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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

I'm in my late 30s now, after two decades as an entrepreneur. My brain was quicker at 21, memory was slightly stronger (slightly faster, easier recall), and I had greater endurance at working productively in very long stretches. And despite that, due to learning how to work more effectively, how to be far more productive with my use of time, understanding what mistakes to avoid, I'm a dramatically better entrepreneur across the board. My patience has improved quite a bit, and my understanding of how to build for simplicity, reducing things down to only what they need to be, is leaps beyond what it was in my 20s. The single most important improvement I've seen, is building up a belligerent ruthlessness when it comes to complexity and general bloat. My 21 year old self just loved to build unnecessary, complex shit.

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I met with a non-technical cofounder a few months ago who is in his early 20s. He had a great idea for a product and was looking for a technical co-founder (he also had an investor who already put up some money and he was already deeply involved in the sales channel and had two customers already sold). I have no doubt this product would very successful. Probably not a unicorn, but could make a few people quite wealthy.

But, from our two hour meeting I could tell that he wanted to make all of those same mistakes I now know not to make.

Your point about building complex shit is exactly his main problem, and I problem I suffered from at that age too. Yes, it might be complex one day if that's what the market needs, but simple can be so much more and it's especially the right move for an MVP.

To some degree, I don't blame him and he doesn't know me well enough to trust me to guide him away from those pitfalls, but man I wish he had a little more humility -- we'd be a couple months away from an MVP at this point.

“Non-technical cofounder in early 20s” sounds like a massive red flag to me. Ideas are cheap, execution is what matters

This is common sentiment but I disagree. As a tech person, I’d much rather partner with a non-tech person already selling and raising funds. Sounds like a winning combo but the parent just didn’t want to go on the path this specific person was heading down.

I've always been better with an "idea man" to work with. I'd be careful though with an inexperienced non-technical cofounder, as they tend to not understand the intricacies of implementation. Setbacks will happen, and I have seen non-technical cofounders place a ton of blame on the technical ones when things go wrong. A rift in the relationship could mean the end of the business.

To be fair, "non technical co-founder" could mean anything from GP's pretty great sounding example to "I have an idea for the next Facebook, if you build it for free I'll give you 10%".

I don't see the disagreement with your parent. He has reservations about the age and thus the experience of the person, not if they are already actively raising money and doing sales. You can do these at 30+ as well.

Execution is not just technical. Sales, marketing, fundraising, recruiting, hiring, design/product, media, strategy, etc...

But if you have no technical innovation or your innovation is trivial to clone, then you don't have a startup.

Many startups fail because they're actually not innovative. Nobody needs another database from a tiny company that is just tiny bit better. No matter how good rest of your offering is, bigger does often mean better.

Other fail due to entanglements, especially hardware ones. Their supply chain fails and that's that. No amount of media will help and you cannot afford to hedge this kind of risk.

Execution is what matters. Execution has nothing to do with technical skills however.

If you're already bringing the technical skills, you probably want to partner with someone that has the skills you lack. In particular you'd probably want business development skills, but you'd also want them to be able to jump in and get involved with designs/mockups so you can focus on the technical side.

I agree; however, after the MVP is built the execution continues... and a hard part of that phase in the execution is actually getting customers and raising money and he had already done both. So, he had real value beyond the idea. I think we can all agree that some ideas are better than others, and the idea was on the better side of that spectrum too.

He already had investor monies and two customers.

> ...non-technical cofounder [...] had a great idea for a product and was looking for a technical co-founder

As an aside, maybe I just don't 'get it' or maybe I've just met bad examples but this scenario always reads to me like "guy wants someone to do the work for him so he can be the boss".

Good ideas are cheap. Execution is the hard bit.

"Execution" also includes selling the product and securing funding. A good non-technical co-founder handles all of this side of things so the technical guy can get on and write the code.

Without actual code you will fail after round 1. Even the best salesman can weasel for funding only for so long.

If the product is not innovative or much better than competitors, you will fail in a later round and best exit you can hope for is an acquihire.

This is why many startups fail, their ideas are meh and/or the execution does not follow.

I think it's more toward bad examples, which is most of the examples that I come across so I can see why you think that. But, this guy was good at sales, had an investor with money already in, had two customers sold on the platform, was already doing business in the space. He was a good example of a non-technical cofounder, he wasn't just saying he would do all the sales/marketing/finance like all non-technical co-founders always say they'll do, he was actually doing all of it already. His only problem was humility.

It seems you are assuming that execution is done mostly by technical co-founders. I would argue that many crucial aspects of what we categorise as "execution" are non-technical business aspects.

Are they now? What kind of aspects are you talking about?

Hiring? Ensuring funding? How long can those two last without a truly superior product?

In my opinion business factors like hiring and ensuring funding are way more important than having a superior product. Betamax was technically superior compared to VHS, Amiga OS was a better product than DOS, etc. etc.

Other non-technical factors, besides the ones you mentioned, are related to company culture, sales, HR and talent retention. Just a few examples that I can think of right now, there are many more of course.

While there are a ton of snake oil salesmen/women out there, there actually are people who are non-technical bringing other real skills to the table. Sometimes it's general business, sometimes sales, sometimes they really do have a deep domain understanding etc. So it's not always them looking to be the boss, but rather that they recognize a skills/knowledge gap and are trying to fill it.

It's all about the focus.

In the end, the system that a company is built from will be complex.

Execution is about knowing which parts of the system should be complex and which parts should be simple.

>I'm in my late 30s now, after two decades as an entrepreneur. My brain was quicker at 21, memory was slightly stronger (slightly faster, easier recall), and I had greater endurance at working productively in very long stretches.

I'm in my mid 30s. If my brain was quicker and my memory better when I was 21, it's certainly not enough of an effect to be noticeable. This corresponds to what more current studies say about when cognitive decline tends to become perceptible.

What has changed, is the demands on my time. Also, as you said, endurance. I can't sit at a computer for hours without stretching or something will start hurting.

>My 21 year old self just loved to build unnecessary, complex shit

When time and energy feel infinite, the perceived cost of wasting either feels low; the real cost remains the same.

> the real cost remains the same.

The cost is actually much higher when you’re younger because of the time-value of money. It just doesn’t feel that way because the immediate consequences are lower.

I however do feel that the best way to learn that you're wasting time with overly-complex solutions is to suffer the consequences for it, and the earlier you suffer them the better. So, I would say that wasting time (as long as it doesn't take long for you to realize you're the one who f'ed it up) when you're young has a high benefit, too. You learned it the hard way.

I don't think the poster was just talking about money, although there may also be a time-value factor for other things (health, neural plasticity, etc).

This captures the essence of mid 20s vs. 40 year old entrepreneur.

> My brain was quicker at 21, memory was slightly stronger (slightly faster, easier recall), and I had greater endurance at working productively in very long stretches.

> I'm a dramatically better entrepreneur across the board. My patience has improved quite a bit, and my understanding of how to build for simplicity, reducing things down to only what they need to be, is leaps beyond what it was in my 20s.

> The single most important improvement I've seen, is building up a belligerent ruthlessness when it comes to complexity and general bloat. My 21 year old self just loved to build unnecessary, complex shit.

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