Finding a Technical Cofounder
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Finding a Technical Cofounder
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Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder
#2My vote is for the learn to code approach.
Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder
#3My vote is for the learn to code approach.
As a Computer Science TA (and author of this post), I'm just not sure learning to code is a one-size-fits-all approach. Some of my favorite founders (Evan Reas at LAL, Joe Cohen at Coursekit) are not technical, and it's just not their thing. It remains to be seen whether things like Codecademy are going to open the possibility of coding for more people, but still - to each their own.
Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder
#4Thanks Alex. I gave up after trying to find someone magical for 2 months and I now have a demo site with a fake back-end. Slogging through Ruby on Rails and I realized this is really fun and not very different from solving puzzles.
Great deck. You are being generous with the one green stick dude.
Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder
#5My vote is for the learn to code approach.
As a Computer Science TA (and author of this post), I'm just not sure learning to code is a one-size-fits-all approach. Some of my favorite founders (Evan Reas at LAL, Joe Cohen at Coursekit) are not technical, and it's just not their thing . It remains to be seen whether things like Codecademy are going to open the possibility of coding for more people, but still - to each their own.
This is exactly right. People don't choose their passions; their passions choose them. Specialization is a Good Thing.
Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder
#6Thanks Alex. I gave up after trying to find someone magical for 2 months and I now have a demo site with a fake back-end. Slogging through Ruby on Rails and I realized this is really fun and not very different from solving puzzles. Great deck. You are being generous with the one green stick dude.
Glad you found it useful! Credit to David Tisch for making a room full of Penn entrepreneurs raise their hands. Made the point better than I ever could.
Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Computer Science TA (and author of this post), I'm just not sure learning to code is a one-size-fits-all approach. Some of my favorite founders (Evan Reas at LAL, Joe Cohen at Coursekit) are not technical, and it's just not their thing . It remains to be seen whether things like Codecademy are going to open the possibility of coding for more people, but still - to each their own.
This is exactly right. People don't choose their passions; their passions choose them. Specialization is a Good Thing.
Fair enough, Steve Jobs serves as a prime example for this. Wozniak was a far better engineer than Jobs. I guess I should have elaborated, you don't need to be a coding ninja to run a startup but I do honestly feel that a solid understanding of coding and computer systems is essential for any tech entrepreneur.
Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder
#8Awesome slides. I think this is one of the hardest parts to launching something. It's hard to find someone that is aligned with you as well as someone who you can trust enough to start a company with.
Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder
#9Does the reverse (finding a business cofounder) also apply? What resources do you recommend a technical person gather (beyond things like Rework, which I grok, and Four Steps to the Epiphany, which I need to reread and try to grok)?
Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder
#10My vote is for the learn to code approach.
Founders new to coding write horrible code. And that is ok!
At the beginning the biggest risk is not writting terrible code you will regreat having written, let alone give maintance. The biggest risk is making something nobody wants.
From my experience, the biggest issue comes after you get enough traction/money/funding to hire a team. This is where things can get really bad, when the founder thinks he actually knows how to solve CS problems, and says things like: "This Machine Learning thing is not that hard: I wrote the landing page for the startup in 3 hours without any programming knowledge".
Hubris is one dangerous trait that will get anyone in trouble. Founders, due to their natural Reality Distortion Field[1], can be a victim of it[2].
Kent Beck, creator the agile methodology XP, discussed some of this in his The Flight of a Startup[3]
[1] http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2010/09/visionarys-lame...
[2] http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down...