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Comment by BayAreaEscapee | Hacker News Reader

> 95% of people I talked to were non-technical. Many were actively searching for a technical co-founder or early engineer. I’m convinced that me being technical is the single biggest contributor to the high response rate.

That would be the most painful part of all this for me. If I were forming a startup, I don't think I would consider pairing with someone non-technical. My personal idea of hell is having a bunch of marketing people spew buzzwords while I write and debug all the code.

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There are certainly advantages to both routes. I think there are a lot of business skills that are just as important, possibly even more important than the technical skills.

fwiw, my original plan was to be a solo founder. I ended up killing that idea a few months in because I missed some of the key red flags a business focused person likely would have caught.

> I ended up killing that idea a few months in because I missed some of the key red flags a business focused person likely would have caught.

Could you give a few examples of such flags? I'm pretty curious as someone hoping to be a technical solo-founder myself. Do you think that some management training would have caught some/most of these?

As a solo technical founder my idea of hell is kissing frogs, doing all the follow ups, figuring out taxes, doing demos, managing freelancers and debugging code. But 100%, no boards, no arguments is nice. But just last year I've messed up so many things a "real" CEO would have managed...

That can definitely be a problem, but having someone who can actually sell your product is invaluable.

Yup, but make sure they can sell the product, not sell you.

Also, never give up control of the finances - abdicating that responsibility means you will probably get screwed. You need to be technical about ensuring your efforts are not stolen.

I think you might draw benefit from this essay:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/11/the-development-ab...

I suppose it depends on the kind of product your building. My non-technical cofounder (medical field) does so much that I wouldn't enjoy, like trying to secure contracts with health care companies, funding, working through all the nuts and bolts of setting up being a provider, finding patients, etc.

Comparatively, I feel like the tech part is the easier part. I know (generally) what we have to build, and I'm confident I can build it and build up a team as we scale.

This is a really unhealthy perspective for so many reasons.

Almost all successful startups have good business leadership, sometimes from a technical founder, but usually not.

If your non-technical cofounder only knows a handful of marketing buzzwords, you should jump ship and find a better partner.

My personal idea of hell is cold-calling randos all day, trying to get them to pay me for half-finished software.

I guess it would depend on what it is, but I would think anything I would be interested in would need more than one technical person from the beginning…everything I’ve ever started has.

Someone has to do it. Usually you pair with someone who is stronger in areas you are weaker. In your case you are going to have to do it now.. is that what you really want?

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