btw, a good technical cofounder isn't "just" a good programmer (or even a great one)... actually, he doesn't even have to be the best programmer on the team
An Open Letter To Business People
31–40 of 61 posts
Re: An Open Letter To Business People
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you willing to try to solve non technical problems by yourself? You know, researching the market to assure you're actually building something people will want to use, finding paying customers or advertisers, dealing with investors, finding decent PR people, recruiting etc... nothing too fancy.
Yes. A bit less snarky: a good measure of a technical co-founder is him trying to solve the business problems himself. For the same reasons I cited above.
That's the right attitude. Unfortunately, that's not the norm at all.
Mostly, technical folks tend to behave as spoiled brats when dealing with non technical people as cofounders (which amazes me given that one of the best performing tech companies today is run by a non technical guy - Steve Jobs).
Update: no need for the technical guy to actually work on non technical issues... given the current scenario, respecting the non technical guy within his domain would suffice. It's not like non technical people try to tell programmers how to do their job.
Re: An Open Letter To Business People
#33The problem is you don't need a technical cofounder, you need a good technical founder. Just because someone is at a meetup or on Github doesn't mean they're a good technical cofounder. Finding a technical cofounder isn't too difficult. If you can't sell your idea to one developer you probably can't sell it to customers. Finding a good technical cofounder is very hard.
I agree with you, Matt - I wouldn't want to just pick the first technical cofounder that could dazzle me with jargon I haven't heard.
I'm a business type, and I absolutely believe that business types with great ideas and hypotheses they want to test can hire a team to get their minimum viable product off the ground, for a very reasonable price. And, if skilled at product development, they can get quite far on this track.
Yes, of course you want to partner with a great technical co-founder, but how do you expect to attract such a hero without having proven your worth, the viability of your idea, etc.
What's a bit frustrating about this post is that it's going to paralyze a lot of perfectly good business folks with the ingenuity to get it going on their own first. I'm not saying that hiring a team is a long term strategy, but in the short term? HELL YES! YOU CAN DO IT!
Re: An Open Letter To Business People
#34This is a nice piece overall but, having seen founders negotiate their splits countless times over nearly three decades, I would add that such negotiations tend to be more nuanced than equal splits in most cases. Idea people may not be able to proceed without solid technical people but what they do or don't have to give them for their services is always governed by supply and demand. An exceptional technical person w…
I definitely agree that 50/50 is nowhere near a hard and fast rule. The split depends on how long the company has been around, how much progress has already been made, etc.
The larger point I was trying to get across is the discrepancy between the amount of value many businessy types ascribe to technical skills and the actual value (at least from my perspective).
If the only progress you've made on your company is the initial idea, I really do believe that the you'll up your chances of success significantly if the split is close to 50/50. The odds that you're even going to end up succeeding with the same idea is pretty low. At that stage, you really want to build a team of equals, not get employees.
Re: An Open Letter To Business People
#35Why do we always hear about non-technical cofounders looking for technical co-founders, rather than the other way around? Is this like some singles bar where 80% of the people are male? I for one would like to find a hustler who really knows how to hustle.
I too am in the other camp. I've already developed a MVP over the past year over many iterations. Now I want to find a co-founder that wants to help me take it to the next level for an equity stake. The problem is location. The midwest is a horrible place to birth an internet startup.
Re: An Open Letter To Business People
#36Guy says he doesn't value the "vision guy" that much...has he looked at the photo he's using? It's not even sized properly. Simple, simple fix: http://i.imgur.com/o73DX.png
Re: An Open Letter To Business People
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. A bit less snarky: a good measure of a technical co-founder is him trying to solve the business problems himself. For the same reasons I cited above.
That's the right attitude. Unfortunately, that's not the norm at all. Mostly, technical folks tend to behave as spoiled brats when dealing with non technical people as cofounders (which amazes me given that one of the best performing tech companies today is run by a non technical guy - Steve Jobs). Update: no need for the technical guy to actually work on non technical issues... given the current scenario, respecting…
Steve Jobs soldered with everyone else at Atari. Just because he didn't engineer at Apple doesn't mean he's non-technical.
Re: An Open Letter To Business People
#38A startup without a business plan isn't a business. It's just some code. I disagree. Users make it a business - and users don't care if I have a business plan. They just care if the product (i.e., code) makes their lives better.
I think there is a third distinction that's missing:
Idea + Code = Tech
Tech + Users = Product
Product + Plan = Business
(Good execution at all steps is, of course, implied)
Re: An Open Letter To Business People
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree, though I don't think "business plan" in this context is meant to read "a 100+ page analysis of the market and other bullshit." Rather, I took it to mean a sense of how you're going to get the product out to users and (maybe) how you'll eventually make money. Both of those things are required if you want your business to become sustainable.
In spite of this being repeated so many times still it is so easy to fall into the trap. At-least it was for me. Working on my latest project we discussed so much on the feature, design and others but never on how to get users. We kinda assumed that once the project is done users will be waiting for us.
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Re: An Open Letter To Business People
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree, though I don't think "business plan" in this context is meant to read "a 100+ page analysis of the market and other bullshit." Rather, I took it to mean a sense of how you're going to get the product out to users and (maybe) how you'll eventually make money. Both of those things are required if you want your business to become sustainable.
In spite of this being repeated so many times still it is so easy to fall into the trap. At-least it was for me. Working on my latest project we discussed so much on the feature, design and others but never on how to get users. We kinda assumed that once the project is done users will be waiting for us.
It is an easy trap to fall into. Nick and I have often caught ourselves going "Well it's going to be super awesome once everyone's on it."
There are tons of systems that would be super awesome if user acquisition wasn't a problem ;). It's not a coincidence that getting users is usually the hard part.