Vinicius Vacanti

You should read Vinicius Vacanti's blog, "How To Make It As a First Time Entrepreneur" (http://viniciusvacanti.com/). He quit a prestigious finance job to do his own thing, and it took him a while to figure his way around. I recommend reading his whole story from the beginning, I think it will inspire you.

Hey Lance, It took me awhile to find my CTO. Here are my recommendations: 1) Outsource: http://www.sourcebits.com/ 2) Keep doing it yourself: http://viniciusvacanti.com/ I am currently in College and think I have a scalable idea. Kept searching in till someone believed me. However, even since I found my CTO, I'm teaching myself how to code to just build a basic crude prototype with no hard coding or algorithms. Most VCs I've talked to are just looking for something tangible. If you can just build a crude protoytpe and pitch it then you're solid. Also, you might want to look into mobile apps. -CC

http://viniciusvacanti.com/ His blog has great advice for new entrepreneurs. Especially when you don't have a tech co-founder... He covers in depth how he went about learning to code a basic prototype and provides a solid outline to go about doing so.

Vinicius Vacanti of Yipit - http://viniciusvacanti.com/ Dan Shipper - http://danshipper.com/

Some recent discussions/resources that came up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3923569 http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/02/08/how-to-get-your-first-1000-users… http://www.vinnie.net/2009/03/10/10_ways_to_get_your_first_1000_users/ Best of luck.

Read this great blog post from Vincius which aptly answers your question: http://viniciusvacanti.com/page/2/

Check out this blog from one of the founders of Yipit, starting here: http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/07/guide-to-finding-a-technical-co-… Also, hack! Not just code, but think of ways to validate product-market fit without actually having to build the whole damn thing. Set up a landing page with a button or two that mimics the feature you want to test. If someone clicks on it, at least you'll know there's interest. If not, no big deal. Assuming they click on it, instead of sending a 404 error, put something like "We're building [description of awesome, world changing web app]. If you want to be one of the very first users and brag to all your friends about how in the know you are, sign up below." Then just put a nice tidy email field with a big ole' submit button. Done. You've proven people want what you're building and you have a list of emails of people you know will use your product once you've built it. Use that to convince some superstar to become your technical cofounder. Startup Weekends and that sort of thing are a great way to meet potential cofounders as well, where people share their idea for a startup, form teams and hack all weekend. Whatever you do, don't waste your money on outsourcing, especially at this point. Startups are a long road. Get out to events, get to know people, and share what you're working on (no one is going to steal your idea). Good luck!

Vin (of Yipit) has a similar blog post (http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/cant-find-a-technical-co-founder-do… but from the perspective of someone who actually just got down into it and wrote the entire site. While not uniquely a NYC problem, it was refreshing to be out in the Bay Area and not be at startup events hearing MBAs pitch "it's like Facebook, but for dogs!" I tell everyone that asks me about finding a technical co-founder to just learn the basics of databases and a web language (PHP, Ruby + Rails, Python + Django). Either 1) you'll actually learn enough to make your MVP or 2) you'll learn enough to figure out what your product really is and what to look for in a technical co-founder. If you don't have any clue what your technology portion is going to look like, you aren't very attractive to technical co-founders and those that are interested probably aren't the best fit.

OP left a quarter-million a year hedge fund job to swing for the fences. I'd guess his floor for "acceptable" exits is in the multiple millions. Your personal mileage my vary. http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/08/03/why-i-quit-my-job-to-start-a-tec…

There are quite a few quantitative indicators for businesses on exit conditions; for web businesses in particular, see eg: http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/12/12/when-do-you-throw-in-the-towel-o…

Same - Infection Details URL: http://viniciusvacanti.com/2012/08/14/th... Process: C:\Users\James\AppData\Local\Google\Chro... Infection: JS:Redirector-MA [Trj]

I think this how Yipit started. They initially were looking to do bar deals in nyc. http://viniciusvacanti.com/2012/03/26/how-getting-rejected-by-founder-…

I am surprised to see this question resurfacing last half year because I think that the answer to this question was pretty much nailed down by Vinicius Vacanti in his blog post in Sep 2010 http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/27/should-you-hire-a-programmer-or-… In short - it depends on the nature of your start-up and the challenges your start-up is tackling. Depending on those you 3 options: 1. Find tech co-founder (and don't do start-up w/o such person). 2. Learn to code. 3. Outsource the programming. If your case is #2, then read the guy's post http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/13/cant-find-a-technical-co-founder… and some other posts in his blog.

Here is another good article about getting your site out there. It includes info about getting it on TechCrunch. The post is from Feb 2011 so it should still be relevant. I was searching for similar information the other day, which is how I found the article in the first place. I submitted my site to TechCrunch two days ago and I'm waiting to hear something. If you want to go directly to the submission page: http://techcrunch.com/contact/ For the entire article: http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/02/08/how-to-get-your-first-1000-users…

Another data point to support the three year number being thrown about, this one from the founder of Yipit writing about their early struggles: "It took us almost three years to know what exactly we had to do during those three days." http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/09/12/the-long-grind-before-you-become…

Entrepreneurship: http://cdixon.org/ http://derekandersen.me/ http://davidcummings.org/ http://viniciusvacanti.com/ http://www.steveblank.com/ http://37signals.com/svn Startup/Tech Marketing: http://www.responsys.com/blogs/nsm/ http://startup-marketing.com/ http://blog.kissmetrics.com/ http://unbounce.com/blog/ Venture Capital: http://bhorowitz.com/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ http://www.feld.com/wp/ http://www.avc.com/ http://vcinjerusalem.typepad.com/vcinjerusalem/ http://sixkidsandafulltimejob.blogspot.com/ http://redeye.firstround.com/ http://informationarbitrage.com/

Vinicius Vacanti: http://viniciusvacanti.com/category/diy-technical-co-founder/

Vinicius Vacanti listed some helpful tips in a recent blog post, "How To Get Your First 1,000 Users:" http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/02/08/how-to-get-your-first-1000-users…

These from user "keeptrying" in item http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239780: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/04/in-the-pursuit-of-traction… http://tractionbook.com/ http://cdixon.org/2009/08/25/six-strategies-for-overcoming-chicken-and… http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/02/08/how-to-get-your-first-1000-users… http://www.quora.com/In-the-shortest-amount-of-time-whats-the-best-way… http://betali.st/submit

For your first question, as a non-tech person myself, I personally thought this place was a pretty good overview of all the options available for eventually attracting a tech cofounder: http://viniciusvacanti.com/becoming-your-own-technical-co-founder/ To sum up the key points from that blog, it's basically: 1) Go work at a start-up 2) Become a key member of the tech community 3) Blog about your idea 4) Hire a programmer (to at least build a prototype) 5) Roll the dice on a stranger 6) Build your own prototype Since what I was trying to build is not technically intensive, my personal choice was to learn some coding and build a rough prototype first.

Guys, this is an under-informed and reactionary post, which grossly simplifies the situation in a way that is insulting to Dropbox, TechCrunch/AOL, CrunchFund, and the Mailbox/Orchestra team. It's also kind of upsetting that this post is at the top of HN and getting a kind of froth-at-the-mouth reaction that it is. It's well-known and indeed massively controversial[1] that there's a CrunchFund/TechCrunch conflict. Arrington left TechCrunch because of his desire to return to investing about a year ago[2], after the short stint at doing both journalism and investing in parallel. According to CrunchBase, this was coincidentally the same month that CrunchFund invested in Orchestra[3]. Both he and MG returned in October 2012[4], but both have hardly written any TC pieces since then. Why? Probably because they're quite busy with their day jobs running CrunchFund. Additionally, on many posts with CrunchFund conflicts, they have been called out at the end of each article (see http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/30/andreessen-horowitz-adds-jeff-jordan-… They probably have been a bit lax about that as of late since the CrunchFund guys aren't really involved in TC (compared with the often torrential output of most other staff writers). TechCrunch coverage did probably get Mailbox some users, and CrunchFund as a VC probably did add some value to their company, but the effects and importance of TechCrunch itself are wildly overstated. Probably more…

A few days ago an article on "delayed launches"[1] was posted here on HN. We took a step back from our computers, looked at each other, and laughed nervously. The article was about us. The thing is, the author couldn't possibly have known about us as we've been too afraid to leave the comfort of our stealth mode. We've wasted so much time tweaking our concept in utter fear of how the community would receive us. Mantras about releasing early and often, or letting our users shape the product, to no avail; we subconsciously wanted our entire (ever-changing) vision to be implemented to perfection before showing you anything. A lot is happening in the "real-time" business at the moment and now we're asking ourselves: "why the hell didn't we launch a year ago?". So, as an exercise in letting things go, we're throwing our little project to the wolves. Despite our wishes to have implemented X, Y, and Z before doing so. [1] http://viniciusvacanti.com/2012/04/02/how-we-fooled-ourselves-into-del…