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Ask HN: What does a non-programmer bring to a 2-3 person startup team?
51–60 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: What does a non-programmer bring to a 2-3 person startup team?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's all sorts of problems with this. Usually startups don't have enough money to hire good developers, so they try to pay people in equity. Most developers who aren't personally invested in the idea or the founding team aren't going to split equity with non-technical people unless everyone is clearly bringing something to the table (marketing, fundraising, etc). Unless there's a clearly even split of labor in the…
"Software is very expensive to build." Not necessarily. Offshore outsourcing of programming is quite cheap. The question is whether your MVP is so complex it warrants a $100/hour local programmer to handle that complexity. In many cases, it's not complex enough to warrant it, and paying $100/hour to a developer is inconsistent with building a MVP, because you're hiring a bells and whistles developer better suited to…
Where is competition in your analysis?
Yes, there are many possible software products that can be done cheaply with outsourced labor. The problem is, because they can be done cheaply, they are done. Why should anyone use your Groupon clone when they could just use, well, Groupon.
You can go through a whole lot of MVPs and find out that all of them aren't really viable.
And then if it is viable, why should the developer work for you instead of competing with you? If you're throwing away the initial outsourced prototype and starting from scratch, what advantage do you have over him? While you're scrambling to find a technical cofounder to replace your cheap outsourced team, he could just reimplement the thing, plus all the improvements that actual usage has suggested, and keep 100% of the equity. You're just asking to get Winklevossed.
There's a reason why Paul Graham advises people to take a look at their alternatives and then do whatever's hardest. Business is about competition, about having a durable competitive advantage that other people can't easily replicate. If everybody can do it, nobody makes any money off it.
Re: Ask HN: What does a non-programmer bring to a 2-3 person startup team?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Software is very expensive to build." Not necessarily. Offshore outsourcing of programming is quite cheap. The question is whether your MVP is so complex it warrants a $100/hour local programmer to handle that complexity. In many cases, it's not complex enough to warrant it, and paying $100/hour to a developer is inconsistent with building a MVP, because you're hiring a bells and whistles developer better suited to…
I think your idea of throwing away a prototype is a great one. We essentially did that when we launched our startup, although it was just a major refactoring rather than a complete ditch-and-rebuild effort. Beyond that, oh man... Even if the non technical cofounders sit on their asses and do absolutely nothing while you code all day, you'd be sitting on 33% equity in an already successful startup, when they took all…
My attitude puzzles you because you're assuming that 90% of the risk comes before the MVP.
Absolutely, most startups fail because they build something that people don't want. That doesn't mean things like scalability and maintainability don't matter. It means you're putting the cart before the horse if you're worrying about those things before you even have a product that people want.
All you're really bringing to the table is the first 3 steps, and asking your technical co-founder(s) to handle the next 617 or so. It's better than just a "big idea", but not by as much as you're thinking.
Aren't your same gripes just as valid against venture capitalists? I mean, all they're giving you is money, and they're trying to take a huge chunk of equity while you have to worry about the next 617 steps?
Re: Ask HN: What does a non-programmer bring to a 2-3 person startup team?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Software is very expensive to build." Not necessarily. Offshore outsourcing of programming is quite cheap. The question is whether your MVP is so complex it warrants a $100/hour local programmer to handle that complexity. In many cases, it's not complex enough to warrant it, and paying $100/hour to a developer is inconsistent with building a MVP, because you're hiring a bells and whistles developer better suited to…
Where is competition in your analysis? Yes, there are many possible software products that can be done cheaply with outsourced labor. The problem is, because they can be done cheaply, they are done. Why should anyone use your Groupon clone when they could just use, well, Groupon. You can go through a whole lot of MVPs and find out that all of them aren't really viable. And then if it is viable, why should the develop…
You're missing marketing, sales and business development in your analysis.
Groupon isn't successful because of its programming prowess. It's successful because of its sales, marketing and business development prowess. Groupon is a great example of a startup that's not that complicated in the technical department (or at least it wasn't when it started...now it's large enough to where it's justifiable to bring in programming all stars to make sure scalability, maintainability, etc. are in order).
So, as to why a developer should work for a proven MVP rather than building his own clone, the reason is simple...why is it more attractive to be an equity technical founder of Groupon vs. starting your own Groupon, if Groupon approaches you after it's already gained traction?
Re: Ask HN: What does a non-programmer bring to a 2-3 person startup team?
#55I'm looking for a programer. Please email at johnq30@hotmail.com if interested in me sending you platform deck
Re: Ask HN: What does a non-programmer bring to a 2-3 person startup team?
#56Let me get involved in this conversition. I am an entrepreneur, for long time. I always find the easy way out, but uselly it means piggybacking. If you find creativity is not important. My metaphore, you can have great building skills but no ideas to build and take socalled risk you are airbuilder.
If you got ideas but no building skills you are airwaster.
As entrepreneur i know it is very important to have the developer skills. So iam building that, because the internet will stay and i got billions idea how to influences that.
But to build one company and stay stuck at that.. It will bore me. But keep on building and creatibg ideas for the rest of my life is my passion.
Re: Ask HN: What does a non-programmer bring to a 2-3 person startup team?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your idea of throwing away a prototype is a great one. We essentially did that when we launched our startup, although it was just a major refactoring rather than a complete ditch-and-rebuild effort. Beyond that, oh man... Even if the non technical cofounders sit on their asses and do absolutely nothing while you code all day, you'd be sitting on 33% equity in an already successful startup, when they took all…
My attitude puzzles you because you're assuming that 90% of the risk comes before the MVP. Absolutely, most startups fail because they build something that people don't want. That doesn't mean things like scalability and maintainability don't matter. It means you're putting the cart before the horse if you're worrying about those things before you even have a product that people want. All you're really bringing to th…
I'm not suggesting that you worry about scalability and maintainability first. I'm saying that only a fully-invested and skilled engineer can solve those problems for you, and they are probably not interested in working for you if you aren't also working just as hard.
Aren't your same gripes just as valid against venture capitalists?
Arguably. But, good venture capitalists give you not only huge sums of money that you wouldn't otherwise be able to pool, but also advice and access to their professional network.
Re: Ask HN: What does a non-programmer bring to a 2-3 person startup team?
#58To name a few non-technical co-founders off-hand: Steve Jobs, Andrew Mason (Groupon), Ev Williams, Marc Benioff (salesforce.com), etc. The list is a mile long. A few of those folks can code a bit, but none of them coded much at all when they were doing their best work.
There is nearly infinite non-programming work for most startups. Design, fundraising, writing, support, sales, bizdev PR, QA, accounting, talking to lawyers/tax-folk, recruiting, marketing etc.
That said-- a hackathon-style event is a different critter than a startup. You need coders, designers, and (a distant third), people who can write compelling copy.
Re: Ask HN: What does a non-programmer bring to a 2-3 person startup team?
#59If they served no function, they would have been worked out of the gene pool by now.
A developer can build, but what can sell and actually selling it are another matter entirely.
I really gained a lot of respect for sales people at one startup I worked for. How they were able to cold call into a company and find a need and money to pay for addressing it is pretty amazing (to me anyway).
Re: Ask HN: What does a non-programmer bring to a 2-3 person startup team?
#60The measure of a good programmer is in the quality of the code he produces. The measure for a good business guy is the value he has generated for himself and for others.
If a business person hasn't been able to generate value for himself (be it money, connections, social proof) then he's the equivalent of a programmer who hasn't written a line of code. It's that simple.