If you have an idea to create a competitor to Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia or Google, but you lack the programming talent, you can still do like Kevin Rose did to start Digg.com, what Steve Jobs did to start Apple and what Bill Gates did to start Microsoft, you can just have someone else do all the programming work for you for cheap! Now that we have the Internet, why not hire someone to do it for those $500 or so that you have been saving up?
Digg.com was started for $200, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer bought DOS for $50’000 from some guy which basically founded Microsoft, Steve Jobs convinced his programming friend Steve Wozniak to code the Apple OS inspired by ideas they got from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for “free”, some claim Mark Zuckerberg was hired as a freelance programmer for $1000 to program facebook (then possibly to have been called harvardconnection) before he decided it was too good and kept it for himself (something like that).
What do you think of the potential of outsourcing work using Freelancer.com or other such online freelancing sites? Can those sites also be used to connect freelancers in your local areas if you want to actually meet the freelancer face to face? What do you think is the potential to create a successful startup based on a small investment through freelancer.com or such site? What do you think is the value of an idea compared to the programming talent necessary to build it? What do you think is the risk of you potentially loosing your idea to a freelancer (like Mark Zuckerberg) if they find out that the idea is too good and they decide to keep it or duplicate it?
