Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
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Kind: captions Language: en all right my last question um how many of these folks building software companies that you see yourself included are non- technical well that’s a great question and and if they are non technical what do they do yep um so I’m a developer or was I haven’t written code in years but we actually as so we do a state of independent SAS survey and we put out a report an like an industry report and we asked the question do you have at least One technical founder right or you know and yes or no right and the number of SAS companies kind of bootstrap dish SAS companies with Z with no technical Founders is like I believe it’s 20% 25% it’s very possible it is and usually what the expertise they have they either the subject matter expert like we’re going to build software for accountants I was an accountant for 20 years we’re going to be software for ux designers I was a designer for 10 years they’re either that or they’re sales or marketing that’s what they should have now we’ve seen where there’s a developer and then there’s like the business person the business guy or G anything this is yeah usually winds at meeting you’re not actually that helpful and you probably shouldn’t be a co-founder you know if you can’t sell or Market or like have input on the product you know or or develop it like those are really the four roles um You probably shouldn’t be so if I’m if I like I’m not Tech I’m not technical but I um I can like tie stuff together and use zap your and I’m super creative how do I start a start a software company without hiring or I if maybe hiring is it but without having a co-founder right so for you since you have money you would either acquire something because there’s always stuff for sale that you may want to acquire and then just grow if you have a Content marketing expertise or you would hire you know a developer or an agency or something to build it if you don’t have the money uh a lot of people non-technical will work a day job and actually funnel money to the side to basically pay for a developer to do it um the other two approaches I’ve seen are exactly what you said which is I’m going to build my minimum viable product using zapier and notion and chewing gum all right and I’m just going to Cobble it together to the point where hey if I get a few grand a month in Revenue this proves it and I’m going to use that to get it built it’s a harder way to go but it’s possible the last one I’ve seen which is genius and this is what the founder Casto did CU he’s not he’s a single founder not a developer he worked a day job he started a product IED Service Podcast editing and he h he got it up to I forget what the number with 30 or 40 Grand a month in productized podcast he was one of the earlier ones it was called podcast motor he was working a day job the whole time so then while he was was he actually doing the editing or he would he did it first and then and then got someone overseas exactly yep yep or he even even has folks in US and Canada doing it um and there was enough profit margin that he then started reinvesting you know and said well now I want to build now that I’m doing podcast hosting he actually was in the podcast space someone says I have this WordPress podcast plugin for podcast hosting on WordPress and I want someone to kind of adopt it type thing since he was doing something in public they approached him he bought it for not very much money and then he built the entire you know what again as a seven figure business he’s raised you know three aside from us he’s raised three qus of and it’s growing fast so that’s the other way to do it is like I even I was a developer and I had to do it nights and weekends too you know and I was pulling money away from the day job for the agency and de and hiring a de developer what what’s the best way to do that do a lot of these folks like a lot like when I was starting everyone said like oh just go on odesk and hire someone in India to do it and I’m like I don’t know man that doesn’t sound like I can like like yeah so like what you what what what are there any agencies that you like or for hiring devs are you hiring someone by the hour in America what what’s what do you typically see yeah I typically see I see a lot of people going either through referrals like you get into a community um microcom connect or Indie hackers or whatever Dynamite Circle and you ask and you say who has used someone whom you trust right so you try to get that referral it’s not just a a flat look because going to upwork which used to be odesk is kind of a show these days the other thing is there are now these refer Services aggregators there’s one called trust Shoring which is run by a guy who attends microcom but he basically knows a bunch of Eastern European Dev agencies and if you come to him and say I want to build an IOS app he’ll say cool I have these three agencies that I that I refer to he’s almost like a broker in a way but like he’s a good dude and he knows them you know and so he and he’s vetted them and then there’s one called cloud dev.com and they do the similar thing for Latin America and so the do you like do you like top tow or anything like that top tow is good it’s expensive um right cuz I think it’s hours so it depends on budget and all that if you’re if you’re scraping by I haven’t used toptw but I’ve had friends use it and I heard quality was really good in the early days and of course like anything it gets you know less and less but um that’s certainly something you could try too how much would you budget to create an MVP it depends on what it is you’re talking like a sass app here’s the other thing man if you’re if you are non-technical and you’ve never started a startup before I would say don’t build a SAS app it’s too hard like go I have this thing called the stair step approach to bootstrapping which is like start small with like a WordPress plugin a HubSpot add-on a Salesforce add-on a Heroku add-on and go build that cut your teeth at it it’s way less expensive way harder to maintain and way easier to maintain you get the experience you get some Revenue then grow it to enough that you can buy out just buy out your day job eight grand eight grand a month maybe 10 grand a month then now you have experience you can double down and um and do it this is awesome to your to your question of building an MVP of a SAS app 10 to 30 grand I to throw it out but and you think a non-technical person could actually maintain that and understand what’s going well no then you’d need to have that agency sticker right that’s where I’m saying if you’re non-technical um you either need some money I mean this is why folks you build it and you’re you pre-sell it you get to the point where there’s enough Revenue that you can then justify you know raising funding right if you’re if you’re non technical or you have a side job that’s uh putting money [Music]