So I have an idea that I could develop myself but I do IT consulting fulltime.
I'm not sure how Ycombinator views it, but I think you should get some skin in the game. I know it can be tough to jump ship and work on your startup full or even half time, but you can't give yourself any excuses. (Like working IT consulting full time).
That said, outsourcing your development is a fairly common practice.
There are a number of boilerplate "work for hire" and "intellectual property agreement" forms available, but if you're serious about this idea, you could not spend your first $500-$1000 any better than getting a competant attorney to write you one.
You might be able to rely on oDesk or E-lance to provide you with protection. The people who outsource through those platforms are required to agree to the standard "work for hire" terms and conditions.
I'd go the lawyer route, though. If your idea gets traction, you'll eventually need one anyway.
I don't know of any startups that outsource their development. I know of startups that pull in the assistance from other studios or extremely talented contractors nearby, although the last startup I was in, we did that early on (seed funding stage) and the studio that worked for us did a terrible job. It was a nightmare and in the end, I was sent in to fix all of their problems in Flash. It was a combination of incompetence on behalf of the studio, and they weren't physically present, so the pressure on them for succeeding wasn't as strong as if they were in the same room as us.
What happens if you outsource? You'll either save on two things: time and money. If you save on time, you're going to pay a high price for good quality. If you skip out on price, you're going to get crappy code, and you will spend just as much time explaining to the developers how to build your product. And I know of startups at my school that have re-written their entire code base simply because of how rapidly they're iterating. Can you imagine what it'll be like trying to get a company from another country to write your initial code base, and then eventually hiring someone to manage it? I'm guessing it will be a nightmare. There's a reason why companies like Google and Facebook are desperate for top engineers, it's because the quality becomes a competitive advantage, it's pretty important in a startup and investors know this. That's why so much emphasis is on your team, and not necessarily your idea.
Why not stick it out for a month and write your own prototype? It will take the same amount of time to find, hire, explain, review, and finalize code being done by someone else.
I want to say that any ambitious angel investor or VC will NOT fund you if you outsource your development. Why would they? You aren't bringing much to the table at that point. And if your only advantage is some code that was written, well I'm sure your angel or VC already has several programmers in their rolodex that could do the same thing, with better code, much faster. So you'll have a very hard time convincing someone why they should invest in you, instead of just pass the idea off to one of their existing startups to work on if their current gig is failing.
I don't want to discourage you from pursuing your idea. Just keep all of this in mind when you make your decision.
Randy's mother was my English teacher in High School. Small world. Bummer to lose a brilliant professor, but he certainly has left his mark on the world.
Awhile back, YC listed some ideas they wanted to fund. Simplified browsing was one of them. Seems like your technology could be applicable to simplifying the online experience for people who want that.
It doesn't look tuned for that now, but it's an idea.
Thanks. I'm hoping people are receptive to the concept... Trying to blend it with the way you surf now. I think you'll see microspaces built that will be real helpful for novice to advanced.
The whiteboard and pseudocode questions work for me, but personally I like to put a laptop in front of them with an IDE and a coding problem.
I allow outside help (google, etc) because in their work environment, they are permitted to use any reference materials they want.
I also let them ask me questions.
Exact syntax, without the benefit of the compiler or IDE, is unimportant to me. And, candidates that are on the spot to write code on a whiteboard are usually more nervous when working in an unusual medium (who codes on a whiteboard?)
So yes: in my opinion, they should write code in some fashion, and if that medium doesn't include a syntax checker, the simple errors are OK.
Touchy topics, to be sure. I think they all can and should be asked. Whether each is really worth of much debate is a different question.
Most are worth debating, some aren't: depending on your audience. I think most people think these are things you "can't ask" because many folks lack an intelligent, informed opinion on the topic, and therefore resort to emotional closed-minded positions that result in little exchange of ideas.
So, intelligent people think: "Maybe I can't ask that question."
I am most creative when I sleep. I wake up with ideas. But I'm not productive in the morning. If I can get to the office before it gets too busy or distracting, I find I can jell a lot of ideas in the morning.
I am productive late at night, when I can go into the coding zone with little interruption. But that late night time is generally not creative for me.
I notice that when I get enough sleep I will sometimes spend the last dream of the morning solving (or at least advancing on a solution) to a problem I have been wrestling with. My dead time is after lunch until early evening, I try and schedule phone calls and interaction with other people to renew my energy.
I'm not sure how Ycombinator views it, but I think you should get some skin in the game. I know it can be tough to jump ship and work on your startup full or even half time, but you can't give yourself any excuses. (Like working IT consulting full time).
That said, outsourcing your development is a fairly common practice.
There are a number of boilerplate "work for hire" and "intellectual property agreement" forms available, but if you're serious about this idea, you could not spend your first $500-$1000 any better than getting a competant attorney to write you one.
You might be able to rely on oDesk or E-lance to provide you with protection. The people who outsource through those platforms are required to agree to the standard "work for hire" terms and conditions.
I'd go the lawyer route, though. If your idea gets traction, you'll eventually need one anyway.