Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You do need a technical co-founder [video]

ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 381 posts

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

#221

Post by eddy_chan »

puniaviision wrote: post #210
waprin wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technical expertise is very rarely where the core value of a product comes from. If you're really pushing some boundary and just have a better technology product, like original Google or ChatGPT, then sure, tech is your special sauce. For 99% of software businesses, the tech can cause the business to fail but its almost never what makes the business succeed. Things like customer development and sales are actually far…

This whole comment was beautiful. Especially this part: "But to recap, my high level point is that the technical expertise is not really the money printer. The money printer is mapping market demand to technical products, which is a business skill. And that business skill is worth a lot more than technical skills. Its just a type of business skill that you find more often in developers than you do in MBA, and so we d…

> Nope. Now I'm just a shitty business person and a shitty dev. Forcing myself to do the actual work of talking to customers now.

This level of humility will take you far. You will get better at talking to customers over time, keep grinding, keep practicing, it gets easier. And one day the switch will happen, they will look up to you as the knowledgeable consultant instead of looking down on you as the 'shitty business guy' with nothing of value to offer.

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

#222

Post by lainga »

waprin wrote: post #202
lainga wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 li…

Technical expertise is very rarely where the core value of a product comes from. If you're really pushing some boundary and just have a better technology product, like original Google or ChatGPT, then sure, tech is your special sauce. For 99% of software businesses, the tech can cause the business to fail but its almost never what makes the business succeed. Things like customer development and sales are actually far…

I want to say (as GP) good points. Thank you for disagreeing. When I think of the business, my worldview underweights the cases (the 99%?) where technology is only an enabler to the business case - I guess because I don't think it's as interesting as the pushing of boundaries.

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

#224

Post by mtizim »

csa wrote: post #196
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…

> This mindset that technical cofounders are essentially “coders” (a term I hate) is very prevalent among inexperienced nontechnical founders. I know I’m preaching to the choir here but a lot of technical people have deep industry/business/product knowledge and have social skills. It is very frustrating when some Ivy League 25 year old PM/management consultant tries to pitch you on their vision while treating you lik…

Could you name some (not commonly known ways to get fuck you money)? As a young tech guy doing stuff in startup spaces, I'm genuinely interested.

Of course, "no silver bullet", especially to make big money, but I'm curious, from the perspective of someone who'd place around 1.3 on the spectrum you described.

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

#225

Post by gnicholas »

TuringNYC wrote: post #195
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…

>> It is very frustrating when some Ivy League 25 year old PM/management consultant tries to pitch you on their vision while treating you like an idiot savant they can easily take advantage of. I get calls weekly from people seeking technical co-founders. The biggest thing most CTO candidates dont realize is the power they have -- unless the "business co-founder" is actually bringing something to the table. I'd LOVE…

> and retains the right to take all the upside and has none of the downside

When you are paid in equity, the non-technical cofounder doesn't have all of the upside. But I completely agree that both parties need to bring something to the table at the beginning. It can't be "you build something and then after you've done that I'll go sell it". Both founders need to be putting in sweat equity simultaneously, to align incentives.

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

#226

Post by syrusakbary »

vlod wrote: post #218
syrusakbary wrote: post #197

I'm a technical founder working in a deep-tech startup. If I am completely honest, I think the recommendation of having a technical cofounder while useful for startups in the past might not be as useful for the startups of the future. Why? I strongly believe AI will cause a paradigm shift, and I'll adventure stating that AI will make non-technical people be able to do more and more with less. Which will make the requ…

>working in a deep-tech startup. I'm curious if you use it for non trivial stuff? I lot of people say it will take over, but I don't see many devs using it beyond simple stuff.

AI usage is trending up. I don't see any signs of deceleration in our company. Right now is mostly trivial, but as AI is able to get more context on the space, it will go up.

I foresee AIs learning from the code of your repo, your language, your dependencies... and most importantly, your competitors (if they have open-source code of course). The more context, the better it will get, the faster you will iterate and the bigger you may get.

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

#227

Post by willsmith72 »

robocat wrote: post #204
willsmith72 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first stages are just sales. You're just trying to find something people will buy and that means a lot of people time. I've found it rare that engineers will find that natural, it takes a lot of time and discomfort to get good at

> just sales This sounds like a typical engineer's summary. It is a dismissal - just like the video talks about tech being dismissed. Recruiting a co-founder is not "just sales". The video is taking about an archetypical salesperson who still can't buy a tech guy (maybe their sales skills are not so good).

"just" as in, an emphasis on the importance of sales, not a minimisation of it.

sales is everything at the start, and a huge amount of the reason why technical people usually need non-technical.

(i would have second thoughts about a non-tech founder without sales skills)

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

#228

Post by puniaviision »

eddy_chan wrote: post #221
puniaviision wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole comment was beautiful. Especially this part: "But to recap, my high level point is that the technical expertise is not really the money printer. The money printer is mapping market demand to technical products, which is a business skill. And that business skill is worth a lot more than technical skills. Its just a type of business skill that you find more often in developers than you do in MBA, and so we d…

> Nope. Now I'm just a shitty business person and a shitty dev. Forcing myself to do the actual work of talking to customers now. This level of humility will take you far. You will get better at talking to customers over time, keep grinding, keep practicing, it gets easier. And one day the switch will happen, they will look up to you as the knowledgeable consultant instead of looking down on you as the 'shitty busine…

> This level of humility will take you far. You will get better at talking to customers over time, keep grinding, keep practicing, it gets easier.

Thanks! I launched my first large-scale cold outreach campaign this morning after learning about it this week and building up leads. Tomorrow, I will try out cold calling.

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

#229

Post by tfehring »

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…

Dalton says basically the same thing in the video. Lightly edited excerpt from the YouTube transcript (starting around 11:28):

What often happens - again, to go deep on this - is that the way they'll pitch the person is that they'll pitch them their idea, like, "I'm an idea guy, I've got a great idea, do you want to be my worker bee to go do all my ideas?" And of course the person that's the best person you've ever worked with does not want to sit in a cage and do all of the work that you give them. And instead I'm like, well have you asked them if they have startup ideas? And then you sell yourself, where you can come together, come up with the idea together, as co-owners, and it's shocking how often that appears to have never occurred to someone. Like they think the idea of finding a tech co-founder is to find someone who will basically submit to their whims and be, like, their assistant, and that's not the move.

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

#230

Post by happydev »

When I met my current cofounder he was paying $5,000/month to a dev agency in Eastern Europe that was ripping him off with slow progress, inflated hours, and very poor quality code. Their developer was brand new to the tech stack and made many glaring mistakes. As a non-technical founder he had no way to judge the quality of their work, he was completely at their mercy and they took advantage of him.

I do not know how non-technical cofounders expect to avoid this type of situation.

Post reply on HN