your cut.
There are tons of other things to do, like raising capital, finding free office space, getting content, public relations, finding more team resources, etc. Most will rely on connections -- if you have no connections and you can't code, well, then it's going to be more difficult. Better hope you have a lot of charisma :)
(I'm a developer and I end up advising a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs)
I think the problem is that even if suggested idea is good and executable, usually these idea-people know little about nothing how to execute the idea. Typically they know nothing of industry, running a business, web, planning, making products, design and never nothing technical. Programmer should just figure out all the features, design and business plans while programming.
My advise is that you have to sell the idea to programmers same way you would sell the idea for investors. You have to do your homework, have some plans, and make clear what you expect from them and what you can bring to the table(eg. money, connections, expertise). You won't go to investors asking for millions with a idea written on a napkin.
Aye, the thing that a non-technical founder can bring to the table is industry experience and connections.
One small company I worked at was run by former investment bankers. They knew VBA obviously, but that was it (the app was C++ on Solaris). But they knew the foreign exchange business inside out, and "sales" consisted of them having lunch with their mates (which BTW bagged us 7 of the top 10 FX banks as clients.... no programmer could have done that).
What I really like (honestly) is coders who talk to you and say, I have this great idea, wanna help me make it better? This is rare but really cool when it happens. It also makes me hope that more business people would bother to learn more about what they want to sell.
i meet people like that everyday, the line is '' i want to be the next (google,youtube..etc).. i used to try to explain .. now i just smile and say no thanks.
I've had people approach me saying things like "I want to make this great site. It would allow people to buy and sell things online and the prices would be determined by auction and we could have user feedback on the sales, you know, kinda like Ebay". They came up with the idea (and by came up with, I mean saw Ebay) and it was my job to develop the site and figure out why people would use it over Ebay. They had done their part, but when I said no, it was in their mind because I was a crappy programmer.