colellm

judging a startup by the founder's email address..brilliant methodology

The "shocking" part was completely sarcastic :) I totally understand the value of one's time. i am not hoping to ignite that whole business person vs coder battle or come across as a business person jerk, which is why I am presenting myself as a tech collaborator who will build the front end.i myself have already spent countless hours baking the idea, talking to industry experts, etc

p.s. if interested [email protected]

shocking that I should get such a response.

on one end, there is a TON of legwork with regard to my idea that involves reaching out to each adventure operator and incorporating content into the site. I did mention it was extremely fragmented and a lot of the value would come from bringing information together/generating unique content.

also, i did learn to hack in xhtml/css and although i know they are not true programming languages it is a start in that i can at least hack together part of a front end

A lot of the applications for the yc like programs are similar (ex. launchboxdigital), which, I agree, does make it easier to apply to multiple programs.

"I am pretty sure that starting a business involves some level of desperation."

I agree. People do have to be pushed up against a wall to some extent and feel they are left with few options, otherwise, it is too easy to convince yourself not to startup.

Me too - I will go

Any suggestions on things to read so I can start to learn. I am going to buy a book on rails (agile web development). Know of joel on software. Programming.reddit.com. Anything else?

Thanks :) Didn't mean to sound defensive. I posted expecting responses similar to yours. Initially I was naive but a little networking in the tech community solved that pretty quickly.

Yeah. I would not apply to ycombinator without a programming co-founder (I am going to apply to launchboxdigital though).

Definately have considered "hiring" someone, but I wanted to exhaust trying to find a co-founder first.

Yup. Know Y combinator funded them. Actually, brings up another point. Curious what people think about applying to ycombinator if they have funded a potential competitor of your company in the past??

Thanks for the advice. Right now, I would like to continue in my hunt for a co-founder but do plan on trying to pick up some knowledge of programming even if I do find someone to work with.

I knew I would probably get attacked on this post in some way. I am not naive and I do realize my limitations. Additionally, in a business you are looking ideally for individuals who complement yourself in skills (i.e. one business person, one technology person).

What is wrong with 1 non-programmer + 1 hacker sharing equity equally? I realize product development is paramount. I do not expect to be twiddling my thumbs while my partner hacks away. As a user of the internet and sites like the one I would like to build, I have many ideas concrete ideas about features/functionality I would like on the site and would hope to function as a team in developing the product.

Beyond that, down the road much of the focus would be on user acquisition strategies (for a user generated content site such as the one I would like to do). I cannot imagine I would not be able to contribute equally to the overall process of building a sustainable company.