(This is a guest post from Steven's Entrepreneurship Blog)
People who are interested in making a startup company are usually smart people. They tend to have ideas all the time, good ideas that solve some problems in the current market. The next step is typically try to attract people with the similar interest and vision to build a team toward the common goal. It all sounds reasonable but the funny thing is most of the time people are not willing to commit that much in the beginning. In the other words they are chickens rather than pigs.
A reputable entrepreneur might pull that off effortlessly as he oozes leader's charisma and backed by successful stories. Typically people would find it a lot more comfortable to follow this type of leader instead of someone who are new to the entrepreneurship world. Here are my suggestions:
Don't Wait For the Others
I know it might not be easy to understand why we should hastily dive into the startup venture without validating how good an idea is. But the cruel fact is you will never know the full picture before you start. Market validation with hard numbers is nice if you are pitching to a VC because they are paying money out to you, and the ultimate goal is to get a lucrative return in the investment. They don't care too much about what problem you are trying to solve as that's only a mean to an end for them. However, this strategy will need to change if you are recruiting people because they care exceedingly about the problem you are solving. I find the more effective way is to have some prototype that explains your idea and its application to get some responses.
Show Confidence
A prototype (preferably a working one) worth a thousand words in showing how confident you are to your own idea. If you truly believe something is worth doing and the world is dying for a solution you would commit more than just talks. Finding something with that attributes is hard but it helps you and the team motivated in the long term.
What if I Can't Code?
Find someone who can and pay them. The most important thing is to get things off the ground and how you do it isn't that important. I've heard a founder with a legal background outsource his idea to an Indian developer just to get things started. If you think your idea truly rocks you would get out of your way to get it done ASAP. Also I found when recruiting, developers are drawn to a team that has a working prototype. Developers love to see the inner working of things just out of curiosity. That's why they chose to be developers.
Don't Try to Lead
I had spent months to understand leaders do not build followers intentionally. They just do what they think what is right and in time followers would come. If you are putting together a technical team or if you are finding a technical co-founder the best strategy is to start building it rather than trying hard getting free development resources for your idea. If it has certain value the rest would come. But first you need to believe in it completely.
(Image from TalkDroid)
