Simon Willison’s Weblog

What’s the best platform I can use for a food delivery startup? Shopify? Or should I instead learn to code?

11th June 2013

My answer to What’s the best platform I can use for a food delivery startup? Shopify? Or should I instead learn to code? on Quora

Don’t build an e-commerce system as your first programming project—I know engineers with many years of experience who wouldn’t trust themselves to write code that handles money.

Instead, go low tech. Prove your business model by running everything by hand using a spreadsheet and a PayPal account. If it works, you can either hire an experienced developer or use the traction you have proved to bring on a technical co-founder to automate your manual process.