Devtrepreneurs end up with a few abandoned children
In the context of Tech Startups, non-technical founders often wish they “knew how to code” so they could build all the great app ideas they come up with. In most cases they look out for a technical co-founder or hire a freelancer to build their prototype faster than it would take for them to actually learn how to code.
On the other hand, technical founders (devtrepreneurs) have the entrepreneurial mindset and the skills to build their app ideas themselves. They can sketch out some screens, user flows, design the database schema, pick a development framework of preference, start coding and… boom! 48 hours later a working prototype is ready.
With hosting-platforms like Heroku they can easily deploy applications in minutes and start testing and validating their assumptions right away and almost for free.
Sounds cool right? Well… after having gone through this many times and hearing about similar experiences from other devtrepreneurs, I believe that not being able to code is actually a blessing for non-technical entrepreneurs.
Let me explain… when it costs you nothing to do something (i.e. the cost of building an app), you just go ahead and do it without thinking too much about it. In contrast, when it costs real money, you can’t just go ahead with every crazy idea that pops up in your mind… you need to evaluate, test your assumptions, do some basic market research, customer development and/or use cheap smoke-test techniques before you can commit any more time and money to it.
Even if they don’t realize it, having this limitation allows non-technical founders to focus more carefully on the details of sustainability and business model for their ideas sooner than devtrepreneurs. Once they are convinced an idea is worthy or more effort and resources, they go ahead and look for a tech co-founder or freelancer to start working on it.
Devtrepreneurs tend to get excited about the technical aspects of building apps, we just want to start coding and deploying as soon as possible… getting any excuse to test out new frameworks, write some fresh and clean code, make it efficient and highly scalable, etc.
Soon after we are done building the basic prototype (MVP), we get more excited about the idea and start adding features, preparing for huge scale, etc, etc, etc. By the end of two weeks we have invested so much time and effort into this idea, that even if we have not validated it with any real customers/users, we continue working on it (why stop now, right?)… then weeks turn into months and we end up with a product that does a lot of cool things but nobody cares about.
At that point, a new idea pops into our mind, the old idea is not exciting anymore and we abandon it. Fast forward a few years into this behavior and you end up with a dozen “abandoned children” out there, running for free on a cheap hosting provider… just there… waiting for you to pay a little attention and help them grow up to their full potential.
After many years and a dozen “abandoned children” left out on their own, I have learned to stop and think about those details that non-technical founders are forced to think about before jumping into coding my next billion dollar idea...
In memory of: kidsabacus, pictour, class.io, webconflatino, cellarteller, gamedayspot, localspanish, hondurasart, siliconalien, micajita, blipea, domus
