I think having a good technical co-founder alleviates the need for getting as much seed money. If they have access to a lot of seed money, then they can afford

I think having a good technical co-founder alleviates the need for getting as much seed money. If they have access to a lot of seed money, then they can afford to hire a designer/developer and give them a smaller chunk of the company. It's a valid way to do it. But, more and more, due to technical and social reasons, developers are realizing that they don't need access to massive amounts of money to do it themselves. The people becoming unnecessary in this equation are the co-founders you mentioned above. So, basically there are two ways to doing a startup. 1) The "traditional" way they described above. 2) The Y-combinator method of by passing the people mentioned above and getting the hackers to found companies directly.