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You do need a technical co-founder [video]

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

#281

Post by TuringNYC »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #93
ginkgotree wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second this. I worked in Sales Engineering for 5 years, ended that career selling a $25MM solution to the CEO of a fortune 100. There is no secret sauce, and it is all learnable. The key skills are interpersonal. I know its hard to do as an engineer, but most of (enterprise) sales is shutting the F up, listening, carefully listening, earning trust, and learning to navigate stakeholders and what their potential incent…

I think sometimes the salary market would disagree with that. At many companies a sales engineer can make more money than a developer. Personally I think it’s too nuanced a question to answer generally. Depending on who it is and the context “the right” person in either role can make all the difference.

To put some context here, SEs often make so much because of commissions, not due to some crazy salary.

Commission based sales seem like a good thing -- it is pay to perform. "Business co-founders" are not the same thing as SEs, because "Business co-founders" are often paid upfront (via equity) for the future promise of performing. That is not a setup with good alignment of interests.

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

#282

Post by waprin »

TuringNYC wrote: post #263
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…

>> 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 more important. I STRONGLY disgree with your take as a universal take. At the pre-Seed stage, the technology is the only thing. Without that, you dont have a technical business. You just have a pitch deck. Of course, once you prove…

A pitch deck is something you make for investors. I'm not talking about investors, I'm talking about customers.

Lots of management consultants can make a pitch deck. Very few can actually find people willing to pay for an MVP of a software product.

That was pretty much the point of my post. Most "business" guys are bad at the business side. Making pitch decks and raising funds is not the business side - except in some people's little side-circus. Understanding what customers want and figuring out what's the minimal version that people will pay for is.

You show me a management consultant that actually has 50 people willing to pay for an MVP, and that person can easily have a side startup. In fact, please put me in touch. Very, very few of them can actually do that. And even if they don't have a developer, I imagine an investor would be pretty impressed by that too.

Again, I'm speaking in generalities. If your technology is "turn common trash into gasoline" or "teleports people across contintents safely", then yeah, you don't need many business skills. But if your technology is "a scalable web app", or "I forked stable diffusion and did something cute with it", then the business skills are more critical than the tech skills.

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

#283

Post by testmasterflex »

gumballindie wrote: post #220
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…

They types still didn't learn that google, microsoft and every single disruptor out there has been founded and brought to riches by technical people. Business minded folks survive for a while, make a few millions, but never reach the levels of these companies. Quite the contrary - companies of this level plunge once business folks dominate. But that's good. Once google's dead others will take its place, and will be l…

What about Amazon? Bezos first hire was a coder for the site and have him 5% IIRC

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

#284

Post by TuringNYC »

WendyTheWillow wrote: post #214
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…

Having used LLMs to solve tech problems, I would not trust the current state, or even GPT5, to reliably solve anything other than the most trivial of trivialities. Is the idea that in 2025, AWS will have an AI console where a non-technical founder types in what they want their site to do, and the LLM takes care of the rest? Register domains, build out the database/backend/auth/frontend, etc.? I really can't see it ha…

LOL? Why do we even need the business co-founder? Let the LLM create the idea also and keep 100% percent of the equity for the FAANGs that created the LLM

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

#285

Post by injeolmi_love »

csa wrote: post #262
injeolmi_love wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest way to get fuck you money is to reduce your consumption.

> The easiest way to get fuck you money is to reduce your consumption. If you work at a very high paying job in finance or at a place like Google or FB, I might agree with this. Some people in those groups make a lot and spend a lot (sometimes more than they make). For people with more modest salaries, I think that this is tragically wrong for fuck you money , but probably right for relatively modest “nest egg” money…

Personally, I quit my job at a time I had $300/mo in income from my startup and lived in an old suv. Yes there is a bottom limit but it’s much lower than you might think. A big limitation many people have is their family, since if they aren’t onboard (mine was) then it cannot work out. But in that case it’s no longer fuck you money, since you’re trying to earn enough to maintain your family relationships first, an honorable decision to be sure.

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

#286

Post by danenania »

TuringNYC wrote: post #263
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…

>> 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 more important. I STRONGLY disgree with your take as a universal take. At the pre-Seed stage, the technology is the only thing. Without that, you dont have a technical business. You just have a pitch deck. Of course, once you prove…

It somewhat depends on the product, but in the beginning, I think the tech only matters inasmuch as it allows you to iterate quickly and build a product people love. It can be a spaghetti code tire fire underneath.

What really matters is market insight to understand what people want, design ability to give it to them, and sales/marketing to get traction. You do need a good engineer to pull this off, but they need to prioritize iteration speed, not engineering quality.

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

#287

Post by TuringNYC »

jschveibinz wrote: post #158

I'd like add to this conversation this two other important facts: 1) you (or your partner) do need domain experience and expertise. If you want open a bakery, or even try to automate a bakery, you really need at least some commercial baking experience. I see so many folks pitching a product in an area where they have zero experience. 2) you (or your partner) do need some organizational and/or business management expe…

>> 1) you (or your partner) do need domain experience and expertise. If you want open a bakery, or even try to automate a bakery, you really need at least some commercial baking experience. I see so many folks pitching a product in an area where they have zero experience.

I'd love to deep-dive into your example. Lets say this is the case.

Suppose you are the technical co-founder coding for 80hrs/wk. Does the baker also work 80hrs/wk? Can you just hire a baker as a consultant for 5hrs/month? Is that worth giving away 50% of the quity? Are they just providing some domain expertise you can buy a la carte, or are they bring in sales and critical relationships? Are they just another baker, or President of the National Baker's Association who will get you front-row exposure to thousands of bakers?

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

#288

Post by TuringNYC »

m348e912 wrote: post #219

As someone who would be interested in being a technical co-founder (complete with my own seed money), I wonder if when they say technical co-founder, they mean programmer who can build a MVP or someone who can build a technical team and help solve technical problems.

They are speaking about non-technical founders who are seeking technical co-founders

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

#289

Post by ericjmorey »

csa wrote: post #277
puniaviision wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the perspective. Cool hearing about your story! How did you get the initial capital to buy businesses, just from your savings as a research professor?

> How did you get the initial capital to buy businesses, just from your savings as a research professor? Much like Andrew Wilkinson, I started an agency. Agencies are great cash cows. In retrospect, I could have just started with savings (I had enough). It probably would have added stress I wasn’t looking for. That said, the agency was and is still great cash flow. It’s also a useful business space for learning how t…

What is an agency in this context?

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

#290

Post by TuringNYC »

gnicholas wrote: post #41

This is generally true. I had a technical cofounder for the first 4 years or so, but once our tools were built it was less clear what his ongoing role would be. This is because at that point, our focus turned to licensing our (patented) technology to businesses. We still have B2C customers who use the tools that he originally built (and which have been updated by contractors after he left), but now the vast majority…

>> My technical cofounder provided a lot of value in getting us to where we are, for sure. But needing a technical cofounder to launch doesn't necessarily mean you need one all the way along.

This is a good point, but it should be clear that you would not have gotten to this point w/o the technical co-founder.

The problem is that once you get to this point, less than honest non-technical people seek to marginalize and eventually consume the equity/payout of the technical co-founder that often took the original risk.

It is critical that technical co-founders maintain equity and FIGHT hard for what they have earned and enabled, do a fair extent of the value they added.

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