How to Earn a Technical Co-Founder
humbledmba.com
humbledmba.com
But please, PLEASE know that that is a prototype and that your technical cofounder will likely want to throw it out the door on day 1.
Nothing is a worse conversation than "okay, so I have the v0 built offshore, but it just needs X, Y, and Z". Great start, but let me pick the stack, framework, etc. so I can do my job quickly. I'm here to make decisions WITH you, not be your code monkey.
If the offshore team works just stick with it so you can focus on technology strategy.
That is a big "if". A good technical cofounder will identify the latent technical debt that exists in an outsourced prototype and if that number is too high, a rewrite can be justified.
He hired a CTO, who took a look at the current code, list of bugs, and new features desired, and made the call to do a complete rewrite.
In retrospect, this was absolutely the right call. It can definitely be wasteful, but sometimes starting with a completely new design is the right thing to do.
It would be irresponsible to not be very skeptical of the code as it's usually trash, and trash code will scare away any and all future tech employees. The annual turnover will be >100%, guaranteed. No company can sustain that level of turnover.
Every time I have to use an iPhone app with broken non-standard UI components and UX it makes me sad.
I find that the real key is working with coders who can refactor one component at a time, without requiring a re-write from scratch. Then you actually can iterate on a junk codebase.
A prototype is something that you build and then throw away, a MVP is the minimum feature set that can be given to customers, developed with the same quality and values as your eventual product that can be expanded upon.
So be clear what your trying to built at the start, and make sure you build the right thing.
I think it's a mistake to not throw away a prototype. You could be starting day 1 with so much tech debt that it would take longer to fix it all vs. design and develop an MVP properly in the first place.
If the offshore stuff works, great, build on it. If it doesn't rewrite it.
If the architecture is good, but not the implementation, incrementally swap out what you can, as you need.
The worst part of going to any sort of pitch events is hearing just how bad so many of the startup ideas are.
Email in bio.
I can't speak from experience (or I'd have my own startup) but I think the best non-technical cofounder is found while working a technical job with someone of like mind. Or at Uni it seems.
Also, does their idea make intuitive sense to you, especially in terms of how can this be monetized? Vague, handwavy social apps that don't charge directly are a common problem. Apps for customers who don't have money is another popular antipattern. Apps that seem trivial are generally bad. Apps that respond Boolean true to "Can I already do this with Yelp?" are toxic.
But you find someone who has a couple of businesses already under their belt, who has some specific customers in mind who have a specific problem that person already understands... then you're getting somewhere. And it may be an entirely unsexy problem. One of my favorite startups locally is a company that has built a system for detecting excessive water use/leakage in toilets - something that can be repaired at cost savings if you have a large building (say, apartment complexes). Totally unsexy. Great market.
There is a very big difference between understanding the technological problem of something and then the business opportunity of that problem.
Latest Episode of Silicon Valley kind of touches on that.
I have met endless people who have a mediocre understanding of something and have a solution to a problem no one has. Or they have a problem and try to solve it with something that creates an equally annoying problem or the solution requires millions of dollars for any hope of working.
I welcome anyone who has a real solution for a real problem that needs building - send me a message via reddit and I will be more than happy to build it for you: https://www.reddit.com/user/beeboopp/ (since I don't have an email I want to tie to this account)
They didn't put any thoughts into how to monetize, what is the short term goal, which customers they would target first, how to gain traction, how to validate the idea, what was the advantage over the competition, etc etc
And when I started pointing out all these things to think about they got either panicked or angry, "why are you not excited?" "Why are you trying to destroy the idea?"
For me, it's actually really hard to do the opposite and find a true non-technical co-founder. Someone who would actually produce something, bring something to the table other than their "idea" of "Uber for puppies" or "An awesome merge of Facebook and AirBnB".
PS if you want to discuss startup ideas let me know
Unfortunately, it seems like calling yourself "an idea guy" is a sign that you actually have no clue. I can't imagine a real idea guy calling himself like that :)
If you know how to code you're already so far ahead :) I remember talking to a guy who told me "and then we'll add the API", I asked "why an API? What is it gonna do?", his answer: "Everybody has an API, we need it if we're serious", he had no clue what an API even was.
In a way, it makes me sad. Most of these people I "interviewed" (for lack of better words) were working full time on their project (or so they claimed) but still had no clue what they were really trying to accomplish.
An idea is way more than just one line (uber for X). My idea of an idea is insights into the market, designs for the MVP, and marketing strategy all in one.
Some business opportunities are based on solving technical problems, not all technical problems are business opportunities.
Personally I think some of the most enjoyable parts of starting are debating these points, creating inexpensive tests to validate (or invalidate) them, and evolve the idea.
A change of scenery might clarify the problem. If you go to a star trek convention you will likely not find any tech founders. It is true that many tech people are trekkies. Superficially that makes it sound like a great idea to recruit for a tech position at a trek convention. It is simultaneously true that only a microscopic fraction of trekkies are programmers. Most will be postman, bartenders, truck drivers, a true cross section of the country. That's why no body recruits programmers at a star trek convention.
On the other hand, if you went to strangeloop or Clojure/West and claimed you can't find any lisp programmers, that sounds way more mysterious. "I went to BSDCan and didn't meet any sysadmins" what?
So where is this businessperson-free location you went fishing at? Where is a good place to fish is a valid question for both sides.
But honestly, if I went back I wouldn't have learned to code. I would have learned enough to put up a basic lead capture page using unbounce or leadpages or some other landing page out-the-box product and started marketing.
Most good businesses can get some traction without any code. And people are always willing to talk if you have a product that already has some traction - even if it's very minimal.
The key is to figure out some super scaled down version of your product and use it to get some initial traction.
Your value proposition is not "an app that provides X". It should be the X. Technology is just the vessel.
Speaking as a technical person, what I'm interested in is your or your team's ability to excel at the things I am not good at doing, or don't enjoy doing. Mainly what I would care to see is the ability to do market and business model validation, marketing (in its many forms), sales, and fundraising. That stuff can be demonstrated with the sort of legwork discussed in this article, or (preferably) with past success in those areas.
I don't care if you know how to code, and I might even worry that you'll have learned enough to be in a Dunning-Kruger zone where I'll have to worry about you meddling.
Just my two cents!
What I think the real underlying issue is all the "I need a technical founder who is willing to build my idea but only share in 1% of the upside" people. They're equivalent to the spam mail recruiters which plague our industry.
Why is it unethical? No one is forcing designers to go onto 99designs. They only do it if they think it's worth it.
I "earned" my technical co-founder exactly by finding a smaller problem to solve from the really big one I had in mind.
Paid him to do it and made him realize that this was an interesting problem to solve while still a good business to be in.
The smaller problem he helped me solve has turned out to a pretty good business so I can't wait for what the bigger problem will do for it.
Now we are building some really great stuff.
If I were still young, single, and childless, I'd happily give that a shot if someone approached me with a halfway interesting idea.
Here is Orlando the mantra seems to be "I need to pay my bills, do that and I'll help you".
> I'd happily give that a shot if someone approached me with a halfway interesting idea.
That's really what's being talked about here. The reality is that many, if not most, non-technical founders have really crappy ideas. And then they complain about not being able to find a technical co-founder. What this article is saying is that they need to earn it. They need to validate their idea in some way that doesn't need technical skills beyond what they can learn themselves. Do the work or put in the money necessary to earn your technical co-founder's participation. Because that person has put in thousands of hours learning how to build what you need built. Just expecting to bring an idea to the table and have a technical person jump at working together is unrealistic. An non-technical founder needs to put in the effort to make their offer attractive.
tl;dr - the advice is the same regardless of whether you are on the business or technical side : you need a presentable proof of concept.
This is definitely insightful. Finding a person that is both good and available looking for a new project is a double rarity. All the more reason it is a sales pitch regardless of what side you fall on (tech or business). Good luck to you!
Original HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714304
Co-founders are a team and should have complimentary skills. There are far more roles in building a startup that just "idea guy" and "tech guy", so if you are a non tech founder certain that you need a tech founder i would strongly suggest learning other skills that as a team you think you might not possess.
Also asking someone if they know anyhow is not a bad solution to a problem. Maybe it doesn't always work and you have to explore other avenues, but it rarely hurts to ask people as a first move.
Then you have a lot more leverage when going to "business guys" and saying: "Hey, look, I've sold 30k of ARR in the last few months, but I don't see myself as amazing on the business side and I'm curious how you think you'd be able to accelerate this growth."
This will sound like a goofy analogy but my wife and I have been together for twenty years and its more important that we agree on the theory of boundaries than on the actual boundaries themselves. Although when we cooperate by having at least a minimal understanding of each other, things do go much better than working separately. Thinking back on observations of divorced people, the signals started very early with arguments about the very concept of boys night out or the only correct way (LOL) to organize household finances. May have been a divorce immediately after someone slept with someone else, or whatever, but the problem didn't initiate when the third party magically appeared in bed one night.
Anyway the analogy is obviously two founders will go further the more they can productively cooperate, but disaster is absolutely certain if they can't even agree on what level to cooperate at. And inflexibility there is going to limit the possible matching talent pool.