Traits of successful non-technical solo founders
quibb.com
quibb.com
"Non-technical solo founders need to be extremely product focused. They're not purely business-y or marketing types"
Marketing gets short shrift in the tech world, probably because tech is one of the major industries in which the marketing function and the product development function are separated to a large degree. But true marketing, as a discipline, is very much product focused.
In fact, the discipline is often said to encompass "Four P's": product, price, place, and promotion. Many people -- not just in the tech world, to be fair -- tend to conflate the "promotion" function (advertising, communications, messaging) with marketing in general. In fact, promotion is just a subset of marketing. It's an important subset, but it's a subset nonetheless.
The best marketers are well grounded in, and can draw upon, the full-spectrum marketing skill set. Finding one of these marketers can actually be very valuable to your company. Having this full skill set can be very valuable to you, whether you're a technical or non-technical founder.
[A (hopefully) interesting side note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix]
However, I do agree with you that people often consider promotion = marketing when promotion ≠ marketing; its just one aspect of it and embracing all aspects of the marketing mix is beneficial to any company.
If I recall, the 4 P's are the standard marketing mix, with the 7 P's being called the extended marketing mix. FWIW, the 4 was definitely more central at my school.
Which is ironic, because every web startup these days seems to be in the advertising industry.
That said, it does sound perfectly reasonable that non-technical solo founders should be product focussed (like somebody in any startup needs to be), have the means and connections to get technical help, and have some understanding of what the people building the product are actually doing.
I always wonder what someone means by it, because I may well (once done with my current project) decide to start a startup as a solo founder. And I'm "aspiringly-technical," let's say. I studied math in college, but only started programming more recently.
This article was reassuring, in a sense, because at the very least I qualify as a "technically-literate non-technical person." But I'd like to be more than just technically literate.
If you don't write the code yourself, you will need to partner with or hire someone who can. That would make you a nontechnical founder.
To use a famous example, Woz was the technical founder, while Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne were nontechnical founders.
As soon as the idea advances to include sophisticated technical elements it's nearly impossible for a solo non-technical founder to run the business without a competent technical co-founder.