I think non-technical founders have a harder time building a profit-based company (like 37signals or Plenty of Fish, his examples) because how do you get a programmer on board to build the thing if you can't pay them? Imagine the job ad: "Wanted: Engineering Bitch." http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/02/startup-lessons-for-the...
The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?
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Re: The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?
#22Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Peter Thiel (Paypal), Mark Pincus (Zynga) I mean is this even a serious question?
Re: The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?
#23Here's a better test: if you listen to people who tell you what you can't do you probably won't be a good founder.
You're sure to find many others who say "no big problem!"
Which do you believe? The wrong answer can be very expensive either way.
There's a reason why very few '7-80s superminicomputer companies survived the advent of multiprocessors and trying to get their operating system(s) to work reliably with them.
In that case, it was "this will be hard" vs. "not too hard". In most cases, the B team got the nod, and all was well ... until customers with machines in the field started complaining how their shiny new systems would sporadically crash. And the B team couldn't find the problems (or at least very quickly), since among other things they hadn't invested enough in instrumentation and so on. Some companies were lucky enough to get a chance to hire third team who could do it, but I think in most if not all of those cases the company was too injured and too late with a good solution to survive.
ADDED: I should probably qualify this with "it depends a lot on how hard the problem is". I'm used to the domain of hard technical problems because that's mostly how I made my living before retiring. And one advantage of them is the barrier to entry they pose to competitors.
After all, we're here because the problem of developing a really good (easy to use and so on) web shop development system is hard, something where using secret alien technology (http://lispers.org/) can make a big difference, and did.
Re: The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you. I agree 100%, that is why I wrote the post. I didn't reveal it too much in there, but as a non-technical founder, there are ways to make it work.
Absolutely. The way I see it is that there are a number of ingredients involved in successfully doing a startup: Marketing, sales, finance, people, luck, ambition, domain knowledge, etc. You can be weak in one area but then you'll have to compensate in other areas to make it up. I know a very successful founder of a tech company (yearly turnover 8 figures), and he has no idea how to hack. But he does have acute peopl…
No one ever bought DEC because they offered great mass storage solutions (and let's not even go into the early RA81; CPUs, on the other hand...). But they did at least an adequate job of every essential thing (documentation, build quality, then the softer stuff) that they succeeded when the vast majority of their peers failed.
Re: The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?
#25Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Peter Thiel (Paypal), Mark Pincus (Zynga) I mean is this even a serious question?
Skimming his resume and recommendations (on LinkedIn :-), it's clear he's very good with people and social stuff (surprise!) ... and I would suspect that transferred to dealing with the technical people who built LinkedIn. His history prior to it would have also given him a chance to learn about them, learn to respect them, etc.
Re: The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?
#26I know someone who is non-technical and does startup Internet businesses. His lack of knowledge concerning software development is a real problem, but he guts through it. The biggest problem is one of trust: if you are not yourself a developer you don't appreciate why on rare occasion it can take a while to track down a bug, and other normal software development scenarios. A friend of mine has a way of explaining thi…
Damn, as in I wish I'd though of it way back when. Then again, I'm pretty sure almost all my superiors were city slickers who wouldn't have really gotten it....
Re: The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?
#27I think non-technical founders have a harder time building a profit-based company (like 37signals or Plenty of Fish, his examples) because how do you get a programmer on board to build the thing if you can't pay them? Imagine the job ad: "Wanted: Engineering Bitch." http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/02/startup-lessons-for-the...
There also tends to be a really big issue with finding the first techie for the company, in most cases in my experience it was done through networking or the good type of nepotism (e.g. a brilliant younger brother who was just graduating from EECS at MIT and who turned down a good offer (IE when it was the very best browser, something he'd worked on in summer internships) to work for the startup).
Re: The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?
#28I know someone who is non-technical and does startup Internet businesses. His lack of knowledge concerning software development is a real problem, but he guts through it. The biggest problem is one of trust: if you are not yourself a developer you don't appreciate why on rare occasion it can take a while to track down a bug, and other normal software development scenarios. A friend of mine has a way of explaining thi…
Hi Mark, First of all, I must say, your website is very impressive. I would love to chat with you about AI at some point. You are correct about the non-techs understanding and empathizing with the developers. I am a non-technical founder myself, that's why I wrote the post. I try my best to understand the processes and problems that the tech team goes through. I try and learn as much as possible in order to not be in…
Re: The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?
#29Here's a better test: if you listen to people who tell you what you can't do you probably won't be a good founder.
What do you do when a programmer tells you "this can't be done" (perhaps "... with these resources", including time)? You're sure to find many others who say "no big problem!" Which do you believe? The wrong answer can be very expensive either way. There's a reason why very few '7-80s superminicomputer companies survived the advent of multiprocessors and trying to get their operating system(s) to work reliably with t…
Re: The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you do when a programmer tells you "this can't be done" (perhaps "... with these resources", including time)? You're sure to find many others who say "no big problem!" Which do you believe? The wrong answer can be very expensive either way. There's a reason why very few '7-80s superminicomputer companies survived the advent of multiprocessors and trying to get their operating system(s) to work reliably with t…
There's a difference between asking someone else to do something and doing it yourself. Don't listen to people who tell you what you can't do.
Yeah, that has much less weight, although you might want to drill down and see why they have that opinion. E.g. Edison could not do in a practical way electronic distribution because he didn't have the math (calculus) needed for polyphase AC, which is why we're all using Tesla's inventions (with a modern special case exception of very high voltage DC interconnect lines).
I.e. a "you can't do this unless and until you master X" is worth listening to. On the other hand, the founder of Motorola didn't know or pay attention to the conventional wisdom that coils? (inductors) had to be big, so he went ahead and made the first really practical car radios.