Ask yourself: once you break a demand down far enough into its components, is it still hard to say whether or not those components are things people want?
The problem is people don’t want things independently of how they are presented and packaged. Design, UI, and marketing matter.
Regarding other things (hiring, cofounder, investors...) keep in mind that you just really need to satisfice, not optimize.
How do you know this? How do you know what level of optimization you need, and when satisficing is good enough?
It’s good that you acknowledge that you lack experience, and that you are trying to create the starting point for a discussion. Nevertheless, a lot of your claims and hypotheses sound inordinately confident given your current level of experience and evidence. Perhaps this explains the skepticism and cautioning you are facing here.
It’s possible for even rational and hardworking people to fail at execution, or to run out of money or time before they can get far enough. If you don’t see why that is, then I would say that your estimate of the risks is miscalibrated. See my previous posts in this thread for more discussion.
It’s also possible for rational people to be badly miscalibrated, or to start off with incorrect information, in which case their rationality is heavily bounded. As you note, there are significant cached thoughts on the subject of startups.
I’m talking about the chances you raise money given that you have a good idea and successfully built it.
OK, but how do you build your idea to a level of execution that someone will want to fund you? That’s the challenge. Here are just a couple examples:
You might need a site redesign before you want to show your project to a potential investor. This will entail you bringing in an outside designer. Do you know designers who want to work with you? Do you have any ability to evaluate designers and make a good choice? Have you worked with designers before? If the answer to those questions is “no,” then you have a risk of a roadblock or a subpar result. Also, you will need to spend programming time integrating with the redesign. This is time that you aren’t spending developing some other aspect of your business.
You will probably have a slide presentation to show your investors. Who is going help you make it? Let’s say that your designer works on it (more hours), and then you show it to a couple friends for feedback. That’s still a considerable outlay in resources, and it will take time.
Need photography on your site? You either need to work with a photographer, or acquire stock photos. This requires money, taste in photography (or an advisor who does), and time spent picking photos. That’s not super expensive, but it all adds up.
Merely getting a basically acceptable presentation and demo will cost a significant amount of your time. Either you need to make your designer a co-founder (which would be a tough sell since the project is so green and you have a lack of experience), or you need to pay them. You have a limited budget of time and money.
I’m sure you are motivated and enthusiastic to spend those things, but it is risky to throw money into a project that has significant team risks (since you have no team, no experience building teams, and you yourself are inexperienced at development), and market risks (just having a good idea doesn’t mean that your execution of it will appeal to a market: see edanm’s restaurant analogy).
Can you see why I say that it’s at least plausible that you will run out of resources before you can peel back enough layers of risk to sufficiently impress co-founders and investors? It’s possible for you to pull it off, sure, but the execution risks are much greater than you think, because execution is way more important than you have been led to believe. If you show that you underestimate the significant execution risks in a project like this, that itself would be a red flag to a potential investor, who can’t count on you to surmount risks that you don’t fully appreciate.
I would encourage you decide a point where you will cut your losses if you don’t succeed, put your site on your resume, and then go be a web developer at someone else’s startup until you have the skills, knowledge, and connections to try your own startup again. Your enthusiasm is a good quality, but realize that it’s very possible for you to run out of resources before you can satisfactorily execute on your project to get the next level of co-founders or investors.
The problem is people don’t want things independently of how they are presented and packaged. Design, UI, and marketing matter.
How do you know this? How do you know what level of optimization you need, and when satisficing is good enough?
It’s good that you acknowledge that you lack experience, and that you are trying to create the starting point for a discussion. Nevertheless, a lot of your claims and hypotheses sound inordinately confident given your current level of experience and evidence. Perhaps this explains the skepticism and cautioning you are facing here.
It’s possible for even rational and hardworking people to fail at execution, or to run out of money or time before they can get far enough. If you don’t see why that is, then I would say that your estimate of the risks is miscalibrated. See my previous posts in this thread for more discussion.
It’s also possible for rational people to be badly miscalibrated, or to start off with incorrect information, in which case their rationality is heavily bounded. As you note, there are significant cached thoughts on the subject of startups.
OK, but how do you build your idea to a level of execution that someone will want to fund you? That’s the challenge. Here are just a couple examples:
You might need a site redesign before you want to show your project to a potential investor. This will entail you bringing in an outside designer. Do you know designers who want to work with you? Do you have any ability to evaluate designers and make a good choice? Have you worked with designers before? If the answer to those questions is “no,” then you have a risk of a roadblock or a subpar result. Also, you will need to spend programming time integrating with the redesign. This is time that you aren’t spending developing some other aspect of your business.
You will probably have a slide presentation to show your investors. Who is going help you make it? Let’s say that your designer works on it (more hours), and then you show it to a couple friends for feedback. That’s still a considerable outlay in resources, and it will take time.
Need photography on your site? You either need to work with a photographer, or acquire stock photos. This requires money, taste in photography (or an advisor who does), and time spent picking photos. That’s not super expensive, but it all adds up.
Merely getting a basically acceptable presentation and demo will cost a significant amount of your time. Either you need to make your designer a co-founder (which would be a tough sell since the project is so green and you have a lack of experience), or you need to pay them. You have a limited budget of time and money.
I’m sure you are motivated and enthusiastic to spend those things, but it is risky to throw money into a project that has significant team risks (since you have no team, no experience building teams, and you yourself are inexperienced at development), and market risks (just having a good idea doesn’t mean that your execution of it will appeal to a market: see edanm’s restaurant analogy).
Can you see why I say that it’s at least plausible that you will run out of resources before you can peel back enough layers of risk to sufficiently impress co-founders and investors? It’s possible for you to pull it off, sure, but the execution risks are much greater than you think, because execution is way more important than you have been led to believe. If you show that you underestimate the significant execution risks in a project like this, that itself would be a red flag to a potential investor, who can’t count on you to surmount risks that you don’t fully appreciate.
I would encourage you decide a point where you will cut your losses if you don’t succeed, put your site on your resume, and then go be a web developer at someone else’s startup until you have the skills, knowledge, and connections to try your own startup again. Your enthusiasm is a good quality, but realize that it’s very possible for you to run out of resources before you can satisfactorily execute on your project to get the next level of co-founders or investors.