Sketch everything.

Once you have an idea, the next thing to do is sketch everything. If you’re making a site, draw all of the pages, and if you’re making an app, draw all the screens. Don’t skip any interaction — if you have a link or a button, what happens when you click it? Draw that too.

This process gets the idea out of your head and on to paper. It also helps anyone else working with you, be it co-founder, investor, designer or developer, understand what you’re creating. For co-founders, it means that you can come to a consensus about what the idea is. For investors, they can picture what they’re giving you money for. For designers and developers, sketching helps them picture what they need to and how long it will take.

Find co-founders you trust.

People are the important part of your startup. More than your idea. Have an uncommited or irresponsible co-founder and your startup may as well not exist. Good founders know how to pivot and change things when they’re not working. Ideas are worthless and execution is key.

You can do things as a solo founder but it’s harder. Lots of investors don’t like investing in just one person for various reasons but there are examples of going it alone. If you are considering it, make sure you get decent support on the areas you’re weaker on. For example, if you’re a businessperson, find design and tech advisors.

It’s always easier to work with your friends rather than finding someone to be your co-founder. You trust them, you know them and you have faith in their abilities. However, startups will strain even the most solid of friendships. Startups can be stressful and you may take your stress out on the nearest person.

If you and your co-founders do the same role — for example, you’re all businesspeople or all designers or all developers—then you have to make your roles very clearly defined in the business. If you don’t then you will fall out because one of you won’t want to do the shitty work that needs doing.

Co-founder fallouts are more common than most people realise. I left my first startup for that reason— it happens and you all just have to move on. There’s two very good articles on Mark Suster’s blog Both Sides of the Table on The Co-Founder Mythology and The Perils of Founder Fighting. Read them both.

How to find a tech co-founder.

When I was freelance, I was asked weekly if I could join a startup as the technical co-founder. I generally didn’t know the person asking so I always said no.

Coders can be arrogant and they believe that they can build the whole idea on their own. Which is true… to a point. Coding the idea is only a tiny part of doing a startup, there’s design, sales, marketing, admin and plenty more. But at the moment, you need them more than they need you.

How do you differentiate yourself from other “idea people”? First is do a lot of homework. Do lots of research, draw sketches, get branding done, anything that a developer doesn’t do.

Secondly, learn some skills to sell yourself to developers. Learning the basics of design and/or coding, so that you know what you’re talking about. You wouldn’t start a cake shop if you didn’t know how to cook — same thing applies to starting a tech company.

How to find investors.

I said earlier than I’m not a startup expert: I’m definitely not an expert in investment. However, Paul Graham from Y Combinator is and you should read all of his articles, but especially this one.

You need a “runway” — the amount of time you need from starting your startup to it being profitable. This is going to be an estimate as most startups never lift off the runway. Your runway probably will be at least twice as long as you first predict so raise money accordingly. It’s easier and time-saving to do one big raise than several small ones.

Raising money will also take a lot longer than you plan too. I’ve heard of startups taking a year to raise a round of money. Prepare for the worst.

The best investors are advisors with money. What sort of investors will depend on what you’re creating. If you’re creating a tech product in a particular area, you can look for tech investors and investors in that particular area too.

For early-stage startups, you will be looking to raise seed investment. Don’t bother trying the bigger companies like Index and Balderton just yet. For instance, in London, investors like Passion Capital are great for early-stage investors (disclaimer: I’ve freelanced at companies funded by Passion).

How much to raise again depends on your runway, your investors and also tax schemes. In the UK, look into SEIS and EIS as investors will probably want these tax breaks as incentives for themselves. A finger-in-the-air figure for an average early-stage raise would be between £150k and £300k as 3–5 employees plus operational costs can be expensive (see next section for more on this).

As always, talk to people who’ve done it. Make contacts at startups who can advise you and talk you through the stages.