Even this article IMO subtly demonstrates the mindset that leads nontechnical founders to not think they need a technical cofounder, by phrasing the search for one as “recruiting” as if they were a subordinate or code monkey. It should be a partner relationship, not a subordinate relationship.
This mindset that technical cofounders are essentially “coders” (a term I hate) is very prevalent among inexperienced nontechnical founders. I know I’m preaching to the choir here but a lot of technical people have deep industry/business/product knowledge and have social skills. It is very frustrating when some Ivy League 25 year old PM/management consultant tries to pitch you on their vision while treating you like an idiot savant they can easily take advantage of.
>> It is very frustrating when some Ivy League 25 year old PM/management consultant tries to pitch you on their vision while treating you like an idiot savant they can easily take advantage of.
I get calls weekly from people seeking technical co-founders. The biggest thing most CTO candidates dont realize is the power they have -- unless the "business co-founder" is actually bringing something to the table.
I'd LOVE to work with a "Business co-founder" who actually brings Purchase Orders, Funding, Transact-able Relationships, prior wins (esp publicly verifiable wins). That would be a dream.
It makes no sense to work with a "Business co-founder" who wants ME to put in hundreds of hours of technical work -- upfront -- often for equity "e.g., free" -- and retains the right to take all the upside and has none of the downside. Why would I need a "Business Co-Founder" at all in that case, I might as well be the only founder and recruit later.
I see tons of friends burnt by these types of "deals." The biggest red-flag is when the "Business co-founder" still has a job and no real skin in the game.
> while treating you like an idiot savant they can easily take advantage of.
I considered it a bit, and you know what, I'd wager that four-fifths of tech business dynamics flow from this statement. Technical expertise is the money printer onto which all manners of value extraction anchor themselves, like barnacles. If not at the creation, then, for a time, it is good. And then it happens anyway 5-10 years down the line.
That said, there are different failure modes for purely technical people not understanding business. But the market doesn't seem to reward them the same way. Root cause is outside the scope of this comment...
Heading over to MIT to “find a coder” is something you’ll hear from HBS aspiring founders.
I also deeply agree with the other part - there’s a class of technical leaders who have that depth and choose to work with technology as the primary day to day. But, they also don’t have HBS MBAs often.
Good VCs look for these founders I think, but otherwise the cultural treatment of that type can aspire one to get a MBA just to fix or re-align the perception.
Dalton says basically the same thing in the video. Lightly edited excerpt from the YouTube transcript (starting around 11:28):
What often happens - again, to go deep on this - is that the way they'll pitch the person is that they'll pitch them their idea, like, "I'm an idea guy, I've got a great idea, do you want to be my worker bee to go do all my ideas?" And of course the person that's the best person you've ever worked with does not want to sit in a cage and do all of the work that you give them. And instead I'm like, well have you asked them if they have startup ideas? And then you sell yourself, where you can come together, come up with the idea together, as co-owners, and it's shocking how often that appears to have never occurred to someone. Like they think the idea of finding a tech co-founder is to find someone who will basically submit to their whims and be, like, their assistant, and that's not the move.
They types still didn't learn that google, microsoft and every single disruptor out there has been founded and brought to riches by technical people. Business minded folks survive for a while, make a few millions, but never reach the levels of these companies. Quite the contrary - companies of this level plunge once business folks dominate. But that's good. Once google's dead others will take its place, and will be likely founded by technical people.
Over the years, when I meet a non-technical founder looking for a technical founder, I ask them if they're ok owning as little of the startup that they offer to the technical person, until they can deliver sales.
Technical people, in large do deliver a product and something that works. It might not be what the market wants, or the right thing, but speed of iteration, is again technical, and something the technical founder uniquely must bring.
There is a video from YC that says they can see it from a mile away when the non-technical founders have taken advantage of the technical person, founder or not, by not giving them equity equal to the difference they make.
This is pretty well said. I tend to agree and as a founder of multiple companies, as a well an engineering-background co-founder myself, I have definitely had interactions with "non-technical" founders looking for people (like me) and totally got the vibe of the needing a "technical co-founder" because they just need some "coder" as if that's the missing key to success (or whatever).
That said, there are plenty of very smart, driven, people who are not software engineers who don't think of a technical co-founder that way. So it'd be wrong to paint with a super wide brush on this.
It's really weird given how many tech founders have shown the value of tech talent by creating billion dollar companies. Why can't they see it?
Then again look in a mirror and techos tend to believe business people are total trash. Yes, many executives and salespeople are useless manglement and pointy-haired-bosses (just like there are useless engineers). But don't miss the valuable management gems. Techos: don't make the same mistakes as described about the non-techs in the vid by ignoring a 10x engineer. There are 10x non-techs too.
That’s because the people with money are not the people who actually do the things.
The people with money are the Ivy League 25-year-old PM management consultants.
Since everyone seems to prefer more money over more freedom, us nerds keep agreeing to or putting ourselves in positions where we are depending on non technical people for money.
I hate doing money stuff, I like building stuff
There are people who don’t like building stuff but like doing money stuff.
Which one do you think is going to get more money?
Which one has the power over the other one?
It’s totally inverted and changing this is going to take a century or more to fix
What term do you prefer over “coder”? I’ve had this issue with pretty much any term for what I essentially do. I don’t like “developer”, “programmer”, “techie”, “IT… guy”? (The last two being particularly bad)
Even “engineer” is a bit strange to me and I feel it doesn’t really fit, so I actually never knew what to call myself.
May I ask what a non-technical founder should look for in a technical co-founder?
I have two customers for slightly different businesses. The deals are made, I am building MVP's myself and JVing with established tech companies to get products to market.
I have a supply chain with a 30% cost advantage with customers.
and
I have a hardware software system that significantly improves hire businesses that has customers and development partnerships with research organisations and funding applications in progress.
Both have customers and large B2B growth potential.
I am building the MVP's myself while selling and JVing as necessary but would happily partner equally with a technical expert in Microsoft365 and PostgreSQL and PostGIS.
I'm an expert in business design and love technology without being talented or experienced building it. Someone with a business mind and opinions plus the technical skills to build an MVP and hire a technology team would be perfect. I can license my way to market but it will a clunkier more painful start. If I could work with someone who has deep experience with making microsoft365 work smoothly, for small volumes of data and a small number of users initially, then they would add value to both businesses instantly.
My question is should I grind through this myself with JV's where needed using architects on contract for the tricky bits and build the technical knowledge to be a really good technical work partner enabling recruitment of a better technical co-founder or should I recruit the best technical-cofounder I can and get on with growing the businesses.
I would happily take a smaller salary from cashflow than a technical co-founder initially, recognising their market value remuneration as soon as the business is able - likely early year 2. I would even consider technical guidance/mentoring for some equity if someone was interested.
And I know you are supposed to focus on one thing at a time but the software for the two business systems is similar, and I have systems and people to drive the sales and management for both so will offering a technical-co founder 2 bites at 2 potential rapid growth businesses make them think they were increasing or reducing their odds of success?
What questions would I ask to make sure the partnership will be enjoyable for the technical co-founder?
Are there any books/experts on keeping technical co-founders happy?
Not to mention that you take approximately the same risk minus a couple of hundred K in total comp per year but - tadaaaa - in return you get 0.0025% stock that will vest over the next five years.
It would be nice(-er) if people said: "Look, my parents know people, my classmates and their parents know people, and while we unfortunately can't let you past the bike room, we'd like to work with you".
Show me a meritocracy and I'll show you the winners corrupting it for their friends and kids.
> This mindset that technical cofounders are essentially “coders” (a term I hate) is very prevalent among inexperienced nontechnical founders. I know I’m preaching to the choir here but a lot of technical people have deep industry/business/product knowledge and have social skills. It is very frustrating when some Ivy League 25 year old PM/management consultant tries to pitch you on their vision while treating you like an idiot savant they can easily take advantage of.
This is nicely worded, but I would like to expand on it. This is coming from someone who is a businessperson who programs — I’ve been programming since I was 10, but I’ve never had the job of a programmer.
tl;dr - I think that both programmers and business people can be delusional about their value add, but folks who can do both are easier to work with, and folks who can do both have more opportunities than just hyper-growth startups.
In generalities, there are four groups of folks on the tech-business continuum.
1. Pure tech folks with little or no business acumen. Some of these folks think “sales” or “marketing” are fighting words. I find many of these folks very difficult to do business with. To be charitable to the “Ivy League” folks you refer to, they have probably met enough of these pure tech folks (some of whom are actually idiot savants) such that they erroneously over-generalize to think that all tech folks are like these pure tech folks.
2. Tech folks with business acumen. The business side usually comes from experience. I think pg advocates for tech folks who do start ups to develop into this. Overall much easier to do business with, but sometimes they make product-oriented decisions that miss the forest for the trees. The best tech businesses come from this group, but they get outclassed on the business side unless they embrace the business side aggressively (Zuck and Gates being prime examples). I think the “Ivy League” folks lose a lot of business due to lack of respect for this group.
3. Business folks with tech acumen (this is me). Great at taking over tech business that are poorly run and optimizing them either as a c-suite executive or as a buyer (this is what I do). While I don’t refer to programmers as “coders”, and I don’t treat programmers as idiot-savants, I know how to find and pay programmers to solve my business problems. Interestingly, I run into some programmers who are doing commodity work who want a percentage of the business. My offer is always the same — zero. I’m not building a startup or complex software. Their skills are largely fungible to me, since most of the value is in finding the solution rather than the nuts and bolts of development. The exception is for folks in group 2 who want to move to group 3, but at that point they become a businessperson rather than a programmer.
4. Business folks with no tech acumen. These are the “Ivy League” folks (and a lot of VCs, tbh). These are the “idea people”, the people who are clueless about tech and tech development, often the people who are also bad at business, but they happen to have access to money and/or critical buyers. Fwiw, many of these folks treat other business people even worse than programmers — they just treat most people like idiots, sans the savant. I sometimes have a hard time doing business with these folks, because they frequently don’t know the value (or lack thereof) of their business, and/or they are only looking for suckers to do business with. Many/most of these folks are all style and no substance. If they had some substance, they would be in group 3 (or try to be).
Obviously these are people on a continuum that are separated into somewhat arbitrary groups. That said, these archetypes exist.
How do these archetypes matter for tech businesses?
If you’re in group 1, you’re at the mercy of whatever business person you can work with. You hope that you end up more like Woz than most of the pure tech folks who get restructured out as the business grows. I strongly recommend that the pure tech folks focus on getting paid primarily in cash rather than equity, since any non-benevolent business person will structure out the tech person’s equity as soon as possible.
If you are in group 2, you are in a strong position to develop a successful startup or successful tech business. Just realize that you are a cog in the VC machine, and they only value you for your potential to hit home runs. You can make more reliable money (think 8 or 9 figures) in a “lifestyle business”, but it is not likely you will become a billionaire… unless you shift to group 3.
If you are in group 3, you need to realize that most of your value will be by doing very boring shit. Billionaire status is possible, but it will be a boring trip, and you are not likely to appear in any sexy tech write ups unless you engage in aggressive self-promotion in these areas (some should, most probably shouldn’t). The biggest mistake I see group 3 folks make is to think that they are in group 2, especially if/when they try to develop a consumer-oriented product without getting a group 2 cofounder.
Group 4… well, group 4 is what they are. There is some jiujitsu by which their egos and ignorance can be used for greater good. If you engage with these folks, I would only do so with that type of interaction in mind. If you engage with them on their terms, you will almost certainly lose.
Why did I write all of this? To clarify options for various level of tech people.
The HN/Ycombinator narrative to push for technical co-founders is very valid for start ups (the pg kind that are built to grow fast), but there many other ways to make money as a tech person or a tech-oriented business person than start ups (especially now in the 20s compared to the 90s or 00s), and some/many of these are more reliable ways to get to a “fuck you money” level. I don’t think a lot of highly skilled tech folks realize this.
This is what I constantly tell my students: The hard part about doing a tech product for the most part isn't the what beginners think makes tech hard — the hard part is wrangling systemic complexity in a good, sustainable and reliable way.
Many non-tech people e.g. look at programmers and think the hard part is knowing what this garble of weird text means. But this is the easy part. And if you are a person who would think it is hard, you probably don't know about all the demons out there that will come to haunt you if you don't build a foundation that helps you actively keeping them away.
I love the way you put this. It also doubles as a great explanation for why programmers shouldn't be worried that ChatGPT is going to steal their jobs: ChatGPT is good at the garble of weird text, but it's terrible at the "wrangling systemic complexity in a good, sustainable and reliable way" piece.
To rephrase your point with tongue-firmly-in-cheek: "many technical people look at products and think the hard part is wrangling systemic complexity in a good, sustainable and reliable way" but in reality, that's not the hard part.
If your product is successful enough that systemic complexity is your chief problem, congratulations, you've made it further than most startups - which die from lack of demand, lack of paying customers, and lack of users giving feedback.
>This is what I constantly tell my students: The hard part about doing a tech >product for the most part isn't the what beginners think makes tech hard — the >hard part is wrangling systemic complexity in a good, sustainable and reliable >way.
I teach the same thing, seemingly every day to my teams. It doesn't work, until it works reliably, within reason.
High-5 from the doers to the teachers! (Both are needed)
For the record, my partner teaches at a major university, just not tech. ;)
The business degree kids with an idea need to realize the tech cofounders can learn and understand business.
Having an idea is like having a thought.
A startup needs product and distribution. If a tech cofounder builds what’s asked of him and the sales cofounder can’t sell, should the ownership revert to the tech cofounder?
I like Michael's take that the real value in a founder is their ability to recruit the right team. What I don't think was said explicitly here is that typically technical people are progressively marginalized as the business grows. We get some harrowing stories where that doesn't happen, but I don't think that's the standard story. Like they allude to, it's a story of what the people who handle the money and investments value.
Context: Michael is a non-technical founder from Justin.tv and Twitch.
> typically technical people are progressively marginalized as the business grows
I know three YC technical co-founders who were ousted by their CEOs, and a justintv alumn who got nothing from the follow-on exits. When YC says “you need a technical co-founder” they mean it like you need a disposable lawyer. The essay here is about targeting growth and flipping, not high-performance teamwork.
Having started a small business I respect greatly the skills of great sales people and fund raisers and people who are great with people. But I don't respect them when they think they can start a business where they don't take what they actually make seriously and think the product will just work its self out if they sell hard enough.
Corollary: you do not need a non-technical co-founder.
My advice to engineers is that it's nearly always easier to learn business/sales than to learn to like a co-founder, especially the type generally drawn to being a "business" founder.
It is good to have a co-founder in general though, get one of those if you can. Just don't worry about finding complementary skills, bias entirely towards someone you can work with.
Disagree, and I say this as a technical founder with no cofounder. Once things start to take off, a majority of the things you deal with are non-technical. There’s so much that goes into building a company, and you really need someone who understands how businesses work and can run G2M.
Sure, you can hire for it… but you’ll almost never find someone as invested in it as the founder, and it’s just as important as the product.
Agreed, I think it depends on the technical complexity of the product & model.
Declaring it an absolute requirement feels a bit like an exclusive club without real merit or consideration. I say this as a former exec at a YC company founded by a pair of eng degrees that couldn't build a thing (not even a prototype).
The inverse side of this is, that depending on the business, you may need another type of co-founder as well. Two technical co-founders aren't the right fit for every business.
When I met my current cofounder he was paying $5,000/month to a dev agency in Eastern Europe that was ripping him off with slow progress, inflated hours, and very poor quality code. Their developer was brand new to the tech stack and made many glaring mistakes. As a non-technical founder he had no way to judge the quality of their work, he was completely at their mercy and they took advantage of him.
I do not know how non-technical cofounders expect to avoid this type of situation.
I'd like add to this conversation this two other important facts:
1) you (or your partner) do need domain experience and expertise. If you want open a bakery, or even try to automate a bakery, you really need at least some commercial baking experience. I see so many folks pitching a product in an area where they have zero experience.
2) you (or your partner) do need some organizational and/or business management experience. Business-whether it is software, hardware, or selling bakegoods-is about working with people and working with money. Learn about it and do some of it before starting uour own company.
The inverse is also true. As a technical founder, and maybe even an introvert like me, you should definitely look for a non-technical co-founder who can help you with networking, etc... I found my dream co-founder through YC Co-founder match and what can I say, it's going great. We're focusing on enterprise GraphQL/API solutions (https://wundergraph.com) and I benefit from the networking and communication abilities of Stefan, while I answer all technical questions. Tldr, I highly recommend to team up with people who complement your skills.
This is generally true. I had a technical cofounder for the first 4 years or so, but once our tools were built it was less clear what his ongoing role would be.
This is because at that point, our focus turned to licensing our (patented) technology to businesses. We still have B2C customers who use the tools that he originally built (and which have been updated by contractors after he left), but now the vast majority of our revenue comes from our B2B licensing.
We are pretty unique in this regard, since most startups aren't able to generate much revenue from licensing in this way. Specifically, when we work with our licensees, we provide a JS library that they plug into their own platform. We don't need engineers to do integration work, or provide support.
My technical cofounder provided a lot of value in getting us to where we are, for sure. But needing a technical cofounder to launch doesn't necessarily mean you need one all the way along.
I'm a technical founder working in a deep-tech startup.
If I am completely honest, I think the recommendation of having a technical cofounder while useful for startups in the past might not be as useful for the startups of the future.
Why? I strongly believe AI will cause a paradigm shift, and I'll adventure stating that AI will make non-technical people be able to do more and more with less. Which will make the requirements for differentiation in the tech side even harder to accomplish (very few people reaching the god-tech realms), but at the same time it would make the bases reachable for almost anyone. Basically, a more polarized order where less people will have access to "technical founders" that can differentiate themselves enough outside of the AI realms.
This is dated. There's no rules to founding your own company.
As a non-technical founder I can
A) Get a technical cofounder which takes me weeks to find, dilutes my ownership, and with whom I have no recourse if their work is sub-par (or we end up just not liking/trusting/vibing with each other)
or
B) Build an MVP with any number of offshoring partners in a matter of weeks and for far cheaper (money, time, opportunity cost). If I don't like the work, we can modify the contract, or I can quickly pivot to another team.
This is also true for technical founders as well, to be clear. You can probably do a lot of the business stuff by outsourcing. You can worry about gelling a team once you've got to 1.
For many (most?) startups, for many (most?) MVPs, in many (most?) domains -- yes, with a million caveats -- the "non-technical cofounder" can likely figure it out what's needed to hack together a simple product, get a handful of real users using it, and then go from there.
In my case, all I had done was make HTML/CSS websites with a bit of PHP. But I didn't let "I need a technical cofounder" and "I'm just the business guy" stop me from figuring out how to build v0.1 myself and get it out. I had never touched a server before. I had never built a web app with a MVC stack before. I had zero experience with command-line prior. I didn't have any formal technical training. But I just started coding and built it myself, and from there was able to attract a great technical cofounder and early team. And 10 years later, we sold it for $100M.
I'm not saying this to brag. I'm proud that "I figured it out" with duct tape but I realize that I had the good luck that it all worked out.
But I worry that other guys like I was are sitting there thinking 'Shit, everyone says I need a technical cofounder'. Well, maybe not. Go try to build it yourself. Especially in the age of co-pilot and decades of StackOverflow - for most apps, you can figure it out.
No one take this the wrong way. I'm just trying to potentially inspire some bright person out there to try it themselves, and building the first simple version yourself might be the missing step in attracting a REAL technical person or at least validate your hypothesis.
[+] [-] opportune|2 years ago|reply
This mindset that technical cofounders are essentially “coders” (a term I hate) is very prevalent among inexperienced nontechnical founders. I know I’m preaching to the choir here but a lot of technical people have deep industry/business/product knowledge and have social skills. It is very frustrating when some Ivy League 25 year old PM/management consultant tries to pitch you on their vision while treating you like an idiot savant they can easily take advantage of.
[+] [-] TuringNYC|2 years ago|reply
I get calls weekly from people seeking technical co-founders. The biggest thing most CTO candidates dont realize is the power they have -- unless the "business co-founder" is actually bringing something to the table.
I'd LOVE to work with a "Business co-founder" who actually brings Purchase Orders, Funding, Transact-able Relationships, prior wins (esp publicly verifiable wins). That would be a dream.
It makes no sense to work with a "Business co-founder" who wants ME to put in hundreds of hours of technical work -- upfront -- often for equity "e.g., free" -- and retains the right to take all the upside and has none of the downside. Why would I need a "Business Co-Founder" at all in that case, I might as well be the only founder and recruit later.
I see tons of friends burnt by these types of "deals." The biggest red-flag is when the "Business co-founder" still has a job and no real skin in the game.
[+] [-] lainga|2 years ago|reply
I considered it a bit, and you know what, I'd wager that four-fifths of tech business dynamics flow from this statement. Technical expertise is the money printer onto which all manners of value extraction anchor themselves, like barnacles. If not at the creation, then, for a time, it is good. And then it happens anyway 5-10 years down the line.
That said, there are different failure modes for purely technical people not understanding business. But the market doesn't seem to reward them the same way. Root cause is outside the scope of this comment...
[+] [-] welfare|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dogman144|2 years ago|reply
I also deeply agree with the other part - there’s a class of technical leaders who have that depth and choose to work with technology as the primary day to day. But, they also don’t have HBS MBAs often.
Good VCs look for these founders I think, but otherwise the cultural treatment of that type can aspire one to get a MBA just to fix or re-align the perception.
[+] [-] tfehring|2 years ago|reply
What often happens - again, to go deep on this - is that the way they'll pitch the person is that they'll pitch them their idea, like, "I'm an idea guy, I've got a great idea, do you want to be my worker bee to go do all my ideas?" And of course the person that's the best person you've ever worked with does not want to sit in a cage and do all of the work that you give them. And instead I'm like, well have you asked them if they have startup ideas? And then you sell yourself, where you can come together, come up with the idea together, as co-owners, and it's shocking how often that appears to have never occurred to someone. Like they think the idea of finding a tech co-founder is to find someone who will basically submit to their whims and be, like, their assistant, and that's not the move.
[+] [-] gumballindie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j45|2 years ago|reply
Technical people, in large do deliver a product and something that works. It might not be what the market wants, or the right thing, but speed of iteration, is again technical, and something the technical founder uniquely must bring.
There is a video from YC that says they can see it from a mile away when the non-technical founders have taken advantage of the technical person, founder or not, by not giving them equity equal to the difference they make.
I couldn't agree more.
[+] [-] speby|2 years ago|reply
That said, there are plenty of very smart, driven, people who are not software engineers who don't think of a technical co-founder that way. So it'd be wrong to paint with a super wide brush on this.
[+] [-] robocat|2 years ago|reply
Business people usually think techos as commodity workers: Buy a geek like you would a house cleaner.
Good discussion on that topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38402515
It's really weird given how many tech founders have shown the value of tech talent by creating billion dollar companies. Why can't they see it?
Then again look in a mirror and techos tend to believe business people are total trash. Yes, many executives and salespeople are useless manglement and pointy-haired-bosses (just like there are useless engineers). But don't miss the valuable management gems. Techos: don't make the same mistakes as described about the non-techs in the vid by ignoring a 10x engineer. There are 10x non-techs too.
[+] [-] paulddraper|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|2 years ago|reply
The people with money are the Ivy League 25-year-old PM management consultants.
Since everyone seems to prefer more money over more freedom, us nerds keep agreeing to or putting ourselves in positions where we are depending on non technical people for money.
I hate doing money stuff, I like building stuff
There are people who don’t like building stuff but like doing money stuff.
Which one do you think is going to get more money?
Which one has the power over the other one?
It’s totally inverted and changing this is going to take a century or more to fix
[+] [-] darajava|2 years ago|reply
Even “engineer” is a bit strange to me and I feel it doesn’t really fit, so I actually never knew what to call myself.
[+] [-] smearth|2 years ago|reply
I have two customers for slightly different businesses. The deals are made, I am building MVP's myself and JVing with established tech companies to get products to market.
I have a supply chain with a 30% cost advantage with customers.
and
I have a hardware software system that significantly improves hire businesses that has customers and development partnerships with research organisations and funding applications in progress.
Both have customers and large B2B growth potential.
I am building the MVP's myself while selling and JVing as necessary but would happily partner equally with a technical expert in Microsoft365 and PostgreSQL and PostGIS.
I'm an expert in business design and love technology without being talented or experienced building it. Someone with a business mind and opinions plus the technical skills to build an MVP and hire a technology team would be perfect. I can license my way to market but it will a clunkier more painful start. If I could work with someone who has deep experience with making microsoft365 work smoothly, for small volumes of data and a small number of users initially, then they would add value to both businesses instantly.
My question is should I grind through this myself with JV's where needed using architects on contract for the tricky bits and build the technical knowledge to be a really good technical work partner enabling recruitment of a better technical co-founder or should I recruit the best technical-cofounder I can and get on with growing the businesses.
I would happily take a smaller salary from cashflow than a technical co-founder initially, recognising their market value remuneration as soon as the business is able - likely early year 2. I would even consider technical guidance/mentoring for some equity if someone was interested.
And I know you are supposed to focus on one thing at a time but the software for the two business systems is similar, and I have systems and people to drive the sales and management for both so will offering a technical-co founder 2 bites at 2 potential rapid growth businesses make them think they were increasing or reducing their odds of success?
What questions would I ask to make sure the partnership will be enjoyable for the technical co-founder?
Are there any books/experts on keeping technical co-founders happy?
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benreesman|2 years ago|reply
Show me a meritocracy and I'll show you the winners corrupting it for their friends and kids.
[+] [-] csa|2 years ago|reply
This is nicely worded, but I would like to expand on it. This is coming from someone who is a businessperson who programs — I’ve been programming since I was 10, but I’ve never had the job of a programmer.
tl;dr - I think that both programmers and business people can be delusional about their value add, but folks who can do both are easier to work with, and folks who can do both have more opportunities than just hyper-growth startups.
In generalities, there are four groups of folks on the tech-business continuum.
1. Pure tech folks with little or no business acumen. Some of these folks think “sales” or “marketing” are fighting words. I find many of these folks very difficult to do business with. To be charitable to the “Ivy League” folks you refer to, they have probably met enough of these pure tech folks (some of whom are actually idiot savants) such that they erroneously over-generalize to think that all tech folks are like these pure tech folks.
2. Tech folks with business acumen. The business side usually comes from experience. I think pg advocates for tech folks who do start ups to develop into this. Overall much easier to do business with, but sometimes they make product-oriented decisions that miss the forest for the trees. The best tech businesses come from this group, but they get outclassed on the business side unless they embrace the business side aggressively (Zuck and Gates being prime examples). I think the “Ivy League” folks lose a lot of business due to lack of respect for this group.
3. Business folks with tech acumen (this is me). Great at taking over tech business that are poorly run and optimizing them either as a c-suite executive or as a buyer (this is what I do). While I don’t refer to programmers as “coders”, and I don’t treat programmers as idiot-savants, I know how to find and pay programmers to solve my business problems. Interestingly, I run into some programmers who are doing commodity work who want a percentage of the business. My offer is always the same — zero. I’m not building a startup or complex software. Their skills are largely fungible to me, since most of the value is in finding the solution rather than the nuts and bolts of development. The exception is for folks in group 2 who want to move to group 3, but at that point they become a businessperson rather than a programmer.
4. Business folks with no tech acumen. These are the “Ivy League” folks (and a lot of VCs, tbh). These are the “idea people”, the people who are clueless about tech and tech development, often the people who are also bad at business, but they happen to have access to money and/or critical buyers. Fwiw, many of these folks treat other business people even worse than programmers — they just treat most people like idiots, sans the savant. I sometimes have a hard time doing business with these folks, because they frequently don’t know the value (or lack thereof) of their business, and/or they are only looking for suckers to do business with. Many/most of these folks are all style and no substance. If they had some substance, they would be in group 3 (or try to be).
Obviously these are people on a continuum that are separated into somewhat arbitrary groups. That said, these archetypes exist.
How do these archetypes matter for tech businesses?
If you’re in group 1, you’re at the mercy of whatever business person you can work with. You hope that you end up more like Woz than most of the pure tech folks who get restructured out as the business grows. I strongly recommend that the pure tech folks focus on getting paid primarily in cash rather than equity, since any non-benevolent business person will structure out the tech person’s equity as soon as possible.
If you are in group 2, you are in a strong position to develop a successful startup or successful tech business. Just realize that you are a cog in the VC machine, and they only value you for your potential to hit home runs. You can make more reliable money (think 8 or 9 figures) in a “lifestyle business”, but it is not likely you will become a billionaire… unless you shift to group 3.
If you are in group 3, you need to realize that most of your value will be by doing very boring shit. Billionaire status is possible, but it will be a boring trip, and you are not likely to appear in any sexy tech write ups unless you engage in aggressive self-promotion in these areas (some should, most probably shouldn’t). The biggest mistake I see group 3 folks make is to think that they are in group 2, especially if/when they try to develop a consumer-oriented product without getting a group 2 cofounder.
Group 4… well, group 4 is what they are. There is some jiujitsu by which their egos and ignorance can be used for greater good. If you engage with these folks, I would only do so with that type of interaction in mind. If you engage with them on their terms, you will almost certainly lose.
Why did I write all of this? To clarify options for various level of tech people.
The HN/Ycombinator narrative to push for technical co-founders is very valid for start ups (the pg kind that are built to grow fast), but there many other ways to make money as a tech person or a tech-oriented business person than start ups (especially now in the 20s compared to the 90s or 00s), and some/many of these are more reliable ways to get to a “fuck you money” level. I don’t think a lot of highly skilled tech folks realize this.
[+] [-] atoav|2 years ago|reply
Many non-tech people e.g. look at programmers and think the hard part is knowing what this garble of weird text means. But this is the easy part. And if you are a person who would think it is hard, you probably don't know about all the demons out there that will come to haunt you if you don't build a foundation that helps you actively keeping them away.
[+] [-] simonw|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sebmellen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corry|2 years ago|reply
If your product is successful enough that systemic complexity is your chief problem, congratulations, you've made it further than most startups - which die from lack of demand, lack of paying customers, and lack of users giving feedback.
[+] [-] sonicanatidae|2 years ago|reply
I teach the same thing, seemingly every day to my teams. It doesn't work, until it works reliably, within reason.
High-5 from the doers to the teachers! (Both are needed)
For the record, my partner teaches at a major university, just not tech. ;)
[+] [-] j45|2 years ago|reply
Having an idea is like having a thought.
A startup needs product and distribution. If a tech cofounder builds what’s asked of him and the sales cofounder can’t sell, should the ownership revert to the tech cofounder?
[+] [-] RobKohr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oooyay|2 years ago|reply
Context: Michael is a non-technical founder from Justin.tv and Twitch.
[+] [-] michaelmior|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] choppaface|2 years ago|reply
I know three YC technical co-founders who were ousted by their CEOs, and a justintv alumn who got nothing from the follow-on exits. When YC says “you need a technical co-founder” they mean it like you need a disposable lawyer. The essay here is about targeting growth and flipping, not high-performance teamwork.
[+] [-] dontupvoteme|2 years ago|reply
Even if it's mediocre, it's basically free, and has almost no costs.
Compare that to the incalculable potential switching costs of us meatbags and our many non-linearities.
[+] [-] j45|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tracerbulletx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DelaneyM|2 years ago|reply
My advice to engineers is that it's nearly always easier to learn business/sales than to learn to like a co-founder, especially the type generally drawn to being a "business" founder.
It is good to have a co-founder in general though, get one of those if you can. Just don't worry about finding complementary skills, bias entirely towards someone you can work with.
[+] [-] hiddencost|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkoberger|2 years ago|reply
Sure, you can hire for it… but you’ll almost never find someone as invested in it as the founder, and it’s just as important as the product.
[+] [-] svergara|2 years ago|reply
Declaring it an absolute requirement feels a bit like an exclusive club without real merit or consideration. I say this as a former exec at a YC company founded by a pair of eng degrees that couldn't build a thing (not even a prototype).
[+] [-] paulddraper|2 years ago|reply
It's relatively rare nowadays to see tech solopreneurs. (At least, for something more than a lifestyle business.)
Often you need someone with experience/connections/insight into the industry: medicine, construction, ecommerce, finance, logistics, whatever.
[+] [-] amelius|2 years ago|reply
Take that into account if you're the technical guy working for the startup.
[+] [-] ofirg|2 years ago|reply
which could mean soon-to-be-underperforming companies fail to attract technical co-founders
[+] [-] ilc|2 years ago|reply
If you don't know why you need a technical founder. That is EXACTLY why you need one.
It is the same reason why if as a technical founder, I didn't know why I needed a non-technical founder. I'd probably be making a major error.
To those saying they waste equity:
If you truly have a failed company, with a bad founder, buy them out or kill the firm, it happens. You've learned some key lessons.
If the founders you need cost you 75% of your equity and you make a unicorn.... Were they worth it? Who cares. You got your fuck you money.
[+] [-] redm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] happydev|2 years ago|reply
I do not know how non-technical cofounders expect to avoid this type of situation.
[+] [-] jschveibinz|2 years ago|reply
1) you (or your partner) do need domain experience and expertise. If you want open a bakery, or even try to automate a bakery, you really need at least some commercial baking experience. I see so many folks pitching a product in an area where they have zero experience.
2) you (or your partner) do need some organizational and/or business management experience. Business-whether it is software, hardware, or selling bakegoods-is about working with people and working with money. Learn about it and do some of it before starting uour own company.
[+] [-] jensneuse|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnicholas|2 years ago|reply
This is because at that point, our focus turned to licensing our (patented) technology to businesses. We still have B2C customers who use the tools that he originally built (and which have been updated by contractors after he left), but now the vast majority of our revenue comes from our B2B licensing.
We are pretty unique in this regard, since most startups aren't able to generate much revenue from licensing in this way. Specifically, when we work with our licensees, we provide a JS library that they plug into their own platform. We don't need engineers to do integration work, or provide support.
My technical cofounder provided a lot of value in getting us to where we are, for sure. But needing a technical cofounder to launch doesn't necessarily mean you need one all the way along.
[+] [-] jjtheblunt|2 years ago|reply
So, is this post correlated?
[+] [-] syrusakbary|2 years ago|reply
If I am completely honest, I think the recommendation of having a technical cofounder while useful for startups in the past might not be as useful for the startups of the future.
Why? I strongly believe AI will cause a paradigm shift, and I'll adventure stating that AI will make non-technical people be able to do more and more with less. Which will make the requirements for differentiation in the tech side even harder to accomplish (very few people reaching the god-tech realms), but at the same time it would make the bases reachable for almost anyone. Basically, a more polarized order where less people will have access to "technical founders" that can differentiate themselves enough outside of the AI realms.
I'd love to get more thoughts on this!
[+] [-] 23B1|2 years ago|reply
As a non-technical founder I can
A) Get a technical cofounder which takes me weeks to find, dilutes my ownership, and with whom I have no recourse if their work is sub-par (or we end up just not liking/trusting/vibing with each other)
or
B) Build an MVP with any number of offshoring partners in a matter of weeks and for far cheaper (money, time, opportunity cost). If I don't like the work, we can modify the contract, or I can quickly pivot to another team.
This is also true for technical founders as well, to be clear. You can probably do a lot of the business stuff by outsourcing. You can worry about gelling a team once you've got to 1.
[+] [-] hackitup7|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corry|2 years ago|reply
In my case, all I had done was make HTML/CSS websites with a bit of PHP. But I didn't let "I need a technical cofounder" and "I'm just the business guy" stop me from figuring out how to build v0.1 myself and get it out. I had never touched a server before. I had never built a web app with a MVC stack before. I had zero experience with command-line prior. I didn't have any formal technical training. But I just started coding and built it myself, and from there was able to attract a great technical cofounder and early team. And 10 years later, we sold it for $100M.
I'm not saying this to brag. I'm proud that "I figured it out" with duct tape but I realize that I had the good luck that it all worked out.
But I worry that other guys like I was are sitting there thinking 'Shit, everyone says I need a technical cofounder'. Well, maybe not. Go try to build it yourself. Especially in the age of co-pilot and decades of StackOverflow - for most apps, you can figure it out.
No one take this the wrong way. I'm just trying to potentially inspire some bright person out there to try it themselves, and building the first simple version yourself might be the missing step in attracting a REAL technical person or at least validate your hypothesis.
[+] [-] geiagal|2 years ago|reply
I thought this headline meant a technical founder needs a technical co-founder even.