In regards to staunch's comment I feel A Hacker would implement someone else's ideas if they felt enough people would want the idea to be implemented.
I would like to thank [willarson] I found his comment to be insightful and will take to heart what he has said about a non-programmer not understanding the capacity of programming.
It sounds like hackers are not completely shut down to working with a non-technical person as long as that person can add his fair share of value.
I am now going to throw a kicker into the business / hacker relationship. What if a business guy has a vision that both he and the hacker agree has a chance to improve peoples lives. And on top of this vision he has the money to fund it. What is the hacker's response? And how should the equity be divided?
No, a hacker would implement someone else's ideas if the ideas were interesting to implement and possible.
If a business guy has a vision that he shares with the hacker, the hacker will want to build it, though the hacker may want to build other things more and thus decline the partnership. The equity should be divided according to what each brings to the relationship; if all the business guy brings is the vision, he ought to be paid a flat fee for it, probably no more than $50, and thanked kindly. If he brings funding, it depends on how badly he needs the hacker.
If you're funding it, then you can simply hire someone. Of course, at that point, you might have yourself a bit of a principal-agent problem, so giving them some equity is likely to be a good idea. You're still going to have some issues with the fact that an employee is going to follow orders more than a co-founder, which has some negatives associated with it (sometimes, it's good to say "no, that's dumb!", and that's harder to do as an employee).
But... life's tough - everyone has obstacles of one kind or another, so why not just wade in and get started?
Comments
In regards to staunch's comment I feel A Hacker would implement someone else's ideas if they felt enough people would want the idea to be implemented.
I would like to thank [willarson] I found his comment to be insightful and will take to heart what he has said about a non-programmer not understanding the capacity of programming.
It sounds like hackers are not completely shut down to working with a non-technical person as long as that person can add his fair share of value.
I am now going to throw a kicker into the business / hacker relationship. What if a business guy has a vision that both he and the hacker agree has a chance to improve peoples lives. And on top of this vision he has the money to fund it. What is the hacker's response? And how should the equity be divided?
No, a hacker would implement someone else's ideas if the ideas were interesting to implement and possible.
If a business guy has a vision that he shares with the hacker, the hacker will want to build it, though the hacker may want to build other things more and thus decline the partnership. The equity should be divided according to what each brings to the relationship; if all the business guy brings is the vision, he ought to be paid a flat fee for it, probably no more than $50, and thanked kindly. If he brings funding, it depends on how badly he needs the hacker.
If you're funding it, then you can simply hire someone. Of course, at that point, you might have yourself a bit of a principal-agent problem, so giving them some equity is likely to be a good idea. You're still going to have some issues with the fact that an employee is going to follow orders more than a co-founder, which has some negatives associated with it (sometimes, it's good to say "no, that's dumb!", and that's harder to do as an employee).
But... life's tough - everyone has obstacles of one kind or another, so why not just wade in and get started?