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

301–310 of 381 posts

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

#301

Post by csa »

ericjmorey wrote: post #289
csa wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> What is an agency in this context?

Successful tech agencies that have been started by people I know:

- programming

- digital marketing

- social media

- web development

- SEO

- data science

- AI (this is emerging)

The agency is a business that goes to other businesses and offers to solve one or more of their business problems for a fee. Sometimes these fees are one-time payments, sometimes they are recurring, sometimes both. I recommend having recurring payments being baked into your agency model.

It’s a relatively easy way to get “ramen profitable” (or more!) along with some money to invest.

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

#302

Post by oulu2006 »

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

I disagree.

I'm the technical co-founder and my co-founder non-technical; he's brought in so many soft skills around process, finance, sales, recruiting, etc.. that I would have (and would still) struggle at to replace.

He's also a domain expert in our field so for me it was definitely the right choice to make.

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

#303

Post by corry »

For many (most?) startups, for many (most?) MVPs, in many (most?) domains -- yes, with a million caveats -- the "non-technical cofounder" can likely figure it out what's needed to hack together a simple product, get a handful of real users using it, and then go from there.

In my case, all I had done was make HTML/CSS websites with a bit of PHP. But I didn't let "I need a technical cofounder" and "I'm just the business guy" stop me from figuring out how to build v0.1 myself and get it out. I had never touched a server before. I had never built a web app with a MVC stack before. I had zero experience with command-line prior. I didn't have any formal technical training. But I just started coding and built it myself, and from there was able to attract a great technical cofounder and early team. And 10 years later, we sold it for $100M.

I'm not saying this to brag. I'm proud that "I figured it out" with duct tape but I realize that I had the good luck that it all worked out.

But I worry that other guys like I was are sitting there thinking 'Shit, everyone says I need a technical cofounder'. Well, maybe not. Go try to build it yourself. Especially in the age of co-pilot and decades of StackOverflow - for most apps, you can figure it out.

No one take this the wrong way. I'm just trying to potentially inspire some bright person out there to try it themselves, and building the first simple version yourself might be the missing step in attracting a REAL technical person or at least validate your hypothesis.

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

#304

Post by aleph_minus_one »

jdminhbg wrote: post #166
welfare wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree, I'm waiting for the article on "Why you need a business-oriented co-founder and how technical founders can recruit one"...

> There are two reasons founders resist going out and recruiting users individually. One is a combination of shyness and laziness. They'd rather sit at home writing code than go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably be rejected by most of them. But for a startup to succeed, at least one founder (usually the CEO) will have to spend a lot of time on sales and marketing. [2] http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

> One is a combination of shyness and laziness. They'd rather sit at home writing code than go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably be rejected by most of them.

I think this is more complicated: the problem is not going out and talking to a bunch of strangers (which I would do if necessary, and I do claim that my tolerance of rejection is sufficiently high).

The problem rather is (this is something that a friend, who works as a business consultant, explained to me): to make a successful sale, you need a salesperson "who thinks like the customer". Lots of programmers simply think very differently from how the typical programmers, and thus are bad salespersons concerning these customers.

He really said that I have an insanely good intuition for what kind of software product would insanely help some specific industry, but also honestly told me that I (and honestly also he) would likely not be capable of selling such a product (if it existed) to a customer in this industry, simply because I think too differently from the decision makers in this industry.

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

#305

Post by corry »

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…

To rephrase your point with tongue-firmly-in-cheek: "many technical people look at products and think the hard part is wrangling systemic complexity in a good, sustainable and reliable way" but in reality, that's not the hard part.

If your product is successful enough that systemic complexity is your chief problem, congratulations, you've made it further than most startups - which die from lack of demand, lack of paying customers, and lack of users giving feedback.

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

#306

Post by pleoxy »

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.

You completely missed the nuance I tried to convey.

Making a giant bucket of lots of things and declaring it bad because there is something bad in there shows your ignorance.

Ignoring reasoning shows an unwillingness to learn about stuff.

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

#307

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

Why is disrespect for technical people so deeply rooted? It's like they think we're beneath them.

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

#308

Post by vlod »

geniium wrote: post #115

I love the format with the topics on the side, well done YC! Downside: they are too much looking around , probably a lot of people around or screens with prompters. Disturbing me

Assuming you've just seen this for the first time, it's worth watching ALL of the Dalton+Michael videos. Have fun!

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

#309

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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…

That’s because the people with money are not the people who actually do the things.

The people with money are the Ivy League 25-year-old PM management consultants.

Since everyone seems to prefer more money over more freedom, us nerds keep agreeing to or putting ourselves in positions where we are depending on non technical people for money.

I hate doing money stuff, I like building stuff

There are people who don’t like building stuff but like doing money stuff.

Which one do you think is going to get more money?

Which one has the power over the other one?

It’s totally inverted and changing this is going to take a century or more to fix

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

#310

Post by robocat »

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…

> mindset that technical cofounders are essentially “coders”

Business people usually think techos as commodity workers: Buy a geek like you would a house cleaner.

Good discussion on that topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38402515

It's really weird given how many tech founders have shown the value of tech talent by creating billion dollar companies. Why can't they see it?

Then again look in a mirror and techos tend to believe business people are total trash. Yes, many executives and salespeople are useless manglement and pointy-haired-bosses (just like there are useless engineers). But don't miss the valuable management gems. Techos: don't make the same mistakes as described about the non-techs in the vid by ignoring a 10x engineer. There are 10x non-techs too.

Post reply on HN