I used to work IT in an entertainment startup, and now I’m an iOS dev at a big entertainment company. Several people from my old company have been reaching out to eagerly tell me about their new app idea I just have to hear, asking me to help code their app— and have even hinted at me quitting my nice safe job to join their great new startup that doesn’t even exist yet.

I know this must happen to app devs all the time. What do you say?

How do you deal with telling these nice people who just don’t understand it doesn’t work that way, without crushing their dream? I have a coffee meeting planned to tell one of them “You should learn to code so you can make a proof of concept,” but I fear that won’t be received well.

What’s the standard protocol for telling people you won’t be able to code their magic app idea?

@BrokeTheInteger tell them 'no real money? No magic app idea coding'

But in all fairnesd you have to tell them that without any serious business plan and some (investment) money, there will simply be no app. Also they need to understand that leaving security for insecure adventure is only reasonable in adventure time.

I would just say the reasons why you don't want to change jobs to there 'startup'.
e.g.
- i like my current company
- it's to much of a risk for me

Just don't actively tell them what they should do, that's mostly the part where people act weird when critized.

P.S. yes it happens all the time I mostly tell them that I don't code for money in my privatetime. And most people are then scared because they heard money in the first sentence I responded.

@plusgut Us greedy devs and our need to be paid for work (I also don’t code on weekends, I have so many other interests I never have time to enjoy)

What makes this tough is there’s a feminist angle to most of these requests— aspiring women entrepreneurs I respect, telling me they absolutely want their tech team led by a strong woman “like you!”

That’s a nice idea, but true empowerment is the power to believe you can learn enough code to build your own POC. (I like to tell people Swift is a language written for people who have never programmed. I hope I’m right— I’ve never used Swift :/)

It's the developers' market right now. They get to mostly pick what they do and get paid well for it. That's why startups struggle to get good developers on board - good developers are simply not interested when there is no pay and little promise of success.

Its also a kind of chicken-egg issue for startup founders. Developers and others tell them to get investment first before they join. Investors tell them to get a team (=developers) first and build a prototype, then beta, then get users, then MAYBE we're interested to talk further.

When these same developers grow older they often start getting fed up with their jobs. But at that stage they already have a family with high expenses. They cant just quit their jobs to try out some startup without big sacrifices.

All in all, startup founders need to either get technical, buy programming freelancing with cash or just be damn awesome at convincing developers to join.

What most startups lack is a good business plan and, based on that, the necessary "seed funding" (meaning some investors, e.g. family, friends or angel investors backing them up and financing the starting phase). With that money, they could hire some developers (for real moneeeeeys) and get going. After they successfully built the PoC they can go on and start the regular funding rounds. The problem: the founders are really pressured to succeed, as their faliure means losses for everybody. :)

@NavCon don't mean to challenge you but a business plan is really worth nothing in this industry. Business plan is something students do. But it's not something investors wanna see.

What outside investors want to see is:
-solid team
-traction

Traction here means users, partnerships etc. that are concrete evidence that your startup is already off the ground. Off the ground means that you already have a product out in the market used by real people/companies.

So in essence you need to be prepared to go quite far without any outside financial help. Unless you're in USA. If you are then all the luck is on your side and you may be able to secure funding without even a prototype developed.

As for your family, they'll pour in the money if they do because you're their son or daughter. Not because of any objective business viability.

@vertti You're absolutely right about the "family-funding". Nevertheless, you get some "starting money" to (maybe) get off the ground.

Edit: I see that you're an entrepreneur yourself and probably know a lot more than me about this. My knowlege comes solely from talking to founders / learning at university. I have no first-hand expirience whatsoever.

@NavCon the hardest challenge initially is developing a product/service all by yourself, then finding users/customers/partners for it. If you can push through both then you've done better than most other startup people out there.

That's also basically the prerequisite for outside funding, at least where I live.

@vertti As I understand, it is a sizing problem? Start small, get it working in a very specialized way --> get funding --> grow? (at least thats how Peter Thiel always draws it in his Talks)

@NavCon yeah nobody expects you to have scaled up. That's what you use investment for.

However, everyone will expect you to have a solid product that already has users/customers. So at any pre-prototype stage they'll just tell you to come back when you've developed the beta, pushed to the market and seen how it goes. If it looks like it's getting traction they might get interested.