Ask HN: Mentoring for equity

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2365643

by phlux • 15 years ago

5 3 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I have a proposition/question for the HN community:

Would you be willing to Mentor For Equity?

The idea is this - There are tons of people (like myself) who have ideas they want to build out, but don't have the development chops to implement.

Rather than joining as a technical co-founder -- would you be willing to be a mentor with stake?

You meet on a regular schedule one to two times per week for two hours.

The goal is that the non-tech founder shows up with an agenda, and a goal. You provide guidance, tutorial help and technical knowledge but no development work.

Instead you teach the founder to code towards his goal.

In return, you get some advisory % of the company. Think of this as a personal incubation effort - a MYCombinator.

Does this sound of interest to anyone? If so, meet with me.

bmelton• 15 years ago

Honestly, to me, it sounds maddeningly frustrating. If you've ever been the guy telling someone else to type something while waiting over their shoulder, it's like nails in my soul if they make a typo. I usually have to fight very hard to not say something like "JUST LET ME TYPE IT PLEASE!"

This is that same thing, but on a much grander scale.

There may be somebody interested, and I certainly hope that you can get somebody qualified, but I guess the main question I have is why you wouldn't just bring on a technical founder and let them develop it? You'd still have the opportunity to learn by osmosis, and they could give you small chunks of coding tasks to offload some of the stuff that's less important, and you'd probably be done in a quarter of the time, if not less.

phlux• 15 years ago

I am sure it would be faster to take on a technical founder -- but it seems as though there is a shortage of them available these days.

I am trying to find a workable solution to a lot of peoples problems - that they don't have full-time/interest to be a technical founder and others don't/cant contribute enough hustle to make technical founders take the jump.

Mentor someone for a few hours though, for an advisory % (between .5 and 2%) and it might work out.

If you meet with someone who you feel merits more time/interest/stake -- then go for it.

This might be a way for hackers and hustlers to meet up and speed-date.

The hacker gets to see the idea's vision and can determine if its something he wants to be a part of.

vshlos• 15 years ago

To tell the truth, the best way to learn to develop something is to go and do it, mess up, read some article, and do everything possible before asking for help. If you can figure out how to solve the problem yourself, then you not only learn how to develop, but also learn how to tackle a problem in the future. If someone is "coaching" or "mentoring" you, you wont ever learn, and both of you will be frustrated. I recommend start small and grow your dev chops. Make the development of your idea the way to learn to do it and keep the motivation for learning.

Ask HN: Mentoring for equity

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