

Ask YC: Can a startup entrepreneur not be a coder? - deltapoint

I am very interested in startups and business and its components (sales, marketing, finance, legal aspects, innovation) but am not into coding and hacking and so forth. So I am wondering if there is room on start ups founding teams for business people?
======
SwellJoe
Yes. But you might have a hard time convincing technical people that there is
room in their tech startup for a non-technical person.

~~~
cmm324
Lol. Very true. I am a coder, but on my startup I am not coding. It is because
my partner's skills far surpass mine at programming and my skills at online
marketing, sales and pr outweigh his. So I am focusing on branding and
awareness while he focuses on the nit and gritty code. It is a great
relationship. But we are also best friends and have worked on projects
together in the passed.

~~~
SwellJoe
That's pretty similar to my startup. When we're both working solely on code,
he outproduces me at least three to one. I've written plenty of code in my
life, and I still write quite a bit of code, but my priorities are mainly
support, packaging, documentation, marketing, website maintenance, etc. while
he builds the products. Mostly those are still technical skills, however...and
when we bring in a third person later this year (not really "founder" status,
but plenty of equity and a salary), it will be another technical person to
help off-load some of the support and handle some of the ongoing UI and design
work. Though I may hire a part-time assistant to deal with the books and such
before then, but no serious equity will be involved. The fourth real hire will
be an enterprise sales person who will see mainly commission-based
compensation with some equity so that the long-term health of the company has
some sway on their decisions. Those hires will probably come pretty close
together.

But every company is different. Companies building much smaller web apps that
require a lot more marketing, sales, PR, and evangelism than ours does could
probably make use of a non-technical person much earlier in the process.

------
gscott
Building product awareness is a full time task and so is programming.

------
iamelgringo
Ask Guy Kawasaki.

------
dennykmiu
I think technical skills are highly over-rated, whether it is programming or
mechanical design. The most important ingredient for a successful startup is
an insight into a set of problems experienced by a large enough population of
potential customers that are currently unsolved and that they are willing to
pay money to relieve the pain, even if it means that they might risk their
career buying from an unproven startup. If they have identify such an
opportunity, you can find technical talents which are highly interchangeable.

~~~
symptic
I disagree. My toughest problem is finding people I am comfortable with in
terms of their technical ability.

~~~
dennykmiu
This is exactly my point, that technical people are interchangeable. Your
problem is not finding technical people but technical people whom you are
comfortable with. In another words, the selection criteria here is not their
technical ability (which there are plenty) but their compatibility with you.
Again, none of these matters unless you have a good product idea.

------
bootload
_"... Can a startup entrepreneur not be a coder? ..."_

Yes. Mitch Kapor was underestimated and you can use this to your advantage. He
was seen as a novice non-tech in his Startup, recognised this & profited from
it. Read about Mitch Kapor ~ <http://www.kapor.com/bio/> and I've written more
about this here: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2296168310/>

~~~
SwellJoe
How is Kapor a non-coder? He was writing software throughout all of his early
endeavors. He didn't outsource development of Visiplot and Visitrend.

I'm having a hard time imagining how Kapor could possibly be considered a non-
technical/non-coding founder. He may not have gone to school for it...but most
of us didn't learn to hack in school (if you didn't know how to hack until you
got to school you obviously don't love computers enough to be a hacker).

So, sure Kapor hired additional developers, and his genius probably lies more
in his dealings with other people than computers, but he was clearly a hacker
from very early on, and one certainly can't hold him up as an example of an
entrepreneur without any technical ability.

~~~
bootload
_"... How is Kapor a non-coder? ..."_

I'm not trying to say he has no technical ability. I'm saying that in this
case an Entrepreneur succeeded in spite of what is considered by many to be
the prime requirement of Entrepreneurship. The current mantra is, _"if you are
non-technical, give up"_. If anything, Kapors success came more from his
insight into human psychology than the his technical ability to code ~
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2348902846/>

------
tonyvt2005
If you've really got a handle on the business side of things and you're a
great people person, I'd say yeah.

Even if you're not actually coding, you can provide ideas and feedback.

------
izak30
Yes. Your startup doesn't _have_ to be in tech. We have two founders, me
(tech, business, sales), and kasey (graphic designer (UX), marketer, sales,
evangelism, business, etc) And that's just how it works us, and we're in tech.

------
a-priori
In my case, there was room because there's a significant non-technical
component to the business. So, my co-founder is a business person. She handles
that side of the business, and I do the technical.

------
eusman
yes, if you have connections and an idea that comes from your experience which
could be crucial for success, but joining an existing team maybe it's harder
if there is not even a product yet...

