

Finding a Technical Cofounder - jorde
http://alexeymk.com/finding-a-technical-co-founder-slides

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joshklein
I think all these "learn to code" messages to MBAs get it wrong. It should be
"learn to think like a developer". An MBA should be able to determine the
screens his software might display (thereby specifying the functionality and,
loosely, the UI), then build a prototype in powerpoint if he must (heaven
forbid)!

Technical cofounders: if an MBA can't even build a clickable prototype in his
native language of PPT to sell you on his idea, run. Not because he is
technically incompetent, but because he is an incompetent salesman.

But, more to the point, the concept that all you need is business acumen (MBA
founder) and technical acumen (technical founder) is unbelievably wrongheaded.
You need domain expertise. If you don't have it, you're probably working on
something any bunch of monkeys could make, MBA-type or technical-type
included.

Don't skip the part of the pitch where you have to say "why this management
team can successfully execute this idea." That's what the investors say they
look at, remember?

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inuhj
The question I ask myself is why would you want a non-technical founder to
learn to code if they will never write production code? The encoded message in
most of the replies fall in to a few categories: 1) to understand the
technical feasibility of their vision and 2) as a way of showing initiative.

#2 is what code jockeys want to see and the natural way for a coder to measure
initiative is in lines of code. What non-technical founders don't seem to
realize is that you can begin building the product without writing code: \-
Make a landing page. \- Do A/B testing on marketing and company names. \- Talk
with customers. (this is huge) \- Weigh the pros and cons of different
business models. \- Tied in very closely with the above but plan features. \-
Do everything BUT the code.

In other words, execute.

~~~
j_camarena
True story. I made my landing page .. Learned html and css from zero for
that... I got enough clients to be profitable that way and also got selected
for startup chile.

Im now trying to learn python. Much much better than waiting for miracles

~~~
itmag
Wow, that's inspiring!

I compare with myself: I am a quite good coder and I have lots of ideas, yet I
feel stuck for some reason. I'm gonna try to borrow from your can-do ethos :)

~~~
j_camarena
Thanks! i will need some coders for my startup on the near future, feel free
to send me a tweet (@j_camarena) if you want to talk or just keep in contact
:).

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rwhitman
I never see posts on HN from the perspective of "I'm a technical founder with
an idea and a product, and I need a non-technical co-founder who can pitch,
market and sell it".

~~~
nikcub
that is because most tech people think they can do sales, marketing and ops
while non-tech people know they can't code.

~~~
davidhansen
Not that I've seen. Most technical people I know are aware that they lack the
requisite sales skills.

What I have seen, however, is a _moral_ judgement about the relative merits of
what skills the founders bring to the table. Specifically, I have known many
technical people who perceive sales and management as of lower value than
technical creation. Consequently, they privately scoff at the notion that the
person doing the "hobnobbing", "gladhanding", and perceived-to-be-commodity
sales activities gaining equivalent equity or compensation as themselves.

Out of their sense of "fairness", some of these people go it alone or hire out
rather than seek an equal partner in their endeavors.

I know this sounds highly anecdotal( and it is ), but I've seen it enough that
I suspect it's at least somewhat widespread.

~~~
invalidOrTaken
I've seen this too, and it hurts all parties. But I can sympathize with the
tech guy---sales and management are other words for value extraction. How is a
technical person to be sure they're not the extractee (i.e. getting screwed)?

I think the best answer is what mguillemot suggests---a tech cofounder should
learn a bit more about the sales/marketing/deal-making side. He can then gain
a better understanding of what the sales guy does, how hard it is (or isn't),
and he'll be more respected by a career salesman, just as an MBA who knows how
to code is much more trustworthy to the average technical person.

------
ravikalaga
Thanks Alex. I gave up after trying to find someone magical for 2 months and I
now have a demo site with a fake back-end. Slogging through Ruby on Rails and
I realized this is really fun and not very different from solving puzzles.

Great deck. You are being generous with the one green stick dude.

~~~
AlexeyMK
Glad you found it useful! Credit to David Tisch for making a room full of Penn
entrepreneurs raise their hands. Made the point better than I ever could.

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trustfundbaby
This is a small thing, but its huge for me. As a technical guy, seeing that
the entrepreneur has actually tried to code gives me the re-assurance that
they'll actually appreciate my contributions when I come on and not just think
that throwing instructions over the wall for me to build will even be remotely
okay.

For example, I want a guy that knows that I'm using a nosql datastore and why,
even if they can't write a query. Someone smart enough to grok things enough
that it'll be tough to bullshit them unless you're skilled at it
(bullshitting). That way, they'll have some shot of having things continue to
run okay if I get hit by a bus or am otherwise unavailable for some period of
time.

------
HSO
> Co-founders are looking for competence and traction

You could boil it down to this and scratch the "technical" in the title.

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apollo5
I sat awkwardly around for a year and courted two technical co-founders..the
first left to take his dream job with one of the valley hottest start ups. The
other decided his own project took precedence, for good measure..its a good
one.

But there I sat. Idea fleshed out..and I was ready ready to sell it.

I finally finally took option 2. I understand code and can manipulate
wordpress enough to get by, but it certainly isn't my strength. I searched
forums and reached out the top commenters and contributors of one in
particular. Out of the 3 folks I connected with 1 was a fit. In four hours, he
had the previously crafted code live on the net for us to refine.

I plan to be to market in a couple months and could not be happier. I enjoy
paying my developer exactly what he wants and look forward to making him a
partner sooner than later, if he wants.

The proof is in the pudding.

------
zsherman
My vote is for the learn to code approach.

~~~
AlexeyMK
As a Computer Science TA (and author of this post), I'm just not sure learning
to code is a one-size-fits-all approach. Some of my favorite founders (Evan
Reas at LAL, Joe Cohen at Coursekit) are not technical, and it's _just not
their thing_. It remains to be seen whether things like Codecademy are going
to open the possibility of coding for more people, but still - to each their
own.

~~~
Hrothgar15
This is exactly right. People don't choose their passions; their passions
choose them. Specialization is a Good Thing.

~~~
zsherman
Fair enough, Steve Jobs serves as a prime example for this. Wozniak was a far
better engineer than Jobs. I guess I should have elaborated, you don't need to
be a coding ninja to run a startup but I do honestly feel that a solid
understanding of coding and computer systems is essential for any tech
entrepreneur.

~~~
inuhj
Steve Jobs could code. He was a technical founder.

~~~
coderdude
Can you show me where that's written somewhere? I never heard Steve Jobs coded
and his Wikipedia page doesn't seem to mention it.

~~~
inuhj
Jobs had a hand in making event loops standard programming fare, and was there
when Apple and NeXT pushed languages such as Objective-C and Dylan and various
software frameworks, and decided to cease supporting others. - <http://lambda-
the-ultimate.org/node/4372>

I can't find the link but I also read about Jobs going on a tirade to his
employees about some aspect of Objective-C while at Apple.

Another case supporting him as a technical cofounder(although not a
programmer) is when he worked at Atari on 'Breakout'. From wikipedia: "The
same year, Alcorn assigned Steve Jobs to design a prototype. Jobs was offered
US$750, with an extra $100 each time a chip was eliminated from the prospected
design. Jobs promised to complete a prototype within four days. Jobs noticed
his friend Steve Wozniak—employee of Hewlett-Packard—was capable of producing
designs with a small number of chips, and invited him to work on the
hardware."

Jobs may not have done the job himself but he was clearly working in a
technical position at the time.

------
mmcconnell1618
I often hear that non-technical founders have a hard time finding hackers and
the hackers have a hard time finding a good sales/marketing co-founder. I
think these two groups just live in different circles. The middle of the venn
diagram is where both groups need to be to meet. Just get out there and go to
events not-geared toward your tech/non-tech skills. Most people aren't
comfortable being uncomfortable but that's what you need to do to grow (and
meet people outside your current orbit).

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grunar
I'm apparently the green guy. Yay. I still lean towards someone who's got a
good sense of the technology. Someone that labels themselves as non-technical
has already missed the point. I love learning business, there's nothing I
don't want to learn about running a company. I think any founder should feel
the same way, especially about the technology. Learn to code or at least learn
to read the code.

------
gbog
Reading these comments I am reminded a thought i had sometime ago. It was that
in a not so far future computer languages may well but so easy that they would
be taught to everyone, at school, along mathematics and French.

Working with python recently I think it could be the closest to that aim. I
have a friend who taught python to his 13yo boy, i plan to do the same with
mine.

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helipad
I'm a non-technical founder but I decided to teach myself PHP (via
CodeIgniter), jQuery, CSS3, how to play with LESS CSS, Amazon S3, source
control and countless other small things.

What I learned from using 'race to the bottom' oDeskers is that if you're
going to be a non-technical co-founder, you better at least be sure what it is
you're asking for.

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itmag
Why isn't there kind of a "dating site" for this? Ie, take me as an example: I
am in Sweden, am technical, and am interested in meeting a business co-founder
with whom I can get to work on an e-learning startup (btw, if anyone is out
there, get in touch).

Someone should create a site with that kind of granularity.

(Yay, HN posting cherry lost!)

~~~
helipad
There have been attempts at such sites.

From experience though, they tend to fill up with "need technical co-founder
to build app/social networking site. Don't want to mention what it is in case
someone takes idea. Have mockups and list of other sites I like" type posts.

~~~
itmag
Maybe there could be a voting system to prevent this? Ie like halfbakery.com
uses

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AznHisoka
If you can't find a technical co-founder, you gotta narrow your business idea
to something that doesn't have a huge technical focus. Something like
DailyCandy... Start a newsletter, build a mailing list, build the content,
talk to advertisers, and outsource the HTML and design. No need for technical
co-founder.

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davidwparker
Great slides. This really resonates with the experience I've had recently too.
I'm a grad student doing a dual-degree MS in CS as well as MBA. A lot of MBAs
don't really "get it" when I talk to them. I'll be sure to pass this along.
Thanks Alex.

~~~
AlexeyMK
Glad you found them helpful! I really need to write the actual article version
of this talk.

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pedoh
Does the reverse (finding a business cofounder) also apply? What resources do
you recommend a technical person gather (beyond things like Rework, which I
grok, and Four Steps to the Epiphany, which I need to reread and try to grok)?

~~~
AlexeyMK
Honestly, the odds are so skewed in your favor that the only thing you need to
do (if you're happy being the tech guy) is meet quality business co-founders.
Let it be known that you're available. Go to meet-ups like Hackers and
Founders. Go to founder-dating events. Build a cool sample app and post on HN.

Business guys will seek you out (at least, they do for me) - assuming you can
hack, you're that one guy in green.

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jules
Are many non-technical people here here looking for a technical co-founder?

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ruski4050
Awesome slides. I think this is one of the hardest parts to launching
something. It's hard to find someone that is aligned with you as well as
someone who you can trust enough to start a company with.

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deepkut
Fellow Penn student, I was there for Tisch's talk--well done. I agree
entirely. Build, build, build. And if that's not possible: learn, learn,
learn.

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Mz
I'm not looking for a technical co-founder. I'm not even planning on starting
a company per se. I am looking to try to figure out where to start with
creating a "game" (aka simulation) to more effectively share what I know about
getting well. So far, I remain stuck (though that's partly because getting
well continues to take up a lot of my time and energy).

:-/

