How To Make An Adoptable Website?

Startups: How important is it to know how to code or make a website for an entrepreneur?

• I have had some good ideas in the past which are well structured and can turn into a good web startup. The only problem is, I do not know how to code or make a website due to which my ideas die before they can even start picking up. And I would not really like to pay to get my website done. Being an engineering student I have coded in C and C++, but website making requires some skills. What are some efficient ways I can get around this situation, as it is almost always a hindrance towards my goal to own a company. Plus, what are the ways I can team up with coders and ask someone to make a website for me and treat them as a co founder. Or is it better to learn coding and make one yourself, if so, what are the resources and how should I go about it. A detailed answer will be appreciated. Thanks.

• Answer:

  I am glad I came across this question and would be glad to answer it as I was in a similar situation some time back. So here is what you can do.   I gather from the question that you have not really tested any ideas until now. So I think the main aim should be to get into the habit of building things and not just documenting. It’s important because the constant fight between failure and success is what one should aim for and not build (startup) anything to be a billionaire, you can’t do that. It’s not in your hands. Not saying you are one of those guys but its important not to forget this fact.   Here is a quick flowchart I could come up with right now - how the life cycle of an idea looks like – You can clearly see the time consumed in DIY (Do It Yourself) approach and the reduced iterations as opposed to other approaches. To answer your technical background question. C and C++ is what we were all taught in college ( I hate the fact) but the important thing is that if you consider yourself a programmer, there is no language you can’t pick up (except Lisp or Haskell). Jokes apart, if you want to go with the DIY approach I’d strongly recommend python, its simple and does a lot of stuff every quickly. Apart from python get your hands dirty with HTML/CSS. Now the thing with HTML/CSS is that (which you will soon know if you start working) you either love them or learn to live with them. If you love them then go ahead and spend your time wisely but if you are one us who just know enough to get going – it’s one of the simplest and easiest things you can learn and implement. The basic stuff is just too basic to pick up. When I say basic stuff I’m referring to the alfa phase where you are still testing your backend - frontend connections. If your UI needs some more advanced knowledge of HTML/CSS, I believe you can still manage it. And you can always ask for help when you have some ground work already done. Its a lot easier to pitch the idea to people when you have already started working on it. I want to put in a lot of emphasis on the backend in the beginning because that is how you can at least get your idea out there and show it to people you want to collaborate with. So if you don't want to spend any money and also do things your way then either rob a bank or learn to do what you want others to do :) If it’s of any help. I’m working on a project of my own apart from my day job, which BTW requires zero website building skills. Its a web subscription service. I started off on it on my own, now a few friends have joined in but they only came in when they knew its happening and it’s not one of those fancy startup ideas you talk about at a party. Will Share when it launches. One of the collaborators in the project is a C guy and he picked up python not long ago. So what you just need is your basics correct and you can jump onto any language wagon. At times when we are discussing something in the code and I don’t understand what he’s saying or trying to do, he explains that to me in C and we take it from there.