Ask HN: How do you evaluate non-technical co-founders?

Everyone always talks about how hard it is to find technical co-founders. We have the opposite problem. We have, basically, all go and no show. We have a very original product that's still in stealth mode and we're trying to raise investment to launch it -- without turning it on to too many people. We have some commitments from friends (about $60k of the $250k we're trying to raise), but our geekness is turning into a problem. It's easy enough to find big-talking evangelists, and it's easy enough to find techies who get what we're talking about; but it's really hard to find evangelists who can also get out there and talk nuts & bolts, and give the right answers when investors get all Perry Mason on them.

There are tons of websites dedicated to finding technical co-founders, and basically none dedicated to the non-tech kind. And to some extent it's probably because there isn't a simple test you can administer to check whether someone would be good for the job. I mean, there are ways you can test someone's technical knowledge. But how to test whether a non-tech has the stamina to be a long-term team player, the playfulness to be a great evangelist, the cajones to be a good salesperson, and the drive to never become complacent or lazy? That they're smart enough to play the part, that they're competent to maintain good business sense and good social skills -- I mean, what's the test for that? A dinner and drinks doesn't seem enough to know it (let alone an email exchange or a 30-minute interview.) And moreover, a lot of times we think the ability to hype something is key, and therefore people who hype themselves well must be good at hyping something we're building. To a certain extent that's true, but it's missing a key component: Trust. Trust granted is inverse to a person's ability to hype themselves. Put another way, the best salesment are humble, and generate sympathy as well as respect and adulation. We've yet to see much humility, or even humanity, in the people applying for this role.

So how do you evaluate non-technical co-founders, if you're an all-tech startup? For the longest time we've maintained we don't need them at all, but it's becoming obvious that in some ways, we really do. But without hard and fast rules for evaluation, we're operating on gut instinct, which can only take us so far.