Steven shares how he got developers to work for equity when he had no money. He kept the project small enough to build in weeks, offered a real equity stake, and made clear whether they'd be co-founder or early employee. Both emphasize that developers need skin in the game and a technical co-founder who's as committed as the founder.
Okay, Michael, how do I persuade a developer to code for me even though I do not have much money since I'm a student? We got a lot of student entrepreneurs here.
I love that. No, um, and a couple of the gigs we started, we got people, um, actually one of the companies I went to, another startup, California startup, this is a long time ago, about 18 years ago, uh, we kind of worked for nothing for a while. We did run ourselves on fumes, but boy, it makes you really hustle. But we got basically— one of the guys, when we took him on, we said we'd trade kind of cash for equity, and we gave him a very small percentage in terms of the company. So there's loads of things you can do. And again, I think if you're right at the start of a product with these sort of things, you've got to avoid boiling the ocean. You just gotta start small, and then when you've got something that works, scale it up. So, so my question for you, if you're going to code a product and you're going to build some technology, build an app, whatever it might be, kind of what's the minimum viable product that you need to build? And these days with technology, hopefully you can build that in less than a couple of weeks. But I reckon for a couple of weeks coding, someone's likely to work for free. And there's loads of things you can do. You can do deferred earnings, You know, and you could say lock it to the company's success. You could give them a small portion of equity. So there's loads of creative things you can do. But also, you know, obviously if you give people money, ironically— this is sad about human nature— they tend to switch off from the mission. If you actually say, you know, if we land on the moon together, we take some moonshots, and everybody's kind of got skin in the game, it really drives a great culture and it keeps them keen as mustard to really bet on the company's success. And also, the only other thing, college students, I know, you know, if you're building an app, you reckon you can build it, I don't know, 3 days. It always takes a bit longer than you think. So what you need to do is keep that fellow student really focused on delivering the minimum viable product and getting something in the hands of customers so they can road test it. And then you'll validate whether you've got a business, and then you can share it. But I think the final thing I'd say is with all these things, you just got to be honest with— because this guy could be a potential coworker. If he does a great job coding your app, you'll want him to be your first employee. So how do you think about him being, you know, effectively a co-founder of the company and being on the management team? Maybe he's not the guy, maybe he's all your best techie and he's coding for you. So you need to kind of think ahead of how the movie might play out. But I also think you owe it to that individual to share with them and be honest with them and transparent with them. You haven't got, you know, you're not kind of Warren Buffett. You're a student, you've got a dream, you want him to be part of it. Sell him the story. If he believes in the story, he'll cut that, he'll cut code for you.
Yeah, I mean, the only thing I would add, I agree with Everything Steven's saying. The only thing I would add is if you wanna be a tech company, you need to have tech leadership in your team. You can't be a successful app company, like if you're, so you're not a coder, you wanna run an app, great. You can't just have somebody who you hire and then, you know, does occasional maintenance on it. If you wanna be a successful app company, you need to have somebody who cares just as deeply as you do about the business and is part of the company. So you need a co-founder, and that's not a decision that you just take lightly. You don't just enter into business with somebody and like the values are super important too, not just the skillset. But I wouldn't, if you treat this just as, oh, I can hire somebody and, you know, when I need them, I'll bring them on. That is not the way to build a successful tech company if you don't know how to do the tech yourself. You need somebody who's just as committed to doing this and building a company. If you do the business side and they do the tech. But if you want to make it big, you got— like, look at every successful tech company. One of the co-founders knew the tech. You need somebody on your, on your team who's deeply committed, who understands the tech.
