Stop Looking for a Technical Co-Founder, Learn to Code Yourself

I've been thinking about this for a long time too. One of the questions Im sure other people in a similar boat would ask is: which programming language?

the biggest problem with non technical founders, from my perspective as a programmer who has dealt with many of them, is that they don't have the foggiest idea how long it should take to build something. I've heard far to many say something like, "I told an investor we'd have this built in 3 months".

I generalize of course, the best person I've ever worked for was a non technical founder and he had an uncanny ability to understand this stuff at some level despite no direct experience in it.

How about try to code for yourself, but learn where your strengths lie. If you hate coding, and really can't stand it with tons of navigation through way too many odd details and abstractions, just draw the line. It is a classic case of weighing the pros and cons.

Being aware of the basics is a huge advantage, but after some serious time invested, don't ignore that coding really may not be for you. It is going to take you forever to get up to speed. You may waste a lot of time and it may become a big mess. It is more beneficial to find a technical co-founder, code less, search more. You also may find that you're a born coder, and it is an extremely valuable to continue going at it, keep coding.

If you have a startup idea and you don't know how to code, learning how to code enough to implement the idea all on your own is probably not cost-effective from a time standpoint and you're more likely to end up with a mess of non-functioning code than anything else.

That being said, at least to me, knowing even a layman's amount about programming will gain major points with the potential technical co-founders you do meet.

I get approached by friends/acquaintances on a weekly basis with some startup idea. And I mostly think, "So basically you're suggesting I spend 10 hours a week of my free time for six months to build Facebook For Cats, while you make some half-assed attempt to do some marketing or whatever, and if there are any technical issues I can't even discuss them with you because it'll go over your head, and if there are any tedious technical issues you can't even help with those." It's pretty much a non-starter right there.

But knowing even a little bit about programming could go a long way. It means your idea is probably a little bit better than "Facebook For Cats," because maybe in programming you learned about some company's API and how to leverage it. It means I can split up work and give you some of the easier programming tasks and feel like we're putting in close to the same effort. And it means I can tell you things like, "the service doesn't always return well-formed XML so we should find a validator and then run it on the response before we insert it into the database," and you'll know what I'm talking about.

It all starts with the product, and the product usually means code, and having one and a half heads coding will usually be more productive than just one. Learn enough to be that half a head and you'll go far.

If you are a non-techie founder, then yes, you probably can do it, but you should not. There have got to be a zillion other things that you should be doing -- raising funding, talking to potential users, researching the space, finding employees, finding office space, and yes, finding a tech co-founder.

I've been a tech co-founder a few times. If you can't convince me -- someone who wants to be working for a successful startup -- that your idea is worthwhile, I really doubt you will be able to convince users and investors either.