

An idea for non-technical co-founders: try a service-first business - mrbogle
http://benogle.com/2013/03/25/an-idea-for-non-technical-founders-service-first-business.html

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pytrin
This is a good approach for non technical people, no doubt. That is if it
really suites their skillset.

 _As a non-technical founder, you are likely good at building and maintaining
relationships. You are probably good at selling things. You might be great at
framing, so people buy into your vision or get excited about your ideas. These
are amazing, difficult-to-acquire skills._

Unfortunately, too many non-technical founders do not have those skills. Many
people believe that an idea and "hustle" (working hard, being persistent) is
enough. Now they just need to find people to build it, people to market it,
people to sell it. They have this great idea! the rest will just fall into
place.

The OP saw teams that made it through the YC process. Likely, those are not
your average non-technical founders. If you do have those skills, then for
sure - this is great advice.

~~~
mesozoic
If they are non technical and don't have the hustle and flow skills then what
exactly would they be bringing to a startup generally?

Assuming of course it's not money cause money solves most problems.

~~~
josephlord
Potentially domain knowledge, contacts, access, name...

Whether they are what is required will depend on the situation.

~~~
argonaut
Contacts/access/name are useless if that's the primary skill someone brings.
If you are an intelligent engineer, a few months in the Bay Area will get you
contacts with investors. A great product will also get you contacts and
access.

Domain knowledge _is_ useful, however (i.e. a lawyer at a startup doing online
legal documents).

~~~
johnrgrace
Contacts/access/name is about more than investors, in some industries that's
what you need to reach customers or suppliers.

~~~
argonaut
I put that under "domain expertise."

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helen842000
This post made me really happy. THIS is the kind of encouragement that 'non-
technical' aspiring founders need. Less of the "if you can't code you don't
have valuable skills" attitude. I have a blog post sitting in draft form that
has scarily similar advice to this based on my own experiences, however this
describes it with some really inspiring YC examples.

I started working this way at the start of 2012 and all of my projects since
then have been far more popular/successful and more pleasing to work on. This
is because I'm fully in control of project progress, I can see things through
to launch, pushing the limits of my coding skills and bringing my 'concierge'
MVP to life.

For those looking for technical help with a project longer term, don't forget
that by starting this way you're stripping back and leaving pure technical
issues which allows those with technical skills to clearly see where they
could bring value which makes offering help very interesting.

~~~
amarghose
More importantly most non-technical founders (my past self included) have a
habit of bringing very little to the table. With this kind of approach there's
a clear value that both the technical and non-technical people are
contributing.

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edanm
This is GREAT advice. And not just for non-technical co-founders - this is how
I would start almost _any_ business, if I didn't already have money in the
bank and my goal was to have a close-to-sure economic success. (Btw, Technical
founders I would urge towards starting with a consulting practice as a way of
getting a) money and b) business experience.)

Another benefit that isn't mentioned in the article: this gets you money in
the bank from day 1, making you a lot less reliant on giving away equity to
VC's, with all the good that implies. And honestly, if all you need is a
technical person to help you scale after you've already got some money in the
bank, you can always pay someone to do it - saving you even _more_ equity.

------
drsim
Absolutely spot on. I would even extend this to developers. Why take a week to
build a way to automate something that takes a human half a day when you don't
know if anyone is ever going to pay for it?

I don't remember the company, but I was inspired by a fresh fruit+veg box-
delivered-to-your-door founder. He made all the deliveries himself to start
with rather than building a grandiose delivery platform or hiring.

I started my B2B company the same way. Initially I copied and pasted my code
into customers sites. My 'ordering system' was just a PayPal express checkout.
Zero backend. Man was it dull. But as a developer I knew I could automate 90%
of what I needed to, when I needed to.

Now it's completely automated apart from support. Meaning my notional margin
(cost of sale being my previous contracting rate) is at 85%. And I know I've
just written the code I needed to so as to not do the mundane manual tasks
anymore.

~~~
sigil
> I don't remember the company, but I was inspired by a fresh fruit+veg box-
> delivered-to-your-door founder.

Could it have been Manuel Rosso of Food on the Table? He was the "Concierge
MVP" example from Ries's book. They started by meal planning for a single
family. If I'm remembering this right, he and his chef co-founder walked the
grocery stores each week looking for the best food values, then drew up the
week's menu...for that one family.

<http://www.foodonthetable.com/>

It worked, and they automated things as they scaled.

> I started my B2B company the same way... Now it's completely automated apart
> from support.

It's great to hear this. A film industry friend and I started a company last
year with a very similar approach, but we're earlier along than you are. So
far so good!

~~~
drsim
Ah, it could well be the Food on the Table guy.

All the best for your company!

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pault
I think this is excellent advice for developers too. We often get caught up
tinkering with code because we enjoy it, when we should really be looking for
an off-the-shelf or non-technical solution. If you can validate your ideas
with nothing but google forms and manual email, all the better.

~~~
mooreds
Definitely. All too often, I'm into building what can be bought (often bought
for $0). I'm a developer because building stuff is fun, but it isn't always
the right choice for the business.

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jenntoda
Good points. With the abundance of services like Wufoo forms, Shopify, Weebly,
and other "make your stuff without code" products out there, it is easier now
than ever before to pull together a MVP, even if it means to take care of
things behind the scenes manually. See how nastygal.com made it big with a
humble start from an ebay store.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/technology/nasty-gal-an-
on...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/technology/nasty-gal-an-online-start-
up-is-a-fast-growing-retailer.html)

~~~
jonathanjaeger
An in-depth interview with PandoMonthly:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y04gnM57Sow>

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zevyoura
>In practice, when I was attending meetups, I did not meet a single non-
technical person who had done any of this leg work. I would have taken them
and their idea very seriously if they had.

This is why I've stopped attending meetups that aren't specifically targeted
towards devs. It's a shame, because there are many interesting people at those
events, but every time I go to one I get sick of explaining why I don't want
to work for startup X or be represented by recruiter Y.

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mgkimsal
"I did not meet a single non-technical person who had done any of this leg
work. I would have taken them and their idea very seriously if they had".

In the last year I've met more than a dozen such groups. Of those, _2_ had
actually done some legwork on their own - one had attended a tradeshow showing
nothing more than a powerpoint and had collected some leads. (initially, that
was impressive). Another had done a lot of exploratory work, and when I asked
them to do XYZ, they actually did it and gave me the results from it.

In both cases, I've extended a bit more of my time to work with these people
in hopes of getting the project to a point where we might work together long
term. In one case, we simply parted ways because the vision was shifting a lot
on his end - no focus. In the other case, that team has actually called it
quits - they had simply underestimated the time and effort involved in making
it work, and I appreciated the halt vs dragging it on for months on end.

But _rarely_ do I meet groups or people that have done any significant legwork
at all - they're the typical "idea man/woman", and just need someone to "make
it work".

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bsimpson
I studied entrepreneurship at USC, and this was one of the big lessons. It's a
whole school about startups from a non-Silicon Valley POV, and the point they
drill home more than any is to get out and validate your concept in the market
as early as possible. Talk to people in your target audience before investing
in building a product. Every class in the program requires interviewing
25/50/100/etc. "strangers" in your target audience.

In fact, USC's online graduate program for education started this way. They
were trying to decide whether to do it or not, so they put up a landing page
with a broken buy button and bought AdSense against it. When they realized how
many people were trying to buy, they decided it was a market worth satisfying
and built the program behind it.

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mooreds
As a tech person involved in a small company (not a startup), I can vouch for
this reality, because I see it every day. The tech I bring to the table is
very helpful, but the service side of the business is core.

There are tons (tons!) of businesses out there that can be made to scale,
optimized or otherwise improved through technology, but can be proven out with
nothing more than a wordpress blog (or other free, non-custom infrastructure).

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timedoctor
I'm a non technical co-founder and am building a combination of a serviced
based business and technology business.

I think this article is spot on for most people. A lot of very successful
businesses can be started with a wordpress blog and very little technical
capability.

A business based around the technology itself is a highly risky venture. I
would argue it's a lot lower risk to first develop a business without much
technology, build up your customer base and then gradually build technology to
automate more aspects of the business as you go.

PayCycle purchased by Intuit for $170million is an example of this. They
started doing the payroll for businesses completely manually. Literally
writing out checks etc. Then they gradually automated each step of the
business.

For most businesses it's a better strategy to build the business first get
customers and then build the technology second. Technology startups where you
build the technology first are the exception not the rule.

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stretchwithme
Even the search engine, cited as an example of something that must be
implemented to be useful, is something that was once done manually.

In the movie, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, Spencer Tracy's character calls
his secretary and asks her to check out his prospective son-in-law. Today, we
would just ask Siri to do it.

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knwang
I would say this is not only for non-technical co-founders, but even for
people with technical skills, starting with service, but the type of service
whose value is not measured by hours. Then just come up with the engineering
to automate said service. This approach has several advantages:

1\. You will be working with real, money paying customers from day 1 - right
there you are ahead of 90% of startup projects.

2\. You get to work your customers to understand their pain points, needs
directly, without annoying them - they will actually be delighted that you are
trying to understand them better!

3\. You have revenue coming from day 1.

4\. When you launch your product, you already have a group of people in your
target audience, with whom you hopefully have already eared trust.

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hacker_beta
Well written article and as a non-tech founder with experience starting a
business, you nailed it. I started a company that I didn't know anything about
prior to starting and if it wasn't for a lot a lot a lot of hustle I'd be in a
much different place then I am today. It's great to have my own office,
employees, and take care of personal finances from the revenues my business
generates. The reward is great. But the hustle never stops. Actually that's
the most exciting part of the business. Is waking everyday with a mission and
being solely responsible for the success.

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swombat
_> I graduated from YCombinator a few months ago ( S12 Easel )._

Anyone else bothered by this view of YCombinator as a kind of university
programme?

I may be wrong, I have only met a few YC founders and they all seemed like
nice, smart people, but it seems a bit off-colour to treat the mere fact that
you've been through the YC programme as some kind of "graduation".

Maybe I'm just being grumpy or something... It's certainly not a big deal...
but something just rubs me wrong when I read that sentence...

~~~
krschultz
I think it's meant to be a training program that you graduate. Military guys
will tell you when they graduated A-school or what ever is applicable. Welders
graduate from vocational school. "Graduation" is applicable for any training
program, not just university.

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TimPC
I mostly agree. I just want to specifically say for the games example that as
a technical person, I'm willing to work with someone who will prove the game
in the real world as a pen and paper game that can be much easier as an online
game. Admittedly graphics heavy, programming intensive games I'm less
interested in working with a game-designer as a co-founder but for something
that's mostly a single screen app it's interesting.

~~~
TimPC
And no, I'm not available, I'm quite happy where I am, I'm just saying there
are plenty of good real world independently designed board games that could be
turned into better online games.

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lukethomas
Loved this article - non-technical people should learn how to SELL. There's no
point in building something unless you have money in your hand first.

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spencerfry
The premise of do what you're good at is great. However, even the non-
technical examples listed still require quite a bit of technical knowledge
(accounts, management, payment flows, notifications, etc.). The good thing is
that these are fairly simple processes nowadays and can be picked up within a
few months of studying.

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OnyeaboAduba
As a non technical founder I liked the article. Many of the ideas in the
article are similar to things discussed in the book The Lean Startup by Eric
Reiss . I think PG is a big fan of the way of thinking as well so the fact
that the article was written by a YC alum isnt surprising.

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aganek
Fantastic approach. Great post.

My takeaways: (1) Look for unconventional ways to create a MVP (2) Hustle is a
very valuable asset to a startup. For startups with high hustle-to-technical
ratios, they may consider building a culture around hustle rather than code.

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bigsomar
This is great advise. You have an idea, tell it to technical person (you do
not learn to code, lazy), make the idea a 'technical' challenge (focus on
wrong thing) and get stuck in 'technology creates a market'. Create a
marketplace and use technology to scale it.

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entangld
Good advice. Wish it was a little less condescending. I'm a marketing type who
can code (more) now.

There is a vast amount of knowledge one needs to learn just to be a beginner.
I don't blame so many idea people for trying to find shortcuts.

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hef19898
Seriously, this is one of the best pieces of advice regarding the founding of
new businesses i read in along time. And very encouraging, too. Especially for
non-tech guys like me!

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namenotrequired
I think you hit the nail on the head. Very helpful article - I have passed it
on to my less technical co-founder as an idea for our approach. Thank you.

