Web Startup - Looking for Guidance

[offallygood]

Hi everyone! I'm a long-time lurker, but don't post much. I always enjoy reading about the vast experiences, unique knowledge and information shared by this diverse community. As such, I'm reaching out to you all for guidance on a start-up.

The long-and-short of it is I have a web start-up idea, but don't have the IT knowledge to put it into action. The idea could likely be started clumsily through other means (i.e. existing online marketplaces or phone/email), but I feel like for the idea to truly shine, it needs its own dedicated platform. There is an existing website design/platform for a completely different industry and purpose that I have in mind that I think could work for what I'm looking to do, but I have no way of building it myself and am not looking to invest personal capital to get it going. Ideally, I'd like to find an aspiring IT entrepreneur with web development knowledge/experience and partner with them to make this idea a reality. However, I'm not sure how to find these people. Our local state university has an entrepreneurial department, but it only provides assistance to current students or alumni. I know of a few people who graduated from the school that would be good candidates, but none possess the IT skills needed to really make this idea soar.

Thoughts or ideas? Any Guidance for tackling a web-based start-up? Anyone lurking here interested in starting an IT business that just needs an idea and partner? Is this all actually much harder than I'm envisioning even if I get over the IT hurdle?

[Askel]

... and am not looking to invest personal capital to get it going.

That's a huge red flag for anybody who's worked in this industry for more than like 5 minutes. 

I've spent my whole working career implementing the tech dreams of other people. Some ideas are terrible, some ideas are half baked, some ideas are genius. About 95% never go anywhere after launch.   

Anybody who knows what they're doing has a ton of other much better paying opportunities to pursue.   

[offallygood]

I see your point. When I say no personal investment capital, I mean that I'm not looking to pay an IT company to build the site as I foresee it requiring more capital than I can come up with myself. As such, I'd like to find a partner with the hard skills needed to build it, investing their own personal time and energy to building the site, while I work on recruiting users with my own personal time and energy. However it's also possible that I don't really understand the IT professionals market and the willingness for them to pursue individual initiatives (like an auto technician working for themselves on the weekend). 

I'm interested to hear what others have to say even if it's just recommended resources for pitching ideas and acquiring capital. I'm currently working on a business plan.

[Fru-Gal]

Pay a web developer on Fiverr to build a prototype. Then see if you can get users. Or use existing web-build services like Squarespace or Google sites to create the homepage yourself.

In any skilled endeavor you are going to have a hard time finding a “true believer” who wants to work for free on your idea. Also, that person will consider themselves a part equity owner and may take your idea and run with it themselves. Or you may end up in personal ego battles. Paying people for their labor is the cleanest way to do this kind of thing.

Tim Ferriss would probably recommend you use existing platforms and see if your idea has legs. The Internet is filled with beautiful websites and products that no one uses.

[the_gastropod]

Yea, I think you're going to have a hard time finding anyone decent by just offering equity. "Business guy seeks code monkey" has been a bit of a meme for a long time.

I'd +1 the Fiverr suggestion, and also consider poking around Reddit. Subreddits for some popular web frameworks would probably be a safe bet for finding a reasonably competent junior developer willing to build something on the cheap. Examples: /r/rails, /r/laravel, /r/django, /r/phoenixframework

[SeattleCPA]

This is maybe obvious but you can build a pretty good site yourself using WordPress.

Also for simple JavaScript programs you can (with a little bit of learning and fiddling) get ChatGPT's help to write most of the code.

Here's an example page from my little blog: https://evergreensmallbusiness.com/s-corporation-tax-savings-calculator/

WordPress (with a $50 theme) lets you create a good looking site. And ChatGPT did most of the work for that little calculator that estimates the tax savings the entrepreneur enjoys by using an S corporation.

[the_gastropod]

This is maybe obvious but you can build a pretty good site yourself using WordPress.

Also for simple JavaScript programs you can (with a little bit of learning and fiddling) get ChatGPT's help to write most of the code.

Here's an example page from my little blog: https://evergreensmallbusiness.com/s-corporation-tax-savings-calculator/

WordPress (with a $50 theme) lets you create a good looking site. And ChatGPT did most of the work for that little calculator that estimates the tax savings the entrepreneur enjoys by using an S corporation.

I don't know OP's background, but you're likely selling yourself a bit short here. There's so much stuff you're probably very comfortable doing that you've forgotten is actually kind of complicated. Gotta buy a domain name, gotta update DNS records for that domain name, gotta get a web hosting provider, gotta upload (FTP?) Wordpress to it, gotta setup a database and configure wordpress to connect to it, then have to learn the basics of using Wordpress / changing themes, etc. Not to say none of this is learnable, but there is a not so insignificant learning curve to even get to this "just ask GPT to do it!" step.

[offallygood]

Thanks to all responded.

It had been quite some time since I'd last looked at Wix, so thanks for the reminder. It seems like it might have a platform that could work for my idea. It might just need a little more manual processing than I was hoping for.

Happy Thanksgiving!