

Founders aren't programmers = doomed ? - snowbird122

Neither my business partner nor I are coding our web application.  We are paying others for programming, graphics, and server work.  We both have full time jobs and more money than time.  I'm an ex-programmer, and he is a product manager.  There are lots of examples of successful startups where the founders were the original programmers.  Can you give me some examples where that wasn't the case?  Do we have a better or worse chance of making it than if we were 2 programmers?
======
mechanical_fish
The line between an ex-programmer and a programmer is pretty fluid. Just open
your resume in a text editor, delete the first three characters in "ex-
programmer", and your doom will be averted!

Even better, open a file in your text editor and type

    
    
      puts "Hello, World"
    

or, for more style points,

    
    
      (setq my-triumphant-return "Hello, World")
    

and, voila, you're a programmer again. At least by the standards of many job
applicants.

Of course, by "ex-programmer" you may mean "I used to know how to program, but
now the code that our programmers show me is completely opaque and I have no
idea what it does or how it works or whether it harbors lots of hidden bugs."
In which case... you are probably doomed! ;)

------
whacked_new
Not doomed at all. Less chance than programmers? Not even. I know a product
manager-ish person and he leads projects from proposal to finish for his
company. He reads a description, drafts a spec, and scrutinizes every step.

The advantage of being a programmer yourself is that you have intimate
knowledge of what's not possible, what is, what limitations there are, and
what approaches to take. If you know enough of the whole plan, leave the
details to others. All you need to know is what you want to do and _exactly_
how to do it, not as in "we will do a POST XHR here," but "the user submits
this, and we will look for this keyword, and they will see that." If you can
write a good spec, you're good to go.

------
trekker7
No way are you doomed. I don't remember who it was, but a wise person on this
forum posted the phrase "there is no one path" in response to another post
like this.

However you may have to play to your strengths... if your Web application is
doing something deeply technical, and you need deep knowledge of
algorithms/data structures to make critical feature-level decisions, you're
probably at a disadvantage. But if your product isn't too algorithmically
flavored, and a lot of the work involves coming up with the right features for
an end-user application (business software, greeting card maker, productivity
suite, etc.), you can definitely kick some ass, if you have great knowledge of
your target users.

Last thought: make sure you completely trust your dev team, or do a thorough
job with verifying the quality of their code.

------
papa
Jeff Bezos? Mark Cuban? the guys who founded bluemountainarts, Stuart Skorman?

Though I'll admit that many of these are either online retailing enterprises
or internet/media type companies.

But clearly, there are successful examples on both sides of the fence.

------
sonink
I think it might be a good idea to get a good programmer as an advisor to your
startup. Give him a small stake like a percent or two and get him to verify
your software outsourcing plans. I think the bigger problem here is the doubt
that you will not make it incase you dont have programmers as founders. You
might or might not , but that will only depend on you trying and figuring
things out - it might be the case that for your domain you absolutely need a
programmer on board (or not) - but there is no real way to know as such.

Getting a programmer on board will help you with figuring out things faster
than you would otherwise have done - atleast on the programming part.

~~~
Hexstream
Only a percent or two of stake for a mission-critical programmer advisor?!
You're crazy.

------
aswanson
It depends upon how technical what you are planning to do is. New e-greeting
card company? You might be OK. Scalable distributed computing utility? My
moneys on fail.

------
marrone
The guy from the "4-hour work week" book advocates outsourcing everything you
do. I wouldn't say your chances are out the window, but it would depend on
what your application is. If you have a vision that can be completely laid out
without getting into technical details, then you are probably ok I would
guess. Whereas if your business is the technology itself, it my be harder.

------
nside
When you _really_ need to get something done overnight, which is common in
startups, you'll have to pay extra fees. And no contractor gets to the small
details, or gets the whole picture.. Would you open a garage without being an
engineer/mechanic? I doubt.

------
paul
Digg, I believe.

~~~
arn
yep. digg was outsourced.

~~~
ojbyrne
Though they didn't actually tell me that I was an "outsource" rather than a
"founder" till later. In fact they never really told me that at all, just left
me to read the press.

~~~
ojbyrne
Oh, and just to complete the thought, I would say that non-programmer founders
are far from screwed.

~~~
deltapoint
Just wondering, what are you up to these days after digg? I would imagine you
could utilize the notoriety you gained from digg to create an app development
team. Something to the nature of electricpulp.com ...

~~~
ojbyrne
Messing around mostly. The problem with outsourcing now is that I'm in Canada.
I could charge exactly the same in C$ as I charged in 2002, and Americans will
pay 50% more. Unless I can target a european audience, and then you get into
the language issues.

I've been helping a friend with his site, learning lisp thanks to the bad
influences here ;-), and trying to create an interesting website. The last one
is difficult.

Thanks for asking!

~~~
deltapoint
Why is it difficult to create an interesting website? You created digg and
that, I must say, is a very interesting website. Also how could I contact you
about possibly having you work or partner on a possible project? It is an
interesting website!

------
bkrausz
You can be an ex-programmer? As I see it it's a mentality, you can't really
lose that.

------
edw519
Doomed? Of course not. Better or worse chance? Probably worse.

You can leverage your resources by paying others to do lots of stuff, but
doing the core work of the business? I don't know. The reason most successful
software startups are started by hackers is because they do the core work,
keeping their fingers on the throttle of the business, and outsourcing that
which can transparently be done by others.

You don't mention your business's the key market differentiator, but if it's
tech related, you're in for a bumpy ride.

Put another way, would you start a law firm if you weren't a lawyer, a beauty
salon if you didn't know how to cut hair, or a restaurant if you didn't know
how to cook or serve? Probably not. Some do, but...you get the idea.

I'd give you an example of a tech firm started by 2 non-techies, but frankly,
none comes to mind.

~~~
alex_c
Well, he did mention that he is an ex-programmer and his partner a program
manager, so the tech knowledge might be there.

~~~
staunch
The biggest risk with having _some_ technical knowledge is the knows-enough-
to-be-dangerous syndrome. There's a common tendency to interfere and second
guess. It can make for a hellish experience for the person doing the actual
technical work. Nothing is more pathetic than repeatedly hearing things like
"It will take you 2 weeks?! I could do this in 2 days!".

I think it's far better to have people who are deeply knowledgeable about the
field being worked in. They'll be useful in figuring out what to build and
less distracted by how it's built.

------
snowbird122
First off, I want to thank everyone for the ideas. Just so you know, the
problem we are having isn't a technical one. I feel that our application isn't
getting 'the love' it would get if I wrote it myself. Our service providers
rely on us to find problems instead of being proactive. To summarize - there
just isn't the sense of ownership that drives quality. The problem isn't going
away, so that is why I thought we might be doomed.

~~~
zealog
I really think this is the key point and problem. If the people doing the
heavy lifting aren't either passionate about the product or actually using it
on a daily basis, you will suffer.

I don't think you're doomed, but as a programmer, I've both had startups and
been brought into ones that have been outsourced. In my experience, those
little things, the fit and finish, just aren't there when the people building
them are in it for the paycheck.

At the risk of sounding cliched, it's kind of like the old adage about people
who are fighting for their home vs. a paid soldier. You will get a lot more
fight from the guy defending his home than the mercenary.

------
pwakman
The second question that pops to mind is: Can you give relate the success of
the startups to the programmers/founders being "good" or "bad programmer" ?

------
Hates_
I'm struggling to give some examples. I don't know if either of
lastminute.com's founders were coders, but even that isn't a "great" example.
There is no reason why your project can't be a success technology wise, I
would just say it's important to at least have an understanding of the
technology and the process that goes into development.

~~~
DarrenStuart
google, Microsoft etc :p

~~~
DarrenStuart
so I get down modded for giving examples.... I know its not cool to moan about
down modding but at least people could give a reason.

------
vegasbrianc
It is good until your programmers run off with your idea and you have not seen
one line of code.

------
bokonist
Constant Contact was founded by a non-programmer ex-Bain consultant. They're
public now.

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

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=136649>

------
earle
that should be:

Founders aren't programmers == doomed

silly.

~~~
wheels
I thought this was a lisp hangout? Shouldn't it be:

(doomed (= founders programmers))

:-)

~~~
aston
It's an Arc hangout. = is for assignment.

------
mixmax
Being good at execution counts much more than being a good programmer.

There are examples of this everywhere, Amazon, Ebay, Digg, etc.

------
rob
Carson Systems/Carsonified

------
tim2
money+non-programmer vs. broke+programmer

I'd say it's a draw.

------
ken
NeXT?

