

The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup? - sthomps
http://futurephilanthropreneur.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/the-age-old-question-can-a-non-technical-founder-run-a-startup/

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mark_l_watson
I know someone who is non-technical and does startup Internet businesses. His
lack of knowledge concerning software development is a real problem, but he
guts through it. The biggest problem is one of trust: if you are not yourself
a developer you don't appreciate why on rare occasion it can take a while to
track down a bug, and other normal software development scenarios. A friend of
mine has a way of explaining this to non-techs: "You are going fishing. Tell
me exactly when you will catch a fish." :-)

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sthomps
Hi Mark,

First of all, I must say, your website is very impressive. I would love to
chat with you about AI at some point. You are correct about the non-techs
understanding and empathizing with the developers. I am a non-technical
founder myself, that's why I wrote the post. I try my best to understand the
processes and problems that the tech team goes through. I try and learn as
much as possible in order to not be in the dark.

I also like the fish analogy :D

~~~
mark_l_watson
Thanks. BTW, my telephone number is on my web site - I'm available to talk,
preferably in the morning (Arizona time)

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rdl
I think a domain expert can be a stronger founder than a programmer, if it's
the right kind of domain. You either need to know what needs to be built, or
how to build it, to have a chance (ideally, you'd know both)

I'll bet with 99% certainty a non-programmer cannot run a successful
programming tool startup, though :)

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kansando
Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Peter Thiel (Paypal), Mark Pincus (Zynga)

I mean is this even a serious question?

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nanospider
These guys can't. They're over 40 and we all know that unless you're
20-something you cannot do anything startup-related.

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100k
I think non-technical founders have a harder time building a profit-based
company (like 37signals or Plenty of Fish, his examples) because how do you
get a programmer on board to build the thing if you can't pay them?

Imagine the job ad: "Wanted: Engineering Bitch."

[http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/02/startup-lessons-for-
the...](http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/02/startup-lessons-for-the-
protofounder.html)

~~~
hga
In my harsh experience in trying to recruit programmers for companies or units
run by a non-technical types, the pay is a trivial detail. Most of the really
good people just don't want that scene, most especially if he's their direct
report.

There also tends to be a really big issue with finding the first techie for
the company, in most cases in my experience it was done through networking or
the good type of nepotism (e.g. a brilliant younger brother who was just
graduating from EECS at MIT and who turned down a good offer (IE when it was
the very best browser, something he'd worked on in summer internships) to work
for the startup).

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samd
Here's a better test: if you listen to people who tell you what you can't do
you probably won't be a good founder.

~~~
hga
What do you do when a programmer tells you "this can't be done" (perhaps "...
with these resources", including time)?

You're sure to find _many_ others who say "no big problem!"

Which do you believe? The wrong answer can be very expensive either way.

There's a reason why _very_ few '7-80s superminicomputer companies survived
the advent of multiprocessors and trying to get their operating system(s) to
work reliably with them.

In that case, it was "this will be hard" vs. "not too hard". In most cases,
the B team got the nod, and all was well ... until customers with machines in
the field started complaining how their shiny new systems would sporadically
crash. And the B team couldn't find the problems (or at least very quickly),
since among other things they hadn't invested enough in instrumentation and so
on. Some companies were lucky enough to get a chance to hire third team who
could do it, but I think in most if not all of those cases the company was too
injured and too late with a good solution to survive.

ADDED: I should probably qualify this with "it depends a lot on how hard the
problem is". I'm used to the domain of hard technical problems because that's
mostly how I made my living before retiring. And one advantage of them is the
barrier to entry they pose to competitors.

After all, we're here because the problem of developing a really good (easy to
use and so on) web shop development system is _hard_ , something where using
secret alien technology (<http://lispers.org/>) can make a big difference, and
did.

~~~
samd
There's a difference between asking someone else to do something and doing it
yourself. Don't listen to people who tell you what _you_ can't do.

~~~
hga
Do you mean what " _you_ can't do" as "you are not capable of this but others
are/might be"?

Yeah, that has much less weight, although you might want to drill down and see
why they have that opinion. E.g. Edison could not do in a practical way
electronic distribution because he didn't have the math (calculus) needed for
polyphase AC, which is why we're all using Tesla's inventions (with a modern
special case exception of _very_ high voltage DC interconnect lines).

I.e. a "you can't do this unless and until you master X" is worth listening
to. On the other hand, the founder of Motorola didn't know or pay attention to
the conventional wisdom that coils? (inductors) had to be big, so he went
ahead and made the first really practical car radios.

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davidw
If it's an "age old question", then it must mean no one has come up with a
satisfactory answer despite a lot of data? That would seem to indicate that if
the answer is not a firm yes or no, then it is possible. The post, however,
says "no".

~~~
sthomps
It seems as if there is always a debate as to whether this is a yes or no
question. In the post, I say "no" to startups and yes to scalable startups. I
think that this topic is subjective and hard to define as yes or no.

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necrecious
Why was Plenty of Fish used as the sole example in this article? It makes $10
million in profits a year and would take 100 years to make the $1 billion in
profits that he require for a startup to be considered as a "scalable
startup."

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vaksel
\+ PoF is no longer adsense based, he is running his own advertising and
selling premium accounts.

Actually I've recently read an article that basically questions PoFs claims.
It was a few years old, from when he was still running adsense...but basically
it raised one question..."if plenty of fish is as successful as the guy
claims(still had that 10mm/yr number back then)...why isn't he an adsense
premium publisher?"

Basically it implied that the only reason Plenty of Fish took off, was because
the guy lied his ass off early on when he was making a few grand a month,
saying that he was making millions, which got him a ton of coverage which in
turn eventually got him more users, which in turn led to the $1mm/yr number.

And that even now the numbers he is putting out for consumption are nowhere
close to reality, and is just a way for him to get more free marketing.

~~~
sthomps
You never know, that is a distinct possibility. If the numbers are relatively
correct, then it is a different way of doing business. If not, then it is
another case of trying to get marketing any way he can.

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mixmax
Of course a non-technical founder can run a startup. Just look at Richard
Branson. Or some of the many startups in greentech, biotech or anything else
not directly related to the internets.

However, I don't recall any startups without a founder that has some flair for
sales and marketing succeed.

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sthomps
Thank you. I agree 100%, that is why I wrote the post. I didn't reveal it too
much in there, but as a non-technical founder, there are ways to make it work.

~~~
mixmax
Absolutely.

The way I see it is that there are a number of ingredients involved in
successfully doing a startup: Marketing, sales, finance, people, luck,
ambition, domain knowledge, etc. You can be weak in one area but then you'll
have to compensate in other areas to make it up.

I know a very successful founder of a tech company (yearly turnover 8
figures), and he has no idea how to hack. But he does have acute people
skills, and he's brilliant at sales. He was also lucky that he got into a
domain that had a lot of possibility.

I also know a guy that's a brilliant programmer, but his projects never go
anywhere. He doesn't know how to sell his product, and he's afraid of giving
up control. The inevitable result is that noone has ever heard of him or his
company.

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sthomps
Those are great examples. There are a multitude of things to do in a company,
and everything has to work in unison. I also think you write a very good blog,
the posts are great.

~~~
mixmax
Hey thanks :-) It's not updated as as often as I'd like though...

