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Finding a Technical Cofounder

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Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder

#41

Post by mgkimsal »

rwhitman wrote: post #11

I never see posts on HN from the perspective of "I'm a technical founder with an idea and a product, and I need a non-technical co-founder who can pitch, market and sell it".

Maybe I should then post on HN?

I fall in to this camp, sort of. I'm not looking for a non-tech co-founder, but certainly open to the idea. However, as I meet people, the ones who seem to be capable are generally already doing their own thing. To a large extent, this is probably a similar problem non-tech people face when looking for tech co-founders - the ones who are most likely to be capable are probably already doing something.

I meet a fair number of people who might be non-tech co-founders - they tick some of the boxes. But when discussing things more, then almost inevitably fall short of my own expectations.

This is hard to put in to words, but the ones I've talked to seem more in love with the idea of being in a startup than actually working on one. There's also seemingly little drive to do much more than talk. Generally, also, there's little financial stability in their lives, to be able to deal with no or limited income for several months while ramping up. And based on discussions with some potential co-founders over the past several years, there seems to be little willingness to be at all flexible with their own ideas - they have tended to think of themselves as Steve Jobs, and me more as a Wozniak to be used and thrown out later.

So... again, while I'm open to the idea, I'm not actively looking. Perhaps I should be actively looking, and would weed through the bad fits faster?

Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder

#42

Post by rpwilcox »

itmag wrote: post #32

Why isn't there kind of a "dating site" for this? Ie, take me as an example: I am in Sweden, am technical, and am interested in meeting a business co-founder with whom I can get to work on an e-learning startup (btw, if anyone is out there, get in touch). Someone should create a site with that kind of granularity. (Yay, HN posting cherry lost!)

I created a survey about what people would like in a site that solves this problem (posted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3209163 )

Got some interesting feedback and information, haven't yet done anything with it.

Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder

#43

Post by rpwilcox »

rwhitman wrote: post #11

I never see posts on HN from the perspective of "I'm a technical founder with an idea and a product, and I need a non-technical co-founder who can pitch, market and sell it".

There are a few - I think I've seen two or three, including myself... but they tend to be met either by deafening silence or lost roar of people/companies looking for technical people.

Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder

#44

Post by roel_v »

notatoad wrote: post #23
nikcub wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is because most tech people think they can do sales, marketing and ops while non-tech people know they can't code.

No, I don't think most tech people are under any illusions about their ability. But sales, marketing, and ops scale in a much more linear way than tech does. You don't need a ton of marketing ability to make a few sales and get a bit of cash flow coming in. Then you can hire sales and other non technical staff, rather than bringing them in at the cofounder level.

"You don't need a ton of marketing ability to make a few sales and get a bit of cash flow coming in."

"Then you can hire sales and other non technical staff"

Have you ever run a business? This sounds so naive it's probably the exact thing the OP was talking about.

1. The modal amount of revenue for most payment processors is 0 dollars. The majority of all applications developed and deployed never make a single dollar of revenue.

2. 'a bit of cash flow' is 20 dollars / month. It is not easy to make revenue acquisition repeatable (or, more accurately, by far the hardest problem in any business is in finding repeatable acquisition models)

3. You cannot just 'hire a sales guy' and expect the money to flow in. Regular 'sales guys' need a pitch, a sales script, a leads source, a pricing list, in other words, they need to be told exactly what to do and how to do it. Somebody who can develop all of that is the 'non-technical founder' as it is most commonly called on here. It's like expecting to hire 'a programmer' and thinking he can think of a product, code it up and bring it to market. The vast majority can't, because it's a completely different skill set.

Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder

#45

Post by damoncali »

coderdude wrote: post #39
inuhj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs could code. He was a technical founder.

Can you show me where that's written somewhere? I never heard Steve Jobs coded and his Wikipedia page doesn't seem to mention it.

Woz's book describes a fairly technically involved young Steve Jobs back in the day. I can't recall if it was code exactly, but deep into technology. Not your stereotypical "sales and marketing" guy.

Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder

#46

Post by joshklein »

I think all these "learn to code" messages to MBAs get it wrong. It should be "learn to think like a developer". An MBA should be able to determine the screens his software might display (thereby specifying the functionality and, loosely, the UI), then build a prototype in powerpoint if he must (heaven forbid)!

Technical cofounders: if an MBA can't even build a clickable prototype in his native language of PPT to sell you on his idea, run. Not because he is technically incompetent, but because he is an incompetent salesman.

But, more to the point, the concept that all you need is business acumen (MBA founder) and technical acumen (technical founder) is unbelievably wrongheaded. You need domain expertise. If you don't have it, you're probably working on something any bunch of monkeys could make, MBA-type or technical-type included.

Don't skip the part of the pitch where you have to say "why this management team can successfully execute this idea." That's what the investors say they look at, remember?

Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder

#48

Post by localhost3000 »

inuhj wrote: post #21

The question I ask myself is why would you want a non-technical founder to learn to code if they will never write production code? The encoded message in most of the replies fall in to a few categories: 1) to understand the technical feasibility of their vision and 2) as a way of showing initiative. #2 is what code jockeys want to see and the natural way for a coder to measure initiative is in lines of code. What non…

why can't they write production code? if it works, it works. deal with scaling problems when you actually need to scale. in lieu of finding a 'technical co-founder' i taught myself to code and built our entire product. I'm now the 'technical co-founder.' JFDI

Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder

#49

Post by dangrover »

nikcub wrote: post #12
rwhitman wrote: post #11

I never see posts on HN from the perspective of "I'm a technical founder with an idea and a product, and I need a non-technical co-founder who can pitch, market and sell it".

that is because most tech people think they can do sales, marketing and ops while non-tech people know they can't code.

Which is because a lot of the non-tech people have never actually sold anything, marketed anything, or operated anything either.

Not having technical chops doesn't make you good at "everything else."

There's so many skills that go into a startup that you can't have a specialist for each one.

Re: Finding a Technical Cofounder

#50

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

I often hear that non-technical founders have a hard time finding hackers and the hackers have a hard time finding a good sales/marketing co-founder. I think these two groups just live in different circles. The middle of the venn diagram is where both groups need to be to meet. Just get out there and go to events not-geared toward your tech/non-tech skills. Most people aren't comfortable being uncomfortable but that's what you need to do to grow (and meet people outside your current orbit).
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