Business people with ideas and the ability to market products and attract customers can look online for freelance developers and programmers to turn those ideas into reality… I see a lot of ads from startups with the “next big idea” looking to find a profit for themselves. How about a programmer with an idea and the technical skills to flesh out a working prototype, but lacking someone to help them with the marketing part?
I’m curious as to how, if it’s possible, for a developer to “recruit” a businessperson / marketing expert to help push forth his own idea and build on the product he created.
It doesn’t really go in that direction, so instead of trying to ‘recruit’ someone like that you’d really need to focus on ‘attracting’ them.
People in the development world don’t really like this reality, but the fact is that:
developers are widely available and easily replaced
marketing professionals are widely available and easily replaced
ideas are widely available and easily replaced
and yet…
business people who can bring it all together are rare and hard to get
people with money (or know how to get it) and picky and only want the best projects
the above two types of people are inundated with ideas from developers and marketers all the time
So, if you are one of the above then you need to learn to attract the missing pieces. Those missing pieces as well as the money to kick off a project are what make someone an entrepreneur rather than just a dev/marketing person with an idea.
If you are a tech person who has what you think is a great idea, I would seek to share that idea with business minded people who have both the money (or access to it) and the rolodex to get the right people in place.
That means you essentially need to shop your idea to people who can put the pieces into place if you aren’t able to do it yourself. You’ll need to refine your business concept into a VERY short description (i.e. one paragraph) and send it to anyone you think might be able to help develop it.
Don’t get stuck on privacy/secrecy issues - if your idea is THAT good it’ll soon be ripped off anyways.
Build a reputation, hang out where businesspeople hang out and make it known that you are looking.
I’ve done that end of the business for someone who I met off of SP, unfortunately nothing ever took off to the big time but it was still a good experience for both of us.
FYI, fix the site in your sig, it doesn’t look good when a potential interested party clicks it and they get an account suspended page from Godaddy
Are you familiar with SCORE? It’s an organization of executives that volunteer their time to mentor new or growing businesses. They have many chapters throughout the US. Here is the site for the Chicago chapter (based on your profile location). I have a feeling that you will find some great advice with them
