

Non-technical founders from zero to profit? - faitswulff

Are you or do you know of any non-technical founders who have gone from a concept to company?<p>Put differently, how do you start from zero (connections, employees, funding)?
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hkarthik
I have worked for a company with two non-technical founders that built a
$1.5-2 million dollar business over the course of 10 years.

The first founder had a wealth of specific industry knowledge (Insurance
Denials management for physician practices) and the second founder was the biz
dev genius who had built and led large sales forces at previous roles in
Healthcare IT.

The two of them ran the company with only one technical contributor who was
actually a contractor and only came on full time as CTO nearly three years
after they first started.

In my conversations with them, it seems that they succeeded due to the
following:

1) Hitting upon an untapped, but highly profitable niche with little to no
competition very early on. 2) A strong early sales team that quickly learned
how to sell the product effectively. 3) Getting lucky with the first technical
contributor being dedicated, talented, and highly efficient with limited
resources.

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faitswulff
I'm reading this as:

1) Market, 2) Sales, 3) Hires, which is great. But how do you find that first,
incredible technical contributor?

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hkarthik
Like I said, there was a lot of luck involved with finding their first CTO
that carried them to the first 2 million in revenue.

Unfortunately for him, he was let go after 10 years and didn't negotiate
enough equity to be comfortable afterwards.

Stories like that are all over the place and it's one of the reasons a
dedicated, incredible technical contributor is more likely to start their own
thing than hitch their wagon to someone else who might screw them over in the
long run.

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massarog
I fit into this category. Put it this way, it takes time, hard work,
persistence, more time, and money. The first version of my site was nothing
but a wordpress blog. I eventually hired someone to build the version that I
had mapped out on paper, and it now is 3 years later and very profitable :).

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wallawe
I'd be interested in hearing more about this. Would you mind telling a little
more and linking to the site?

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manasnutcase
Basic Web Technology - PHP/ Ruby on Rails or ASP.Net is not that difficult to
learn. It may be a good idea to know the basics. I am not a pure techie and am
building a web app. It took more than a couple of months to find the right
techie. In the mean time, I outsourced development on ODesk so that there is
some momentum by the time I build my own tech team. Now we are almost at the
verge of launching our first app. It is certainly do-able. Takes a little
longer and costs a little more. But in any startup, the cost of building the
first iteration of the product is not the most significant. But you absolutely
must have clarity on what your product is and who is going to use it.

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damoncali
I know several. They're doing quite well. They sold stuff, hired people to
build it, and in a some cases, raised money. It's really no different than it
is for technical folks. It's trickier because development costs more, but it
can be done.

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wallawe
I am in the process of trying to do so right now. The most important thing
I've learned after about 5 months (2 weeks pre launch now) is that you should
learn about the "technical stuff" as much as you can along the way. You don't
even have to learn how to do everything, but being fluent and knowledgeable
about the various languages and programs is a huge plus.

