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You do need a technical co-founder [video]

ycombinator.com

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Re: You do need a technical co-founder [video]

#101

Post by Satam »

dontupvoteme wrote: post #71
oooyay wrote: post #36

I like Michael's take that the real value in a founder is their ability to recruit the right team. What I don't think was said explicitly here is that typically technical people are progressively marginalized as the business grows. We get some harrowing stories where that doesn't happen, but I don't think that's the standard story. Like they allude to, it's a story of what the people who handle the money and investme…

We're (probably) rapidly shifting to a reality where your biggest value will be Agentifying as many things as you can. Even if it's mediocre, it's basically free, and has almost no costs. Compare that to the incalculable potential switching costs of us meatbags and our many non-linearities.

Hmmm, an extremely interesting thought! Basically, agentifying might be the next programming.

Do you have a guess how that would play out or how likely that might be? It seems like the main blocker here would be if the agents remain relatively weak in pure reasoning.

Re: You do need a technical co-founder [video]

#102

Post by gnicholas »

sebmellen wrote: post #80
DelaneyM wrote: post #47

Corollary: you do not need a non-technical co-founder. My advice to engineers is that it's nearly always easier to learn business/sales than to learn to like a co-founder, especially the type generally drawn to being a "business" founder. It is good to have a co-founder in general though, get one of those if you can. Just don't worry about finding complementary skills, bias entirely towards someone you can work with.

https://nav.al/build-sell > Bill Gates famously paraphrases this as, “I’d rather teach an engineer marketing, than a marketer engineering.”

Absolutely true. Of course, a non-technical cofounder probably knows more than just marketing. He may add a lot of value in terms of fundraising, product management, and other areas. Teaching all of these things to an engineer wouldn't be trivial.

Re: You do need a technical co-founder [video]

#103

Post by gkoberger »

hiddencost wrote: post #100

I'd argue the other side of the this: you don't need a non technical cofounder.

Disagree, and I say this as a technical founder with no cofounder. Once things start to take off, a majority of the things you deal with are non-technical. There’s so much that goes into building a company, and you really need someone who understands how businesses work and can run G2M.

Sure, you can hire for it… but you’ll almost never find someone as invested in it as the founder, and it’s just as important as the product.

Re: You do need a technical co-founder [video]

#104

Post by mgaunard »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #75
alfalfasprout wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, this is largely true in software engineering in general. Programming is easy. Perhaps being an excellent programmer is much harder but for many things being mediocre is good enough. The hard part is building things sustainably at scale (people wise or performance wise). That's when a combination of knowing how to manage systemic complexity and knowing how to communicate very well (soft skills) really come int…

IMHO the hard part with a startup is you don't want to build something that works sustainably at scale. You want to build something that could plausibly morph into something that is sustainable at scale.

Depends on the stage of the startup lifecycle you're at.

But in general, reaching profitability (which is the real hard part) will require making scaling efficient and operations smooth.

Re: You do need a technical co-founder [video]

#105

Post by debacle »

threeseed wrote: post #39
tracerbulletx wrote: post #29

Having started a small business I respect greatly the skills of great sales people and fund raisers and people who are great with people. But I don't respect them when they think they can start a business where they don't take what they actually make seriously and think the product will just work its self out if they sell hard enough.

History has shown them to be right. There are many terrible products in this world that were successful only because of good sales and marketing. And vice versa.

> There are many terrible products in this world that were successful only because of good sales and marketing. And vice versa.

Name one.

Re: You do need a technical co-founder [video]

#106

Post by j45 »

atoav wrote: post #4

This is what I constantly tell my students: The hard part about doing a tech product for the most part isn't the what beginners think makes tech hard — the hard part is wrangling systemic complexity in a good, sustainable and reliable way. Many non-tech people e.g. look at programmers and think the hard part is knowing what this garble of weird text means. But this is the easy part. And if you are a person who would…

The business degree kids with an idea need to realize the tech cofounders can learn and understand business.

Having an idea is like having a thought.

A startup needs product and distribution. If a tech cofounder builds what’s asked of him and the sales cofounder can’t sell, should the ownership revert to the tech cofounder?

Re: You do need a technical co-founder [video]

#107

Post by bcrosby95 »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #81
sebmellen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people need to read https://grugbrain.dev/

I like this but I don't understand one part under "Saying OK" * sometimes probably best just not tell project manager and do it 80/20 way.* Does 80/20 in this context mean that we'll implement 80% of what is asked for an leave out the remaining complex parts?

80% of the features/details for 20% of the code/complexity. Even minor tweaks can have an outsized effect on the final code. A large part of my job is doing this in such a way that satisfies the stakeholders.

Re: You do need a technical co-founder [video]

#108

Post by gedy »

jeremyjh wrote: post #59
sebmellen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people need to read https://grugbrain.dev/

I really wish I'd read this 25 years ago, but probably I wouldn't have believed any of it.

I don’t know, I’ve mostly followed this approach over my 20 year career, but it really depends on your surroundings, and honestly hasn’t led to great success.

E.g. If you’re surrounded by yes men who will code whatever without question, product people greatly prefer that, and you end up sidelined.

There’s also plenty of companies who don’t want engineers getting involved with decisions, and product and UX people work upfront and in isolation until you’re handed tiny Jira tickets with Figma mockups attached. Discussion at that point is considered “disruptive“.

It honestly seems like this has gotten worse in the past 5 to 10 years.

Re: You do need a technical co-founder [video]

#109

Post by j45 »

oooyay wrote: post #36

I like Michael's take that the real value in a founder is their ability to recruit the right team. What I don't think was said explicitly here is that typically technical people are progressively marginalized as the business grows. We get some harrowing stories where that doesn't happen, but I don't think that's the standard story. Like they allude to, it's a story of what the people who handle the money and investme…

Also they notice yc applications that are taking advantage of tech co-founders or tech team builders with unfair equity structure.

Re: You do need a technical co-founder [video]

#110

Post by polar8 »

debacle wrote: post #105
threeseed wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History has shown them to be right. There are many terrible products in this world that were successful only because of good sales and marketing. And vice versa.

> There are many terrible products in this world that were successful only because of good sales and marketing. And vice versa. Name one.

Religion.
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