Start-up without a Tech Founder? WSO founders - any advice?
To everyone with experience with start-ups -
Can a start-up be done without a Tech co-founder? Our start-up will not fundamentally be a tech-based company, rather the web will simply a platform to deliver cheap, quality information relating to a certain sector to our targeted demographic (kind of like WSO in terms of delivery).
How important is a CTO in this case? We have a site that is currently in Beta and functional (we have a part time tech-founder)- but it needs to look more professional. We are thinking of outsourcing it to a third party professional development firm (and we have ~10k to spend on this). Is that feasible and sufficient?
Appreciate any advice on this, Thank you!
Definitely don't need it nowadays. I run this site on the Drupal cms (drupal.org) which has a lot of flex and powerful permission features, but if your primary business is offline and you just want a professional looking site / blog, I'd point you to WordPress...if you can't set it up yourself because you are really lost around computers, you should still be able to get a really nice functional site set up for under $2k with basic features like blogs, seperate pages / sections of site, etc.
you can check this out: http://www.studiopress.com/ looks like they have some nice designs.
Also, your question reminds me of my buddies article he just wrote: http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/30/how-to-build-your-startup-without-lea…
Good luck!
Wordpress + Studiopress = easy for beginners, lots of options if you want to learn it and do it yourself, save the 10 grand. I've had some experience with both (not in a while though) so if you have any questions, shoot me a message and I can probably help you out.
Thanks for posting that WSO. Very insightful as I have been pondering that very question for a while now. Tell your buddy thanks as that article makes me want to keep at it. The only question that remains is how does someone with no VC contacts begin to show off their "mock up" and business plan? Just cold e-mail with the two attachments?
If you have no VC contacts then you need to find advisers that do and start networking hard. I know there are many entrepreneurial / start-up communities that you can join in each major city, so just do some searching around for events and clubs in whatever city you are in. That club will likely have some contacts with angels and VCs and as you develop your product and business plan, you can start trying to develop a conversation with some of them.
I would not cold email your business plan and/or demo as a first step because I think that just shows you don't have the connections, capital or know-how to make it happen. So how do you demonstrate that? Get other successful people in a related industry to believe in your idea and agree to be an adviser. That should help build credibility and help establish some key connections early on. If you aren't good at networking - practice.
Good luck, Patrick
everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows a VC
WSO - thank you very much! that is extremely helpful and encouraging. Been a user for 6-7 years now (junior year of high school) and it's great to see how much the site has progressed!
thanks ibhopeful - always fun to see users who have been around since the early days :-)
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