HACKER Q&A
📣 incognito_user

I have an idea,an implementation, users and want to invest.What is next?


I have been developing a side project for a couple of years and I mostly started it for fun, as a learning practice and to enlarge my developments portfolio. Of course I thought on monetize it if possible and dreamed on being my main income source but that was not the driver at all.

Now I have few users and some people approached me asking questions and I truly think the project could work. Also every now and then someone close to me says I should do something with this saying they could help in some way or another but I never get specific answers on how to make this work.

I know the project needs a complete reengineering to become commercial and although I can invest a good amount of time in it it will never be enough to make it start but I trust enough in the idea to be willing to put some money on it.

My problem is that I am a full time employee and I have always been, so I don't even know where to start. I guess my question is, what are possible ways to keep going with it?

  👤 Lorenz-Kraft Accepted Answer ✓
You probably might want to go the way almost everyone in your position is about to go: Apply for a Investment.

Not sure if you are aware, but you currently are on a investor site ... HackerNews. See at the bottom: "Apply to YC".

Of course, that's too simple explained. Preparing for such a application is not easy. Some investors want to see complete business plans and stuff. Around this whole "startup" scene, there are tons of ways you might want to go first, almost always depending on your needs (like selling your idea because you have no way to make it happen).

The most comforting way seems to be finding a partner. This partner might be there for you to prepare all the business related stuff (in case of investment) or to help you to put your project on its own feet (in case of bringing it to market on your own).