Hi everyone,

a friend and I are currently in the progress of developing an app. We are psychology grads and are currently looking for capable app developers / software engineers to help us in dev. since our competence is very limited in this respective field.

I‘ve got two main questions:

  1. How / where do we best look for help? Since we do not yet have investors on board we are not able to pay a salary. We are therefore looking to onboard app devs on a SitC (shares in the company) type of deal. Where do we best look for people that are wiling to hop onto a start up and work for 0 payment in the beginning.

  2. How do we make sure that the people we approach do not run off with what we pitch them? Are NDAs enough? Couldn‘t they just tell a friend and nobody can track whether they said anything or not? I do not get IP at all and don‘t understand how we can actually protect the idea in the very early stages of recruiting.

Thanks a lot!

  • feudalle@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    So I run a dev company, and my wife is a psychologist. Ndas are fine. No one wants to steal your idea. Most devs have a stack of them they don’t have time to do. I’m certainly in that camp.

    As for finding someone to work on equity, this gets tough. Most devs get this pitched at least twice a week. I’m usually approached and offered 20-30% if we build the product. The problem is the idea person seldom brings anything else to the table.

    My go-to example is this, here is a billion dollar idea yours for free. It’s an electric car, it charges to 80% in 5 minutes and has a 1000 mile range. The problem is I don’t know how to build a car and am not sure I’d it’s possible due to physics. I also have no contacts in my network for manufacturing. But it is a great idea.

  • Hot-Afternoon-4831@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m a dev and unless your idea has the potential to be the next billion dollar company, I probably wouldn’t work on it. Why should I drop what I’m currently working on in favor of yours? Not trying to be rude, but the idea and the unfair advantage, scale you’re looking for is what drives devs like me to work with you! Hope this helps

  • Bytesfortruth@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    If every time I could have a penny! when someone said to me, here is how we will change the world but you change it while I just talk about it. I will never have to raise money with the investors :). Not trying to be rude, just saying build a business then get technologists in. That’s your value prop.