Founders who can't code

An advise to founders who can't code

If you are a business/idea guy and looking for a technical co founder, stop. Stop right now. Take 6 months off and go learn how to code (day and night, weekends including).

Most web apps do little besides save, show and update data. No, You will NOT become an engineer, programmer, or web developer, but you will be able to put a prototype of your idea together and maybe get one or two beta users for feedback. At this moment it will be much easier to recruit a technical cofounder.

The reason why most technical cofounders can create great products is not because they have a deep domain knowledge or they are great hackers. The reason is (beside passion for the problem) their cost is time. Your cost is money. They can spend one year working after hours to create a product. Can you pay someone for one year to create a product? They can fail 23 times and still find time to build their next idea. Can you convince your best friend to work on your 4th idea, when the previous 3 failed?

Here is the thing, 1 year from now, you will still have plenty ideas. But are you going to have ideas and the ability to implement them (or parts of the solution), or are you going to post one of those "Revolutionary Disrupting Idea with potential to make millions. Need Someone to build. Will give 15 % of revenue".

Stop and go learn. Worst case scenario, your future technical founder will respect you for trying, and you in return will truly appreciate their skills.

Note 1: If your idea is to build something truly technically challenging, then scratch my advice.

Note 2: Off course all the above would mean little if I wasn't the marketer/business/idea/support/whatever guy who spent the past few months learning. Email me if you are learning, maybe we can keep each other motivated.

I've gotta say I really do disagree, the reason we do business/idea/marketing is because that's what we ENJOY and are PASSIONATE about. I believe that that's what's most important, being passionate, and enjoying what you're doing.

And frankly, I can only code for so long before getting bored, and losing interest. But when I'm marketing, brainstorming partnerships, and discussing potential leads with a company -- i'm in my element, and loving it. I never get tired of it.

Instead of taking time off to do this, I'm doing it on the fly while my startup is up and running. I fought this fight for just about 2 years, outsourcing much of our web development during that time. And I don't regret outsourcing - it can get you up and running faster than learning, especially if you're building something that borders on complex. But in the end, we really needed to start bringing things in-house, from both the standpoints of protecting our IP as well as enabling us to become more nimble in terms of making changes on the fly etc.

We haven't completely weened off outsourced web development, but I can now see a path to get there, and it all started by learning how to become more self-sufficient.

I don't think the standard CRUD web app is necessarily what will make an exciting startup. That would more likely be some new twist.

Also, I can feel with business types who say it doesn't make sense for them to learn coding. In a way I am in a similar situation, as I am constantly extremely hampered by my lack of design skills. Should I try to become a designer? I admit to trying now and them (decided today to go through the inkscape tutorials, bought the occasional book on design), but honestly, odds are very low that I'll be able to compete with real designers. And the graphics design takes away much needed time from coding.

I don't want to sound harsh, but that's at least in part because talk is cheap - everyone enjoys talking and brainstorming, but at some point you have to put your head down, get your hands dirty, and get through that last 10% of work that invariably takes 90% of the time.

There's nothing wrong with what you enjoy doing - it's very valuable to have someone good at it - but there is a difference between a good sales/marketing guy and a good founder, just like there's a difference between a good programmer and a good founder.