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Comment by hardwaregeek | Hacker News Reader

What I want from a co-founder is: Smart, good chemistry, available. With most people I get 1-2 of these.

Also, we talk a lot about how it's hard to assess the quality of technical co-founders, but it's also really hard to assess the quality of non-technical co-founders. I'd love to collaborate with a non-technical person, but I have no way to determine whether a person is good at the skills which I lack. Maybe it's my tech chauvinism showing but there seems to be a lot of non-technical people who want esssentially a get-rich-quick scheme.

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Am technical and worked with some pretty poor non technical co-founders but also worked with an amazing one. The difference:

Real, ridiculous charisma (like can totally work a room, will impress almost anyone they sit down with), very aggressive on the commercial side, down-to-earth judgment/understands things/easy to be on same page.

Might have viewed being insanely charismatic as a red flag but I saw first hand how easy it was to get meetings, create business and client relationships, and have employees basically loving the guy.

So a good test is: does this non technical cofounder simply blow me away as a person and in their manners.

Cause many non-technical people have no useful skills. There's really only two things to solve, technical and sales. I can handle the technical.

Ideas are cheap and most suck (that is, not innovative enough to really be something special). I want someone highly skilled at the process of taking something small and good, getting people to invest, and making it bigger. I can build <whatever startup> faster and cheaper and more solid than you could ever imagine, but don't have any desire in schmoozing or learning the VC game.

I am a non-technical person. The only programming I know is some old HTML. I am pushing 50. I have built some amazing retail businesses from the ground up, you could call them “startups” with less than a hundred bucks many times in thirty plus years. I’ve been an educator for the last 16 years, of my own school. Ive learned so much about so many different industries - from food to fashion to IT recruiting to gifted education and online schooling, and a lot of stuff in between. I’d love to help some bright younger go-getters who’re hungry to make a difference and recreate the world in their own mould, or even try to change it - but I lack the trust of techies who dismiss my ideas and input as “old”, or who think they can’t understand me, but simply lack the energy to try because they’re so focused on their own things. Sales is about getting out of your comfort zone and looking at the world upside down, from a different person’s point of view, the person sitting beside you. It’s about building trust and relationships that are sustainable because there’s a two-way give, not a one-way take it or leave it. I have a lot to offer, but no takers. I’d love to volunteer for equity in a startup. You can take what you like from my feedback and throw away what doesn’t suit your work, I’m fine with that. Most people aren’t. But you have to search for them, and that means looking beyond your skill sets and seeing the bigger world. Good luck, kids. You’ll do well. We’re behind you all the way.

I might be wrong, and this is a bit of a trope, but I would recommend assessing people by whether they can show commitment to the things they care about, and whether they care about and can commit to the startup. People seeking a get-rich-quick scheme may not have a track record of patience in that regard.

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