
What To Look For In A Technical Co-Founder - jasonlbaptiste
http://jasonlbaptiste.com/startups/what-to-look-for-in-a-technical-co-founder/
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newmediaclay
As a non-technical person with two technical co-founders, I found this to be a
great list. Here are a few more from my experience as the non-technical
founder:

1\. The ability to explain things in simple, non-technical terms, even though
the issues are usually neither of that. My company builds really cool things
-- I need to sell those things to keep it alive. Without co-founders who can
help me understand the details and speak at intelligently about our
technology, I couldn't do half the pitches I do.

2\. The willingness to do technical work "beneath them.". It's grand if your
partner is a super talented developer, however, in a startup, they won't be
able to always work on the exciting stuff due to bandwidth, and you'll need
someone who is willing to deign to do some of the not so fun stuff. For
example, the more technical of my partners will still pitch in with simple CSS
and HTML tweaks when the rest of the team is stretched thin. His willingness
to occasionally do BS that he did in his early teens allows us to keep moving
forward with happy clients.

3\. Patience and politeness! Your technical co-founder needs to have an
attitude that makes them approachable and not intimidating. Staff and yourself
need to feel comfortable asking them questions, even dumb ones.

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DrJokepu
The willingness to do work "beneath you" is a fundamental requirement for any
founder really in my opinion. Besides the trivial advantages (tedious minor
things get done too) it sets an example for the employees.

When I was studying mechanical engineering, I was doing a summer internship in
a medium sized industrial plant in southern France. Every now and then, the
owner of the company got into a forklift and did warehouse duties himself,
just like his workers. This is a very old trick in the book.

~~~
newmediaclay
Oh, most definitely. I think most of my requirements could be extended to just
about any founder. I still spend probably 10% of my time making simple text
changes in our CMS.

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sosuke
I think that your co-founder also has to believe in your idea just as much as
you do. Any wishy-washy-ness now will only grow as time goes on.

The list also reminds me of a "what to look for in an employee" article.

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lsc
the important thing to remember here is that any technical person with
experience is going to have an initial reaction of suspicion when approached
by a business person with some wacky new idea. If you avoid everyone who
initially reacts with suspicion, you will be limiting yourself to people who
have not been approached by business people before.

That said, I agree that your co-founder and you have to agree the product is
worthwhile. I'm just saying; don't expect this enthusiasm right off the bat;
that is really only going to happen if your technical co-founder has never
listened to a well-pitched bullshit idea.

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feverishaaron
I'll add to the deadline section "the ability to actually ship." Beware of the
brilliant computer scientist who is working on their baby, and sees the
performance of their software as reflection of their character.

The software will never be "good enough" to release, and "no one will buy it"
as it is. They'll run out of money before they actually launch anything.

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jasonjei
I don't think I can stress this one enough. Not only will a team run out of
money with a perfectionist co-founder, but the other obvious result will be
that competition may ship a product before you do in what was previously a
vapid market.

Should you happen to bring a perfectionist computer scientist on board,
implement first (even if it's not DRY) and cleanup/refactor later. Always
stress this message. Particularly Ruby programmers. You can remind them that
once you ship, they always have the opportunity to clean it up during
maintenance nights. You can make it work with a brilliant computer scientist,
but always make sure he's focused on shipping rather than perfecting.

~~~
techiferous
"Particularly Ruby programmers."

Ruby programmers talk good game. But actual production Ruby code can be pretty
messy.

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andreyf
Strong experience in a specific language isn't necessary. I know it's
anecdotal, but reddit started out being written in Lisp, then switched to
Python pretty early on. Many great tech people I know have no problem moving
from language to language, or framework to framework.

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klochner
that reminds me of the quote:

    
    
       "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
    

you want your co-founder to choose the best language/tech stack for the job. A
c++ developer is fine for a web-app if he's smart and is open to learning new
languages.

~~~
markstansbury
I like that quote.

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kscaldef
Maybe this is implicit in calling something a "startup" rather than a "side
project", but on both sides there needs to be a common agreement on how much
time you put into the project, what your vision for the growth of the company
is, whether you have other sources of income (and work) at the same time, etc.

The nasty variation on this that I ran into was something that started as a
side project where two of us had full-time jobs and one guy did contract work.
A couple months later the other guy got laid off and started putting most of
his time into the side project, which then evolved into a startup in his mind.
Much acrimony followed regarding how much time each person was or should be
putting into the project, whether things were "fair", etc.

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dgudkov
Share your ways to resolve this problem, please. What's happened with your
startup/side project?

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kscaldef
I won't claim to have any solutions, except that in the future I'll be a lot
more careful about asking people what their intended time commitment is, and
where they want the project to go. I'd also insist on written agreements from
the start.

In the case of my project, there was about 6 months of anger, finger-pointing,
and general failure to make meaningful progress because all our time was
consumed with debates over how the project should operate. Eventually, I
realized that the project was a major source of unhappiness in my life and I
announced my intention to leave the project. We reached an agreement for the
other two to buy out my interest in the project, and they have since made it
their full-time job and are attempting to turn it into a real business,
working with a local startup incubator.

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jasonlbaptiste
I'm almost certain there are a lot of other smaller points and non general
things that could be added. I would love to append the post with comments from
here in a day or two.

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asterix
Nice post Jason! Haven't seen you in a while, you used to frequent VLab
planning meetings

You may want to add "Getting their point across" to the list too.
Communication skill (and negotiation skill) is very important for tech co-
founder role. Early on, the business co-founder may be the voice of all
decisions made by the company. But, as the company grows, the tech co-founder
will need to defend his decisions to board members and outsiders.

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jasonlbaptiste
hey! who is this? I haven't been in the bay area, that's why :).

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asterix
This is Navin. Pretty sure you are the same Jason who helped with the
MIT/Stanford VLab Lifestreaming event couple of yrs ago. Ryan Junee and I were
leads for the event. I believe you were doing Publictivity back then

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hypedsound
If you can't afford to pay a potential CTO for their time (rather you are
giving them equity), there's a good chance they will need to have a day job.
If they can't handle coding during the day and working on your startup at
night, you'll run into serious problems. Air out all these issues right at the
start.

