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I liked the piece a lot and it is roughly right. However, as a technical co-founder, I think a good measure of a business co-founder is whether he tries to solv
by rguzman 16y ago
I liked the piece a lot and it is roughly right. However, as a technical co-founder, I think a good measure of a business co-founder is whether he tries to solve the technical problems himself. e.g. by learning a bit of php and hacking something together.
Not only does that show that he's resourceful and scrappy, but it also makes it more likely that he'll be able to talk about the product coherently i.e. understanding and keeping in mind the constraints that software development has. It calibrates his intuition, if you will.
- marionogueira 16y agoAre you willing to try to solve non technical problems by yourself? You know, researching the market to assure you're actually building something people will want to use, finding paying customers or advertisers, dealing with investors, finding decent PR people, recruiting etc... nothing too fancy.
- rguzman 16y agoYes. A bit less snarky: a good measure of a technical co-founder is him trying to solve the business problems himself. For the same reasons I cited above.
- marionogueira 16y agoThat's the right attitude. Unfortunately, that's not the norm at all. Mostly, technical folks tend to behave as spoiled brats when dealing with non technical people as cofounders (which amazes me given that one of the best performing tech companies today is run by a non technical guy - Steve Jobs). Update: no need for the technical guy to actually work on non technical issues... given the current scenario, respecting the non technical guy within his domain would suffice. It's not like non technical people try to tell programmers how to do their job.
- sachinag 16y agoSteve Jobs soldered with everyone else at Atari. Just because he didn't engineer at Apple doesn't mean he's non-technical.
- marionogueira 16y agoJust soldering doesn't make anyone "technical". Woz's designs were the technical assets that made Apple a successful startup. Furthermore, that experience certainly didn't mean a thing for his second tenure at Apple since 1997, during which the company became bigger than ever. I also doubt he had anything to do with the technical aspects of the operation during this time.
- staunch 16y agoYou can be technical without being an engineer. Steve Jobs has been working closely with some of the best engineers in the world full-time for 30 years. He probably knows more about display, memory, graphics, processor, and battery technology than 99% of programmers. Not to mention his knowledge of a dozen other technologies.
- mfukar 16y agoI'm sorry, but every reference I've ever read to the history of Apple has only reinforced my opinion that Jobs is a marketing bully. A clever one, perhaps, but still. PS. I'm counting seconds until I get to -5.
- c1sc0 16y agoI think you'll find lots of technical founders are willing & able to pick up those skills along the way. Programming is perpetual self-education. This means that for a large subset of entrepreneurial programmers picking up business skills is easier than you'd think.
- netcan 16y agoI think this is an instance of a general point. Resourcefulness is an important. A finance person learning a bit of php and hacking something. A coder reading 'Sales for Dummies' and trying to do a walk in sale. etc. Also, 'business co-founder' (as can be derived from the fact that not similar pd exists at a large company) is a generalist role. Understanding how software gets made, if software making is a central part of the business is important.