Startup Hacks: What to do when you don’t have a complete team

If it’s a tech product and the core team is not a set of founders, then you should probably double your deliverable timelines. The core team should comprise of at least one tech geek and one design guru.

I have an idea but I am neither a tech guy nor a design guy. Get at least one of these two people on board as founders. Please do not outsource both the design and development of your product. That fails. Certainly. Period. Even when you throw a lot of money at it.

I have an idea and I am a tech guy but no design experience. Getting the design right is hard. I have learnt the hard way that design can never be outsourced. It’s like outsourcing your soul to someone. Certainly not at the very beginning. You need to get a designer inspired enough to join you as founder. Or work on equity. If these two options fail, here is how to hack the process of product design –

  1. Draw a basic set of wireframes, on paper if you will about what the product will do. Force yourself to think like the user. This in any case will be immensely helpful.
  2. Once the wireframes are done, spend hours on sites like Usabilla and design patterns, to see what people are doing to solve similar UI problems. Sometimes you might get similar products operating in different geographies or verticals. Stretch your imagination and try to retro fit your needs on these patterns.
  3. Look up font and color combinations on the web — there are enough free resources that will help you achieve this.
  4. Take up UI development based on the design patterns or existing pages you shortlist. It’s a quick iterative process, and you will need to either do the development yourself or in-house.

I have an idea, I am a designer but no tech experience: As a designer, you are more empowered to build products than anyone else. In consumer web, design and experience is the king. You can build out the product as a mock in its every detail. Tweet it out or share it on face book — not the entire idea, but just a part of it. Talk to people about it. Chances are, that if your idea is compelling, and your mocks beautiful, they will force someone to join you and build it out with you.

Also, today there are tools like Macaw that will enable you to convert a mock into an actual working set of HTML pages. Try that route out and get enough interest generated. My order of preference for solving technology skillsets in a startup is –

  1. Get a founder or guy on equity
  2. Hire an employee and give them stocks
  3. Don’t outsource unless you have some basic understanding of tech or you have either 1 or 2 in place.