Ideas, Validated, No Money...now what?
Hi everyone...
So, I have been going through life, having great ideas, not being able to make the ideas a reality I have seen my ideas being done by other companies and people, yes I know I am not the only one, I am not looking for pity.
I "work" 16 hours a day, everyday, 6 days a week, trying everything I can to get my ideas into the world.
I believe that the biggest issue is that I do not have a network of people that I know that can invest in me and in the ideas.
With that being said though, in this situation, whats next, what? how?
If you want investors you need collateral or you need a MVP or or or....without funds you can't create that MVP if you have no collateral to offer....it is like applying for a job after leaving university and they want experience, but you can't get experience if you don't get the job, catch 22.... :)
I am not complaining, nor am I looking for pity, I know it's not easy otherwise everyone would do it....I need direction, advice, I really really do not want my next idea(s) to be done by someone else again before I can make it....
Anyways, I hope I came across in the right way and that I made sense, I am sure there are thousands of other people feeling or experiencing the same...
Thank you in advance all
Hi IamChange,
This is great. I guess it depends on what your ideas are. You can come up with ideas that cost little to build and make money. For example I have a small business that started with $50 and every month I put $50 into it for around 8 months. At the end of the first year it generated almost $2,000. Not a ton but definitely profitable and gives me opportunity to put the money into a new idea. It’s currently at ~$450 MRR, no maintenance expenses or overhead.
I think it’s really about being creative and if you don’t have the time or money to create a big idea off the bat, think about what you can do now with your current resources. With the internet there are infinite possibilities. I’m not sure what your skillset is but if you have an idea and have a vision for it you may be able to build a product and develop a shopify site around it utilizing an upwork developer for a few hundred.
I would start on things that don’t need a ton of initial investment (couple thousand). But that’s my taste.
What are you looking to do?
Cheezy
Hi Cheezy
Thank you for the advice and comments.
The ideas are all built around technology, the issue I am facing is that most of the ideas require "specialist" skills, as its SaaS platforms, Integrated systems, customized solutions, that no-code platforms cant offer me. I have started learning development, but my skills are not good enough to build what I need and by the time I'll be ready I'll miss the boat....
If your skills aren’t good enough then hire people that can help you cheaply. If you don’t have money either, work on a cheaper idea first or find someone to give you money (loan)/sell your stuff/live cheaper. This stuff is hard and most people fail. The world doesn’t care if you’re successful or not, you do. Which is great but that means it’s up to you to figure it out if you want to be successful. I’m sure a lot of people are saying the same thing but it’s true. There’s no easy answer. It will take sacrifice. If you believe in your idea that much maybe change careers so you have time to devote to it. Working as much as you do and not feeling confident in your skills is not setting you up for success in your own endeavor in my opinion. It’s going to be hard to get investors if you work that much. You may have to figure out something creative to propel you forward. You can do it though. Many people figure out how to change their life around. Read biographies from successful people to see what they’ve done. Maybe you can relate to one of them and apply something they did to your life to turn it around. You can do it! Be strong! Believe in yourself and just start. You will lose money at times. If you have no buffer (like you can’t handle losing $1k) I would start putting money aside to test ideas that won’t drain you financially. Even if it’s a landing page with a value proposition that collects emails. Use internet ads to put the value prop in front of people and if you collect emails it’s a win and move forward. You can easily do a shadow test of an idea with godaddy for $200.
Welcome to the awesome world of makers. Make it happen.
Start posting your ideas. If you can't work on them, get them out into the world.
Learn to program. Seriously just start. In a year you can be making your ideas. Good luck.
Kind of piggy-backing off what @Lamchezzy is saying you can totally start a business with little or no money and focusing on operating that business on a net gain. This won't bring you much money in but it will give you something to cut your teeth on.
Further unpacking your post though I would say spend some time building your network. It's not something that happens overnight, you're certainly in the right place to start (indiehackers) but you need to know real people too, and build relationships of trust with them. I personally found that moving to a different city opened up many more opportunities for me but I also realize this isn't something that everyone can do.
Surprised no one's addressed this part so far.
Just because you see others already using your idea out there doesn't mean you can't do it better or slightly differently. It didn't stop Lyft from competing with Uber, Bing with Google, and so on. If anything, it confirms market validation, which is part of the challenge of coming up with an idea. And to be honest, with 7.5 billion people on this world, chances are high that for all the ideas you've come up with, someone else out there has already thought of it as well.
What's important is that you find something that you'd be motivated to work on every day. The work doesn't stop after deploying an MVP - there's growth, user interactions, more growth, additional development for features, and did I mention more growth?
You got this.
What’s an idea you thought couldn’t build an MVP for? Maybe we can brainstorm how to? I believe you can build anything without code - you just have to understand what your solving the customer, and relate something minimal that will generate money -> which you invest in building bigger
Two thoughts:
"I "work" 16 hours a day, everyday, 6 days a week, trying everything I can to get my ideas into the world." - Why is "work" in quotes? Either you're moving closer to your goals or you aren't. Don't deceive yourself one way or the other by saying either your early steps aren't valuable or that just sitting around "putting in the time" is progress.
I challenge you to do some self-examination and ask yourself if you're more excited about coming up with ideas than actually executing on them. Personally, I spent years YEARS dreaming but not doing. Tons of ideas I was excited about, but I was also always lamenting about never doing anything about them. If you're in that place, you have to recognize that fact and change something. Pick an idea. Do something about it, however small. Get it out into the world where real customers are. Succeed or fail. Or admit that all you want to do is dream.
Thank you @tylerchurch, definitely don't simply want to dream, think I am stuck in the mindset of "I don't have money to make this a reality and move to the next step" and see that as the roadblock I can't get pass, good hard advice, thank you for that.....need to change my mindset of getting over the wall in any and every way possible...I always end up with "need developers"...."need money to get the developers"....I'll keep fighting the fight...thanks again!
Keep fighting! Get yourself unstuck! :) Focus on what you CAN do. Focus on actually helping people. There's a ton of stuff out there that people need that doesn't require much money or developers or SaaS or plugins or whatever else.
I'm looking forward to hearing about your future journey :)
Great, awesome, thank you.....
Going to share one idea here, it is to help people, people that is in a similar position as me.....
A mix of Kickstarter and Freelancer....
So you have a platform, people with various skills, legal, development, marketing, etc. signs up to the platform and make their skills available(Freelancer model).....a person with an idea comes to the portal, posts the idea and information(Kickstarter model), so instead of people sticking cash to the idea, they offer their skills and time....in return they will get shares within the idea/company....this is very high level....but think it is different to what is out there and can help a lot of people, both ways, the idea and the skills people...anyways....thanks again
Glad I could help :)
And awesome! Lots of different potential directions that idea could go in.
Now think through all the various aspects of that idea (a few I can think of: idea voting, incentive systems, community forums, legal templates, skill vetting, anything that could build trust between members, etc.) and then pick the tiniest piece that you can do that will benefit someone out there in the world. And get to work researching, marketing, and building.
Is there a way for you to claim back more time? You put work in quotes, so maybe there's a way to claim a few extra hours? IMO if you can claim some hours back, you'll have room to follow the suggestions that others have made in the comments.
Bubble is your solution. Build it yourself without writing code. Use Genm to hire a marketeer.
Thank you codeables....Bubble wont work as I need custom developed plugins, SaaS platforms etc...thank you for the advice though!
You can extend the app by building custom plugins. Everything's possible
Great thanks, will see if I can build a plugin that needs to communicate to the backend of a SaaS portal....thinking, from a quick glance at Bubble its mobile only?...the plugin needs to run on a user pc, gather information and send back to the backend so data can be displayed on the SaaS portal
You might want to use Integromat to automate any third party API to Bubble or use the API Connector from Bubble itself.
I was in the same boat in terms of having ideas I think would be great, but not having
Thankfully I found no code solutions, the one I've landed on being bubble.io and now I'm slowly building my MVP.
Once that is done and I can test it, I can either continue to build it into a live solution myself or present to organidations/people to find investment externally.
I'm going slow and working on it between work and other responsibilities and it sounds like this may be a direction you could head down to bring your ideas to life soon and without any financial investment up front. Most, if not all nocode platforms have a free plan. That's all I'm using to build my MVP in Bubble and I haven't hit a snag or roadblock yet.
You need to sell your product.
If you do not have capital then you need to learn how to create the product yourself, or save up money to finance the product. Nobody will invest in your idea until you have something tangible to show them.
Thanks for the comments cpope...appreciated