The main problems I see in 99% of the cases of a founder looking for a technical co-founder are:
1. The founder sees themselves as the ideas person but doesn’t have the situational awareness to recognize that their ideas aren’t that unique.
2. The founder doesn’t understand that the value in a startup isn’t the idea but the ability to execute and build on that idea. For every very successful startup in X space there were 10x more with the same general idea but that failed to execute. The founder wants someone to built it for them but wants credit/equity for having the idea. In 99% of cases the value is created by the builders (technical cofounder) which instantly creates awkwardness of the founder wanting far more equity, credit, and control than their contributions warrant
For the above reasons I’d avoid 99% of asks for a technical co-founder like the plague.
Steve Jobs has a great quote about this, from The Lost Interview:
“… it's the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work, and if you just tell all these other people "here's this great idea" then of course they can go off and make it happen.
And the problem with that is that there is just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get in the subtleties of it.
And you also find there's tremendous trade-offs that you have to make. There are just certain things you can't make electrons do. There are certain things you can't make plastic do or glass do. Or factories do, or robots do.
And as you get in to all these things, designing a product is keeping 5000 things in your brain, these concepts. And fitting them all together and kind of continuing to push to fit them together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.
Back in 2010 or so I had a series of meetings with someone about being a technical cofounder for them. I wasn't super passionate about the domain (don't even remember what it was at this point) but it was interesting enough and I had just enough technical experience at the time to think I could pull it off. We had everything figured out in broad strokes until we realized that of the 80/20 equity split, we both thought we were getting the 80. His exact words were "I just gave you this great idea why would I only get 20%?"
Anyone who sees themselves as an "ideas person" as if that is a defining or valuable characteristic is a cancer.
More importantly, most businesses don't need an "ideas person". They need someone who knows how to run a business. You need a total of one decent idea to start and run a business. You need tens of thousands of little hard choices, emails, and sales calls to keep the business successful, and that means getting your hands dirty. Ideas are not valuable.
I've been shipping software, my entire adult life. It's what I do.
My stuff tends to be pretty good. Sometimes, I give exactly what was asked for, which might not be so good, but what I make, works; even if rather ugly.
If I'm allowed to work iteratively, with a good creative, we can make something very good.
I don't usually come up with uniquely original ideas, myself, but I'm really good at turning vague ideas into reality. I Make Stuff Happen. I've been doing that, since I was in my early 20s.
What I have encountered, is that folks put no value, whatsoever on that ability. Like, to the point of being downright insulting. They don't like the cold wash of reality, bringing their lofty ideals into the world of the achievable. I've been told that I'm a "negative naysayer," but nothing could be farther from the truth. I want the thing to happen, and recognize the hurdles that need to be vaulted.
When I was younger, and part of much larger organizations, I had to eat the disrespect poo.
Nowadays, not so much. I guess folks think I'm a cranky old prima donna, but I won't accept being treated like crap. I'm quite aware of the sheer value of what I can do.
"It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.) To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
To make a business, you need to multiply the two. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas. I'm not interested until I see their execution."
You have a great list, but as a potential (and very reluctant) technical co-founder candidate, i'll two more major items to the list:
3. UPFRONT RISK: If you are doing this with sweat equity (no salary) then the Technical Co-Founder is taking almost all the risk. They are putting in all the time upfront, before the Business Co-Founder does. Smart Business Co-Founder would sell the idea to potential customers also, or get POs, or raise funding to pay for the technical effort, or invest their own $ to pay for the technical effort. However, a situation where one co founder (technical) puts in all the effort while the other gets a free option to put in effort later, is a very bad setup.
4. LEVERAGE: The Business Co-Founder essentially gets more leverage the more work the Technical Co-Founder does -- because now there is sunk-cost and a psychological shackle. The Technical Co-Founder just wants to be done with the build-out so the business can proceed and make money -- but the Business Co-Founder has every incentive to expand the MVP more and more since they are putting in no effort (possibly have not quit their job either) and wants more and more before the system can be sold.
ADVISE TO POTENTIAL TECHNICAL CO-FOUNDERS
- You be the "Business Co-Founder" also, no need for another person
- If there is a Business Co-Founder, equal out the contribution at every stage. A PRD is not enough to equal out a build-out. Some ways to equal out the contributions:
- Business Co-Founder has proven record that attracts success guaranteed (e.g., prior major exits, IPOs, huge online following, extreme case would be Elon -- i'll be a technical co-founder for him any day :-)
- Business Co-Founder sells concept to clients, gets Purchase Orders before build-out
- Business Co-Founder gets huge list of potential customers, ideally with pre-orders
- Business Co-Founder raises funding and pays technical co-founder for upfront effort
- Business Co-Founder puts down their own money (or takes a loan) to pay Technical Co-Founder for upfront build
Not to mention the fact, people who can execute have plenty of their own ideas already. People who only have ideas are not economically valuable. If someone wants to get money out, they have to contribute capital or labor. Ideas are neither.
I think the real value of a non technical founder is:
1. Discovering the real requirements to make the product succeed.
2. Being really really good at sales.
Technical people often lack those skills, and even if they build the best product in the world, it’s worthless without someone who can get it in front of the right people and convince them to pay for it.
I totally agree. I have tons of ideas written in my notebook here. They are worthless.
Many self-proclaimed "idea-guys" do not understand this.
Execution is everything.
the business person needs to bring sales and marketing to the project. building something no one wants or knows about is just wasting time. if your resourceful enough to bring a list of potential buyers no you'll be able to get developers interested.
It's not 1 great idea, it's thousands of good ideas, more or less on demand.
“Mr. [Founder] is new to the business of having ideas, and so when he has one, he becomes proud of himself for having it. He has not yet had enough ideas to unflinchingly discard those that are beautiful in some aspects and impractical in others; he has not yet acquired confidence in his own ability to think of better ideas as he requires them. What we are seeing here is not Mr. [Founder]'s best idea, I fear, but rather his only idea.” --https://hpmor.com/chapter/78
Not all execution is technical. 99% of the time, you aren’t building something that technically impressive, so I’d say that most execution isn’t. You’re probably building some CRUD database app and are throwing your VC funded development team at solving your own flavour of the same old scaling issues that they all solved at their last startups.
To categorise 99%+ of serious^ nontechnical cofounders as just* contributing an idea and not meaningfully and positively contributing to some aspects of the actual execution very much paints you as having one of the typical shortcomings of a developer: you think that nothing else matters.
> 2. The founder doesn’t understand that the value in a startup isn’t the idea but the ability to execute and build on that idea.
The best startups have both.
You can execute, great. But if you have poor industry understanding and no idea what is going to work in that space. Let alone something that is going to revolutionize the space. It is, similarly, not going to work.
Your industry expert need to have 20-30 years in the space. Understand it from the ground up. That guy is actually valuable.
It's not one idea, it's comprehensive understanding of all the current struggles in the space.
The problem isn't the ideas. It's the fact that these ideas people want you to validate the idea for them by building out the product. Well then, their idea is basically worthless.
OTOH, there are a lot of things a non-technical founder can bring to the table that makes a co-founder request a lot more interesting. A non-technical cofounder with a track record in getting funding, in sales, or in marketing _can_ bring a lot to the table. There's hella lots of things that have to get done besides building a product to make a successful company, and if a non-technical cofounder can nail those things, and you can work with them, it could be a good arrangement.
A successful business consists of customers and money, not unique ideas.
I would say that the idea behind a business is one of the least useful things of a business. It helps with marketing, recruitment, and sales, but really, the idea itself is irrelevant. Execution counts for much, much more.
In fact, the idea that ideas must be unique is the #1 problem with startups. There's plenty of space in the market for companies doing what other companies are doing, but just better.
The non-tech founder needs to do the sales/marketing stuff.
Managing social media, meeting with prospective users, translating feedback into product requirements. They should be taking every little thing we work on, whether its a napkin sketch or a working MVP and putting it in front of people so we can steer the product as intelligently as possible. If they do all that they are more than lifting their weight. That would make me almost feel like a slouch just doing the coding.
One way I can put it is that a non-technical co-founder must bring tangible business skills, that's what they provide, not "the idea".
If a technical founder is sitting down and writing code until 2am on the weekends the non-technical founder better be making phone calls and sending emails, etc...
The inexperienced "idea guy" thinks by sharing "the idea" they have done their part and are just now going to sit and watch as the "the programmer" implements it.
The article felt like a list of very predictable things that a hot shit young programmer who's steeped in the startup world's groupthink would have floating around in his head.
Here is IMHO a more real world take on the question (can you find a technical co-founder?).
* There are three problems in business. They are 1) Distribution (sales), 2) Product/Service (the thing being sold), and 3) Operations (broad but lets say e.g. Legal, Accounting, HR).
* In very small business (e.g. startups) the Ops is not a ton of work yet, so in practice we talk about having potentially two founders, one needs to deliver a product, one needs to deliver the distribution.
* If you can provably bring the distribution on day one you will have zero problems finding a technical co-founder. In fact you'll have so many options you probably won't need a co-founder, you can just hire someone on a nice package.
* If you can't provably bring the distribution you are borderline worthless. That's the nature of sales, it is an uncomplicated discipline. In sales you produce or you're out.
So the author of the post kind of addresses this when he asks why you as the non-technical founder don't have the money to just hire. That part's more or less right. The "biz" founder with distribution already lined up is more valuable than the technical founder. Yeah the tech founder is more valuable than the biz guy who can't produce.
The idea is worth less than nothing. If your idea is any good, someone with more resources than you will just copy it faster than you can say Mississippi.
> The main problems I see in 99% of the cases of a founder looking for a technical co-founder are:
Some problems I commonly see in people's analysis of situations:
- believing themselves to know things which are unknowable ("the ideas person doesn’t have the situational awareness to recognize that their ideas aren’t that unique", "value in a startup isn’t the idea but the ability to execute and build on that idea", etc).
- representing (and I suspect perceiving) subjective, heuristic based opinions ("aren’t that unique") as facts.
- using inadequate variable types when describing (and I suspect perceiving) the problem space ("the value", "wants credit/equity for having the idea").
- making up facts ("In 99% of cases")
This entire thread (as are most threads when the prompt is of a certain class of topic) is chock full of all of these, and many of the people in this subreddit are arguably genuine "The Experts" on this sort of thing...which is (or can be) kinda funny if you think about it for more than a few seconds.
And yes, I do realize that I "should" just "know what you meant"....except: how should I go about doing that?
And if these silly delusional founders should not believe silly delusional things, should that rule not extend to everyone?
1. The founder being unaware that their ideas aren't unique is a feature not a bug. If Silicon Valley stopped reinventing the wheel, it would cease to exist.
2. The idea is what matters because ideas (and charisma) convince investors, and the goal is to make money, not a product.
If you want me as a technical cofounder, you are going to tick most of these boxes:
1. You have at least 8-10 years of experience in that domain with some of it in a leadership position (ie product manager)
2. You already have a huge following or audience. Especially important if this is a SaaS product or b2c. Not as important if this is hard tech (ie biotech).
But if you’re doing a HR startup, show me your 10,000 engaged HR followers on LinkedIn. If you’re doing a martech startup, show me your Substack with 10k marketing subscribers.
3. You already have talked to at least 25 people about this, and gotten feedback about their pain points, initial reaction to your solution, etc. These conversations are documented and easily shared with me
4. You preferably have at least 1 successful exit/company under your belt, or a couple of failed ones is OK too (but I would need references to make sure they failed for legitimate reasons) the worse is 0 years of experience starting a company.
5. You are a cold email/call/outreach junkie. Because you will OWN sales in the early days. I want to see your 100 send emails or 100 daily calls or 100 sent DMs everyday asking potential customers for feedback or validation conversations or to sign up for your beta
I see lots of hate here for people looking for technical cofounders and bringing up unrealistic expectations into the other side, so I just wanted to offer a counterpoint as a "casted" technical cofounder.
I've had an incredibly great experience and I can confidently say I could not have built this business on my own by far. Here's what got me to sign the deal for the last 10 years of my professional life that I didn't regret:
- "just enough" technical knowledge to be dangerous
- an incredibly well researched market opportunity demonstrating great first principle reasoning and business sense, with a pitch deck for cofounders that was almost seed investor level quality
- a nontechnical early market test, executed intelligently within a few days and 200$ of budget that served as an early indication of product-market fit
- previous demonstrated experience building a team and growth as an employee at a startup
- a lot of grit, with a bias towards action (complementing my sometimes fragmented mind and hesitant personality)
- a humble, reflected personality
In the end, while 98% of pitches for the best years of your professional life are probably BS, don't underestimate how far an excellent nontechnical cofounder can bring you.
Biggest bugbear is that 90% of the time, non-technical people are just looking for a CRUD app. Basic user auth, chat, forum, mobile app. Etc. The age-old scaffold. It's just dull.
I'm a technical person looking for a non-technical person who can absolutely smash the sales/ops/marketing side of things, and has a killer idea in a domain they know like the back of their hand. The struggle I've found, e.g. on hn startupschool, is that people have ideas that are unproven. Like, they haven't even scrappily pieced together an mvp. They feel blocked by a lack of what is almost always yet another CRUD app. Most non-technical-domain things, outside of dev SaaS or super-technical products (which a non-eng has no business doing) can be 'behind-the-curtain' 'fake till you make it' products IMHO so I feel a bit let down when someone comes along with an idea and have hit a barrier without even trying to scrappily piece together their product with bits-and-pieces.
I am the person described in the requirement list. I brought 2 startups from seed to series A, built a cashflow business of my own, led teams, have 5+ years of runway (yes, in San Francisco), and actively looking for a potential idea + business person. I have worked my ass off for the past 10 years to put myself into this position. I'm doing startups to fulfill the intersection of broad positive externalities + financial reward space, which is possible, and I did it 3 times already. I'm looking for a cofounder+idea because what I can do alone is limited. Over the past 2 years, I have reviewed >1500 pitches, talked with 150+ founders, had in-depth conversation with 10, executed (and failed) with 2.
My counterparties are not real.
In descending order of frequency:
* Tirekickers / wannabes: these people have fantasies about doing a startup... someday, but definitely not just now.
* Super excited about <thing/area>... has no related experience, fails at basic business ontology ("target market", "valueproposition") <- 95% mark
* Has no hypothesis about marketing channels, nor any insight on why this particular combination might work
* fails on all of market scoping, TAM, customer development, financial model <- 99% mark
There is a laundry list on sibling comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39904704) for ticking boxes. My current hypo, is that peeps who check these boxes AND don't have a tech cofounder on their rolodex typically go to angels/VCs, and get a recommendation from them; and therefore will never appear on any markets for cofounders. Curious if this matches your experience.
Out of curiosity: are the issues you note here (and the ones in the linked comment) absolute hard stops for you, or more of a checklist of heuristics to take into consideration?
In my experience a non technical founder should have one of the following:
1) Access to capital, normally through family or a family friend. I've worked at several companies where the main thing the CEO brought to the table was that someone trusted him or her enough to invest millions of dollars.
2) At least 5 years working a 9-5 job in the target industry and the associated social connections and experience. This eliminates most college students, sadly.
3) Something unique that enables the execution of the idea. This is normally a relationship or insider knowledge. The answer to "Why you?" can't be "Because I had the idea".
The most common exception I see to this list is when both founders have the same level of passion for solving a given problem. If you have to explain the opportunity and get someone else interested in it, it could be a tough road.
That said, don't lose hope. It's a big world. People meet and things happen.
In summary, people with the ideal skill set required for this job do not work for free. You are better off raising money and paying the market rate for these skills.
"But my idea is great! I'm sure an engineer will understand and work for equity"
The problem is that Angels/VCs have a lower bar for seed investment than the engineer. So if you can't get seed investment, it is a bad signal.
The article misses the obvious. You don't become a technical co-founder to make bank with the equity or salary. You'll get diluted, replaced and kicked out the moment traction starts gaining.
You become a technical co-founder to trade in your technical skills, learn about a new domain, figure out where the pain points are, and eventually jump ship and become a captain of your own vessel.
Also, the article is an obvious pitch in the likes of "don't get a co-founder, order an MVP from me instead".
If you're the idea/money guy and I'm the technical cofounder, your skills must be equal to my skills. If a cofounder could be eliminated without the business ending, they have no place in the business.
Technical founders create the initial actual value by building any MVP. Ideas are worthless, execution is everything, more so with founders who have solved successfully in a particular area before.
It was striking how often a founder with an idea had not much more beyond that. It would scare me when the tech guy who has learned business may know more than the non-tech founder, simply from working with so many other founders with only an idea.
I would offer to build free, or a steep discount to retain 100% of the IP. The non-technical founder would earn back their stake by delivering on marketing, sales, and revenue.
It taught me that:
- tech people can learn business easier than the other way around, even though I strongly believe non-technical founders should learn the tooling enough like they might know enough about their cars.
- 90% of the MVP had nothing to do with solving a problem. Logins, billing, security.
- Most MVPs would waste their innovation points, too soon, by building entirely too much from scratch, leaving it inflexible to modify as you learn through the lean startup process. Simply avoiding this pitfall would allow enough iterations quickly to uncover the valuable problems.
- Boring and quickest techs for MVPs reign supreme because MVPs are supposed to be temporary and disposable, right? Just like a startup is supposed to be a temporary organization to find a repeatable and scalable business model
If a non-technical cofounder cannot market or sell (establish distribution), the greater loss occurs to the Technical founder.
> Looking to make a Garry’s mod day z server called gmodz would need someone experienced in coding I have the ideas just need someone to make them come to life wouldn’t be able pay right now but once servers are up and get players donating we can figure a split so you can get money and i can as well
The main problem is that as a software developer most of us worked at software product companies all our life and I noticed that often we know more about software product design and product strategy than some of the 'idea people'.
People who never worked as developer OR product manager OR designer and have no knowledge in any of these fields and have no money to afford a payed developer are rarely the good co-founders.
I absolutely agree with the OP that most of these people need simple CRUD apps, and the reason they need a 'cofounder' is that they need a mediocre programmer but have no money to pay them.
I don't even like the term 'technical' vs. 'non-technical'. Ideally a smart person in the tech business should be somewhat 'technical'. If absolutely and categorically non-technical then they should be really-really exceptionally good in something that is absolutely needed for the business. (For example having a large following.)
There are a lot of valid things mentioned in the article. HOWEVER, the most important thing missing is that the idea should be VALIDATED before even starting to build anything.
If a business founder did their research and has a line of people just waiting to get hands on the product, then he can simply get a loan and build the damn thing because the money is just there on the street waiting to be picked up.
So many times people start with the build without making sure there is market for their product - that is the original sin of any startup.
I'll go out on a limb to say that loans (famous for needing to be paid back) are not the way to fund an idea which is not likely to be successful. Funding a startup requires you to find money that doesn't require you to be liable if things don't work out. That's why it's more complicated than finding money "just there on the street waiting to be picked up." You actually need to convince people you have an idea that might succeed, so they're willing to risk their cash.
The article makes some good points, but at the same time, hiring somebody to built the first version of your product is maybe even harder. Especially if you don't have a technical background it is really hard to judge whether what they built makes any sense. The initial trade-offs of what to built and where to take short-cuts requires somebody with technical insight. That first proto-type that you are building to throw away ends of course up being the first product you ship.
From my experience previously looking for a non-technical founder, I've run into a lot of people who think they're the second coming of Steve Jobs or something like that and so in turn try to hardball in equity and other negotiations despite having no leverage at all, which just makes them look like a fool. An idea is worth essentially $0 without any ability to execute it. The fact that equity points are a big concern should be a glaring red flag to stay away.
If they are young, they are full of their own ambitions and ideas. It is hard to cooperate.
If they are old, they already have built something in the past and not looking for help in exchange of new risks.
Finding a co-founder is an additional full-time job. I have tried that in 2018 when I was starting my startup. I spent days on meetings and forums like this one.
I found dozens of amazing folks, but it was impossible to negotiate and actually start something together.
Finding a co-founder = finding a girlfriend. You do not seek for one intentionally. You just live having a chance to meet that one. Same with a co-founder.
Too many nontechnical folks I talk to act like they’re blocked because they don't have a technical cofounder to build their amazing app idea. But there’s so much they can do to build a business with no code with today’s tools! Technical folks will be impressed by how far you’ve gotten without having any actual custom software. I tried to capture this here: https://medium.com/@taylorhughes/to-find-a-technical-cofound...
If you are technical co-founder you should only hook up with a co-founder who knows how to sell, and knows how to raise money. Most likely you will pivot from original ideas anyway. Selling and raising money is key.
[+] [-] JCM9|2 years ago|reply
1. The founder sees themselves as the ideas person but doesn’t have the situational awareness to recognize that their ideas aren’t that unique.
2. The founder doesn’t understand that the value in a startup isn’t the idea but the ability to execute and build on that idea. For every very successful startup in X space there were 10x more with the same general idea but that failed to execute. The founder wants someone to built it for them but wants credit/equity for having the idea. In 99% of cases the value is created by the builders (technical cofounder) which instantly creates awkwardness of the founder wanting far more equity, credit, and control than their contributions warrant
For the above reasons I’d avoid 99% of asks for a technical co-founder like the plague.
[+] [-] bitexploder|2 years ago|reply
“… it's the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work, and if you just tell all these other people "here's this great idea" then of course they can go off and make it happen.
And the problem with that is that there is just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get in the subtleties of it.
And you also find there's tremendous trade-offs that you have to make. There are just certain things you can't make electrons do. There are certain things you can't make plastic do or glass do. Or factories do, or robots do.
And as you get in to all these things, designing a product is keeping 5000 things in your brain, these concepts. And fitting them all together and kind of continuing to push to fit them together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.
It's that process that is the magic."
[+] [-] pc86|2 years ago|reply
Anyone who sees themselves as an "ideas person" as if that is a defining or valuable characteristic is a cancer.
[+] [-] bastawhiz|2 years ago|reply
More importantly, most businesses don't need an "ideas person". They need someone who knows how to run a business. You need a total of one decent idea to start and run a business. You need tens of thousands of little hard choices, emails, and sales calls to keep the business successful, and that means getting your hands dirty. Ideas are not valuable.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|2 years ago|reply
My stuff tends to be pretty good. Sometimes, I give exactly what was asked for, which might not be so good, but what I make, works; even if rather ugly.
If I'm allowed to work iteratively, with a good creative, we can make something very good.
I don't usually come up with uniquely original ideas, myself, but I'm really good at turning vague ideas into reality. I Make Stuff Happen. I've been doing that, since I was in my early 20s.
What I have encountered, is that folks put no value, whatsoever on that ability. Like, to the point of being downright insulting. They don't like the cold wash of reality, bringing their lofty ideals into the world of the achievable. I've been told that I'm a "negative naysayer," but nothing could be farther from the truth. I want the thing to happen, and recognize the hurdles that need to be vaulted.
When I was younger, and part of much larger organizations, I had to eat the disrespect poo.
Nowadays, not so much. I guess folks think I'm a cranky old prima donna, but I won't accept being treated like crap. I'm quite aware of the sheer value of what I can do.
[+] [-] renegade-otter|2 years ago|reply
To make a business, you need to multiply the two. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas. I'm not interested until I see their execution."
https://blog.codinghorror.com/cultivate-teams-not-ideas/
[+] [-] TuringNYC|2 years ago|reply
3. UPFRONT RISK: If you are doing this with sweat equity (no salary) then the Technical Co-Founder is taking almost all the risk. They are putting in all the time upfront, before the Business Co-Founder does. Smart Business Co-Founder would sell the idea to potential customers also, or get POs, or raise funding to pay for the technical effort, or invest their own $ to pay for the technical effort. However, a situation where one co founder (technical) puts in all the effort while the other gets a free option to put in effort later, is a very bad setup.
4. LEVERAGE: The Business Co-Founder essentially gets more leverage the more work the Technical Co-Founder does -- because now there is sunk-cost and a psychological shackle. The Technical Co-Founder just wants to be done with the build-out so the business can proceed and make money -- but the Business Co-Founder has every incentive to expand the MVP more and more since they are putting in no effort (possibly have not quit their job either) and wants more and more before the system can be sold.
ADVISE TO POTENTIAL TECHNICAL CO-FOUNDERS
- You be the "Business Co-Founder" also, no need for another person
- If there is a Business Co-Founder, equal out the contribution at every stage. A PRD is not enough to equal out a build-out. Some ways to equal out the contributions:
- Business Co-Founder has proven record that attracts success guaranteed (e.g., prior major exits, IPOs, huge online following, extreme case would be Elon -- i'll be a technical co-founder for him any day :-)
- Business Co-Founder sells concept to clients, gets Purchase Orders before build-out
- Business Co-Founder gets huge list of potential customers, ideally with pre-orders
- Business Co-Founder raises funding and pays technical co-founder for upfront effort
- Business Co-Founder puts down their own money (or takes a loan) to pay Technical Co-Founder for upfront build
[+] [-] Apreche|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimbokun|2 years ago|reply
1. Discovering the real requirements to make the product succeed.
2. Being really really good at sales.
Technical people often lack those skills, and even if they build the best product in the world, it’s worthless without someone who can get it in front of the right people and convince them to pay for it.
[+] [-] edpichler|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sharemywin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cwillu|2 years ago|reply
“Mr. [Founder] is new to the business of having ideas, and so when he has one, he becomes proud of himself for having it. He has not yet had enough ideas to unflinchingly discard those that are beautiful in some aspects and impractical in others; he has not yet acquired confidence in his own ability to think of better ideas as he requires them. What we are seeing here is not Mr. [Founder]'s best idea, I fear, but rather his only idea.” --https://hpmor.com/chapter/78
[+] [-] cqqxo4zV46cp|2 years ago|reply
Not all execution is technical. 99% of the time, you aren’t building something that technically impressive, so I’d say that most execution isn’t. You’re probably building some CRUD database app and are throwing your VC funded development team at solving your own flavour of the same old scaling issues that they all solved at their last startups.
To categorise 99%+ of serious^ nontechnical cofounders as just* contributing an idea and not meaningfully and positively contributing to some aspects of the actual execution very much paints you as having one of the typical shortcomings of a developer: you think that nothing else matters.
[+] [-] throwaway828|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gadders|2 years ago|reply
Ideas are important. Building a product is important. Both achieve nothing unless you can actually sell what you have built.
[+] [-] bcaxis|2 years ago|reply
The best startups have both.
You can execute, great. But if you have poor industry understanding and no idea what is going to work in that space. Let alone something that is going to revolutionize the space. It is, similarly, not going to work.
Your industry expert need to have 20-30 years in the space. Understand it from the ground up. That guy is actually valuable.
It's not one idea, it's comprehensive understanding of all the current struggles in the space.
[+] [-] random99292|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eschneider|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mannyv|2 years ago|reply
A successful business consists of customers and money, not unique ideas.
I would say that the idea behind a business is one of the least useful things of a business. It helps with marketing, recruitment, and sales, but really, the idea itself is irrelevant. Execution counts for much, much more.
In fact, the idea that ideas must be unique is the #1 problem with startups. There's plenty of space in the market for companies doing what other companies are doing, but just better.
[+] [-] ericmcer|2 years ago|reply
Managing social media, meeting with prospective users, translating feedback into product requirements. They should be taking every little thing we work on, whether its a napkin sketch or a working MVP and putting it in front of people so we can steer the product as intelligently as possible. If they do all that they are more than lifting their weight. That would make me almost feel like a slouch just doing the coding.
[+] [-] borplk|2 years ago|reply
If a technical founder is sitting down and writing code until 2am on the weekends the non-technical founder better be making phone calls and sending emails, etc...
The inexperienced "idea guy" thinks by sharing "the idea" they have done their part and are just now going to sit and watch as the "the programmer" implements it.
[+] [-] safety1st|2 years ago|reply
Here is IMHO a more real world take on the question (can you find a technical co-founder?).
* There are three problems in business. They are 1) Distribution (sales), 2) Product/Service (the thing being sold), and 3) Operations (broad but lets say e.g. Legal, Accounting, HR).
* In very small business (e.g. startups) the Ops is not a ton of work yet, so in practice we talk about having potentially two founders, one needs to deliver a product, one needs to deliver the distribution.
* If you can provably bring the distribution on day one you will have zero problems finding a technical co-founder. In fact you'll have so many options you probably won't need a co-founder, you can just hire someone on a nice package.
* If you can't provably bring the distribution you are borderline worthless. That's the nature of sales, it is an uncomplicated discipline. In sales you produce or you're out.
So the author of the post kind of addresses this when he asks why you as the non-technical founder don't have the money to just hire. That part's more or less right. The "biz" founder with distribution already lined up is more valuable than the technical founder. Yeah the tech founder is more valuable than the biz guy who can't produce.
[+] [-] roncesvalles|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistermann|2 years ago|reply
Some problems I commonly see in people's analysis of situations:
- believing themselves to know things which are unknowable ("the ideas person doesn’t have the situational awareness to recognize that their ideas aren’t that unique", "value in a startup isn’t the idea but the ability to execute and build on that idea", etc).
- representing (and I suspect perceiving) subjective, heuristic based opinions ("aren’t that unique") as facts.
- using inadequate variable types when describing (and I suspect perceiving) the problem space ("the value", "wants credit/equity for having the idea").
- making up facts ("In 99% of cases")
This entire thread (as are most threads when the prompt is of a certain class of topic) is chock full of all of these, and many of the people in this subreddit are arguably genuine "The Experts" on this sort of thing...which is (or can be) kinda funny if you think about it for more than a few seconds.
And yes, I do realize that I "should" just "know what you meant"....except: how should I go about doing that?
And if these silly delusional founders should not believe silly delusional things, should that rule not extend to everyone?
[+] [-] snarf21|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commandlinefan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw4847285|2 years ago|reply
1. The founder being unaware that their ideas aren't unique is a feature not a bug. If Silicon Valley stopped reinventing the wheel, it would cease to exist. 2. The idea is what matters because ideas (and charisma) convince investors, and the goal is to make money, not a product.
[+] [-] pg_1234|2 years ago|reply
>> 1. The founder sees themselves as the ideas person but ...
Ideas are like assholes ... everybody has one and they're usually full of shit.
[+] [-] altdataseller|2 years ago|reply
1. You have at least 8-10 years of experience in that domain with some of it in a leadership position (ie product manager)
2. You already have a huge following or audience. Especially important if this is a SaaS product or b2c. Not as important if this is hard tech (ie biotech).
But if you’re doing a HR startup, show me your 10,000 engaged HR followers on LinkedIn. If you’re doing a martech startup, show me your Substack with 10k marketing subscribers.
3. You already have talked to at least 25 people about this, and gotten feedback about their pain points, initial reaction to your solution, etc. These conversations are documented and easily shared with me
4. You preferably have at least 1 successful exit/company under your belt, or a couple of failed ones is OK too (but I would need references to make sure they failed for legitimate reasons) the worse is 0 years of experience starting a company.
5. You are a cold email/call/outreach junkie. Because you will OWN sales in the early days. I want to see your 100 send emails or 100 daily calls or 100 sent DMs everyday asking potential customers for feedback or validation conversations or to sign up for your beta
[+] [-] endymi0n|2 years ago|reply
I've had an incredibly great experience and I can confidently say I could not have built this business on my own by far. Here's what got me to sign the deal for the last 10 years of my professional life that I didn't regret:
- "just enough" technical knowledge to be dangerous
- an incredibly well researched market opportunity demonstrating great first principle reasoning and business sense, with a pitch deck for cofounders that was almost seed investor level quality
- a nontechnical early market test, executed intelligently within a few days and 200$ of budget that served as an early indication of product-market fit
- previous demonstrated experience building a team and growth as an employee at a startup
- a lot of grit, with a bias towards action (complementing my sometimes fragmented mind and hesitant personality)
- a humble, reflected personality
In the end, while 98% of pitches for the best years of your professional life are probably BS, don't underestimate how far an excellent nontechnical cofounder can bring you.
[+] [-] padolsey|2 years ago|reply
I'm a technical person looking for a non-technical person who can absolutely smash the sales/ops/marketing side of things, and has a killer idea in a domain they know like the back of their hand. The struggle I've found, e.g. on hn startupschool, is that people have ideas that are unproven. Like, they haven't even scrappily pieced together an mvp. They feel blocked by a lack of what is almost always yet another CRUD app. Most non-technical-domain things, outside of dev SaaS or super-technical products (which a non-eng has no business doing) can be 'behind-the-curtain' 'fake till you make it' products IMHO so I feel a bit let down when someone comes along with an idea and have hit a barrier without even trying to scrappily piece together their product with bits-and-pieces.
[+] [-] sdrinf|2 years ago|reply
My counterparties are not real.
In descending order of frequency:
* Tirekickers / wannabes: these people have fantasies about doing a startup... someday, but definitely not just now.
* Super excited about <thing/area>... has no related experience, fails at basic business ontology ("target market", "valueproposition") <- 95% mark
* Has no hypothesis about marketing channels, nor any insight on why this particular combination might work
* fails on all of market scoping, TAM, customer development, financial model <- 99% mark
Rest: limited operational experience, OR self-defeating / low psychological resilience, going nowhere.
There is a laundry list on sibling comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39904704) for ticking boxes. My current hypo, is that peeps who check these boxes AND don't have a tech cofounder on their rolodex typically go to angels/VCs, and get a recommendation from them; and therefore will never appear on any markets for cofounders. Curious if this matches your experience.
[+] [-] cabronerp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistermann|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hooande|2 years ago|reply
1) Access to capital, normally through family or a family friend. I've worked at several companies where the main thing the CEO brought to the table was that someone trusted him or her enough to invest millions of dollars.
2) At least 5 years working a 9-5 job in the target industry and the associated social connections and experience. This eliminates most college students, sadly.
3) Something unique that enables the execution of the idea. This is normally a relationship or insider knowledge. The answer to "Why you?" can't be "Because I had the idea".
The most common exception I see to this list is when both founders have the same level of passion for solving a given problem. If you have to explain the opportunity and get someone else interested in it, it could be a tough road.
That said, don't lose hope. It's a big world. People meet and things happen.
[+] [-] gitfan86|2 years ago|reply
"But my idea is great! I'm sure an engineer will understand and work for equity"
The problem is that Angels/VCs have a lower bar for seed investment than the engineer. So if you can't get seed investment, it is a bad signal.
[+] [-] matrix_overload|2 years ago|reply
You become a technical co-founder to trade in your technical skills, learn about a new domain, figure out where the pain points are, and eventually jump ship and become a captain of your own vessel.
Also, the article is an obvious pitch in the likes of "don't get a co-founder, order an MVP from me instead".
[+] [-] bastawhiz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j45|2 years ago|reply
Technical founders create the initial actual value by building any MVP. Ideas are worthless, execution is everything, more so with founders who have solved successfully in a particular area before.
It was striking how often a founder with an idea had not much more beyond that. It would scare me when the tech guy who has learned business may know more than the non-tech founder, simply from working with so many other founders with only an idea.
I would offer to build free, or a steep discount to retain 100% of the IP. The non-technical founder would earn back their stake by delivering on marketing, sales, and revenue.
It taught me that:
- tech people can learn business easier than the other way around, even though I strongly believe non-technical founders should learn the tooling enough like they might know enough about their cars.
- 90% of the MVP had nothing to do with solving a problem. Logins, billing, security.
- Most MVPs would waste their innovation points, too soon, by building entirely too much from scratch, leaving it inflexible to modify as you learn through the lean startup process. Simply avoiding this pitfall would allow enough iterations quickly to uncover the valuable problems.
- Boring and quickest techs for MVPs reign supreme because MVPs are supposed to be temporary and disposable, right? Just like a startup is supposed to be a temporary organization to find a repeatable and scalable business model
If a non-technical cofounder cannot market or sell (establish distribution), the greater loss occurs to the Technical founder.
[+] [-] __s|2 years ago|reply
> Looking to make a Garry’s mod day z server called gmodz would need someone experienced in coding I have the ideas just need someone to make them come to life wouldn’t be able pay right now but once servers are up and get players donating we can figure a split so you can get money and i can as well
[+] [-] iamcurious|2 years ago|reply
It is true that working for free is bonkers. Priority number 1 is always rent, at minimum cover that so that business is priority 1.
[+] [-] nadam|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wsoczynski_they|2 years ago|reply
If a business founder did their research and has a line of people just waiting to get hands on the product, then he can simply get a loan and build the damn thing because the money is just there on the street waiting to be picked up.
So many times people start with the build without making sure there is market for their product - that is the original sin of any startup.
[+] [-] bastawhiz|2 years ago|reply
I'll go out on a limb to say that loans (famous for needing to be paid back) are not the way to fund an idea which is not likely to be successful. Funding a startup requires you to find money that doesn't require you to be liable if things don't work out. That's why it's more complicated than finding money "just there on the street waiting to be picked up." You actually need to convince people you have an idea that might succeed, so they're willing to risk their cash.
[+] [-] dosinga|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] methodical|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sghiassy|2 years ago|reply
Having a cofounder that can sell and market, while you build is tremendously valuable
[+] [-] alexanderisora|1 year ago|reply
If they are young, they are full of their own ambitions and ideas. It is hard to cooperate. If they are old, they already have built something in the past and not looking for help in exchange of new risks.
Finding a co-founder is an additional full-time job. I have tried that in 2018 when I was starting my startup. I spent days on meetings and forums like this one.
I found dozens of amazing folks, but it was impossible to negotiate and actually start something together.
Finding a co-founder = finding a girlfriend. You do not seek for one intentionally. You just live having a chance to meet that one. Same with a co-founder.
[+] [-] taylorhughes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackernoteng|2 years ago|reply