
Technical Co-founders Are Overrated - mode80
http://lederhosenlabs.com/2011/05/31/technical-co-founders-are-overrated/
======
jonnathanson
This is a great, concise story.

To me, the most valuable insight in this article isn't that a non-tech founder
needs to get super-technical. Rather, it's that he needs to demonstrate a
willingness to do everything he possibly can. _That_ is the secret sauce. It's
not about being able to talk shot for shot with a super-techy coder. It's
about not being the kind of person who throws his hands up in the air and sets
limits to what he can or can't do, or will or won't do. Being a successful
entrepreneur means doing _anything_ and _everything_ it takes to get to
success. And it's a serious red flag when the co-founder, from the get-go, is
already broadcasting that he's setting limits for himself (such as not even
attempting a prototype).

So big kudos to you for posting this. This is awesome and inspiring.

~~~
palish
_"Being a successful entrepreneur means doing anything and everything it takes
to get to success."_

I think the world would be a healthier place if we didn't place so much ...
_emphasis_ ... on the idea of "do whatever it takes to succeed". Just look at
what Airbnb did to succeed, for example.

~~~
temphn
Given the choice between a world without AirBnB and a few emails to Craigslist
users about a better service, most rational people would vote for AirBnB to
exist. The ends do justify the means. Just be sure your ends are defensible,
and be prepared for blowback if you get too many people clutching their pearls
in feigned outrage.

~~~
mattmanser
Because AirBnB have cured cancer? Or was it prevented genocide? Or something,
like, worthwhile?

Most rational people don't give a flying toss whether Airbnb existed.

It's pretty obvious the ends did not justify the means. They're a reservations
website, wake up, sniff reality and stop drinking the koolaid. Is it ok the
aggravation they've caused to small business owners and the total lying. And
that's ok because they did a few cereal packets once? Because they're
'naughty'?

~~~
erikpukinskis
I won't defend their marketing practices, but I don't give a flying toss if
they've made it harder for small businesses. The market changes, old
businesses die and new ones are formed. Or are you one of the people who think
we should subsidize old businesses so we don't "lose jobs" or whatever?

As for rational people caring wither Airbnb existed, I'm pretty rational and I
think it's great. They've enabled a lot of microbusinesses. People who have a
spare room can rent it out and make some extra cash. It allows people to
travel more, and still make rent. It allows people to rent out space in tough
times to make extra cash. It allows people to find cheap places to stay when
they can't afford a hotel room.

I think it's done a lot of good. I'm confused where your negativity is
directed. Are you just angry at them for spamming Craigslist?

------
diego
Good post, but I would change the title. It's not about technical co-founders
being overrated. It's about how it's a good idea to make yourself technical
_enough_ if you are a business person who wants to start a company based on a
web application.

~~~
mcs
I agree. A technical co-founder with no business sense would likely be
inclined to disagree with business decisions made by the CEO, thus causing
friction internally and hindering productivity.

~~~
Shenglong
Wouldn't you think, a business co-founder with a technical co-founder would
mainly stick to their strengths?

~~~
jarin
In my own experience, if the trust is there that's exactly what happens. When
there are disagreements, both parties can at least start with the assumption
that the other person probably knows what they're talking about.

~~~
Shenglong
On an old project of mine, my friend said to me "I don't know why you think
that'll work, and I don't agree at all... but somehow you seem to always be
right about these things"

I guess it's pretty silly to start a big project with people you don't trust
though.

------
richcollins
_After a few months I had a prototype and it actually worked. The application
screen-scraped data, stored it in a database, presented it to the user, and
then submitted data to an external system._

Much better decision than hiring someone that could do it in a day.

~~~
irahul
Not sure if you are being sarcastic, so I am taking it as you were serious.

There are arguments both for and against taking a few months to do it yourself
when someone could have done it in day.

He invested his few months and now he has the credibility and experience to
implement the prototype himself, talk to technical founders, manage
contractors and see through bullshit.

On the other hand, if this was all his prototype was, he could have paid
someone hourly rate to build it and then launched early and improvised. He
could still have learned on his own time - he would have saved a lot of it by
trading it for some money.

~~~
jleader
It also depends whether that "few months" was solely spent learning the
technology, or whether it was also spent iterating on the concept. It could be
that if he'd hired someone, he'd get a prototype of his initial concept in a
day, but then have a harder time iterating because he didn't really understand
how the prototype worked.

------
ehutch79
I think the reason people crap on business ops co-founders, is because most of
the time they don't want to be co-founders. Unlike the author of the articles,
you see a lot of mba types who don't respect what coders do. So in the end,
they don't want to give their 'technical co-founder' equity or sometimes even
a fair wage. That's assuming we're even beyond the business dood's idea being
making a 'facebook killer'

~~~
willaku
Its too bad this divide between technical and business folks exists. That's
mainly what bugged me about the process and why I wrote about it. In the end I
think it comes down to the personality or more importantly how personable the
business or technical person are. -Will

~~~
FrojoS
So I have a question here. What makes you 'a buisnes guy'? Your skills or that
you majored in buisnes [1]? Or to ask in another way, would you have missed
something if you had majored in engineering?

Anyway, great blog post. Loved it!

[1] My assumption!

~~~
willaku
Great question, and I'm figuring this out as I go along. I majored in German
and was a consultant for 12 years. Though I learned some coding skills I know
that I can never be the technical person, unless we had a much longer time to
build the product. An option that doesn't work financially and given the pace
of things on the web.

~~~
ehutch79
I think the fact that you took the time to learn how to code sets you a field
apart from other potential co-founders.

The situation is kind of a mirror of the whole designers that refuse to learn
how to code thing. If you look, even if they don't do it, the designers who at
least learn how html and css work turn out work that is leaps and bounds
better web design. Likewise, business type people who learn how the technology
they're building their business on, run companies that are leaps and bounds
more efficient and potentially leaps and bounds more profitable. (not to
mention that much better to work with)

------
scottkrager
The video for his startup is awesome:

<http://flexmint.com/>

Although, I wonder if Mint might have some issues with the domain/name.

~~~
FrojoS
Agreed. Awesome video. Was that made before the prototype?

------
eekfuh
As a technical co-founder myself, I first read the title and thought "Oh,
cute... look at them trying so hard!" but then I read the article and it has
some good valuable information,.

Sidenote: I should share this to everyone who tries to get me to join their
"$1b idea" companies and the ones willing enough to follow that article might
actually get somewhere.

------
ares2012
I think the article is best summarized as "Don't let the lack of a co-founder
hold you back". No matter what your expertise, the farther you get with your
idea on your own the more likely someone will join you.

I do think the idea of "learning to code" to start something is pretty silly,
just like the idea of "learning to sell" is pretty silly. Yes, you can learn
them while starting a company but the process will be painful. Get advisors,
mentors and possibly job experience in areas where you are weak instead of
burning your precious start-up time on learning something new.

~~~
jarin
I don't know if I would consider learning how to code a waste of time, as it's
highly empowering to be able to just take a weekend and bust out a prototype
of some random idea whenever you want, without bothering your developers who
are likely hard at work on more important, mission-critical problems.

Not to mention it gives you a better understanding of the foundations of your
company and might even get you some bonus points from your technical team (as
long as you don't start messing around with their code).

------
arunbahl
Great post. I want to call attention to Will's first comment from Josh Strike,
who articulated what I'm thinking pretty well.

(Doesn't seem like I can link to it, so I'm pasting - and truncating, so I
encourage you to read his full comment):

Most coders are autodidacts. The ones without a DIY ethos drop out pretty
quickly. Frankly, the reason the tech side feels free to give the business
side a lot of crap -- other than the fact that you guys make more than we do,
in mysterious ways unimaginable to us -- is that the business heads tend to
lack that DIY drive to figure it out for themselves. Basically, wasting our
time with things they could google, or learn to do, if they were as diligent
as we are being (and we, being paid less to do more, feel a right to gripe).
But you don't sound like that; actually, you sound like you took the hacker
mentality and applied it to business, which is what we'd all like to do. SO,
bravo. The fact that you did that is great. Don't rest on your laurels (or
your co-founder); keep improving yourself.

[...]

The most important thing to remember if you're going to delegate -- whether
it's hammering nails, making pizza dough or writing code -- is that the guy
with his hands in the pie has the power to demolish you if you don't
understand what he's doing. And lives by the sweat of his balls. So buy him a
beer...and never consider anything to be magic. If you do, you've just put
yourself in the dangerous position of not being able to fix it when it breaks
down.

------
michaelpinto
If you're looking for a "code monkey" that isn't a technical co-founder. In
fact I'd say if you're even looking a CTO with shares that still isn't a
technical co-founder. To me a technical co-founder is someone with vision as
much as hands on; the first person that comes to my mind is The Woz — or Ub
Iwerks for Disney. Someone like that teamed with an evil genius biz person or
creative director can conquer the world.

------
navyrain
I'd go so far as to add that the business guy having a modest amount of
technical chops will make getting that technical guy easier, make getting
funding easier, and make the creation of the product easier.

This is the Right approach.

~~~
twog
I agree with this. You dont need to be a software developer, but enough
knowledge of a programming language(s) will make raising funding and finding
partners easier.

I think the biggest roadblocks occur because a non-technical founder doest
have the knowledge to properly hypothesize and test his business to practice
theories.

------
freshfunk
In any startup, founders have to play more than one role. Ergo having a strict
business person and strict coder isn't great.

What's better is if you have: \- A product person who's done product
management, product marketing, user experience and design. Ideally they have a
CS background and can understand technology. \- A technical person who's a
generalist and can code things up from front to back. They should also have
some sense of front-end design as well as product.

BOTH needs to have some business sense.

By having product/technical overlap, they can work together to create an
elegant solution both in the product sense as well as the technical sense. By
both having business sense, they can create a product that fits a business.

A business person with no sense of product is not a cofounder because they
can't scope anything out. Just having ideas and describing a solution by mouth
or pointing at another website and saying "do this" is not cofounder material.

A coder who needs to be told exactly what to do for anything and has no
feedback or insight on the product/business is also not a cofounder.

These aren't hard and fast rules but is my conclusion based on my entrepreneur
experiences.

Great product/business people are more than just ideas. Great technical people
are more than just "coders."

------
astrofinch
Despite the title, this guy _does_ seem to assume he needs an experienced
technologist as a cofounder. Can someone explain what the value a really
experienced technologist adds is? (Additionally, can that value be provided by
a first employee rather than a cofounder?)

(Context: I'm a journeyman-level technologist, trying to figure out where the
point of diminishing returns for becoming a better one is.)

~~~
biot
It's possible to build a very slick-looking prototype that uses Microsoft
Access as its datastore. While the Access UI is arguably easier for a
businessperson to mock up databases with, it's unlikely to survive beyond a
handful of simultaneous users.

A competent tech founder will inherently understand issues of scalability,
security, data structures, and so on. By applying this knowledge, you can
iterate faster and not have to stop for a costly rewrite because the site was
crushed by moderate traffic, leaks private data, was hacked, etc.

Given that you're going to want to get the technology right _before_ you
launch, it's generally the role of a founder to tackle these issues. The title
"founder" implies a certain level of equity participation beyond that of an
employee, but it's all arbitrary anyways.

------
zhoutong
I agree with most part of this post. However, I think this article gave us an
idea that a business co-founder who neither knows technology nor has the
determination to learn technology can't succeed easily in today's context.

I don't think it's about overrating or underrating, it's just that technical
co-founders don't want to work with people who haven't even tried to pick up
the technologies. No one can say which one is more important, technology or
business, because both of them are important.

Therefore, saying that technical co-founders are overrated is a bit
irrelevant. We can also say that business co-founders are overrated because
technical co-founders can pick up the business skills as well?

The world needs both aspect of skills. No matter they are overrated or
underrated, both kinds of co-founders need to know at least basic
understanding and sense about each other's.

------
krisrak
Good post, I hope all the non-technical / idea guys read this and learn
coding, much better than pissing-off technical guys by saying the usual "I
have a great idea, it only needs coding, if u sign NDA, we can get this
started"

------
dorian-graph
For my exam revision (university) I've been reading about the history of
computing.

In general what happened with many (Pascal, Leibniz, Schickard, etc.) is that
they had an idea yet the current state of technology and skilled workers was
not adequate.

So, many of them learnt how to do build their ideas themselves. They learnt
the necessary skills. From the textbook:

".. he designed his first machine and contracted some local workmen for the
construction work. An unworkable instrument was duly delivered. As many were
to find after him, having a good idea was not enough, one also had to master
the arts of tool making and engineering."

------
liquidcool
I have a friend that has done pretty much the same thing, although he hasn't
found a tech cofounder yet.

My recommendation to the business types is to spec it out. Even if coding is
beyond you, using something like Balsamiq to create a prototype that you can
workshop, usability test, gauge interest in, etc. is a big help. Even if you
can't convince a techie to join you, they'll be more likely to help point out
the parts that will be easy or hard to implement, which can help define your
MVP and estimate startup costs if you decide to outsource it.

------
capdiz
Before you learn or when your contemplating to learn how to program its best
you don't tackle programming as a whole. Get the basics first then start work
on an idea you might have. Its suprising how solutions will stream in fast
because you have a well defined problem in your mind no matter whether the
idea is a desktop or web app. The best way to learn is to work on a real
problem a few days after getting the basics. The hardest part isn't getting
the answers but defining the problem at hand clearly.

------
fragsworth
Most technical mistakes that a non-technical founder can make will involve one
of two things: Scalability, and maintainability

Lacking knowledge in these two things will not hinder an early startup website
much, so it's easy to go ahead and build something without expertise in these
domains.

The only thing that sucks about these situations is that once your company
takes off, the engineers you hire will be left to maintain/fix the mess that
the non-technical founder made - which can be quite miserable for the
engineers.

~~~
FrojoS
Or rebuild it in the background with a second 'team'. I know that people warn
about rebuilding your product in the early stage. But in such a case, why not
start from scratch one more time? Seems reasonable, if there is a user demand
already and the first version didn't take very long.

------
localhost3000
Good post. The fact of the matter is that, these days, learning to code well
enough to make a web site/app is not hard, it just takes time and
determination. I've gone through a similar process - my motto has been "learn
as much useful stuff as possible" e.g. Rails, Ajax, jquery, image editing,
design principles, wireframes, mockups, git, sass, haml, mobile frameworks...
Have a good idea AND be useful from day 1. That should be the goal. It's what
I'm working toward, anyways.

------
MatthewB
This is amazing and exactly what I am doing. I kept thinking I need a
technical cofounder, and I still wouldn't mind having one, but that doesn't
mean I can't become a technical cofounder myself.

I took the same route. I picked up a ruby on rails book and just started
building. I have experience with C++ and Java, but I haven't done any major
coding in a couple years. I'm now building out my idea and it feels great not
to have to depend on someone else to drive development.

------
gigantor
The title is a bit misleading, but I constantly beg for non-technical
colleagues to have any sort of application modelling skills. MS Paint Web
Mockups, Excel, PDF Forms that save to an email 'database', anything that
gives a clear picture of how things work. Huge bonus if the mockup actually
functions. You don't need to invest in time learning Ruby or .net since the
end result is communication.

Actual execution is where the technical cofounder comes into play.

------
pdenya
Link bait much? Story ends with him getting a technical co-founder.

------
johnx123
Summary of this thread: PG and YC screwed everyone's conscience--that doing
"anything" to get success is legal:-(

