
Why You Don't Need A Programmer - bendingoutward
http://thinkopen.ly/post/20095389300/why-you-dont-need-a-programmer
======
fleitz
If someone hires me to write something for them I write that for them, if they
ask me for advice I give them advice. I don't get into arguments about how
their idea won't work, or call them 'stupid', I charge them my rate for the
work they ask me to do and I thank them when they pay me.

You think the guys at the general store in 1849 told the gold prospectors that
they were stupid and would lose their money? Or do you think they smiled, told
them about the guy who just discovered millions in gold, wished them luck and
sold them tents, picks, and levis?

~~~
SatvikBeri
That's _not_ the point of the post. The OP is saying that a lot of would-be
entrepreneurs are vastly underestimating the amount of work involved in
creating the actual software, and that the would-be entrepreneurs need a
technical cofounder rather than an employed programmer.

To use your analogy, this would be more like the store owners telling the
prospectors, correctly, that they would also need to find legal help to
protect any land they found, security to keep them from getting mugged, etc.

~~~
etherael
I think OP's point to this is that doing that would not be a good business
move. I don't believe that in the canonical scenario simply telling the party
in question that things are much more complicated than they can possibly
imagine and expecting them to accept that is realistic.

I have been a part of projects where first day in discussing the basics of the
project the entrepreneur in question has the design "95% complete" which then
after the first four hours fluctuates somewhere between 0-20% complete. And
all these numbers may as well be randomly chosen for how much of a relation to
reality they have at any rate.

Sell them the picks and tents, let them figure it out themselves. When they
come back to you with their problems and ask for advice they will finally
actually be listening to reason without thinking that their individual case is
an exception to the rules and you're just trying to drain their precious
equity.

~~~
noduerme
So very right. This is why I charge by the hour and refer clients who don't
like it to India. They come back eventually, defeated, but you know they're
worthless dorm room hacks. Some of them will end up on wall street, and a few
of them might eventually find jobs where they actually have to work to,
y'know, make something. The rest will live on daddy's trust fund. We're towing
_them_ , not the other way around. Screw 'em. Let them beg on the street.

If God had truly blessed these people with big enough brains to come up with
brilliant ideas, He would have given them the capacity to learn, at the very
least, enough PHP or Ruby to build a wireframe. I don't see how anyone who
can't do that could have an idea that would be worth wasting time on.

~~~
saurabh
>This is why I charge by the hour and refer clients who don't like it to
India.

Why don't you refer them to people in your own country? Why India?

------
RuggeroAltair
I think, and maybe here I'm stating the obvious, that a big problem is how
people sometimes think that their idea is the real deal, while the
implementation is just a matter of paying somebody.

I think that most people don't realize that most ideas aren't original, and
that if you think of something, just by sociological statistics, most likely
somebody else has already thought of it.

So what really matters isn't a detailed plan, but a person who builds it well.

Making a very good programmer a technical co-founder is probably the best
move.

Giving away 30% of your startup, but locking in a very good technical person,
is probably going to give you more success than that 30% that you wanted to
keep.

Maybe somebody can point at some statistics, but I feel like that it shouldn't
be difficult to have a rough idea of the success rate of technical founders'
startups vs non-technical founder ones.

~~~
sopooneo
My experience is that usually people haven't actually thought their ideas
through. Not even the parts that are within their grasp to imagine and design.
In trying to implement stuff, or just in preplanning discussions, you as the
programming are always asking, "So what about here? What should happen in this
case?" And then there's a pause making it clear the person has never
considered this, then they throw out an answer like they _had_ thought about
it. But after a little while their answers start to contradict, and their idea
is not even _conceptually_ possible.

------
BadassFractal
To the biz guys here who might think that we're unicorns, I'd like to point
out that there are definitely people out there who are very technical and
would love to co-found with someone more business-oriented.

We generally have simple conditions for that to work: \- you have to respect
our work, because for us it's an art form and a craft, although we do realize
that creating business value comes first. We spend decades refining this craft
and want to take pride in every line of code (even though it might not always
be possible). \- We are concerned that you will treat us like codemonkeys and
it will be a PBH-like relationship, where you'll be asking us for status every
day, while doing little to no work yourself. You won't be able to code and
optimize a large scale distributed system no matter how hard you try. I can
most likely figure out whatever it is that you do with a bit of time and elbow
grease. However, I'd still much rather work on the product, which is where you
come in. \- We're also concerned that you will not understand anything about
how software works, and will still insist on having a large say in the day-to-
day engineering. You'll need to pick one, either you learn fast about how
things work and contribute bit by bit, or you let us run the show where you're
not the domain expert.

~~~
larrys
"while doing little to no work yourself. "

Why that assumption?

Added:

"I can most likely figure out whatever it is that you do with a bit of time
and elbow grease."

Have you? Or are you just assuming that as well?

~~~
BadassFractal
Regarding the first question, I have been burned before by non-technical co-
founders who turned the project into their own little "I want to learn how to
program" experiment, while spending zero to no time actually hustling, talking
to people, getting feedback, finding more early adopters, engineering
requirements and so on. I have learned to be a better judge of character
through that experience, and am much pickier now.

About the second one, I was actually paraphrasing something I heard Max
Levchin state at one of his talks years ago. Not sure how much it's worth,
given his partnership with Thiel.

~~~
bendingoutward
I have another possible explanation for that first question, and I am making
the assumption that I'm not the only person that has had to work on not
feeling this way:

Even though we really shouldn't feel this way, a lot of us developer sorts
wrestle with the idea that we're the only ones ever really working,
specifically in the pure development phase of a project.

Granted, I'm sure everybody feels that way at least once during a given
venture. I've forced myself to stop thinking that way, but it seems a fairly
human thing to think.

~~~
ryanhuff
Already said (far) below in this post, but the work on the part of the
technical team to produce an MVP is often front-loaded, which means that the
technical person (team) assumes most of the initial execution risk. Equity
distribution should recognize the assumed risk.

If the technical person does not execute on the MVP, the idea guy mostly out
only lost time-to-market. On the other hand, if the technical person delivers,
he/she is now "all-in" before the idea person typically contributes meaningful
execution-value towards the business.

Its probably most fair to view the first "execution" contributors (technical
team building MVP) as the first investors in the business, and therefore
should be recognized with more favorable terms (equity distribution). If the
idea person can create actual execution value in tandem with the MVP, then an
initial 50/50 split is fair.

~~~
jasonglaspey
If you have an "idea" person, you're screwed. You need a product person. I
don't know how to code, but I can help with wireframes, customer interviews,
feedback, marketing plans, pricing strategies, partnership opportunities, etc.
The very idea of an "Idea Person" needs to go away and people need to be
accountable to providing value. And you don't need an MVP for the Product
Person to start working. And I use that term very loosely. Because if they
aren't building the product, they should be supporting/defining/selling it.

------
lukeholder
This puts into words very clearly my feelings and experience. I have a friend
(very smart) who graduated top of class MBA. He has a 'co-founder' with him
working on their idea who is also an MBA. They are looking for a coder, and
offered %5-%10 stake in the company for virtually building the whole app and
everything with no salary. Completely warped view of an app/online service
startup.

Of course they would have every right to give me no equity if they payed me
the going rate of 100k year.

~~~
Jabbles
Is that the going rate for a job that has a high likelihood of not existing in
a year's time?

~~~
delinka
I don't think I understand this question. No job you take (in the U.S.) is
guaranteed to be there in a year's time. You might work for a month (being
paid a month's salary) and _poof_ the job's gone - company folded, political
bullshit got you caught in the crossfire ... whatever.

You keep a fraction of your income in savings for just such an occasion. You
add that month to your résumé and move on to the next job that might not last.
This assumes you're not the reason you lost the job, of course.

If you know where jobs with guaranteed longevity exist, please give the rest
of us some pointers.

~~~
sopooneo
The parent's point is that some jobs are _more_ likely to disappear than
others, for example working for a company that seems likely to fail. And when
the risk is higher, the skilled programmer might justifiably require that
compensation be commensurately higher as well.

Too often in discussions of risk management, someone points out that I could
be hit by a bus.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its a very different statistics, the chance of your job being around vs the
chance of the company being around, in a year.

Jobs come and go all the time, even at Dell, even at GM. Rockwell (has a local
plant in Cedar Rapids IA) hires and fires hundreds of engineers yearly, as the
contracts come and go.

------
amishforkfight
Why do the technical people always seem to get the short end of the stick? I
have people approaching me on a monthly basis with their 'great idea' and 'all
I need is someone to code it', and compensation varies from 'money when it
gets big' all the way up to a very enticing 20% equity. After working on a few
of these I now ask for cash up front, no equity. I have plenty of my own ideas
and not enough time to work on them, tvym.

~~~
tomjen3
Heck as far as I can see I can't see the value of the business person at all,
except for whatever connections he has.

Now I am biased, but why would one go into a partnership with a business
person in the first place.

~~~
jordanb
Yeah. I think a business founder looking for free tech work has already failed
the first test as a businessman: He hasn't been able to raise the $40k-$80k in
seed funding needed to build an MVP.

If he can't convince a guy who doles out capital for a living to give him a
tiny bit of it, why should he expect a programmer to front him that value in
highly skilled labor?

~~~
orky56
Alright, let's say that business founder gets $60k in seed funding. Would a
technical cofounder expect that $60k as salary or towards some specific asset
for the company? I don't think that $60k of seed funding is what stands
between a businessman with his idea and success.

~~~
jordanb
I would think he would invest the $60k towards things needed to make his idea
into a business. For an internet company, software development is going to be
a major component, although there are others, like design.

Point is, there are people structured to accept risk. These people include
investors and entrepreneurs. There are other people who provide services that
businesses need, including designers, lawyers, programmers, etc. These people
generally aren't structured to accept risk, they need an hour's pay for an
hour's work.

Because programmers can often be confused as to what role they play in a
business through fast-talk, there's this notion that has developed that there
are lots of programmer/investors available, who are willing and able to accept
risk in lieu of payment.

There are clearly programmers who will accept that arrangement at least once
due to their naivety, but they they generally learn pretty quickly, and I
think it's becoming more common knowledge in the programmer community that
it's an arrangement best avoided.

~~~
noduerme
I think the notion of programmer/investors, as you put it, is mostly wishful
thinking fueled by a basic lack of experience. Until people get burned, they
don't realize that what you can get for $1500 on elance.com will, when it
fails, end up costing you more than what you'd get for $15k from a skilled
developer. If you flip the equation, you could say it's the clients who are
naive until they've actually managed developers a few times and seen what they
can expect for their money.

------
guynamedloren
I thought this was going to go somewhere else. I was totally excited until the
sixth paragraph - the first mention of the technical co-founder. The author
got it all wrong. The main downfall is that, as a non-technical person with an
idea, you aren't just going to go and find a technical co-founder out of the
blue. It's highly unlikely that you'll find a techie who will drop everything
to work with you on your idea in hopes that you will both someday strike it
rich. And if you do find a guy like this, they're probably a bit delusional.

The technical co-founder has to be built in to the core, a part of the
equation from the very beginning. Co-founders (technical or not) have to be
compatible. You can't just go and find a technical co-founder on the street.
That doesn't work.

Now, instead of getting emails inquiring how to learn to program, I'm going to
get emails that say "Hey, I have this great idea but I need a technical co-
founder. I read your blog and I know you can code. We'll be rich. What do you
think?"

------
ajratner
What I don't quite understand about this piece is the motivation for saying
that the biggest value-add would be to 'kindly inform the person that the
correct term is 'co-founder'" (I am purposely trying to keep this comment
symmetrical by leaving out "technical" here...). Why would it be valuable or
even 'charitable' to do this? Them calling programmers 'programmers' or vice-
versa has no negative effect for the named person- IN FACT it has a large
positive one as it marks those people who don't have proper respect for their
counterpart co-founder role. 'Kindly informing' the transgressor of such a
misphrasing is like giving them the secret password without them having earned
it themselves via a proper, self-driven cultivation of proper respect for
their counterpart role.

------
dchmiel
I think this comes into the "You don't find a technical cofounder, you earn
one." category. And trying to get a programmer to build this for you without
even giving them founder recognition or founder shares is absurd. No one will
work for the biz guy who wants to outsource all the work for meaningless
amounts of the company. As a Biz guy, the person who holds the biggest share
of our company is our technical co-founder.

------
joanakoiller
I liked this piece. I'm a designer, not a programmer, but I a lot in this
piece would resonate with designers as well. So many times I have been asked
to illustrate or design something, in exchange for "exposure" - "how great
this opportunity is to get your design out there." One thing that I disagree
on this piece is that I don't think there is a specific formula: that "you
need" a technical co-founder and a business co-founder for a startup to work.
Although programming is obviously a big part of this business, in my view
successful entrepreneurs can come from a variety of backgrounds, and make it
work - it's more about how they can draw from their backgrounds and how they
can learn/contract what they need in order to make the idea fly.

~~~
larrys
Also depends on the particular idea and what you are trying to do. It is
entirely possible to start a business, hire someone to do the "programming"
and make yourself a nice living. Not every idea needs to knock it out of the
park and result in multi millions. And as everyone knows most will not.

------
JVIDEL
I get the point, but there's another side to this:

9 out of 10 of all startups out there are a business method, they don't need
10x engineers to build new technologies, and what they want can be done by a
freelancer using a CMS and some elbow grease.

~~~
patio11
A freelancer capable of "CMS and some elbow grease" has a few attractive
options right now, including building "CMS and some elbow grease" for clueful
clients who will compare his invoices to the change in the bottom line and pay
accordingly, or taking "CMS and some elbow grease" and getting seed funding
for it, or going to one of the numerous companies selling "CMS and some elbow
grease" who are desperate for engineers and saying "I have two years of PHP
experience and have shipped products. You are looking for an intermediate
engineer. How much do you offer?" and then getting offered $120k plus benefits
on the spot.

Periodically, I get a cold lead asking for work. A half dozen recently have
been for Twilio development. The projects are typically not terribly
technically challenging: solving real business problems for money, good ideas,
probably 6 man-weeks on average. I quote my usual weekly rates (in preference
to saying "I know where this conversation is going. The answer is no.") and
regularly get told that a) I'm out of the budget and b) 5~10% of this deal
would make me rich.

I am polite in the emails but, just between us geeks: _that's cute._

P.S. Do you do Twilio development? Need work? Find my email, I'll filter out
the jokers and pass you anyone who sounds serious. Do you do "CMS and elbow
grease"? Pick up Twilio and double your bill rates. Or just double your bill
rates.

~~~
JVIDEL
Sent you an email.

------
Katelyn
I don't mean to discredit the content of this post, but is anyone else tired
of this argument circling around HN like a windmill? (Why you need a technical
X to launch your idea). If the title of this post were (perhaps more
appropriately) titled "Why you need a Technical co-Founder," I don't think
this would have gotten any eyeballs.

~~~
vecter
When I first clicked this article, I thought it was going to be linkbait. I
was surprised to find that he concisely and accurately expressed what I'd been
unable to for the past few years: that non-technical founders shouldn't look
for "programmers", they should look for "technical cofounders". This is after
reading many articles on HN stating the exact same point, just less to the
point. I'm slightly embarrassed because people sometimes come to me asking for
a "programmer" reference, but I've never able to concisely tell them what why
their question was wrong to begin with. The way he phrases the problem
captures almost all of the talking points, and it's the phrase I'm going to
use going forward.

------
ntmartin
Good piece. I've talked with numerous people looking to start a startup with
the assumption that implementation is just a case of hiring a few devs or
outsourcing to n freelancers.

I especially liked the wake up call to developers at the end. Would be very
interested to read any reciprocal articles on why technical founders need a
business co-founder.

~~~
dcosson
Totally agree, I'd love to read a reciprocal piece. I think programmers
(myself included) often feel that a non-technical person can't write a single
line of code* whereas a technical person can figure out enough of the business
and product side of things and make up the rest as he goes along. A lot of
times this works out, but I'm sure there have been many cases where a failed
startup might have succeeded if they'd had a good non-tech cofounder and made
better strategy decisions.

* unless he/she decides to learn to code well enough to hack together an MVP, but that's not what the article is talking about

~~~
kenrikm
A smart programmer can B.S. his way through business. However you can't B.S.
your way though programming and still make it work. The worst possible idea I
could think of is for a non technical founder to try and "hire" someone unless
it is a _really_ simple app. Implimentation > Idea

------
eplace
Some Reasons Programmer Co-Founders Can Be Picky and Elusive

1\. Risk is typically front-loaded for the programmer so they have to be more
cautious. A programmer with no skills is much easier to spot early on than a
business person with no skills.

2\. The "programmer" role can often include many tasks that have nothing to do
with programming. Often times "programming" means UI, UX, server management,
DB management, server-side coding, API coding, website coding, and mobile
development. For really inexperienced business co-founders this role may also
include business card and flyer design, video demo creation, and remembering
the company Wifi password.

3\. 10% equity after doing 85% of the most important work is not a good deal,
especially in a market where you're skills are in high demand.

4\. Quality programming is not a commodity. Programming is more akin to
painting or novel writing. A programmer may have an idea or possibly an
outline to start but when the time comes their still free-styling most of it
while forming new ideas as they go.

5\. Technical co-founders are often willing to learn the business side of
things. Business co-founders typically want nothing to do with learning the
technical side of things.

------
winterchil
This is a tired sentiment in the valley. There seems to be a power/control
needle that swings back and forth between the business people and the
technical people. The truth is you desperately need both.

While we're all familiar with the "I just need a coder..." stories, there are
at least as many coders working on projects that have zero business prospects.
At the moment this is actually the greater sin as technical talents are in
shorter supply so dedicating your (limited) resources to an idea with no long-
term prospects is basically shooting yourself, and the valley, in the foot.
You'd be much better off partnering with a business co-founder and raising
money.

On the other hand, Silicon Valley has a long history of exploiting engineers
and we're all right to be incredulous when working for limited equity and no
salary.

------
daemon13
I am surprised to see this question resurfacing last half year because I think
that the answer to this question was pretty much nailed down by Vinicius
Vacanti in his blog post in Sep 2010
[http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/27/should-you-hire-a-
prog...](http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/27/should-you-hire-a-programmer-
or-diy/)

In short - it depends on the nature of your start-up and the challenges your
start-up is tackling. Depending on those you 3 options:

1\. Find tech co-founder (and don't do start-up w/o such person).

2\. Learn to code.

3\. Outsource the programming.

If your case is #2, then read the guy's post
[http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/13/cant-find-a-
technical-...](http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/09/13/cant-find-a-technical-co-
founder-do-it-yourself/) and some other posts in his blog.

------
redmagnet
I work at a typical web agency and in my experience one of the red flags for a
project is the entrepeneur whose company's success relies solely on the
website that we build for them (as opposed to most of our other customers who
are building a website for an existing company). Hiring an agency to build a
startup is a recipe for disaster. As well intentioned as they might seem, the
agency just can't care about the project as much as a technical co-founder is
going to care. Often when the business model turns out to be crap and there's
no money left, the agency is blamed for building a website that doesn't
"work".

------
adj
I used to be of the opinion that the technical people did all the hard work
and hence they should get the majority of the equity. However, once I tried to
do everything myself I realised that the technical side was only one piece of
the puzzle.

Business, design and marketing may not be as intellectual as programming but
they are no less hard and often more important.

I really think that if two people are involved, the equity split should be
50/50 regardless of the skill set each one brings. If the equity is
unbalanced, the level of effort each founder brings will be too.

~~~
ryanhuff
The problem is that, often times, much of the technical work is front-loaded,
leaving most of the initial risk disproportionately in the technical person's
lap. It's only after an MVP is built that the business side of the operation
has to perform. Equity split should reflect the assumed risk.

~~~
adj
That’s a fair point. However, there could also be front loading in the
business role. Sounding out the market, figuring out who your customers are
and what they want - the sort of stuff that should be done before writing any
code. Isn't that still a significant amount of work?

------
tswartz
This is exactly what I've been experiencing. It's been immensely difficult to
find a technical co-founder so I've resigned to have a programmer build the
basic prototype...

~~~
orky56
Ditto. Business founders need to be able to pitch to investors and customers,
to even garner that initial interest. Since there seems to be an inflation of
technical cofounders' "unwillingness" to partner, there's no other choice than
to outsource development of an MVP. At least with that, you can get customers,
and thus traction. At that point, there's less risk and thus less available
equity for a technical cofounder. Nowadays, it's either you have a technical
cofounder or you don't.

------
ariannasimpson
Very insightful. Originally I was thinking along those lines and trying to
find someone to simply construct what I'd dreamed up. Once I formed a team and
we became equally invested in our work together, things really started to
move.

------
oliverhunt
Are programmers really willing to put together a site for someone else while
the other person has a view to make money from the idea, even if the
programmer is payed at the going rate? what is the going rate?

~~~
delinka
This sounds like you're asking if an employee is willing to work for an
employer who makes a profit off the employee's labor. And that, my friend, is
exactly how business works.

~~~
oliverhunt
So you disagree with the cofounder idea?

~~~
delinka
A co-founder is not the same as an employee. 1) don't make assumptions about a
different subject from the one I'm commenting on; 2) if you actually want to
have a discussion, ask a better question.

------
cateye
What about the money? Most technical people is not looking for a risky
undertaking but want just a determined salary. This is where the conflict of
interests begins.

------
killnine
Is this not arguing semantics? Technical co-founder / programmer / coder /
whatever . Someone who produces software?

~~~
balloot
No, this is not arguing semantics. A contract programmer and a technical co-
founder are two totally different things.

------
Adaptive
Bookmarked for easy access so I can send this out on a regular basis. Nicely
summarized and stated.

------
Zikes
If I recall, the successful Photo365 app was created with completely
outsourced programmers.

~~~
gnaritas
A rare exception to a solid rule; outsourcing your core thing rarely works.

------
stevear
Is there a good place to match non-technical and technical founders?

~~~
mikeriess
Founder Dating claims to do that to an extent, but you have to apply and be
accepted to one of their events.

As a non-tech looking for a technical co-founder, I got fed up with this
search and decided I'd be better off just learning to build and code my
idea(s) myself. It was actually the questions on the Y combinator app that
made me realize that once you push out past the second or third degree of
separation in your social network ("oh yeah the friend of my friend of a guy I
used to work with can code") you're too far removed from this person, and a
co-founder you don't know or can't trust seems like far greater a risk than
investing the time to learn to do it yourself. Plus once you build your first
project, I suspect it gets exponentially easier to make the next and the next
thereafter!

------
bostonvaulter2
Is anyone getting major Déjà vu from this article? I feel like I've read this
exact article before, complete with the linkbait title.

------
noduerme
You know, this post had me nodding in agreement up until the last paragraph:

"Note: I could easily switch this whole article around to all those
programmers that think creating a company is as simple as launching an app.
You’re just as stupid, so start asking for someone to help you grow what
you’re working on, ask for a co-Founder."

No. Frankly, we're not just as stupid. It's not as if just because marketers
can't figure out how to program, the inverse is true and programmers for some
reason _lack the creative thinking skills to come up with new ideas or the
capacity to market their own product_.

Non-technical founders may have some purpose, but to a coder with marketing
ability they're redundant, and worse, in the way. So no, you can't just flip
it around; to say that a programmer who goes it alone is "stupid" is, above
all, a very stupid comment.

~~~
lusr
Let's put it this way. We've all heard of the lone programmer who built
something entirely alone and made a million bucks from it. We've never heard
of the lone businessman whose idea grew legs and programmed itself to make the
guy a million bucks :)

~~~
jasonglaspey
Actually, that's not true at all. I personally am a non-programmer, who've
hired people to write my code for me, and built a successful company that now
employs many people. I _wish_ I had a technical co-founder, for all the
reasons mentioned in this article, but most importantly, that technical
solutions would be solved by someone invested in the company and from their
domain of knowledge. As it is, I have to come up with solutions and ask my
for-hire freelance developer to code it for me. It's been successful, but it
could be so much more.

But, this in no way means that a non-programmer can't go it alone. I have, and
am now doing it. And in the case of the lone programmer building something
entirely alone and making a million dollars, what's to say he wouldn't have
made $4 million dollars had he a non-technical co-founder?

I think your line of reasoning is equally as incorrect as you're implying the
OP's was.

~~~
lusr
The only point I'm making is that a non-programmer has to hire someone to do
the work or learn how to do it themselves (and thereby become a programmer).

In my _experience_ the latter is a hell of a lot more rare than the programmer
learning business skills. Consequently it's far more likely to see a
programmer developing a successful business _solo_ than a non-programmer
developing a successful business _solo_ , so in my opinion you can't just flip
the argument around and say it works both ways.

Note I'm not suggesting that a co-founder isn't important or valuable, simply
that the argument cannot be flipped around; I'm personally looking at
recruiting an old friend once my product reaches MVP because a co-founder _is_
important for some products.

