At AppGarage a lot of people call us and tell a story like this: “I got an amazing idea. I’ve spent so many hours drawing sketches and making powerpoints. All I need is a developer to build it. Can you help?”

In many cases the answer has unfortunately been: “maybe”. At AppGarage we attract the students who are passionate about their own projects and want to spend their time on those. Although we do have some cases where a match was made in heaven such as Major League Wizardry and the DTU Annual Party app.

BUT as someone who can’t build how can you make your project more interesting to developers and maybe one day find that perfect someone.

Problem #1: Understand what your idea looks like from a developers point of view

If you’re a lone entrepreneur this is one is the hardest. If you present your idea to a developer and you have no track record and nothing to prove that your idea is good a part from the fire in your eyes you’re going to have a tough chance convincing a developer to work (probably even for free) for you. Yes, you may offer them shares and if have a business background you see this is as giving away your first born (or part of it at least). From a developers standpoint if they’re not hooked on your idea what does it matter if you offer them shares in something which he/she perceives as having zero value?

Many (not all) developers are highly motivated by making an impact in the world with what they do. They want to build something and see it’s impact immediately. They want people to use what they build. If you have no idea if your idea is going to work apart from the feeling in your stomach — you need data. Go to launchrock.co and start collecting e-mail addresses, make a Facebook page — go and gather followers of your idea. Or if you prefer the more stealthy way, gather a lot of test users. But not just your friends and family — people who you don’t know, people who can make the developer believe that if he/she just build it the product will immediately be in front of a ton of users. This will also help you validate your idea (see problem #2).

A note on offering shares: You should always offer them to be a part of the company. You may think that you’ve spent 3 years on your idea and obviously they can’t get in on the same level as you. But without someone to realize your idea — then how much worth are your idea? It’s obviously totally fine to make an agreement based on performance by the developer as long as you can clearly measure if and when the developer has met these goals. Just don’t think of it as something developers would see as having any value, but more as a necessary sacrifice you have to make.

Problem #2: Is your idea really that good?

Can you give me an exact number that explains to me how good your idea is? “Obviously” your idea is infinitely good — but do you have concrete data on that — which tells me how good it is? Do you think that you can’t get farther without a product? You’re wrong.

Check out the resources on http://www.pretotyping.org. Pretotyping is about testing how good your product is before your build it. And it require you to be creative. The classic example when talking about pretotyping is the IBM Speech-to-Text project. IBM wanted to develop a machine that could take speech and convert it to text. But someone at IBM was not sure that it was really worth the effort so how can you test that without actually building the product?

What they did was that they took some of the people they had talked to who was completely sure that they would buy a machine that could convert speech to text and put them in a room in front of a computer with no keyboard but only a screen and a microphone. They told the people they brought in that they build the machine and that they wanted them to test it. When the participants spoke into the microphone the words they said automagically appeared.

What was happening of course was that an employee was sitting in another room and was typing the words that the participants said. IBM learned that the after people used the machine for a while they became tired of using it. A valuable lesson.

Remember: Magic is always better than the product. If you can’t get people to buy the magic, they won’t buy the product. Have you tested your idea like this?

Problem #3: If I talk to people about my idea they will probably steal it

Let me tell you one thing: If you can get just one developer to even notice your idea then you should probably be extremely happy. People don’t steal ideas (DISCLAIMER: Some people do, but they’re few). Talk talk talk. Make a couple of sketches, mockups to show your idea. Don’t bring an NDA — they’re for pussies. Remember ideas are a dime a dozen — it’s the execution that counts.

Problem #4: Finding a developer

So.. if you’ve done all of the above and are dead set at finding a developer. What should you do?

1. Go to where the developers are
   Attend IT conferences, software/hardware meetups, network meetings, events at DTU. Meetup.com is your friend. Yes going to meetups may be terribly boring, but who knows, you may meet the one and only.
2. Don’t underestimate virtual networks
   Join IT groups at LinkedIn, Facebook and ask for help. Find developers in your area on Twitter and ask them.
3. Use elance, odesk, and similar
   Outsourcing to freelancers is by far optimal — but a lot of cool products and startups have been built using freelancers. In a concrete example we’ve spent about 820 USD on getting a fully working web-app prototype. Wages are typically around 30-40 USD pr. hour.