

ASK: How much input should a tech co-founder have on the business - mzbridget

This is directed to tech co-founders. How much activity do you put into your business outside of coding? Do you actively recruit users? Do you take part in the pitch decks? Do you network to find employees? Do you conduct market research? Do you help with product roadmaps and business roadmaps? To me, a tech co-founder should be much more than a coder but I'd like to have some input on this.
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CGherb858
Shore answer, yes.

Are you a co-founder or an employee? Everyone's first job is to sell. So yes
to recruiting, yes to pitching, yes to recruiting, yes to researching the
market, yes to roadmaps. And in reverse, your biz co-founder should be helping
you get the correct development tool licenses, supply you with photoshop
designs, get hosting deals, etc. Think about deciding what cloud hosting
you're going to use? This isn't about just technology because this decision
shapes your COGS.

Quick Anecdote: When Google was hiring their first vp of marketing, the
interviews were attended by their original vp of engineering. When the vp of
marketing was hired the vp of engineering insisted that he split an office
with marketing. This allowed for frequent communications between the two and
gave them an advantage when creating products. Google's products were always a
combo of engineering and marketing.

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tonyarkles
There's two sides to this, from my point of view.

The first answer is: yes. Absolutely. Every "founder" really needs to be deep
in the nitty gritty of the business. There's absolutely no point in investing
a pile of time into technology that isn't going to be driving the business
goals forward. A technical co-founder who has no interest in the direction
that the business is going really is more of an employee than a co-founder.

The second answer is: yes, but with a balance. Here's a situation that's
pretty easy to imagine: together, you have a fantastic idea for a product that
will require a PILE of technical work. You're working away on getting an MVP
ready to demo to investors or to beta users. In that case, how much effort
should the tech co-founder be putting into the pitch deck, compared to effort
that could be going into developing the product? That's a balance that you'll
have to figure out together.

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mzbridget
Yeah, nailed it. Its a tough trade-off and a really good reason why there
should be 3 co-founders.

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hkarthik
Of the things you listed, they are all reasonable for a tech founder to do.

The key difference is that a tech founder should timebox all of these
activities to make sure the majority of their time early on is spent building
the tech that powers the business.

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davidhansen
My role _as an employee_ is technical leadership and architecture. I also
write code and deal with some low-level administration tasks, just by virtue
of the fact that it's still a relatively small company.

But _as a board seat and shareholder_ , it is my responsibility to concern
myself with the overall direction of the company. This means I work with the
other founder and executives to formulate strategy and make decisions on
matters that have nothing at all to do technology.

These are two separate roles, as far as corporate governance is concerned.
There is the possibility for conflict, but this is unlikely.

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mzbridget
Very well put. I needed this explanation.

