

Finding a technical co-founder (words of wisdom to non-technical people) - msencenb
http://mattsencenbaugh.tumblr.com/post/18562452717/finding-a-technical-co-founder-words-of-wisdom-to-mba

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ethnomusicolog
I don't think this goes far enough. To illustrate my point I am going to take
the extreme case. Let's say you have a genial leader, with great skills in
sales, manageman and business in general, a real hustler, with great taste, a
world changing vision and a practical plan. This is our ideal MBA ( a rare
bird). On the other hand we have a bright technical guy, with no talent for
business matters. This point is important because the more rounded the
technical founder, the less he sees any value in the MBA guy. In this ideal
setup, even with a perfect starting position for the MBA guy, there is no
rational reason for the technical guy to enter the partenership. Because for
the whole initial phase, when a product at the center of the company must be
created, the technical guy is 110% of the company. Whatever the talent of the
biz guy, they are yet to be proved. Just to give an example, as far as we can
tell, the RDF of Steve Jobs would not have made any difference, if he couldn't
convince Woz to cofound Apple. Not just any engineer, but someone able to hack
his way around hardware and software limitations. Remember Folks, Jobs had to
cajole, even beg Woz to join him. And I am not even taking into consideration
the fact that Woz had far more rewarding, more stable and technicallly
challenging, options available right away, whenever he wanted. My point is the
biz guy, at the founding moment, must convince the tech guy of giving him 50%
of his company. Any particular tactic can be used, enrolling the tech guy's
girlfriend might do , but if he loses sight of his "strategical" position and
its inherent disadvantages, he reduce drastically his chances to close the
deal. P.S: Since then the situation has not gotten better for the biz guy. (
cf facebook saga)

