[HN Gopher] You do need a technical co-founder [video]
___________________________________________________________________
You do need a technical co-founder [video]
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 156 points
Date : 2023-11-30 18:25 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com)
| timeagain wrote:
| Can't be bothered to watch the whole video at work so I apologize
| if this is in TFV.
|
| If you can't find one technically minded person who believes
| enough in your vision to drop everything and help you make it,
| that is not a good sign for your vision.
| michaelje wrote:
| Or a technical audience is not the market
| anamexis wrote:
| That doesn't seem relevant. A co-founder isn't part of your
| market or audience.
| notahacker wrote:
| That's why the willingness of a software developer to drop
| everything to work with you might not necessarily signal
| anything wrong with your vision.
|
| If you can't find a single software developer who believes
| in your plan for better APIs or project management tools or
| consumer internet apps, it's a pretty good heuristic that
| your vision or ability to sell it sucks, or that you add
| less value than the dozen other people that talked to them
| about chatbots for X this week. Any prospective technical
| co-founder has a huge amount of insight into those markets.
| On the other hand, unwillingness of software developers to
| believe that the dullest sounding CRUD app going will be
| very exciting to grey suited men controlling a little known
| niche (probably precisely because hardly anyone's writing
| software for it) doesn't actually mean there isn't a market
| there.
| andy99 wrote:
| I don't think it's about the audience, but the company type.
| If someone is starting (random example) a food company based
| on their superior hot-sauce recipe and existing retail
| relationships, they probably don't need a technical co-
| founder. If someone is starting a company that "uses AI" to
| craft and target hot sauce recommendations, but doens't
| really know what that means and assumes they can get a shop
| to code them an app, that's going to be a problem. I think
| the latter case is what this is usually about. Many (most)
| business owners don't have technical co-founders and are
| fine, not so in tech.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| In your first hot-sauce recipe example, that person IS the
| technical founder. Just technical in the field relevant to
| the business, which happens to not be tech.
|
| The scenario in tech is more often comparable to some dude
| saying "I want to make a business selling the greatest hot
| sauce ever" and then having to go looking for someone who
| actually knows anything about hot sauce.
| notahacker wrote:
| I think the idea that the person with the specialised
| knowledge of how to make hot sauce is the technical
| founder is an interesting point, but I think in YC/HN
| contexts it's usually considered to mean "engineer"; even
| in cases like accounting software where the founder who
| doesn't write software's specialised knowledge of the
| field is at least as critical as their partner's ability
| to convert that to code, the latter founder is the only
| "technical" one. Although tbh I don't think accountants
| or lawyers get offended by the insinuation they're the
| "non-technical founder".
| tptacek wrote:
| The video goes into why that's the wrong mindset. If you're
| looking for people who "believe in your vision", there's a good
| chance you're looking for an employee, not a cofounder. Strong
| candidates have their own vision, and strong teams build
| something out of everyone's vision.
|
| It can still be the case that one person has an awesome idea
| that everybody else in the company signs off on. But chances
| are, everybody on the team is going to have to make some room
| for other people's ideas and takes on things.
| redm wrote:
| The inverse side of this is, that depending on the business, you
| may need another type of co-founder as well. Two technical co-
| founders aren't the right fit for every business.
| atoav wrote:
| This is what I constantly tell my students: The _hard_ part about
| doing a tech product for the most part isn 't the what beginners
| _think_ makes tech hard -- the hard part is wrangling systemic
| complexity in a good, sustainable and reliable way.
|
| Many non-tech people e.g. look at programmers and think the hard
| part is knowing what this garble of weird text means. But this is
| the easy part. And if you are a person who would think it is
| hard, you probably don't know about all the demons out there that
| will come to haunt you if you don't build a foundation that helps
| you actively keeping them away.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| >This is what I constantly tell my students: The hard part
| about doing a tech >product for the most part isn't the what
| beginners think makes tech hard -- the >hard part is wrangling
| systemic complexity in a good, sustainable and reliable >way.
|
| I teach the same thing, seemingly every day to my teams. It
| doesn't work, until it works reliably, within reason.
|
| High-5 from the doers to the teachers! (Both are needed)
|
| For the record, my partner teaches at a major university, just
| not tech. ;)
| sebmellen wrote:
| More people need to read https://grugbrain.dev/
| jeremyjh wrote:
| I really wish I'd read this 25 years ago, but probably I
| wouldn't have believed any of it.
| sebmellen wrote:
| In some way, building absurdly complex systems and watching
| them fail is a rite of passage.
| Arson9416 wrote:
| Fortunately (unfortunately?) most places are in some
| stage of that process, so it's easy enough to participate
| in.
| gedy wrote:
| I don't know, I've mostly followed this approach over my 20
| year career, but it really depends on your surroundings,
| and honestly hasn't led to great success.
|
| E.g. If you're surrounded by yes men who will code whatever
| without question, product people greatly prefer that, and
| you end up sidelined.
|
| There's also plenty of companies who don't want engineers
| getting involved with decisions, and product and UX people
| work upfront and in isolation until you're handed tiny Jira
| tickets with Figma mockups attached. Discussion at that
| point is considered "disruptive".
|
| It honestly seems like this has gotten worse in the past 5
| to 10 years.
| sebmellen wrote:
| > _note, this good engineering advice but bad career
| advice: "yes" is magic word for more shiney rock and put
| in charge of large tribe of developer_
|
| > _sad but true: learn "yes" then learn blame other grugs
| when fail, ideal career advice_
|
| > _but grug must to grug be true, and "no" is magic grug
| word. Hard say at first, especially if you nice grug and
| don't like disappoint people (many such grugs!) but
| easier over time even though shiney rock pile not as high
| as might otherwise be_
|
| > _is ok: how many shiney rock grug really need anyway?_
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > E.g. If you're surrounded by yes men who will code
| whatever without question, product people greatly prefer
| that, and you end up sidelined.
|
| I'm amazed at how non-obvious this seems to most
| engineers and how often this angst gets repeated in
| online tech communities. I mean, when I was in academia
| there was a tension between publishing impactful results
| or cozying up with the right professors into the right
| conferences vs outputting meaningful work (pressures into
| p-hacking or having big names author suspicious results
| is par for the course.) In industry it's the tension
| between product folks and engineers. Have you ever talked
| to high-level finance folks who deal with the tension of
| product folks just wanting to _do_ things and finance
| folks who remind them how money works?
|
| It turns out that the hardest thing about getting things
| done with people is... dealing with people. I wish there
| was a way to remove this weird somewhat-ascetic blockage
| found in tech communities about this. Many of the more
| physical engineering occupations have to deal with this
| in the form of contractors and supervisors. Wait until
| you have to work on a government contract lol.
|
| When I mentor junior engineers with these feelings, I
| like to use an adage: "Where there are people there are
| politics." Look at pretty much any prominent FOSS project
| and you'll see tons of it (by dint of transparency) and
| those folks generally focus on the project and not a
| product!
| no_wizard wrote:
| I can see this in academia, because you're working on
| reputation as much as anything, if not more so, sorta
| prone to being like this in a way.
|
| Finance however, not once[0] have I either observed nor
| heard of someone working in finance being overruled by a
| product person. If finance says _no go_ its _no go_ ,
| simple as that. People tend to listen to the money folks,
| even at a high-level.
|
| [0]: I work both in fintech and have lots of professional
| colleagues that work at other financial firms from big
| banks to all manner of investment firms and much in-
| between, as well as several generations of family who
| have all worked in finance on various levels. Honestly,
| its high level finance people trying to pressure others
| into getting things done faster when they want something
| done, not the other way around.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > Finance however, not once[0] have I either observed nor
| heard of someone working in finance being overruled by a
| product person. If finance says no go its no go, simple
| as that. People tend to listen to the money folks, even
| at a high-level.
|
| Totally, but finance people want to see the company
| succeed too, and even if finance says it's a no-go,
| product people will still keep trying to push around
| them. I just mean that this _tension_ exists between
| different stakeholders in every organization. If we knew
| ways out of this, we 'd revolutionize government
| bureaucracies, vastly increase firm efficiencies, sort
| out FOSS issues, the world would be our oyster! But human
| coordination problems are _really hard_. The hardest
| problems out there really. That 's my general point. Too
| much airtime is given to tech people who seem to not
| understand this. It's a bit like complaining that when I
| jump I fall down. I also can't imagine spending _20
| years_ bemoaning this aspect of human nature.
| no_wizard wrote:
| The real human element that I've observed, having been
| both in management and as an IC, and more broadly from
| research I've done as a whole, is that ENG is often the
| profit driver but has the least amount of say in their
| own workload.
|
| I think this is where the tension comes from in the
| lasting, I'm still complaining about 20 years later sorta
| thing. Once you realize the value you are delivering to
| the company, naturally, you start to want to have some
| more say over the value chain, I think this is innante to
| human behavior, but there is alot of gates between ENG
| and the rest of the org, most of the time, from what I've
| observed.
|
| Look at, for example, how "Agile" is implemented at a
| company. It focuses on ENG having to address
| stakeholders, without really saying that ENG should be
| its own stakeholder too. With SCRUM and other systems,
| the emphasis tends to be on _outside_ stakeholders and
| what they want, rather than bringing ENG to _parity_ with
| other stakeholders so everyone has more equal input on
| the work streams - which ultimately, when this is
| actually done, prevents more problems than it creates,
| nearly every time - yet you can feel the resistance in
| most orgs to giving ENG a full table stake
| no_wizard wrote:
| It has, because embracing agile as it was laid out in 12
| principles put too much power in these "technical" people
| by giving them a stake at the table, to anyone who
| doesn't work in an ENG first / ENG focused company.
|
| If you look at how "Agile" is implemented in most
| organizations - even in technology companies! - there's
| alot of barrier process put up to sideline / minimize
| engineering input by focusing on stakeholders where
| stakeholder is defined by _everyone telling engineering
| what to do_ as opposed to engineering being seen as a
| valid and reasonable stakeholder too.
|
| I think its because in part there is a linear pipeline
| that the non technical business side sees as how things
| go: you plan X, it gets designed by Y, and then
| "manufactured" by engineers, if you will.
|
| Engineers - good ones, in my estimation - want more stake
| in each step, both in planning and design, because often
| its engineers that work on the system the closest (you'd
| be shocked how many designers don't use their own
| products on a daily basis, same goes for alot of business
| oriented folks) and this is not "the way the world
| works".
|
| Thats my thesis anyway
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| I like this but I don't understand one part under "Saying OK"
|
| * _sometimes probably best just not tell project manager and
| do it 80 /20 way.*_
|
| Does 80/20 in this context mean that we'll implement 80% of
| what is asked for an leave out the remaining complex parts?
| sebmellen wrote:
| Kind of, and it usually works. Even as a founder you can
| trick yourself into doing things that way. I've found that
| 20/80, Pareto style, is even better. 20% of the features
| can achieve 80% of the sales, and you'll be a lot happier
| if you're not constantly chasing the long tail.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| 80% of the features/details for 20% of the code/complexity.
| Even minor tweaks can have an outsized effect on the final
| code. A large part of my job is doing this in such a way
| that satisfies the stakeholders.
| internet101010 wrote:
| More or less and it usually gets the job done. The last 20%
| can be a real time suck if it isn't managed properly.
|
| What you don't want is for the last 20% to occupy 80% of
| the time.
| airstrike wrote:
| LMAO that's hilarious, thanks for sharing
|
| _> best weapon against complexity spirit demon is magic
| word: "no"_
|
| _> "no, grug not build that feature"_
|
| _> "no, grug not build that abstraction"_
|
| _> "no, grug not put water on body every day or drink less
| black think juice you stop repeat ask now"_
|
| _> note, this good engineering advice but bad career advice:
| "yes" is magic word for more shiney rock and put in charge of
| large tribe of developer_
| moffkalast wrote:
| > sad but true: learn "yes" then learn blame other grugs
| when fail, ideal career advice
|
| Perfection
| oooyay wrote:
| This is some really beautiful prose
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| I mean, this is largely true in software engineering in
| general. Programming is easy. Perhaps being an _excellent_
| programmer is much harder but for many things being mediocre is
| good enough.
|
| The hard part is building things sustainably at scale (people
| wise or performance wise). That's when a combination of knowing
| how to manage systemic complexity and knowing how to
| communicate very well (soft skills) really come into play.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| IMHO the hard part with a startup is you don't want to build
| something that works sustainably at scale. You want to build
| something that could plausibly morph into something that is
| sustainable at scale.
| mgaunard wrote:
| Depends on the stage of the startup lifecycle you're at.
|
| But in general, reaching profitability (which is the real
| hard part) will require making scaling efficient and
| operations smooth.
| gopher_space wrote:
| I've started to look at scaling like you're killing a
| golden-egg-laying goose but there's a 1 in _n_ chance that
| it 'll pay off for you. _n_ starts higher than you 'd hope
| and rises as you make tradeoffs.
|
| I've been thinking about scaling a bit because I've been
| digging into a large SaaS product for a client and find I
| am able to replicate their locally relevant output at a
| fraction of the cost. Scaling up has allowed this SaaS to
| serve an entire country but a majority of their user base
| think in terms of one or two local counties. Consuming
| their output means subsidizing work they do that's
| irrelevant to (or might actually compete with) your own
| interests.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| There is a weird local optimisation problem where being an
| excellent programmer can make one a _bad_ software engineer.
| (Another: unparalleledly excellent Excel skills making one a
| worse financier.)
| jmcphers wrote:
| I've seen this so many times in my career. It happens
| because interviews (especially at the junior level) focus
| almost exclusively on line-by-line programming acumen.
| People who excel at those interviews don't always make
| great software engineers, and sometimes they make terrible
| ones.
| kragen wrote:
| there's a selection bias at play here
|
| suppose you need to either be in the top percentile of
| handsome and the top percentile of emotionally aware to
| get a job as a hollywood actor, but these attributes are
| uncorrelated in the general population, so 99% of top-
| percentile-of-handsome people will be top-percentile-of-
| sensitive and vice versa
|
| then the pool of hollywood actors you observe will
| contain, out of every 199 people, 99 who are top-
| percentile-of-handsome but not of sensitivity, 99 who are
| top-percentile-of-sensitive but not of handsomeness, and
| 1 who is both
|
| someone observing this result but not understanding the
| process that led up to it might think that emotional
| sensitivity makes you ugly or that being handsome makes
| you emotionally oblivious, even though (by hypothesis)
| the traits are uncorrelated. in fact, this negative
| correlation in the selected group can survive even a fair
| bit of _positive_ correlation between the traits in the
| general population
|
| similarly, it's easier to get a programming job if you
| have a history of delivering successful products, or if
| you have a lot of line-by-line coding acumen
| omeze wrote:
| Berkson's Paradox:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox#:~:te
| xt=....
| kragen wrote:
| thank you, that's exactly right. he even used my
| attractive-celebrities example
| gnulinux wrote:
| This is what I always say. In college/studying you learn
| programming, CS, algorithms etc. Once you're a software
| engineer, you realize that programming, CS, algorithms etc
| are the easiest part of your job. If the code is too hard for
| you you're most definitely losing on other things. It sounds
| very obvious, but think about it, part of being a good
| software engineer is that programming should be _trivial_.
| j45 wrote:
| The business degree kids with an idea need to realize the tech
| cofounders can learn and understand business.
|
| Having an idea is like having a thought.
|
| A startup needs product and distribution. If a tech cofounder
| builds what's asked of him and the sales cofounder can't sell,
| should the ownership revert to the tech cofounder?
| simonw wrote:
| I love the way you put this. It also doubles as a great
| explanation for why programmers shouldn't be worried that
| ChatGPT is going to steal their jobs: ChatGPT is good at the
| garble of weird text, but it's terrible at the "wrangling
| systemic complexity in a good, sustainable and reliable way"
| piece.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| I think ChatGPT will eventually be good at the garble of
| weird text. It's immensely helpful already but you really
| must be checking up on what it is telling you. Plausible but
| non-existent or incorrectly used APIs are routine still. I
| definitely bet on it eventually getting there though.
| FuckButtons wrote:
| You know what computers couldn't do 10 years ago? Understand
| and write coherent code. Why do you feel confident in your
| opinion that they won't be able to do that in the next 10
| years?
| dijit wrote:
| 1) an understanding of what LLMs can actually do
|
| 2) a strong history of understanding the limits of
| functional automation (why are there still project
| managers? Asana exists!)
|
| 3) an understanding that progress will slow in this space
| considerably once we have made the big wins and the hype
| cycle dies down. (see also; every tech hype cycle)
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I go the exact opposite way on number 3. It seems more
| likely to me this follows the growth trend of the
| internet, mobile phones and computer graphics than
| blockchain and VR. 10 more year of growth like the last
| would be pretty wild to experience.
| simonw wrote:
| If they can "wrangle systemic complexity in a good,
| sustainable and reliable way" then I think that's AGI. If
| we hit AGI we'll have plenty of other things to worry about
| beyond being able to make a living as programmers.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| depends on what part of "doing a tech product" you're talking
| about
|
| > the hard part is wrangling systemic complexity in a good,
| sustainable and reliable way
|
| in an early startup, this thinking is one of the most common
| ways to failure. people optimise their technology for its
| scalability, reliability, and "cleanliness", when none of that
| matters yet. all that matters is finding product market fit
| jofla_net wrote:
| An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity. --TAD
| koonsolo wrote:
| I would say the tech is the easy part. The most difficult part
| is getting customers.
| hackitup7 wrote:
| I'd take the even stronger stance that additional technical
| cofounders seems to deliver increasing rather than diminishing
| returns.
| geiagal wrote:
| I wonder what portion of Hacker News users aren't technical.
|
| I thought this headline meant a technical founder needs a
| technical co-founder even.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Judging by how many believe procedural text generators are
| viable programmers, i'd say a lot of hn users arent technical.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I'd venture to say the majority are non technical
| CodeCompost wrote:
| Yeah and then the non-technical co-founder treats you like you're
| worthless because you're "just a programmer"
| redm wrote:
| That may be more of a personality conflict. There's no more
| important choice than who you co-found with, and both parties
| should have high regard for each other's value to the business.
| distortionfield wrote:
| Of course that's how it _should_ be. After working at enough
| startups in very early and/or founder roles, I can tell you
| it's more common than not to get treated like a second class
| citizen when the "business" dinners come.
| distortionfield wrote:
| A tale as old as time. Gotta love the classic spin on the same
| trope of "the C suite drives the sales tho" to justify their
| insane salaries and bonuses. like they'd have anything to sell
| in the first place.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Yes, you need to make and sell things. They're both
| difficult.
| distortionfield wrote:
| I'm not diminishing the effort and skill necessary to be a
| good salesperson. I am, however, commenting on how often
| that turns into engineers being kept "in the back" when the
| paperwork starts.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Don't co-found a company with an jerk.
| Alupis wrote:
| Might I suggest not being "just a programmer" then?
|
| In a startup it's extremely important for founders to wear many
| hats and share many burdens.
|
| If you're the person that just goes off into a cave and emerges
| with beautiful code 6 weeks later and then expects everything
| to be great - you're wrong. There's a massive amount of
| foundational work to do to support a startup that technical
| people don't even think about.
| chefandy wrote:
| As someone who's rarely been "just a programmer" or "just a
| designer," that hasn't stopped me from being viewed as such
| by managers if it's convenient for them to mentally classify
| me as such.
| tptacek wrote:
| Your cofounder in a new startup isn't your manager.
| Alupis wrote:
| If that's happening then you're not really a cofounder -
| you're acting like an employee.
|
| If you're a cofounder you do not have a manager...
|
| Starting a company requires a diverse set of skills, almost
| none of which are technical. A technical person can excel
| at those tasks, but they have to have the desire to figure
| out what needs to be done before asking what needs to be
| done.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It's interesting, how all this stuff is written for the biz-
| bros, too -- try doing a google search on how to find a _non_
| -technical cofounder. Like, say you're an eng, with a technical
| idea you think would make the foundation of a good startup, and
| you're looking for someone to "found" the PM/marketing/bizdev
| side of things. From what I can see, the content/advice doesn't
| exist, even via YCombinator.
| kragen wrote:
| why would you want a nontechnical cofounder to do the
| pm/marketing/bizdev side of things? a nontechnical person
| might be able to do those things, but technical ignorance or
| incompetence are not necessary for them, and aren't even
| assets; they're just less serious drawbacks there than
| elsewhere
|
| you might genuinely need some nontechnical people in your
| startup, but if you have some money you can always pay people
| to come be part of a focus group or user test when that's
| necessary
| distortionfield wrote:
| Why would you want a nontechnical cofounder to do these 3
| specialized full-time roles? Is this a serious question?
|
| > but if you have some money
|
| lol . Just... lol.
| kragen wrote:
| yes. why would you want the three people doing those
| three specialized full-time roles to be nontechnical?
|
| it seems to me that, given a nontechnical person who's
| good at one or more of those roles, they'd obviously be
| even better at it if they also understood the technology.
| ignorance and incompetence are weaknesses, not strengths
|
| as for having some money, the context of this discussion
| is startups with angel or vc funding, which is plenty for
| focus groups and some user tests
| distortionfield wrote:
| Because good luck finding those three roles where they're
| from a technical background?
|
| I've worked with a grand total of one PM who was from a
| technical background. He was actually a great engineer
| but he was absolutely the exception to the rule.
|
| Sure, if you can flesh your team out with entirely
| technical people filling those roles, great for you, but
| that's like asking why you wouldn't only hire 10x
| engineers. Well of course if you could find and hire only
| 10x engineers you would, but it doesn't work like that.
| Especially considering those are all industry positions
| that are typically taken by people who never went into
| technical roles.
| kragen wrote:
| right, so people who are looking for a cofounder to fill
| those roles aren't looking for a nontechnical cofounder;
| they're looking for a cofounder. they may have to accept
| a nontechnical cofounder, but that's not what they're
| looking for. that's why there's no advice to be found on
| finding a nontechnical cofounder
|
| i feel that my first comment in this thread already
| explained this with perfect clarity and you've just been
| trolling
| robocat wrote:
| You are undervaluing non-tech skills.
|
| Ironic given that you are commenting on a vid where tech is
| undervalued and you are getting flagged for your
| communication skills.
|
| I suggest you learn not to make the same mistake as those
| plonker non-tech guys.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| (Title is altered, changes meaning: explanatory "Why you need..."
| is more enticing than the assertion "You do need...")
| biomcgary wrote:
| I think the amount of technical expertise needed varies by field.
| I work in a small biotech startup. In this space, you aren't
| going to get anywhere without deep technical knowledge.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| There have been multiple ads/posts recently from companies citing
| YC__ looking for a technical cofounder.
|
| So, is this post correlated?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Maybe. Those posts offer preposterously low equity, so I wonder
| whom it is supposed to attract. Suckers?
|
| Y Combinator sincerely wants people to succeed, I don't think
| it's reactionary or myopic like that.
|
| That said, to fill whatever hundreds of spots nowadays, they've
| exhausted Math 55, it graduates all of 12 people every year.
|
| They're dipping into a far greater supply of nepo babies than
| ever before. Those jagoffs can't do anything - not programming,
| let alone sales - so whom is this advice really for? Those
| companies will "succeed" anyway, I mean they won't fail. You
| can make a ton of money as a technical cofounder, but for the
| minimally intellectually stimulating problems of some moron's
| meaningless app, for that moron to get all the glory? Just to
| polish life off by marrying your subordinate and sending the
| kids to Day School? And shoveling all that money right back
| into meaningless angel investments?
|
| This is a stylized comment of course, but it's just to say,
| yeah, you need a technical co-founder, really easy for Y
| Combinator to say. I too would like extremely talented people
| to give everything and take nothing.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What's Math 55?
| BadCookie wrote:
| Do you mean the "founding engineer" jobs? It can be misleading,
| but those are not founder roles. They are regular employee
| roles where the "founding" part of the title is just an
| honorary indication that the person joined the company early.
|
| YC won't count someone as a founder unless they have at least
| 10% equity in the company. Founding engineers are typically
| getting 2% or less (from what I understand).
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Yep that's what i noticed and the thresholds i did not know.
| Thanks for explaining.
| jensneuse wrote:
| The inverse is also true. As a technical founder, and maybe even
| an introvert like me, you should definitely look for a non-
| technical co-founder who can help you with networking, etc... I
| found my dream co-founder through YC Co-founder match and what
| can I say, it's going great. We're focusing on enterprise
| GraphQL/API solutions (https://wundergraph.com) and I benefit
| from the networking and communication abilities of Stefan, while
| I answer all technical questions. Tldr, I highly recommend to
| team up with people who complement your skills.
| malux85 wrote:
| It's great to hear of a YC Co-Founder success, I'm looking for
| a non-technical cofounder now so I'll give this a shot
| Tactical45 wrote:
| You hit the nail on the head with complimentary piece - and
| extending that to personality as well.
|
| You need a mix of technical skills (engineering, product,
| marketing, etc) but also personalities (which manifest in
| different behaviors which are all useful & compliment each
| other - eg bias for action and hitting targets vs careful
| analysis).
| jensneuse wrote:
| I'm very strong in logical analysis and strategic thinking.
| My problem though is that I have a natural tendency to not
| talk to people. Ask me a question and I'm happy to answer,
| but I don't like to initiate conversations. Stefan is the
| opposite. Everybody loves him. He can talk to everyone and
| he's very creative in finding leads and building connections
| with other companies. But he's a really bad developer.
| Together, we're a really strong team. I'd say without him, I
| would still not have a strong network.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Honest question: Why can't this person be employee #(single
| digit), SVP of sales or something, hired during product
| development? Why the need to elevate to co-founder? Does an
| introverted technical founder really need an extraverted non-
| tech networking expert from day one?
| jensneuse wrote:
| When you build a startup, you have to go through so much
| crap, a lot of people wouldn't do that for money. But there's
| another aspect. Early on in the startup life, sales is not
| just about selling but "exploring". You have to learn about
| the market, what people want, what your ICP is, how to target
| them, etc... Does an employee care enough? Do you really want
| to put this responsibility into someone else's hands? I'd say
| no.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| just a heads up, i found a typo on your website :)
|
| "Get started for free in 3 minutes No credit card required, no
| vendor lock-in, but the convencience of a fully managed
| service."
| ofirg wrote:
| "but based on the thousands of companies YC has funded over the
| years, companies lacking a technical co-founder underperform"
|
| which could mean soon-to-be-underperforming companies fail to
| attract technical co-founders
| lnsru wrote:
| I am developer who spend 2 decades developing things. First
| decade it was hardware and now I moved to software. I can
| always guess which idea from "idea person" will work and which
| is not technically feasible. In my limited experience the "idea
| persons" are not really listening why stuff does not work.
| Sometimes simple laws of physics are ignored.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Having started a small business I respect greatly the skills of
| great sales people and fund raisers and people who are great with
| people. But I don't respect them when they think they can start a
| business where they don't take what they actually make seriously
| and think the product will just work its self out if they sell
| hard enough.
| threeseed wrote:
| History has shown them to be right.
|
| There are many terrible products in this world that were
| successful only because of good sales and marketing. And vice
| versa.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| How many of those are from single-product startups? I know
| some are, but not most that I can think of.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It's just survivorship bias though. There's also boatloads of
| startups that had crap product and just died right away, and
| we don't talk about them.
| debacle wrote:
| > There are many terrible products in this world that were
| successful only because of good sales and marketing. And vice
| versa.
|
| Name one.
| polar8 wrote:
| Religion.
| csallen wrote:
| Most religions spread virally, which means the marketers
| are the customers, which is usually a testament to the
| product/service being one that customers value. I say
| this as an atheist who's not a fan of religion, but
| people clearly get a lot out of it, or at least believe
| they do.
| polar8 wrote:
| That's a great point. I wonder if it's motivated by value
| or fear of an eternity of torture in the afterlife,
| though.
| WJW wrote:
| Probably neither. People like to belong to a group where
| they feel they "belong" and that in itself is sufficient
| explanation for the spread of religions IMO.
|
| Propagation of societal values and/or fear of hell and/or
| fear of death assuaged by the assurance of an afterlife
| and/or being able to rationalize away the vagaries of
| nature as the will of god(s) are just optimizations after
| the core system was already invented.
| pleoxy wrote:
| A totally generic and unthinking generalization.
|
| There is a place for religion. Something that pushes you
| to be better than you are. Along with the happiness and
| fulfillment that comes from that effort. Selflessness,
| love, compassion, truth.
|
| Plenty of bad religions telling you that you are perfect
| the way that you are. Just give me money, fame, or
| influence and I will flatter you and pump your ego.
|
| Another form of this is flattery in exchange for hating
| something. Many doomsday cults fit this category. All
| your life problems are because of 'insert target X'. But
| I, I have the answers you need.
|
| Religion is more attuned with purpose, where your heart
| is, than the belief in God. Though the two are often
| paired.
|
| And yes, we crave purpose.
| polar8 wrote:
| There are plenty of things that deliver the above without
| the dogmatic slaughter of hundreds of millions of humans
| throughout history and at this very moment.
| WJW wrote:
| There's also plenty of religious people who have never
| murdered anyone in their lives, and there have been
| plenty of dogmatic massacres for reasons entirely
| unrelated to religion. The two issues seem to be quite
| uncorrelated tbh.
| nurple wrote:
| Windows
| WJW wrote:
| Windows (especially v3.1, Windows 95 and Windows XP) was
| leaps and bounds better than its contemporaries when it
| came to normal desktop use. You can have the most
| technologically advanced OS in the world but if it is too
| difficult to use for 99% of potential users then it it
| not a good product. Microsoft was one of the first few
| companies to really get this right.
| nurple wrote:
| Yeah, perhaps I should have said MSDOS. But even still, I
| think perhaps your rose-colored hindsight is probably
| miscoloring your memory. The initial releases of Windows
| was a nightmare, with Bill's mom consoling him after a
| particularly disasterous demo, and if it wasn't on the
| back of the brilliant--or lucky--marketing maneuverings
| that cemented MSDOS as the preeminent PC OS at the time,
| I firmly believe that Windows would not have become the
| preeminent desktop OS powerhouse that it is today.
|
| In fact, I think that behind the scenes of the ominous MS
| investment in Apple (with the whole big-brotheresque Bill
| Gates appearance) there was an explicit--business, not
| technical--agreement between Gates and Jobs that Apple
| would not venture out of their own hardware, specifically
| to allow Windows to continue its PC dominance.
| WJW wrote:
| Meh. Was early Windows (and/or MSDOS) perfect? Obviously
| not. Was it better than its competitors? Yes. Absolutely.
| Compared to what we have today they were all shit tbh and
| MSDOS was better than most.
|
| Don't get me wrong, the marketing game of early MS was
| absolutely phenomenal. I just want to say that they
| succeeded to the degree they did because BOTH marketing
| AND the tech were good.
| mplewis wrote:
| Tesla cars
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The fundamental core engineering -- the motors, the
| inverters, the control systems, battery management in
| their cars are pretty damn fantastic and they were
| consistently ahead of most others. And the Model S, while
| a dubious luxury car in terms of fit and finish, was a
| piece of amazing engineering when it came out.
|
| The Model 3 and its variants I think are meh from a UX
| POV (stupid centre iPad distracto-slab etc) and I won't
| pay for them because of who is behind them... and the
| lies about full self driving, and the crap support etc...
| suck.... but I think it's disingenuous to call Tesla
| product crap.
| distortionfield wrote:
| This doesn't track for me. I saw a Tesla dealership and
| supercharging station in my city before ever seeing an
| advert for Tesla. That's why Tesla was successful where
| others weren't.
| brynbryn wrote:
| The original title on this (which was there when I started this
| post) was infuriating - but it is still bad. Is it speaking to
| the 'true' co-founder who is above the technical one? Maybe the
| other co-founder who is an 'idea innovator' could up-skill a
| little and stop pretending that you can build a business by
| putting on a power suit and making presentations with upturned
| hands and studied pauses?
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Very timely for a conversation I'm having this week. Thanks for
| bringing this up.
| oooyay wrote:
| I like Michael's take that the real value in a founder is their
| ability to recruit the right team. What I don't think was said
| explicitly here is that typically technical people are
| progressively marginalized as the business grows. We get some
| harrowing stories where that doesn't happen, but I don't think
| that's the standard story. Like they allude to, it's a story of
| what the people who handle the money and investments value.
|
| Context: Michael is a non-technical founder from Justin.tv and
| Twitch.
| michaelmior wrote:
| I'm confused what is harrowing (acutely distressing or painful
| as Merriam-Webster says) about stories where technical people
| are not marginalized.
| oooyay wrote:
| Typically stories I hear where technical people maintained
| equity it was through a lot of maneuvering. It wasn't given
| to them by the merits of their accomplishments.
| michaelmior wrote:
| Fair point. That makes sense :)
| bomewish wrote:
| I was also puzzled. Thanks for asking and thanks for
| clarifying.
| choppaface wrote:
| > typically technical people are progressively marginalized as
| the business grows
|
| I know three YC technical co-founders who were ousted by their
| CEOs, and a justintv alumn who got nothing from the follow-on
| exits. When YC says "you need a technical co-founder" they mean
| it like you need a disposable lawyer. The essay here is about
| targeting growth and flipping, not high-performance teamwork.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| We're (probably) rapidly shifting to a reality where your
| biggest value will be Agentifying as many things as you can.
|
| Even if it's mediocre, it's basically free, and has almost no
| costs.
|
| Compare that to the incalculable potential switching costs of
| us meatbags and our many non-linearities.
| Satam wrote:
| Hmmm, an extremely interesting thought! Basically,
| agentifying might be the next programming.
|
| Do you have a guess how that would play out or how likely
| that might be? It seems like the main blocker here would be
| if the agents remain relatively weak in pure reasoning.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| It still needs to be scaled and maintained and understood,
| and that is probably best done by a technical co-founder.
| j45 wrote:
| Also they notice yc applications that are taking advantage of
| tech co-founders or tech team builders with unfair equity
| structure.
| anovikov wrote:
| That's explainable, Dunning-Kruger effect. Whole custom
| development industry is based on it. Otherwise it will never
| exist as there are whole agencies with 20-30 year history that
| never seen a tiny bit of what they produced working in
| production: everything is a throwaway paid for by these would-be
| founders.
|
| It's like clouds: AWS exists because enough stupid people don't
| understand available hosting options and can't make simple cost
| calculations.
|
| This will never change simply because no one makes money if it
| does. If those people started looking for a tech-cofounder, then
| two options:
|
| - they never find one, thus give up on the idea, the money they
| spend/waste on it will never be spent, thus GDP from this final
| consumption (which nearly all of custom development is: final
| consumption, a hobby), will not be created.
|
| - they find someone who will pretend or will falsely believe to
| be technical. essentially same guy as the original one. and he
| will waste some time and money with freelancers, become convinced
| they are all fraud (because this is what happens when you ask for
| idiotic stuff to be built on impossible budgets - everyone except
| scammers, decline), then hire some agencies, and waste some money
| on them, aaaaand it's gone!
|
| How do you explain to people who are not capable of starting a
| business, that they shouldn't start one?
|
| Bigger question: WHY would you do it? Why not just benefit from
| them?
| robocat wrote:
| Using Dunning-Kruger as an explaination is a very Dunning-
| Kruger thing to do:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38415252
| gnicholas wrote:
| This is generally true. I had a technical cofounder for the first
| 4 years or so, but once our tools were built it was less clear
| what his ongoing role would be.
|
| This is because at that point, our focus turned to licensing our
| (patented) technology to businesses. We still have B2C customers
| who use the tools that he originally built (and which have been
| updated by contractors after he left), but now the vast majority
| of our revenue comes from our B2B licensing.
|
| We are pretty unique in this regard, since most startups aren't
| able to generate much revenue from licensing in this way.
| Specifically, when we work with our licensees, we provide a JS
| library that they plug into their own platform. We don't need
| engineers to do integration work, or provide support.
|
| My technical cofounder provided a lot of value in getting us to
| where we are, for sure. But needing a technical cofounder to
| launch doesn't necessarily mean you need one all the way along.
| m_a_g wrote:
| And your client's needs won't change ever? The product won't
| need anything done on it until vacuum decay?
|
| Finally, someone made a proper JS library.
| gnicholas wrote:
| The clients don't want us mucking around in their code, which
| is why they have their devs do the work. There are some cases
| where having a dev on our end could help unblock their devs,
| but these are pretty rare cases. In general, it's very easy
| for folks to use our tech, and I'm able (thanks to a couple
| years of CS back in the day) to help out with the vast
| majority of questions that come up.
|
| In terms of changes, there aren't any material changes. We've
| had licensees up and running for 7 years without changing any
| code.
| bob88jg wrote:
| What so the person who "provided a lot of value in getting us
| to where we are" got ditched in the end? Is that your story?
| Use people and then chuck them to the curb once everything u
| need has been extracted?
| skummetmaelk wrote:
| Classic suit brain.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Absolutely not -- he vested founder's shares just like me.
| And then I continued to work with no salary and no additional
| vesting for years after that. Also, I was working full-time
| while he was working nights/weekends.
|
| Perhaps don't assume the worst?
| bob88jg wrote:
| I assumed he got some $$$ - but did he want to be removed
| or did you tell him he was no longer needed? Was he just as
| sure that he was no longer needed as u were?
| gnicholas wrote:
| He was the one who walked. He still has his shares, of
| course.
| ChrisCinelli wrote:
| So you do not have need of innovation?
|
| Usually a company with software need to develop new features,
| reengineering to reduce infrastructure costs and improving
| performance bottlenecks, maintenance, etc. Do not you have that
| in your company? And if you do, who is leading those
| initiatives?
| gnicholas wrote:
| We are not innovating on the core product, which has remained
| static for many years. Instead, we are pushing adoption
| through our licensing partnerships. We now have over 250k
| students using our reading tech through education platforms
| that we work with. Building more of these partnerships, based
| on the data we have gathered from our existing partners, is
| the focus.
| danjc wrote:
| Hate to tell you this but a business cannot thrive if it
| doesn't innovate. At best, you'll ride on your momentum for
| a while.
| gnicholas wrote:
| If we were riding on momentum I would expect our revenue
| to be stable/shrinking, not growing (as it is). I agree
| that in the long term this is true, but when you start as
| a tiny speck, you can grow for a long time as awareness
| spreads. For example, we started our in education and are
| now getting interest from news/media organizations. This
| is without changing the core functionality at all.
| trgdr wrote:
| I mean not all businesses need to thrive. If the thing
| generates significant profits for a while then the
| founder can retire and either sell it or just let it die.
| If it's not a publicly-traded company there's no
| fiduciary duty to do anything more than that.
| lmm wrote:
| Sounds like at that point you're not really a tech company.
| Your tech might as well be some off-the-shelf stuff as far
| as you're concerned, if you're not actually working on it
| any more.
| DelaneyM wrote:
| Corollary: you do not need a non-technical co-founder.
|
| My advice to engineers is that it's nearly always easier to learn
| business/sales than to learn to like a co-founder, especially the
| type generally drawn to being a "business" founder.
|
| It is good to have a co-founder in general though, get one of
| those if you can. Just don't worry about finding complementary
| skills, bias entirely towards someone you can work with.
| Eumenes wrote:
| I generally agree but if you're developing a product for a
| niche industry and that non-technical co-founder has a shit ton
| of insight and connections, it will 1000% open doors. Then
| again, perhaps you can partner with those folks in other ways
| vs giving away 50% equity.
| edgyquant wrote:
| By that logic the person with that domain knowledge can
| partner with technical folks for less than 50% equity. Which
| is what normally happens in my experience
| gnicholas wrote:
| This is more likely to be true where you are selling to other
| technical people. But it becomes much less likely to be true
| when you are selling B2C, or to non-technical businesspeople.
| And of course, the ability of a technical person to learn sales
| varies quite a bit. Some technical folks pick it up easily, but
| others do not (or find important non-technical bits like
| fundraising and sales to be very distasteful/annoying).
| notahacker wrote:
| And of course the reverse is true. Some "business people" can
| pick up a huge amount about UX, client priorities, process
| automation and what is and isn't technically possible and
| make useful product management contributions even if they
| never touch the codebase, and some simply aren't interested
| in that level of implementation detail even if they're really
| good at selling the big picture and someone really needs to
| get a handle on that side of the business.
| choppaface wrote:
| Need somebody who can do product and sales. Often this person
| is predominantly non-technical.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| I'm currently the technical guy and would love to learn how to
| also be the business guy - what do I need to do to develop
| those skills?
|
| Getting your hands dirty is the best way to learn anyhting, so
| with technical topics, especially programming, I would just
| dive into projects and start coding, building things, and
| that's how I learned. In terms of business skills, what
| projects can I realistically undertake on my own that would
| help me develop those skills? Should I start a low-stakes
| business selling soap on Etsy or something? Is that adequate?
| Completely different ballgame from the corporate startup world
| - but would any of the skills from such a humble venture
| transfer to the larger stakes ones?
|
| How might a technical guy become the business guy?
| threeseed wrote:
| Read and understand the Gitlab handbook:
|
| https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/
| GamerAlias wrote:
| Are you serious? If so why? Could you elaborate about why
| one should read such a long text? Doesn't seem a clear
| answer to his Q
| DelaneyM wrote:
| You become a business guy the same way you became a technical
| guy!
|
| Don't waste time selling soap though (unless you really love
| soap) - my best advice is to try to sell something you've
| made. It could be your time (as a consultant), or it could be
| a product.
|
| I would suggest waiting to develop these skills until you
| know what product you want to bring to market as an
| entrepreneur. No sense in learning B2C growth hacking when
| you end up in enterprise sales (or vice-versa).
| willsmith72 wrote:
| The first stages are just sales. You're just trying to find
| something people will buy and that means a lot of people time.
|
| I've found it rare that engineers will find that natural, it
| takes a lot of time and discomfort to get good at
| robocat wrote:
| > just sales
|
| This sounds like a typical engineer's summary. It is a
| dismissal - just like the video talks about tech being
| dismissed.
|
| Recruiting a co-founder is not "just sales". The video is
| taking about an archetypical salesperson who still can't buy
| a tech guy (maybe their sales skills are not so good).
| sebmellen wrote:
| https://nav.al/build-sell
|
| > _Bill Gates famously paraphrases this as, "I'd rather teach
| an engineer marketing, than a marketer engineering."_
| gnicholas wrote:
| Absolutely true. Of course, a non-technical cofounder
| probably knows more than just marketing. He may add a lot of
| value in terms of fundraising, product management, and other
| areas. Teaching all of these things to an engineer wouldn't
| be trivial.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Nonetheless, I think most business functions are more
| societally established, and for that reason they can be
| more easily outsourced.
|
| You can find a "pre-packaged" MBA, attorney, etc. because
| society is very good at churning out those roles. Just go
| the most recently graduated Wharton batch and hire the top
| grad for $300k, and you have someone who can do your legal,
| fundraising, operations, etc.
|
| It's much harder to find someone with unique technical
| insight and the ability to deliver, which is the true value
| of a good "engineer".
| WJW wrote:
| This is like saying you can go hire the top graduate of
| your local bootcamp and they can be a decent tech lead.
| Experience matters for legal and business roles just as
| much for engineering, much as we devs like to pretend
| otherwise.
| ginkgotree wrote:
| Second this. I worked in Sales Engineering for 5 years, ended
| that career selling a $25MM solution to the CEO of a fortune
| 100. There is no secret sauce, and it is all learnable. The key
| skills are interpersonal. I know its hard to do as an engineer,
| but most of (enterprise) sales is shutting the F up, listening,
| carefully listening, earning trust, and learning to navigate
| stakeholders and what their potential incentives are to help
| you.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| I think sometimes the salary market would disagree with that.
|
| At many companies a sales engineer can make more money than a
| developer.
|
| Personally I think it's too nuanced a question to answer
| generally. Depending on who it is and the context "the right"
| person in either role can make all the difference.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Let's just say - there are some critical things you have to be
| good enough at and those correlate with commonly observed
| corporate structures. Some degree of Sales, Marketing, Legal,
| Security, R & D, and Finance competencies need to exist across
| the founders. Sometimes one person can do it, but they also
| need to know how and when to bring in experts if they are lucky
| enough to need to scale up.
|
| On a very basic level, not having a cofounder in any capacity
| can create a structural bottleneck when two important things
| have to happen at the same time. A trusted second party
| provides resiliency.
| robocat wrote:
| > My advice to engineers is that it's nearly always easier to
| learn business/sales
|
| Technical people mispredict the value of a business co-founder
| in a similar way to how this video talks about tech co-founders
| being misvalued. Cue jokes about sales-droids. But there is a
| mirror between businessy people undervaluing tech and tech
| undervaluing business.
|
| A key point of the video is recruiting (albeit a form of
| sales): it is hard to sell "adventure" and belief.
|
| We see this every time an engineer tries to shift to a
| managerial role and fails. In theory business skills can be
| learnt, in practice it is hard and perhaps easier to co-found
| with someone with the skills already. There are risks, but if
| you can't judge ability and integrity then you're already
| hosed.
|
| The best example I can think of who cogently explains how they
| learnt is Jim Keller - talking about how he changed AMD.
| amelius wrote:
| The first non-founder employees of a company usually end up with
| the worst deal financially.
|
| Take that into account if you're the technical guy working for
| the startup.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I never thought that was an open question (given the space we're
| talking about)...
|
| The one that seemed more open and therefore more interesting: do
| you need a non-technical co-founder?
| Belomolo wrote:
| Most modern companies ARE tech / it companies but either don't
| know it or don't accept it.
|
| It's easy to run services on the internet when you don't know
| what you are doing wrong...
| kragen wrote:
| those companies will happily outsource the development of their
| core competitive advantages to another company who does
| appreciate its value; they will then sell it to their
| competitors
| 23B1 wrote:
| This is dated. There's no rules to founding your own company.
|
| As a non-technical founder I can
|
| A) Get a technical cofounder which takes me weeks to find,
| dilutes my ownership, and with whom I have no recourse if their
| work is sub-par (or we end up just not liking/trusting/vibing
| with each other)
|
| or
|
| B) Build an MVP with any number of offshoring partners in a
| matter of weeks and for far cheaper (money, time, opportunity
| cost). If I don't like the work, we can modify the contract, or I
| can quickly pivot to another team.
|
| This is also true for technical founders as well, to be clear.
| You can probably do a lot of the business stuff by outsourcing.
| You can worry about gelling a team once you've got to 1.
| nurple wrote:
| Heh, good luck. As a tech cofounder, I attempted to do just
| this and I have extensive development and management
| experience. It was a nightmare, EVERY SINGLE offshoring company
| tried to play us as a group that didn't know their stuff, and
| when put to the iron they couldn't produce anything that would
| stand up--technically--against a mild sneeze.
|
| If I hadn't been there, my other founders would have gotten up
| to their eyeballs in offshore dev debt and would have a giant
| hairball that even the most experienced tech people would be
| unable or unwilling to make additional progress against once
| the offshore team stops delivering.
|
| So, good luck trying to lead an offshore team that's only
| interested in absorbing as much money from you as possible
| before moving onto the next sucker. If you don't think a tech
| cofounder is worth their ask, then you deserve to get exactly
| what you pay for.
| kragen wrote:
| i'm interested to hear what kinds of things they did and what
| you did in response. there are probably a lot of good stories
| there
| kragen wrote:
| to get from zero to one, which i think is what you're referring
| to with your 'once you've got to 1' line at the end, you need
| to first find a market that's at zero; a product/service that
| doesn't exist. but that isn't enough; then you have to take it
| to one, a product that does exist. there are three piles here:
|
| 1. product categories that are technically feasible and
| profitable and where products already exist;
|
| 2. product categories that are technically feasible and
| profitable and where no products already exist;
|
| 3. product categories that are not technically feasible, so no
| products already exist.
|
| anyone can tell the difference between pile 1 and piles 2 and
| 3. but you need a technical cofounder to be able to distinguish
| between pile 2, which is very small, and pile 3, which is
| enormous. and that's not something you do once; it's an ongoing
| process that happens at many levels of detail in your product,
| and even at the largest scale it's a gradual process of
| reduction of uncertainty, because you don't really know that
| something is technically possible until it's been done
|
| then, you need to actually build the first product in that
| category, which involves identifying, prioritizing, and
| mitigating the risks that could destroy it. probably in banking
| a lot of this is things like regulators, market moves, and bank
| runs, but in companies built on software, a lot of those risks
| are software risks, and you need technical acumen to do this
|
| as a nontechnical cofounder, what value are you bringing to the
| table? your family's money? invest in a vc fund, or start one,
| though without technical cofounders you'll waste all your money
| on companies in pile 3. your business knowledge? that's
| worthwhile in some cases. your leadership and management
| skills? likewise. but you're going to have to offer convincing
| evidence of something like this to be a good option for anyone
| to invest their money in
| ilc wrote:
| Honestly as a technical guy: You come off as greedy.
|
| As a technical founder, I face the EXACT same risks. What if
| the business guy can't drum up money? What if he can't sell the
| damn pen.
|
| Most companies fail, the strongest firms will have strong
| business and technical people.
|
| If you want to stand on one leg. Go for it. You'll piss your
| money away overseas. When you need someone to help you get
| across that line... there is nobody at your side.
|
| Founding a successful company is hard. You will face days where
| you don't have the answer. Things will happen that are outside
| your experience... and yes, you can buy, buy, buy your way
| there... but remember, you are buying mercs. I've been a merc.
| Win or lose... I get paid, so, yes sir. How high sir?
|
| Rework is just more money.
|
| ... You sure you want to be on the other side of the table from
| someone like me, without someone like me at your side?
|
| Because all those off-shore firms... are more merc than I am.
| hiddencost wrote:
| I'd argue the other side of the this: you don't need a non
| technical cofounder.
| gkoberger wrote:
| Disagree, and I say this as a technical founder with no
| cofounder. Once things start to take off, a majority of the
| things you deal with are non-technical. There's so much that
| goes into building a company, and you really need someone who
| understands how businesses work and can run G2M.
|
| Sure, you can hire for it... but you'll almost never find
| someone as invested in it as the founder, and it's just as
| important as the product.
| kragen wrote:
| you need a cofounder but there's no benefit in them being
| nontechnical
| gkoberger wrote:
| Do you really think there's no skills or archetypes that
| are valuable on a founding team that doesn't involve
| writing code?
| paulddraper wrote:
| Depends what you're doing.
|
| It's relatively rare nowadays to see tech solopreneurs. (At
| least, for something more than a lifestyle business.)
|
| Often you need someone with experience/connections/insight into
| the industry: medicine, construction, ecommerce, finance,
| logistics, whatever.
| geniium wrote:
| I love the format with the topics on the side, well done YC!
|
| Downside: they are too much looking around , probably a lot of
| people around or screens with prompters. Disturbing me
| opportune wrote:
| Even this article IMO subtly demonstrates the mindset that leads
| nontechnical founders to not think they need a technical
| cofounder, by phrasing the search for one as "recruiting" as if
| they were a subordinate or code monkey. It should be a partner
| relationship, not a subordinate relationship.
|
| This mindset that technical cofounders are essentially "coders"
| (a term I hate) is very prevalent among inexperienced
| nontechnical founders. I know I'm preaching to the choir here but
| a lot of technical people have deep industry/business/product
| knowledge and have social skills. It is very frustrating when
| some Ivy League 25 year old PM/management consultant tries to
| pitch you on their vision while treating you like an idiot savant
| they can easily take advantage of.
| welfare wrote:
| Completely agree, I'm waiting for the article on "Why you need
| a business-oriented co-founder and how technical founders can
| recruit one"...
| thelittlenag wrote:
| +1 on that!
| debacle wrote:
| The problem is that you don't. "Business" has been
| systematized in many ways, and more and more your "business"
| is just someone else's software.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > There are two reasons founders resist going out and
| recruiting users individually. One is a combination of
| shyness and laziness. They'd rather sit at home writing code
| than go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably be
| rejected by most of them. But for a startup to succeed, at
| least one founder (usually the CEO) will have to spend a lot
| of time on sales and marketing. [2]
|
| http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
| lainga wrote:
| > while treating you like an idiot savant they can easily take
| advantage of.
|
| I considered it a bit, and you know what, I'd wager that four-
| fifths of tech business dynamics flow from this statement.
| Technical expertise is the money printer onto which all manners
| of value extraction anchor themselves, like barnacles. If not
| at the creation, then, for a time, it is good. And then it
| happens anyway 5-10 years down the line.
|
| That said, there _are_ different failure modes for purely
| technical people not understanding business. But the market
| doesn 't seem to reward them the same way. Root cause is
| outside the scope of this comment...
| _jal wrote:
| Yep. I used to be more charitable, but I've taken to being
| very short with founder wannabes who act like this. Bluntly,
| if they refuse to look past their preconceptions to see who
| they're actually talking to, why should I?
|
| This is made easier knowing founders with those sorts of
| blinders are likely going to fail anyway, so you don't want
| to be in the blast radius when it happens.
| gary_0 wrote:
| > That said, there _are_ different failure modes for purely
| technical people not understanding business.
|
| A common one, I think, is technical people thinking
| management or business expertise is easy (or even beneath
| them) because they're so smart in other areas--and any
| problems they might have can surely be solved with the same
| tools they use to solve engineering problems, right? Which is
| kind of the flip side of the attitude of the kind of
| nontechnical founders we're talking about.
|
| Another thing I'm facing myself (as a technical person) is
| when I've successfully dipped a toe into a management role, I
| was lucky enough that the people I was leading were all also
| technical people whose personalities were mostly in line with
| mine. But I've had to remind myself that if I put myself in a
| leadership position again, it won't always be that simple...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The biggest business gap seems to be assuming other people
| won't screw you over, given enough money on the table and
| the opportunity.
|
| I assume most MBAs already know this.
|
| Lots of technical people learn the hard way.
| jjav wrote:
| Yes, this. I've been in many startups but only once as a
| founder. I was the technical one, the only one with deep
| expertise in the core business area of the startup.
|
| Well, my title was founder. All the other founders were
| on the board, I was not. All the other founders
| controlled budget, I did not. So really, despite the
| words on the offer letter I was just an employee. The
| founder title granted me the right to work 90 hour weeks
| with no help and no support and no budget to hire help.
|
| At least didn't waste too many years on that one.
|
| Learn from me. Spend some of your money up front and hire
| a lawyer with tons of experience in startups to guide you
| through contract negotiations and if the company balks at
| your (lawyer-assisted) terms that's your giant red flag
| to run very far away.
| rectang wrote:
| Competing with that naivete is the great delusion of
| technical people that "If we build it they will come."
|
| (Speaking as an technical person who constantly meditates
| on that problem.)
| gary_0 wrote:
| > given enough money on the table and the opportunity.
|
| In my personal experience it was never even that much
| money. Some people just really want to feel like they've
| pulled a fast one, even if all they really end up doing
| is wasting everyone's time. As a nerd who is generally
| not motivated by Machiavellian shenanigans, I have a hard
| time seeing these kinds of predators coming.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _I have a hard time seeing these kinds of predators
| coming._
|
| Just imagine other people's value functions are
| exclusively "What's good for me?"
|
| At worst, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
| mainpassathome wrote:
| > Technical expertise is the money printer onto which all
| manners of value extraction anchor themselves, like
| barnacles.
|
| An even easier way to look at this is in general: Business
| people somehow don't understand that the value comes from the
| labour
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| The other parts of the business are labor as well. Products
| don't magically go to market. Business models don't
| magically create and evolve themselves.
| waprin wrote:
| Technical expertise is very rarely where the core value of a
| product comes from. If you're really pushing some boundary
| and just have a better technology product, like original
| Google or ChatGPT, then sure, tech is your special sauce.
|
| For 99% of software businesses, the tech can cause the
| business to fail but its almost never what makes the business
| succeed. Things like customer development and sales are
| actually far more important.
|
| Its hard to build a well-architected web app that scales, but
| theres many people who can do a reasonable job at it. But
| translating that to business value is much harder.
|
| Theres many people can build a React project in a week, fewer
| who know how to turn that React project into money. That
| should be self-evident on a site full of people who know how
| to make a React app, but begrudglingly work for others
| because they dont know how to turn a React app into money.
|
| The thing about "the business guys" is most of them are
| actually pretty bad at the business side. And a lot of
| developers are actually better at the business side, because
| they have more relevant experience.
|
| The "business guys" get their MBA and learn about merges and
| acquisitions for billion dollar business and do case studies
| about how GM optimizes their supply chain, information that's
| useful in some contexts but mostly entirely useless when it
| comes to getting your first 100 paying customers for your
| SaaS.
|
| The developer is actually more likely to have the relevant
| business skills since they're more likely to have put some
| sort of SaaS on the internet and tried to get users for it,
| even if they failed.
|
| I was on YC cofounder matchmaking for a while and was
| inundated with "business guys" who were just bad at the
| business side. It didn't bug me that they were non-technical,
| but their non-technical nature led to some bad business
| planning. For example, one guy who worked in VC wanted to
| make a GMail / Superhuman competitor oriented towards VCs. I
| suggested we start with a Chrome extension for Gmail, he
| insisted we build an entirely new email stack from scratch
| for the MVP.
|
| Making a realistic plan is part of making a business plan and
| his lack of technical acumen made him bad at business.
|
| If someone came to me and said, hey I have a super pared down
| MVP, it's just 4 screens in Figma with a minimal data model,
| and I have 100 people who I showed the Figma screens to and
| they signed up to pay $50 a month, can you build it ? I'd be
| thrilled to pair up with a "business guy" like that but they
| are far more rare than a good tech co-founder and the
| business types that get that far tend to offer things like
| "founding engineer" instead of actual co-founder because
| they, somewhat fairly, assume that the skills you're bringing
| to the table aren't actually that difficult to find.
|
| But to recap, my high level point is that the technical
| expertise is not really the money printer. The money printer
| is mapping market demand to technical products, which is a
| business skill. And that business skill is worth a lot more
| than technical skills. Its just a type of business skill that
| you find more often in developers than you do in MBA, and so
| we don't associate it with "business guys". But it's the most
| fundamental of all skills to make money from software, other
| than a handful of "exceptions that prove the rule".
| puniaviision wrote:
| This whole comment was beautiful.
|
| Especially this part:
|
| "But to recap, my high level point is that the technical
| expertise is not really the money printer. The money
| printer is mapping market demand to technical products,
| which is a business skill. And that business skill is worth
| a lot more than technical skills. Its just a type of
| business skill that you find more often in developers than
| you do in MBA, and so we don't associate it with "business
| guys". But it's the most fundamental of all skills to make
| money from software, other than a handful of "exceptions
| that prove the rule"."
|
| As an ex-shitty business guy, I taught myself how to code
| thinking that would solve my problems. Nope. Now I'm just a
| shitty business person and a shitty dev. Forcing myself to
| do the actual work of talking to customers now.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Heading over to MIT to "find a coder" is something you'll hear
| from HBS aspiring founders.
|
| I also deeply agree with the other part - there's a class of
| technical leaders who have that depth and choose to work with
| technology as the primary day to day. But, they also don't have
| HBS MBAs often.
|
| Good VCs look for these founders I think, but otherwise the
| cultural treatment of that type can aspire one to get a MBA
| just to fix or re-align the perception.
| paulddraper wrote:
| :shrug: CEOs get recruited too, i don't understand the problem
| speby wrote:
| This is pretty well said. I tend to agree and as a founder of
| multiple companies, as a well an engineering-background co-
| founder myself, I have definitely had interactions with "non-
| technical" founders looking for people (like me) and totally
| got the vibe of the needing a "technical co-founder" because
| they just need some "coder" as if that's the missing key to
| success (or whatever).
|
| That said, there are plenty of very smart, driven, people who
| are not software engineers who don't think of a technical co-
| founder that way. So it'd be wrong to paint with a super wide
| brush on this.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> It is very frustrating when some Ivy League 25 year old
| PM/management consultant tries to pitch you on their vision
| while treating you like an idiot savant they can easily take
| advantage of.
|
| I get calls weekly from people seeking technical co-founders.
| The biggest thing most CTO candidates dont realize is the power
| they have -- unless the "business co-founder" is actually
| bringing something to the table.
|
| I'd LOVE to work with a "Business co-founder" who actually
| brings Purchase Orders, Funding, Transact-able Relationships,
| prior wins (esp publicly verifiable wins). That would be a
| dream.
|
| It makes _no sense_ to work with a "Business co-founder" who
| wants ME to put in hundreds of hours of technical work --
| upfront -- often for equity "e.g., free" -- and retains the
| right to take all the upside and has none of the downside. Why
| would I need a "Business Co-Founder" at all in that case, I
| might as well be the only founder and recruit later.
|
| I see tons of friends burnt by these types of "deals." The
| biggest red-flag is when the "Business co-founder" still has a
| job and no real skin in the game.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| I have substantially less exposure to this space than you
| seem to, but even when trying to start projects with friends,
| this holds true. So often, I get pitched by pals who think
| the _idea_ is what they 've done, and at that point, it's up
| to me to "code up." What I would _love_ to hear is, "I've
| been talking with these three businesses already, and they
| seem interested." or even, "I'm really worried about the
| sales and marketing side of things, so that's the problem I'm
| going to focus on."
|
| Nobody's ever come even close to that. It takes _zero_ coding
| to have those things already started, and yet nobody even
| goes down that path before looking for a "code monkey."
| vlod wrote:
| I've been burnt multiple times by this.
|
| I think they believe in the "Build it and they will come" and
| then they just coordinate and tell you what to do afterwards,
| rather than making hundreds of cold calls (i.e. grinding).
| csa wrote:
| > This mindset that technical cofounders are essentially
| "coders" (a term I hate) is very prevalent among inexperienced
| nontechnical founders. I know I'm preaching to the choir here
| but a lot of technical people have deep
| industry/business/product knowledge and have social skills. It
| is very frustrating when some Ivy League 25 year old
| PM/management consultant tries to pitch you on their vision
| while treating you like an idiot savant they can easily take
| advantage of.
|
| This is nicely worded, but I would like to expand on it. This
| is coming from someone who is a businessperson who programs --
| I've been programming since I was 10, but I've never had the
| job of a programmer.
|
| tl;dr - I think that both programmers and business people can
| be delusional about their value add, but folks who can do both
| are easier to work with, and folks who can do both have more
| opportunities than just hyper-growth startups.
|
| In generalities, there are four groups of folks on the tech-
| business continuum.
|
| 1. Pure tech folks with little or no business acumen. Some of
| these folks think "sales" or "marketing" are fighting words. I
| find many of these folks very difficult to do business with. To
| be charitable to the "Ivy League" folks you refer to, they have
| probably met enough of these pure tech folks (some of whom are
| actually idiot savants) such that they erroneously over-
| generalize to think that all tech folks are like these pure
| tech folks.
|
| 2. Tech folks with business acumen. The business side usually
| comes from experience. I think pg advocates for tech folks who
| do start ups to develop into this. Overall much easier to do
| business with, but sometimes they make product-oriented
| decisions that miss the forest for the trees. The best tech
| businesses come from this group, but they get outclassed on the
| business side unless they embrace the business side
| aggressively (Zuck and Gates being prime examples). I think the
| "Ivy League" folks lose a lot of business due to lack of
| respect for this group.
|
| 3. Business folks with tech acumen (this is me). Great at
| taking over tech business that are poorly run and optimizing
| them either as a c-suite executive or as a buyer (this is what
| I do). While I don't refer to programmers as "coders", and I
| don't treat programmers as idiot-savants, I know how to find
| and pay programmers to solve my business problems.
| Interestingly, I run into some programmers who are doing
| commodity work who want a percentage of the business. My offer
| is always the same -- zero. I'm not building a startup or
| complex software. Their skills are largely fungible to me,
| since most of the value is in finding the solution rather than
| the nuts and bolts of development. The exception is for folks
| in group 2 who want to move to group 3, but at that point they
| become a businessperson rather than a programmer.
|
| 4. Business folks with no tech acumen. These are the "Ivy
| League" folks (and a lot of VCs, tbh). These are the "idea
| people", the people who are clueless about tech and tech
| development, often the people who are also bad at business, but
| they happen to have access to money and/or critical buyers.
| Fwiw, many of these folks treat other business people even
| worse than programmers -- they just treat most people like
| idiots, sans the savant. I sometimes have a hard time doing
| business with these folks, because they frequently don't know
| the value (or lack thereof) of their business, and/or they are
| only looking for suckers to do business with. Many/most of
| these folks are all style and no substance. If they had some
| substance, they would be in group 3 (or try to be).
|
| Obviously these are people on a continuum that are separated
| into somewhat arbitrary groups. That said, these archetypes
| exist.
|
| How do these archetypes matter for tech businesses?
|
| If you're in group 1, you're at the mercy of whatever business
| person you can work with. You hope that you end up more like
| Woz than most of the pure tech folks who get restructured out
| as the business grows. I strongly recommend that the pure tech
| folks focus on getting paid primarily in cash rather than
| equity, since any non-benevolent business person will structure
| out the tech person's equity as soon as possible.
|
| If you are in group 2, you are in a strong position to develop
| a successful startup or successful tech business. Just realize
| that you are a cog in the VC machine, and they only value you
| for your potential to hit home runs. You can make more reliable
| money (think 8 or 9 figures) in a "lifestyle business", but it
| is not likely you will become a billionaire... unless you shift
| to group 3.
|
| If you are in group 3, you need to realize that most of your
| value will be by doing very boring shit. Billionaire status is
| possible, but it will be a boring trip, and you are not likely
| to appear in any sexy tech write ups unless you engage in
| aggressive self-promotion in these areas (some should, most
| probably shouldn't). The biggest mistake I see group 3 folks
| make is to think that they are in group 2, especially if/when
| they try to develop a consumer-oriented product without getting
| a group 2 cofounder.
|
| Group 4... well, group 4 is what they are. There is some
| jiujitsu by which their egos and ignorance can be used for
| greater good. If you engage with these folks, I would only do
| so with that type of interaction in mind. If you engage with
| them on their terms, you will almost certainly lose.
|
| Why did I write all of this? To clarify options for various
| level of tech people.
|
| The HN/Ycombinator narrative to push for technical co-founders
| is very valid _for start ups_ (the pg kind that are built to
| grow fast), but there many other ways to make money as a tech
| person or a tech-oriented business person than start ups
| (especially now in the 20s compared to the 90s or 00s), and
| some /many of these are more reliable ways to get to a "fuck
| you money" level. I don't think a lot of highly skilled tech
| folks realize this.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| I'd like add to this conversation this two other important facts:
|
| 1) you (or your partner) do need domain experience and expertise.
| If you want open a bakery, or even try to automate a bakery, you
| really need at least some commercial baking experience. I see so
| many folks pitching a product in an area where they have zero
| experience.
|
| 2) you (or your partner) do need some organizational and/or
| business management experience. Business-whether it is software,
| hardware, or selling bakegoods-is about working with people and
| working with money. Learn about it and do some of it before
| starting uour own company.
| thelittlenag wrote:
| And here what we need is a business co-founder who can help us
| crack the nut of getting traction. Sigh.
| ilc wrote:
| As a technical founder/early person in my past:
|
| If you don't know why you need a technical founder. That is
| EXACTLY why you need one.
|
| It is the same reason why if as a technical founder, I didn't
| know why I needed a non-technical founder. I'd probably be making
| a major error.
|
| To those saying they waste equity:
|
| If you truly have a failed company, with a bad founder, buy them
| out or kill the firm, it happens. You've learned some key
| lessons.
|
| If the founders you need cost you 75% of your equity and you make
| a unicorn.... Were they worth it? Who cares. You got your fuck
| you money.
| hartator wrote:
| Or you do not need non-technical founders. Sales people selling
| themselves more than anything.
| syrusakbary wrote:
| I'm a technical founder working in a deep-tech startup.
|
| If I am completely honest, I think the recommendation of having a
| technical cofounder while useful for startups in the past might
| not be as useful for the startups of the future.
|
| Why? I strongly believe AI will cause a paradigm shift, and I'll
| adventure stating that AI will make non-technical people be able
| to do more and more with less. Which will make the requirements
| for differentiation in the tech side even harder to accomplish
| (very few people reaching the god-tech realms), but at the same
| time it would make the bases reachable for almost anyone.
| Basically, a more polarized order where less people will have
| access to "technical founders" that can differentiate themselves
| enough outside of the AI realms.
|
| I'd love to get more thoughts on this!
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Having used LLMs to solve tech problems, I would not trust the
| current state, or even GPT5, to reliably solve anything other
| than the most trivial of trivialities.
|
| Is the idea that in 2025, AWS will have an AI console where a
| non-technical founder types in what they want their site to do,
| and the LLM takes care of the rest? Register domains, build out
| the database/backend/auth/frontend, etc.?
|
| I really can't see it happening in 2025, or 2035, without some
| pretty big leaps forward, the kinds of leaps that may never be
| possible.
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