Traits of successful non-technical solo founders
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Re: Traits of successful non-technical solo founders
#2Is anybody else tired of reading x traits/qualities required to perform y and z? Seems like every other post is highlighting what you need to have to achieve everything you can ever want. It's like a bad collection of extracts from self-help books.
Re: Traits of successful non-technical solo founders
#3I wish the title here was the same as the article's title, "Four traits of successful non-technical solo founders". I got half-way through the article before I realised that it was only talking about non-technical solo founders, and it made a lot more sense.
That said, it does sound perfectly reasonable that non-technical solo founders should be product focussed (like somebody in any startup needs to be), have the means and connections to get technical help, and have some understanding of what the people building the product are actually doing.
Re: Traits of successful non-technical solo founders
#4Is anybody else tired of reading x traits/qualities required to perform y and z? Seems like every other post is highlighting what you need to have to achieve everything you can ever want. It's like a bad collection of extracts from self-help books.
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Re: Traits of successful non-technical solo founders
#5I am thinking of comparing this with non-technical big company CEOs, including MBAs.
Re: Traits of successful non-technical solo founders
#6[deleted]
Re: Traits of successful non-technical solo founders
#7[deleted]
"Its not easy being number 1, but someone's gotta do it."
No offense, but that's kind of a cheesy slogan. Which also reminds me of this:
http://manwithasoundrecorder.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/you...
Re: Traits of successful non-technical solo founders
#8[deleted]
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Re: Traits of successful non-technical solo founders
#9One other thing I might add is to make sure your product isn't overly technical. Non-technical solo founders can do great if they are building mostly crud based applications.
As soon as the idea advances to include sophisticated technical elements it's nearly impossible for a solo non-technical founder to run the business without a competent technical co-founder.
Re: Traits of successful non-technical solo founders
#10This is a good article, but one thing just kind of bugs me:
"Non-technical solo founders need to be extremely product focused. They're not purely business-y or marketing types"
Marketing gets short shrift in the tech world, probably because tech is one of the major industries in which the marketing function and the product development function are separated to a large degree. But true marketing, as a discipline, is very much product focused.
In fact, the discipline is often said to encompass "Four P's": product, price, place, and promotion. Many people -- not just in the tech world, to be fair -- tend to conflate the "promotion" function (advertising, communications, messaging) with marketing in general. In fact, promotion is just a subset of marketing. It's an important subset, but it's a subset nonetheless.
The best marketers are well grounded in, and can draw upon, the full-spectrum marketing skill set. Finding one of these marketers can actually be very valuable to your company. Having this full skill set can be very valuable to you, whether you're a technical or non-technical founder.
[A (hopefully) interesting side note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix]