Founders aren't programmers = doomed ? | Hacker News Reader

Founders aren't programmers = doomed ?

15 pointssnowbird12244 comments

Neither my business partner nor I are coding our web application. We are paying others for programming, graphics, and server work. We both have full time jobs and more money than time. I'm an ex-programmer, and he is a product manager. There are lots of examples of successful startups where the founders were the original programmers. Can you give me some examples where that wasn't the case? Do we have a better or worse chance of making it than if we were 2 programmers?

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The line between an ex-programmer and a programmer is pretty fluid. Just open your resume in a text editor, delete the first three characters in "ex-programmer", and your doom will be averted!

Even better, open a file in your text editor and type

  puts "Hello, World"

or, for more style points,

  (setq my-triumphant-return "Hello, World")

and, voila, you're a programmer again. At least by the standards of many job applicants.

Of course, by "ex-programmer" you may mean "I used to know how to program, but now the code that our programmers show me is completely opaque and I have no idea what it does or how it works or whether it harbors lots of hidden bugs." In which case... you are probably doomed! ;)

Not doomed at all. Less chance than programmers? Not even. I know a product manager-ish person and he leads projects from proposal to finish for his company. He reads a description, drafts a spec, and scrutinizes every step.

The advantage of being a programmer yourself is that you have intimate knowledge of what's not possible, what is, what limitations there are, and what approaches to take. If you know enough of the whole plan, leave the details to others. All you need to know is what you want to do and exactly how to do it, not as in "we will do a POST XHR here," but "the user submits this, and we will look for this keyword, and they will see that." If you can write a good spec, you're good to go.

No way are you doomed. I don't remember who it was, but a wise person on this forum posted the phrase "there is no one path" in response to another post like this.

However you may have to play to your strengths... if your Web application is doing something deeply technical, and you need deep knowledge of algorithms/data structures to make critical feature-level decisions, you're probably at a disadvantage. But if your product isn't too algorithmically flavored, and a lot of the work involves coming up with the right features for an end-user application (business software, greeting card maker, productivity suite, etc.), you can definitely kick some ass, if you have great knowledge of your target users.

Last thought: make sure you completely trust your dev team, or do a thorough job with verifying the quality of their code.

Jeff Bezos? Mark Cuban? the guys who founded bluemountainarts, Stuart Skorman?

Though I'll admit that many of these are either online retailing enterprises or internet/media type companies.

But clearly, there are successful examples on both sides of the fence.

I think it might be a good idea to get a good programmer as an advisor to your startup. Give him a small stake like a percent or two and get him to verify your software outsourcing plans. I think the bigger problem here is the doubt that you will not make it incase you dont have programmers as founders. You might or might not , but that will only depend on you trying and figuring things out - it might be the case that for your domain you absolutely need a programmer on board (or not) - but there is no real way to know as such.

Getting a programmer on board will help you with figuring out things faster than you would otherwise have done - atleast on the programming part.

Only a percent or two of stake for a mission-critical programmer advisor?! You're crazy.

It depends upon how technical what you are planning to do is. New e-greeting card company? You might be OK. Scalable distributed computing utility? My moneys on fail.

The guy from the "4-hour work week" book advocates outsourcing everything you do. I wouldn't say your chances are out the window, but it would depend on what your application is. If you have a vision that can be completely laid out without getting into technical details, then you are probably ok I would guess. Whereas if your business is the technology itself, it my be harder.

When you really need to get something done overnight, which is common in startups, you'll have to pay extra fees. And no contractor gets to the small details, or gets the whole picture.. Would you open a garage without being an engineer/mechanic? I doubt.

Digg, I believe.

yep. digg was outsourced.

Though they didn't actually tell me that I was an "outsource" rather than a "founder" till later. In fact they never really told me that at all, just left me to read the press.

Oh, and just to complete the thought, I would say that non-programmer founders are far from screwed.

so Owen, any chance you'd build my app for 30/buck an hour now? hehe, did they overpaid you... When digg sells your going to be stinking rich, and I guess Kevin pays you a bit more now days.

It just goes to show that by working for next to nothing but on a good idea / team, you can not only change the world but rule it too.

I left the company in October. Still hoping for "stinking rich." I'd certainly be open to building your app, but I'd probably want some specific things in writing this time around.

Just wondering, what are you up to these days after digg? I would imagine you could utilize the notoriety you gained from digg to create an app development team. Something to the nature of electricpulp.com ...

Messing around mostly. The problem with outsourcing now is that I'm in Canada. I could charge exactly the same in C$ as I charged in 2002, and Americans will pay 50% more. Unless I can target a european audience, and then you get into the language issues.

I've been helping a friend with his site, learning lisp thanks to the bad influences here ;-), and trying to create an interesting website. The last one is difficult.

Thanks for asking!

Why is it difficult to create an interesting website? You created digg and that, I must say, is a very interesting website. Also how could I contact you about possibly having you work or partner on a possible project? It is an interesting website!

Didn't Myspace have a similar story?

You can be an ex-programmer? As I see it it's a mentality, you can't really lose that.

Doomed? Of course not. Better or worse chance? Probably worse.

You can leverage your resources by paying others to do lots of stuff, but doing the core work of the business? I don't know. The reason most successful software startups are started by hackers is because they do the core work, keeping their fingers on the throttle of the business, and outsourcing that which can transparently be done by others.

You don't mention your business's the key market differentiator, but if it's tech related, you're in for a bumpy ride.

Put another way, would you start a law firm if you weren't a lawyer, a beauty salon if you didn't know how to cut hair, or a restaurant if you didn't know how to cook or serve? Probably not. Some do, but...you get the idea.

I'd give you an example of a tech firm started by 2 non-techies, but frankly, none comes to mind.

Well, he did mention that he is an ex-programmer and his partner a program manager, so the tech knowledge might be there.

The biggest risk with having some technical knowledge is the knows-enough-to-be-dangerous syndrome. There's a common tendency to interfere and second guess. It can make for a hellish experience for the person doing the actual technical work. Nothing is more pathetic than repeatedly hearing things like "It will take you 2 weeks?! I could do this in 2 days!".

I think it's far better to have people who are deeply knowledgeable about the field being worked in. They'll be useful in figuring out what to build and less distracted by how it's built.

It is possible for one or more good programmers to be managed by a better programmer. However, there are two disadvantages to this technique. Firstly, it borders on micro-management and it would take a large number of sub-ordinates to make the process worthwhile. Secondly, there's a large number of small business decisions that get made when you're programming. If you're happy with the latter then you may as well throw dice to decide your business model.

First off, I want to thank everyone for the ideas. Just so you know, the problem we are having isn't a technical one. I feel that our application isn't getting 'the love' it would get if I wrote it myself. Our service providers rely on us to find problems instead of being proactive. To summarize - there just isn't the sense of ownership that drives quality. The problem isn't going away, so that is why I thought we might be doomed.

I really think this is the key point and problem. If the people doing the heavy lifting aren't either passionate about the product or actually using it on a daily basis, you will suffer.

I don't think you're doomed, but as a programmer, I've both had startups and been brought into ones that have been outsourced. In my experience, those little things, the fit and finish, just aren't there when the people building them are in it for the paycheck.

At the risk of sounding cliched, it's kind of like the old adage about people who are fighting for their home vs. a paid soldier. You will get a lot more fight from the guy defending his home than the mercenary.

The second question that pops to mind is: Can you give relate the success of the startups to the programmers/founders being "good" or "bad programmer" ?

I'm struggling to give some examples. I don't know if either of lastminute.com's founders were coders, but even that isn't a "great" example. There is no reason why your project can't be a success technology wise, I would just say it's important to at least have an understanding of the technology and the process that goes into development.

google, Microsoft etc :p

so I get down modded for giving examples.... I know its not cool to moan about down modding but at least people could give a reason.

It is good until your programmers run off with your idea and you have not seen one line of code.

Constant Contact was founded by a non-programmer ex-Bain consultant. They're public now.