You do need a technical co-founder [video] • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by TuringNYC » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 1:01 AM UTC

bob88jg wrote: post #61

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…

What so the person who "provided a lot of value in getting us to where we are" got ditched in the end? Is that your story? Use people and then chuck them to the curb once everything u need has been extracted?

>> What so the person who "provided a lot of value in getting us to where we are" got ditched in the end? Is that your story? Use people and then chuck them to the curb once everything u need has been extracted?

Technologists beware -- some business co-founders will treat you honestly and you'll be paid fairly. And some will not. You need to read this comment and realize that both outcomes are possibles, especially once lawyers, VCs, and other business people get into the mix.

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

#292

Post by gumballindie » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 1:02 AM UTC

testmasterflex wrote: post #283

gumballindie wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Good point - he apparently has a major in CS or something among the lines.

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

#293

Post by j45 » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 1:04 AM UTC

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…

Over the years, when I meet a non-technical founder looking for a technical founder, I ask them if they're ok owning as little of the startup that they offer to the technical person, until they can deliver sales.

Technical people, in large do deliver a product and something that works. It might not be what the market wants, or the right thing, but speed of iteration, is again technical, and something the technical founder uniquely must bring.

There is a video from YC that says they can see it from a mile away when the non-technical founders have taken advantage of the technical person, founder or not, by not giving them equity equal to the difference they make.

I couldn't agree more.

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

#294

Post by esafak » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 1:04 AM UTC

TuringNYC wrote: post #279

esafak wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you mean by founder. Pre-funding employees can get sweet nominal-cost restricted stock awards.

>> Depends on what you mean by founder. Pre-funding employees can get sweet nominal-cost restricted stock awards. So basically, lottery tickets that you get to cash out in 7yrs if you are lucky. You are better off working at market rates, and buying Nasdaq options with your pay difference.

I suppose you started your company expecting to make a loss relative to buying options, and you tell prospective hires the same thing?

You're skipping the part about early hires having outsized impact over the fate of the company and the value of their equity.

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

#295

Post by paulryanrogers » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 1:04 AM UTC

WJW wrote: post #147

polar8 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Religion requires belief without evidence. (Or flimsy evidence like ancient testimony.) It's uniquely positioned as a tool to manipulate people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do.

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

#296

Post by TuringNYC » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 1:10 AM UTC

BadCookie wrote: post #96

jjtheblunt wrote: post #16

There have been multiple ads/posts recently from companies citing YC__ looking for a technical cofounder. So, is this post correlated?

Do you mean the “founding engineer” jobs? It can be misleading, but those are not founder roles. They are regular employee roles where the “founding” part of the title is just an honorary indication that the person joined the company early. YC won’t count someone as a founder unless they have at least 10% equity in the company. Founding engineers are typically getting 2% or less (from what I understand).

Founding Engineer = Engineer making under-market salary for tiny sliver of equity who can be laid off anytime because the company is fledgling, works 70hrs a week, puts in major % of work a founder would contribute, but has little upside.

To be honest, for someone who cant land market salaries (e.g. non typical background), who finds a good team, this might be a good opportunity.

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

#297

Post by csa » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 1:14 AM UTC

mtizim wrote: post #224

csa wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Could you name some (not commonly known ways to get fuck you money)?

To clarify, I put “fuck you money” at about $10m-$20m. This amount enables a relatively comfortable life in perpetuity without touching the principal.

The ways are all commonly known, but they aren’t commonly followed.

tl;dr — it’s boring.

As a tech person:

1. Learn sales.

2. Learn business operations.

3. Solve business problems, possibly using tech.

A great way to scale into this is starting an agency. The agency can do programming, web development, ad tech… anything that direction.

It’s cash as you go, you get to learn while getting paid, you get a front row seat to business problems, and you can make useful contacts.

Once you have enough cash / cash flow, you can buy or joint venture with companies that have good product-market fit but weak operations, and you provide the part that they are weak at.

These businesses are everywhere at price points in the $10k to ~$500m range (at around $500m, the big boys start getting interested).

Many of the operational failures are in sales/marketing (all aspects thereof like pricing, channels, etc.), organization structure (too many bodies), misaligned incentives, etc.

Some of the easiest changes I’ve personally made is pricing changes. Specifically, changing a large irregular one-off payment to a much lower recurring payment (one that is preferred by the customers), and adding three-tier pricing with appropriate value add at each level. Imho, these decisions were not made by the original owners because either they were afraid of change or they didn’t talk to and listen to their customers (or both).

This lets you develop a cash cow.

Hold your cash cow.

Rinse.

Repeat.

Boring, right?

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

#298

Post by TuringNYC » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 1:16 AM UTC

esafak wrote: post #294

TuringNYC wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Depends on what you mean by founder. Pre-funding employees can get sweet nominal-cost restricted stock awards. So basically, lottery tickets that you get to cash out in 7yrs if you are lucky. You are better off working at market rates, and buying Nasdaq options with your pay difference.

I suppose you started your company expecting to make a loss relative to buying options, and you tell prospective hires the same thing? You're skipping the part about early hires having outsized impact over the fate of the company and the value of their equity.

Fair point. The risks are huge. Makes sense if you've got 30% of the cap table. The risk is worth it. Esp if you are founder and on the board directing the company and fending off risks.

Not sure it makes sense if you've got 0.5% equity.

Definitely does not make sense if you are being given X,000 shares and have no access to the cap table.

Any engineer who thinks they can value a fraction with a numerator and no denominator is fooling themselves.

Startup employees -- if you were given 50,000 shares but told you arent allowed to see the cap table, please UPVOTE/DOWNVOTE accordingly if you think the pay-cut to market was worth the money you got at the IPO.

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

#299

Post by lucasyvas » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 1:21 AM UTC

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…

Many feel entitled to captain a ship - they are often just useless.

Definitely not always, but more often than it should be. I had this experience once - a family of people that already had money that were obsessed with "running their own business" off the backs of others. They didn't even contribute the money they had. All exploitation. Fortunately I shut it down and walked away with code. It was useless code, but at least I was also able to waste their time on top of my own.

My default mode as a technical person now is to vet the person actually has something they can bring. If they do less than bring us customers before we have a finished product, they've failed. I expect them to make connections and sell what we don't even have. That way I know we can both make something from nothing - the key ingredient to liftoff.

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

#300

Post by TuringNYC » Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 1:24 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #140

nurple wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, good luck. As a tech cofounder, I attempted to do just this and I have extensive development and management experience. It was a nightmare, EVERY SINGLE offshoring company tried to play us as a group that didn't know their stuff, and when put to the iron they couldn't produce anything that would stand up--technically--against a mild sneeze. If I hadn't been there, my other founders would have gotten up to their…

i'm interested to hear what kinds of things they did and what you did in response. there are probably a lot of good stories there

I'm not the GP, but I know many of the tricks to watch out for:

- Offshore partner delivers software, but you dont have any code. Successive rounds of updates become more expensive. You cant walk away because you have none of the code. (Business co-founder has no idea and goes to new partner with binaries expecting updates to be delivered, then gets told they need to start from scratch)

- Offshore partner delivers software and code, but not the code corresponding to the software. You try to switch partners, but realize you start from zero, because you dont have the code

- Offshore partner delivers software and correct code, but only for the app/UI. Only they retain code for the backend.

- Offshre partner delivers code for UI and backend, but not the right code, UI is secretly pointing to a different backend with different code

- Offshore partner delivers correct code all around, but only they have the build scripts, dependencies, and cloud images required to run it.

- Offshore partner delivers everything, but only they have the data required to start up the system. New partner spends as much time figuring things out and eventually wants to re-code the whole system.

For each of the above, business co-founder goes thru the rounds two or three times. Each time, they spend 20 or 30k and each time they walk away with binaries they cant do much with. Eventually they give up, or find a technical co-founder.