Web idea

Hi Justin,
Confidentiality agreement would be a must I would say. However, you need to bear in mind that unless your business has considerable barriers to entry to shelter it, someone is bound to replicate the idea sooner or later.

There are a range of funding options (ranging from business angel, loan to equity raising as you are already aware); however this will depend on whether your idea/business is investment ready? Do you already have an information memorandum that would cover your driving proposition, what you are selling, the expected future return for the investor, how the funds will be applied (for instance for proof of concept or development of the business) etc? It may be worthwhile before going down the investor route to consider your other options. For instance: 1) look into whether you are eligible for any grant to help you kickstart; 2) crowdfunding; 3) 2011 We Media Pitchit Challenge (refer to article on startup re same) or similar competition.

Consider Innovate SA and see whether they can assist re guidance: http://www.innovatesa.com.au/venture-capital.

Cheers
Yanese

Hi Justin!

This may not apply to your particular idea, but in my personal experience, I always find that starting a new business in the simplest, smallest way possible is the safest way to do so, as it reduces your risk (less financial outlay), and usually means you can finance the project yourself (which takes away the headaches of finding a partner / investor you can trust).

If you break the particular job down into a few separate parts, and contract out a few different programmers etc. to complete the task, no 1 of them will have enough knowledge to reproduce your idea in it's entirety.

Vworker.com is a great website which allows you to do exactly this, at extremely reasonable rates.

Hope this info helps a little! :)

Hi Justin,

As a non-technical founder of a web startup who has raised money, my advice to you would be:

1. The idea you have now is unlikely to be the idea that you end up with after you start building. Things change. Therefore raising money before you have tested the waters is not a good idea, and would in fact be be next to impossible to achieve in the Australian market.

2. No investor who is any good will sign an NDA. Don't even ask.

3. Don't overvalue the idea. Execution is what will win it for you.

4. Find yourself a technical co-founder (I cannot stress how important this is). Once a website is launched, that is when the hard work starts! You need someone who can work with you to iterate through your idea as you search for the winning formula. Startups are a long and hard journey and you need someone to share the pain.

Cheers,
Scott.
www.eventarc.com

Hi Justin,

When I read your post, I had to look twice, as it read as though I had written it myself! I'm in exactly the same boat. Curiously, my idea's food/ecommerce related - yours?

I felt a little awkward about asking some people to sign a confidentiality agreement, however I found that it was well received. If nothing else, it gave me the confidence that I needed in order to enter into a frank and open discussion with people so that I could get some feedback/direction regarding my idea.

I'm still in the early stages, but would love to find somebody who is tech savvy and is interested in funding the business as well. I don't think that that is very likely though. We'll see. I'll be keen to hear of your progress.

Cheers,

Daryl

You can contact us if you like, we have our own inhouse programming team and develop for a number of startups. I would say though that we aren't interested in one side developments, we offer a simple solution which is 50/50. Generally as a rule of thumb we would manage 100% of the development work, whilst you would be expected to do 100% of the management of the site, promotion etc. We won't sign an NDA though, too many people with too many ideas. You have to make your own decision on whether you want to share it, having said that, if you can't do it yourself then eventually you are going to have to talk to someone. www.iltli.com