When you DON'T need a technical co-founder | Hacker News Reader

When you DON'T need a technical co-founder

3 pointsstevejobs3 comments

There are startups which I think can live without techie co-founders. It is my proposition that if your idea does not solve a core engineering problem then the need to bring in a technical co-founder diminishes. You can get away with hiring the talent as employees rather than as co-founders. Sure, you may need some help in putting together a demo/mockup, but that can be outsourced or done on contract.

Here are a few examples of startups that I think don't require technical co-founders because they are not that difficult to build (that is different from saying they don't need any technical help). AirBnB, CardPool, Fanvibe.

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The danger of NOT bringing on a technical co-founder is that you're then dealing with a different type of developer/tech person. This technical person is generally the type that gets (or could get) paid good money.

So as Travis mentions in his comment, if you don't have lots of cash on hand, you could run into problems. There is really no shortage of jobs available to developers, and chances are many jobs out there will pay much better than what you can afford to pay at your startup. Unless you find the perfect person who doesn't mind making less than he/she probably could and is still 100% dedicated, you'll probably have a high turnover rate.

In contrast, you can generally assume that a co-founder is going to give you 100% all the time as they theoretically have a lot of skin in the game.

In many startups, you probably don't need a technical co-founder, but you probably should have one anyway.

Seems to me, though, that if you're not bringing a technical co-founder, you'd better be bringing cash to the table. A technical co founder can exchange time for code. Without them, you need some other medium, which is invariably cash (or connections to cash).

Yes if you have the cash AND know how to hire and manage technical teams, a technical co-founder is not really needed IMO.

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