It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything here, but I wanted to share this with you. I co-founded my current startup over 3 years ago, and one thing that has really come back to haunt us is that we never had a technical co-founder. Neither my partner nor I had ever written a line of code and if you’re a startup online, you need to know how to code if you expect to be successful.
So, as much as I thought that we could outsource our tech work, the cold hard truth was that we had no idea what was under the hood of our site. Sure we had SOMETHING to show, and a site that looked OK, but at the end of the day it was not exactly what we originally envisioned and of course every time we needed to make a change or add a feature we had to pay for it out of our pocket.
Not only that, we didn’t understand how long these changes or features should take to build so they had us over a barrel, and when something broke down or we found a bug, we had to wait until they were ready to fix what was broken, and then we had to reach into our pockets yet again to pay them.
We had no control over how the site performed. It’s totally counter-intuitive for an outsourced dev shop to deliver ahead of schedule and under budget, and its in their best interests to extend their project as long as possible. So unless you have an unlimited supply of cash to throw at them, you will most likely not get what you want.
We were also trying to raise money for our startup from Angels and VC’s, since we didn’t have an endless supply of cash, and couldn’t understand why we were being smile-F*cked, day in and day out, with each investor meeting. We needed the money primarily for the dev side, so that we could continue with our outsourced developers, OR we figured if we got lucky, hire a full time CTO with the money we raised.
Sure, we had a great idea and pitch since both of us had been fairly successful in our previous businesses, and we had high hopes for this one, but the fact remained that we did not have a developer on our team. And, good luck finding a good one who will work for equity. So we came to realize that since we didn’t have a technical co-founder and neither one of us knew how to code and able to be in control of our site, fundraising was a huge waste of time because no one was going to fund us.
That’s when it really smacked me in the face that one of us really needed to learn how to code or just fold up shop…so, why not me? We could not continue to draw down on our savings just to pay the developers who had no ownership in our business. We needed to build it ourselves, strip it down to the bare essentials, take out the clutter and make it very simple to use. Sounded easy enough.
Well, I committed practically 100% of my working time to learning how to code over the next 6 months. I chose Ruby on Rails since it seemed like it made the most sense to me and it’s a very readable language/framework. I never wrote a line of code prior…but first, I started with the basics - HTML and CSS, then once I was comfortable with those I plowed thru online tutorials and classes teaching me both the Ruby language and the Rails framework.
I was at it for a good 6 months and starting to get the hang of this but still relied heavily on the various tutorials I took for reference when building something. I wasn’t to the point where I could start with a blank canvas and just build something, but nevertheless I was able to build some pretty interesting sites for a newbie rails developer. I knew the basics and could find the resources to help me build what I needed to build for the most part.
During this time, I also decided that I needed to get out and start networking with developers to hear what they were saying and doing, how they talked to one another, and even inquire about what challenges they encountered when they were first starting out. In the past I could never hold a conversation with a developer because I was an outsider, the business & finance guy who never wrote a line of code in my life, and I felt this friction that management doesn’t know anything and engineers know it all, type thing. All that started to change.
Then a great thing happened to me as I started to integrate my life into being a developer, I was actually able to hold a conversation with most of these people (well, except for those devs that are, shall we say, “socially challenged”…you know the ones) and not only that, they were supportive and genuinely interested in what I was building or at least trying to build.
I started going to a co-working space that had other Rails developers there and they also had one night a week where we would collaborate on different projects. This was a great opportunity to learn from more senior developers and also have them help me re-build my site.
As things progressed, the top developer in the co-working space was helping me more and more and he seemed to enjoy some of the more challenging aspects of what I was building. Not only is this guy the top developer in this co-working space, but as I came to find out a very sought after developer who also just wrote a book on how to build a ruby ‘gem’.
So, one day as I was sharing my progress with my co-founder, he asked me what it would take to get this guy on board with us as a co-founder. I had no idea what it would take but I figured I’d ask if he’d like to get more involved, so I did and fortunately for us he wanted to come on as a Co-Founder.
Now I am 100% certain that this good fortune would have never come about had I not learned how to code. Him and I (mostly him) totally re-built our site in less than 2 weeks, we re-launched, and are now starting to execute on building our user base and revenue among other things. Another great side effect of having not only 1, but 2 technical co-founders is that we don’t have to go begging for money from Angels and VC’s (and hear things like “We’ll track you”) to pay outsourced developers and can continue to add new features and functionalities on our own.
Thanks for reading and I can say that it is NEVER too late to learn how to code, I’m 45 years old, spent 12 years as a business owner and then became a wantrepreneur in 3 different startups over the past 6 years. Now I believe I have the makings of truly becoming a successful entrepreneur, especially now that I have such a great developer to learn from.
So, as much as I thought that we could outsource our tech work, the cold hard truth was that we had no idea what was under the hood of our site. Sure we had SOMETHING to show, and a site that looked OK, but at the end of the day it was not exactly what we originally envisioned and of course every time we needed to make a change or add a feature we had to pay for it out of our pocket.
Not only that, we didn’t understand how long these changes or features should take to build so they had us over a barrel, and when something broke down or we found a bug, we had to wait until they were ready to fix what was broken, and then we had to reach into our pockets yet again to pay them.
We had no control over how the site performed. It’s totally counter-intuitive for an outsourced dev shop to deliver ahead of schedule and under budget, and its in their best interests to extend their project as long as possible. So unless you have an unlimited supply of cash to throw at them, you will most likely not get what you want.
We were also trying to raise money for our startup from Angels and VC’s, since we didn’t have an endless supply of cash, and couldn’t understand why we were being smile-F*cked, day in and day out, with each investor meeting. We needed the money primarily for the dev side, so that we could continue with our outsourced developers, OR we figured if we got lucky, hire a full time CTO with the money we raised.
Sure, we had a great idea and pitch since both of us had been fairly successful in our previous businesses, and we had high hopes for this one, but the fact remained that we did not have a developer on our team. And, good luck finding a good one who will work for equity. So we came to realize that since we didn’t have a technical co-founder and neither one of us knew how to code and able to be in control of our site, fundraising was a huge waste of time because no one was going to fund us.
That’s when it really smacked me in the face that one of us really needed to learn how to code or just fold up shop…so, why not me? We could not continue to draw down on our savings just to pay the developers who had no ownership in our business. We needed to build it ourselves, strip it down to the bare essentials, take out the clutter and make it very simple to use. Sounded easy enough.
Well, I committed practically 100% of my working time to learning how to code over the next 6 months. I chose Ruby on Rails since it seemed like it made the most sense to me and it’s a very readable language/framework. I never wrote a line of code prior…but first, I started with the basics - HTML and CSS, then once I was comfortable with those I plowed thru online tutorials and classes teaching me both the Ruby language and the Rails framework.
I was at it for a good 6 months and starting to get the hang of this but still relied heavily on the various tutorials I took for reference when building something. I wasn’t to the point where I could start with a blank canvas and just build something, but nevertheless I was able to build some pretty interesting sites for a newbie rails developer. I knew the basics and could find the resources to help me build what I needed to build for the most part.
During this time, I also decided that I needed to get out and start networking with developers to hear what they were saying and doing, how they talked to one another, and even inquire about what challenges they encountered when they were first starting out. In the past I could never hold a conversation with a developer because I was an outsider, the business & finance guy who never wrote a line of code in my life, and I felt this friction that management doesn’t know anything and engineers know it all, type thing. All that started to change.
Then a great thing happened to me as I started to integrate my life into being a developer, I was actually able to hold a conversation with most of these people (well, except for those devs that are, shall we say, “socially challenged”…you know the ones) and not only that, they were supportive and genuinely interested in what I was building or at least trying to build.
I started going to a co-working space that had other Rails developers there and they also had one night a week where we would collaborate on different projects. This was a great opportunity to learn from more senior developers and also have them help me re-build my site.
As things progressed, the top developer in the co-working space was helping me more and more and he seemed to enjoy some of the more challenging aspects of what I was building. Not only is this guy the top developer in this co-working space, but as I came to find out a very sought after developer who also just wrote a book on how to build a ruby ‘gem’.
So, one day as I was sharing my progress with my co-founder, he asked me what it would take to get this guy on board with us as a co-founder. I had no idea what it would take but I figured I’d ask if he’d like to get more involved, so I did and fortunately for us he wanted to come on as a Co-Founder.
Now I am 100% certain that this good fortune would have never come about had I not learned how to code. Him and I (mostly him) totally re-built our site in less than 2 weeks, we re-launched, and are now starting to execute on building our user base and revenue among other things. Another great side effect of having not only 1, but 2 technical co-founders is that we don’t have to go begging for money from Angels and VC’s (and hear things like “We’ll track you”) to pay outsourced developers and can continue to add new features and functionalities on our own.
Thanks for reading and I can say that it is NEVER too late to learn how to code, I’m 45 years old, spent 12 years as a business owner and then became a wantrepreneur in 3 different startups over the past 6 years. Now I believe I have the makings of truly becoming a successful entrepreneur, especially now that I have such a great developer to learn from.
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