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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]

#111

Post by trgdr »

danjc wrote: post #90
gnicholas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not innovating on the core product, which has remained static for many years. Instead, we are pushing adoption through our licensing partnerships. We now have over 250k students using our reading tech through education platforms that we work with. Building more of these partnerships, based on the data we have gathered from our existing partners, is the focus.

Hate to tell you this but a business cannot thrive if it doesn't innovate. At best, you'll ride on your momentum for a while.

I mean not all businesses need to thrive. If the thing generates significant profits for a while then the founder can retire and either sell it or just let it die. If it's not a publicly-traded company there's no fiduciary duty to do anything more than that.

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

#112

Post by sebmellen »

gnicholas wrote: post #102
sebmellen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nonetheless, I think most business functions are more societally established, and for that reason they can be more easily outsourced.

You can find a "pre-packaged" MBA, attorney, etc. because society is very good at churning out those roles. Just go the most recently graduated Wharton batch and hire the top grad for $300k, and you have someone who can do your legal, fundraising, operations, etc.

It's much harder to find someone with unique technical insight and the ability to deliver, which is the true value of a good "engineer".

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

#113

Post by sebmellen »

gedy wrote: post #108
jeremyjh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> note, this good engineering advice but bad career advice: "yes" is magic word for more shiney rock and put in charge of large tribe of developer

> sad but true: learn "yes" then learn blame other grugs when fail, ideal career advice

> but grug must to grug be true, and "no" is magic grug word. Hard say at first, especially if you nice grug and don't like disappoint people (many such grugs!) but easier over time even though shiney rock pile not as high as might otherwise be

> is ok: how many shiney rock grug really need anyway?

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

#114

Post by notahacker »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #43
andy99 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's about the audience, but the company type. If someone is starting (random example) a food company based on their superior hot-sauce recipe and existing retail relationships, they probably don't need a technical co-founder. If someone is starting a company that "uses AI" to craft and target hot sauce recommendations, but doens't really know what that means and assumes they can get a shop to code them…

In your first hot-sauce recipe example, that person IS the technical founder. Just technical in the field relevant to the business, which happens to not be tech. The scenario in tech is more often comparable to some dude saying "I want to make a business selling the greatest hot sauce ever" and then having to go looking for someone who actually knows anything about hot sauce.

I think the idea that the person with the specialised knowledge of how to make hot sauce is the technical founder is an interesting point, but I think in YC/HN contexts it's usually considered to mean "engineer"; even in cases like accounting software where the founder who doesn't write software's specialised knowledge of the field is at least as critical as their partner's ability to convert that to code, the latter founder is the only "technical" one. Although tbh I don't think accountants or lawyers get offended by the insinuation they're the "non-technical founder".

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

#116

Post by bomewish »

michaelmior wrote: post #50
oooyay wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically stories I hear where technical people maintained equity it was through a lot of maneuvering. It wasn't given to them by the merits of their accomplishments.

Fair point. That makes sense :)

I was also puzzled. Thanks for asking and thanks for clarifying.

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

#117

Post by kragen »

jmcphers wrote: post #97
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a weird local optimisation problem where being an excellent programmer can make one a bad software engineer. (Another: unparalleledly excellent Excel skills making one a worse financier.)

I've seen this so many times in my career. It happens because interviews (especially at the junior level) focus almost exclusively on line-by-line programming acumen. People who excel at those interviews don't always make great software engineers, and sometimes they make terrible ones.

there's a selection bias at play here

suppose you need to either be in the top percentile of handsome and the top percentile of emotionally aware to get a job as a hollywood actor, but these attributes are uncorrelated in the general population, so 99% of top-percentile-of-handsome people will be top-percentile-of-sensitive and vice versa

then the pool of hollywood actors you observe will contain, out of every 199 people, 99 who are top-percentile-of-handsome but not of sensitivity, 99 who are top-percentile-of-sensitive but not of handsomeness, and 1 who is both

someone observing this result but not understanding the process that led up to it might think that emotional sensitivity makes you ugly or that being handsome makes you emotionally oblivious, even though (by hypothesis) the traits are uncorrelated. in fact, this negative correlation in the selected group can survive even a fair bit of positive correlation between the traits in the general population

similarly, it's easier to get a programming job if you have a history of delivering successful products, or if you have a lot of line-by-line coding acumen

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

#118

Post by dumbfounder »

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.

It still needs to be scaled and maintained and understood, and that is probably best done by a technical co-founder.

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

#119

Post by airstrike »

sebmellen wrote: post #44
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…

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

LMAO that's hilarious, thanks for sharing

> best weapon against complexity spirit demon is magic word: "no"

> "no, grug not build that feature"

> "no, grug not build that abstraction"

> "no, grug not put water on body every day or drink less black think juice you stop repeat ask now"

> note, this good engineering advice but bad career advice: "yes" is magic word for more shiney rock and put in charge of large tribe of developer

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

#120

Post by simonw »

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…

I love the way you put this. It also doubles as a great explanation for why programmers shouldn't be worried that ChatGPT is going to steal their jobs: ChatGPT is good at the garble of weird text, but it's terrible at the "wrangling systemic complexity in a good, sustainable and reliable way" piece.
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