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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]

#141

Post by DelaneyM »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #65
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.

I'm currently the technical guy and would love to learn how to also be the business guy - what do I need to do to develop those skills? Getting your hands dirty is the best way to learn anyhting, so with technical topics, especially programming, I would just dive into projects and start coding, building things, and that's how I learned. In terms of business skills, what projects can I realistically undertake on my ow…

You become a business guy the same way you became a technical guy!

Don't waste time selling soap though (unless you really love soap) - my best advice is to try to sell something you've made. It could be your time (as a consultant), or it could be a product.

I would suggest waiting to develop these skills until you know what product you want to bring to market as an entrepreneur. No sense in learning B2C growth hacking when you end up in enterprise sales (or vice-versa).

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

#142

Post by lainga »

opportune wrote: post #129

Even this article IMO subtly demonstrates the mindset that leads nontechnical founders to not think they need a technical cofounder, by phrasing the search for one as “recruiting” as if they were a subordinate or code monkey. It should be a partner relationship, not a subordinate relationship. This mindset that technical cofounders are essentially “coders” (a term I hate) is very prevalent among inexperienced nontech…

> while treating you like an idiot savant they can easily take advantage of.

I considered it a bit, and you know what, I'd wager that four-fifths of tech business dynamics flow from this statement. Technical expertise is the money printer onto which all manners of value extraction anchor themselves, like barnacles. If not at the creation, then, for a time, it is good. And then it happens anyway 5-10 years down the line.

That said, there are different failure modes for purely technical people not understanding business. But the market doesn't seem to reward them the same way. Root cause is outside the scope of this comment...

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

#143

Post by gkoberger »

kragen wrote: post #125
gkoberger wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

you need a cofounder but there's no benefit in them being nontechnical

Do you really think there’s no skills or archetypes that are valuable on a founding team that doesn’t involve writing code?

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

#144

Post by polar8 »

pleoxy wrote: post #139
polar8 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion.

A totally generic and unthinking generalization. There is a place for religion. Something that pushes you to be better than you are. Along with the happiness and fulfillment that comes from that effort. Selflessness, love, compassion, truth. Plenty of bad religions telling you that you are perfect the way that you are. Just give me money, fame, or influence and I will flatter you and pump your ego. Another form of th…

There are plenty of things that deliver the above without the dogmatic slaughter of hundreds of millions of humans throughout history and at this very moment.

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

#145

Post by kragen »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #34
CodeCompost wrote: post #8

Yeah and then the non-technical co-founder treats you like you're worthless because you're "just a programmer"

It's interesting, how all this stuff is written for the biz-bros, too -- try doing a google search on how to find a non -technical cofounder. Like, say you're an eng, with a technical idea you think would make the foundation of a good startup, and you're looking for someone to "found" the PM/marketing/bizdev side of things. From what I can see, the content/advice doesn't exist, even via YCombinator.

why would you want a nontechnical cofounder to do the pm/marketing/bizdev side of things? a nontechnical person might be able to do those things, but technical ignorance or incompetence are not necessary for them, and aren't even assets; they're just less serious drawbacks there than elsewhere

you might genuinely need some nontechnical people in your startup, but if you have some money you can always pay people to come be part of a focus group or user test when that's necessary

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

#146

Post by polar8 »

csallen wrote: post #123
polar8 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion.

Most religions spread virally, which means the marketers are the customers, which is usually a testament to the product/service being one that customers value. I say this as an atheist who's not a fan of religion, but people clearly get a lot out of it, or at least believe they do.

That’s a great point. I wonder if it’s motivated by value or fear of an eternity of torture in the afterlife, though.

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

#147

Post by WJW »

polar8 wrote: post #144
pleoxy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A totally generic and unthinking generalization. There is a place for religion. Something that pushes you to be better than you are. Along with the happiness and fulfillment that comes from that effort. Selflessness, love, compassion, truth. Plenty of bad religions telling you that you are perfect the way that you are. Just give me money, fame, or influence and I will flatter you and pump your ego. Another form of th…

There are plenty of things that deliver the above without the dogmatic slaughter of hundreds of millions of humans throughout history and at this very moment.

There's also plenty of religious people who have never murdered anyone in their lives, and there have been plenty of dogmatic massacres for reasons entirely unrelated to religion. The two issues seem to be quite uncorrelated tbh.

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

#148

Post by omeze »

kragen wrote: post #117
jmcphers wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

Berkson’s Paradox:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox#:~:text=....

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

#149

Post by WJW »

polar8 wrote: post #146
csallen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most religions spread virally, which means the marketers are the customers, which is usually a testament to the product/service being one that customers value. I say this as an atheist who's not a fan of religion, but people clearly get a lot out of it, or at least believe they do.

That’s a great point. I wonder if it’s motivated by value or fear of an eternity of torture in the afterlife, though.

Probably neither. People like to belong to a group where they feel they "belong" and that in itself is sufficient explanation for the spread of religions IMO.

Propagation of societal values and/or fear of hell and/or fear of death assuaged by the assurance of an afterlife and/or being able to rationalize away the vagaries of nature as the will of god(s) are just optimizations after the core system was already invented.

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

#150

Post by oooyay »

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/

This is some really beautiful prose
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