Minimum Viable Hustle
patrickwoods.tumblr.com
patrickwoods.tumblr.com
It's an awful, awful word.
To make a point relevant to the article - what if the non-technical chap has deeply relevant domain knowledge and valuable contacts within the industry?
I can't say it bothers me enormously, but I do find the idea that all non-technical cofounders have to be wizards who magically hustle themselves into meetings with people who don't really want to meet them to be both funny and misguided
I would argue that a founder with domain knowledge isn't 'non-technical'. I know traditionally that term refers to people who don't code, but if I was working on an earthquake detector, a seismologist would be a technical founder, even if they didn't code a thing. Same with mathematicians. Domain knowledge in non-science/maths areas is harder to divide, but I would say there's as much weight behind saying a non-technical founder focuses on business dev as saying a technical founder focuses on code.
What is described in this article are neither "business guys" or founders but hapless/clueless "idea people" - of which the startup community attracts a lot since it's much better to say "I'm working on a tech startup" than to say "I'm unemployed".
As a general rule of business, avoiding clueless, unmotivated, wind-bag'ish people is a good rule - "business guys" or otherwise.
One thing I'd add is that it's not just the non-technical founders job to do a great communicator that can get people to do things. A CTO needs to be able to do this to recruit a team and get them moving forward.