Stop Looking for a Technical Co-Founder, Learn to Code Yourself

I'd say the main thing is control.

Me and a friend, both non-technical, started a service oriented company 6 years ago.

Now we're switching our focus to SaaS and even have some $$ to pay contractors / employees...

But how do we evaluate talent?

How do we delegate?

How do we understand (much less give input) on technical decisions?

What happens when (not if) they leave and move on?

Being vulnerable to and leaving that much decision-making responsibility to 'employees' who aren't invested like you are is a recipe for failure - entrepreneurs make things happen and get things done, but how much of that can you do if you don't understand the core of what your business does - software?

sorry, catster beat you to it!

There is a larger issue lurking here. Becoming an excellent developer isn't an over-night process. Tutorials will only hold your hand for so long before you get into the woods with concepts that are over your head (unless you have a math, systems, or compsci/engineering education); learning to program and not just code is a lifelong endeavor - you gotta love it for it, not just because you gotta do it to try building a startup.

The larger issue? The technical illiteracy of the general population. Knowing how to point and click (and nothing else) has brought user's expectations down to a point where they think some piece of functionality that takes them three seconds to interact with is a one hour unit of "coding" when in fact, it's more like days worth of thinking, typing, writing unit tests, and debugging.

My cofounder ATM is handling all of the business, marketing, and customer interaction. She only won my allegiance though because she is technically literate - not to the point of my expertise (otherwise she would be doing it herself) but she does understand that those 40 hours I just spent last week on writing unit tests is worth it instead of breathing down my neck about "let's launch it in a week, this has gotta be ready to make money once it launches, users are expecting it in a week, you just spent a whole week coding and I don't see any changes or updates...".

Kudos to KateRay for taking the reigns; I sincerely hope she/he finds as much joy in programming as I have and do. I also know that in the future, she/he will be more technically literate for a serious programmer to actually be interested in working with her/him.

My only con about this post, as hinted at above, is that it makes out what we [programmers] do to be: "yay I've read the RoR book now I can program!"

If you have a technical company, certainly become as familiar with that technology as possible. However, recognize that it takes a lot of talent and experience to become a great developer, and if you don't have it already you are unlikely to be able to magic that up on your own just by doing a few tutorials. The best way to acquire that skillset is to buy it, with money or equity or both.

Edit: note that attaining a reasonable level of skill in technical matters will pay huge dividends, especially in hiring. There are currently no objective measures for determining developer skill. The better your technological chops are the better you will be at determining the skill of potential employees / co-founders. Making sure your startup is populated by the most skilled engineers can make all the difference between success and failure.

As a qualified professional, who would you rather have a meeting with?

a.) Someone who says they have a 'killer' startup idea but no technical ability to execute it.

b.) Someone who has an idea and has already executed a working prototype of that idea for you to check out.