Going through this exact same situation myself. No, developing the app is not the hardest part. If you build it, they won't come. Much better to hire/find a cofounder with a marketing background instead of YOLOing money into the advertising dumpster fire as you learn how it works.
To be honest both parts are pretty hard. Getting a startup or even just a small SaaS business working is like a series of AND logic gates, all of which are pretty hard and must be done to a somewhat decent degree for it to work
Exactly, "if you build it, they'll come" is the worst advice for startups.
Of course, if you don't build it, nobody will come.
But the real difficult part, and there's plenty of startup literature on the subject, is DISTRIBUTION. That's where the marketing & sales skills comes into play.
As someone that works as a marketing consultant for different eCommerce companies it's the same thing. The product might actually be really good but it's typically going to be crickets without some sort of distribution.
Same. It might also be that developers aren't great at finding co-founders either. I tried YC's Co-founder Match and connected with some amazing people who promised to help in some capacity. They all loved the idea, approved the pitch deck (and helped me improve it too) but none of them committed to being a business co-founder. I have no idea what's wrong!
My experience with cofounder match is mostly founders with an idea/startup and a cesspool of recent or in progress college grads looking for a job. Finding someone without an idea, real experience, and responds to messages is like finding a unicorn.
My experience was much better than that definitely. A lot of amazing business people, some requesting me to join them, some responding to my requests (about 30-40% response rate I'd say). Some former successful founders looking for something new, too.
I think the problem is that a startup is a far riskier proposal for a marketer than a dev. For devs we have a safety net in the most insane job market the world has ever known. Launching a failed startup is almost a right of passage for us.
On the marketing side, finding a job after failure is drastically harder, and you'll be set back years in your career since there's a lot more ladder climbing involved in marketing departments. By contrast launching a startup is a pretty solid way to jump your career from mid-level to senior dev.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve had several money and marketing oriented people reach out and that sounds nice but the alkalis heel is the commitment. Your deadlines are not they’re deadlines etc. That’s the thing about these marketing and people oriented cofounders, they’re jumpy.
Another thing is that with most people on YC match-mate is your most often being used as a listening post to whatever they’re working on not vice versa.
I was in the same situation. My co-founder and I split responsibilities and I moved into a sales role. It was difficult at first, but like anything, learnable.
