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I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: 1. There's an agility to being able to change things yourself, at 2

by blagie 4y ago

I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: 1. There's an agility to being able to change things yourself, at 2am if necessary. That's very important to startups. 2. There's a discipline to not accruing unreasonable technical debt of the type that will sink you two years in that you can't expect from someone who doesn't deeply care. 3. Managing devs generally requires understanding what's going on. Unless you're ready to hire a CTO with a track record, a non-technical person can't do that. There's also a long tail-end of reasons. For example, prototyping and tinkering nights and weekends is "free," and can contribute a surprising amount of value. It can't be managed, though; you can't just pay other people to play around, and expect that to be focused in ways which might add value. *Every* time I've personally seen the playbook of a non-tech founders for a tech startup, it didn't end well.

francisofascii 4y ago
Yep, and to his credit. This is listed as Lesson 4. "Don't make everything reliant on code if you can't code."
ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
Those 126K spent on "App development". Plenty of money in CRUD APIs apparently.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  Software development is much more expensive than people predict, including software developers. Let's say you're paying $200/hour to a software consultancy -- which isn't as much as it sounds, the engineers doing the work will not be making anything close to HN-bragging-level of take-home at that rate, although they'll be doing okay. 120,000 is 600 hours of work at $200/hour billed. So that might be two engineers working about 8 weeks. Does two engineers working 8 weeks seem so crazy for developing a novel app, full-stack from back-end to design? Not at all. Software is expensive. Which means, sure, there's plenty of money in developing it!
  - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
    Sure. Nevertheless, the "App development" budget for a startup with no users/clients should be $0, otherwise it's not a start-up, but more of a start-middle.
    - jrochkind1 4y ago
      For sure you don't want to spend that kind of money without customers/clients yet. The problem with a software-based startup is... software development is expensive. Not that contractors will rip you off charging too much for shoddy work -- although that happens, software is expensive even when it doesn't. If you are paying a consultancy for the software development, you should probably plan on spending six figures in consultancy invoices to even get an MVP -- if you mean an actually working app by "MVP". That's not a lot at all. So... up to you to figure out how to verify your business model before you do that (with an "MVP" that isn't actually a working app yet perhaps), or have a business plan that accommodates it.
- pc86 4y ago
  At least 70K spent on development before a penny in bookings - and probably closer to 100K given the relative 2020 vs. 2021 bookings. Absolutely insane, and it's no wonder this guy lost almost a quarter million.
lnsru 4y ago
I do the dirty tasks for a non-technical founder. Everybody he hires for a task does heavy corner cutting. Technical debt is enormous. Details are not taken care of. I like the guy, so I help him ignoring cost of opportunity. I do all the plumbing and fixing the tiny details and changes at 2 am. But that’s not sustainable. That’s not the way to build a business with prosperous future.
- j2bax 4y ago
  Do you have a stake in the business?
  - lnsru 4y ago
    No. I don’t. Just helping. Because I like this elder gentleman. And he has growing revenue stream from his project.
- TuringNYC 4y ago
  Totally empathize with you and I've been there. At some point, it does make sense to exit amicably in these situations. My experience has been that the non-technical founder will see things as they truly are, eventually. At that point, you can re-establish another engagement where things are budgeted for a balance of speed and longevity. To be fair, there is a purpose for Technical Debt and for cutting corners, esp for MVPs or demos. But it has to be a balance and the cost of the debt carry has to be appreciated.
TuringNYC 4y ago
+10 on point 3. Even as a highly technical CTO, it is shocking what outsourced dev agencies will try to do. I've seen dev agencies try to conclude engagements with a "successfully working app" but havent delivered any source code, or when source code is delivered it cannot actually be compiled into the successfully working app. As a technical CTO I can smell this a mile away and work it into SoWs, but I wonder how many non-technical co-founders fall into this trap. When you need updates or Phase II, now the rates go up massively. No one else can change it and the outsourced dev agency now has a monopoly. Usually the non-technical CEO/founder will now have to find a new agency, who might pull the same trick or some variation of it. It can be subtle: - You have no code - You have code, but it wont compile - You have code, it will compile, but not into the version you're declared success with - You have code to the client/app, but not to the backend
- yolo3000 4y ago
  I've consulted in this sort of role for a startup which hired a dev agency. A few months in, we were behind schedule. I've asked them access to their git repo and built some graphs with the commits and LOC changes of every dev we paid for. It became clear that these devs were working on multiple other assignments and were not really dedicated to us. Without these sort of insights, it's hard to judge if they are honest or not.
  - TuringNYC 4y ago
    I'll make suggestions to anyone doing this: - For slightly more legal protection, the code should be in YOUR OWN git repo, not the dev agency's repo - If you are giving some upfront $ or milestone payment, you should also contractually now own the code up to that point in time - You should not declare a milestone success (and should not pay) until you can independently compile the app straight from git (front end and backend) (Also, watch out for hard-coded domains where you are secretly pointing to their backend and not to your independently compiled one) - App QA should ONLY be on the version of the app where you compiled/deployed the full stack yourself - You should deploy the app into your own cloud to ensure you actually have all the pieces. Super extra credit: Build Terraform/Ansible/Chef into the SoW and final payment should depend on deployment into your own environment by YOU (not the agency) - You should learn how to build/compile/deploy yourself or hire an independent person (not the devs) who can do this for you
twawaaay 4y ago
I don't think they necessarily need to be technical. But there is a huge advantage to being a person that can just roll up their sleeves and do pretty much anything that needs to be done, whatever it is. It does not have to be technical. It is a mindset of being open to researching stuff, trying to figure things out, accepting and learning from failures and doing 20% to get 80% of benefit. A person with this kind of mindset will IMO almost inevitably become at least a little bit technical. Just enough to be dangerous and look silly a bit when they are out of their depth. I have enormous respect for people like that when they dive in into application development with no prior coding experience or can understand complex development ideas because they are truly open and willing and working to understand rather than put artificial barriers before them.
- acdha 4y ago
  Someone needs to be technical or they’ll get hit by a number of problems which are almost always fatal: consulting companies (especially the large ones) will take them for a ride, burning budget and likely failing to deliver something viable; they are likely to make bad hires because it’s hard to tell people who can’t deliver or, more commonly, who aren’t capable of building what the business needs right now; and the more general version of that last point, someone needs to be making sure that you’re building something secure, reliable, etc. which is compatible with both your budget and the kind of app you’re building. That doesn’t strictly have to be a technical cofounder but if not that’s a significant degree of trust placed on an early hire.
  - twawaaay 4y ago
    Which is to say there are upsides to being expert in the field. The question is whether every company requires technical people to run the company just because they need an app to sell their services. One theory is that in future every company will be a technical company -- because merciless competition will favour companies driven by technical, scientific mindset. But I don't think we are there yet.
    - acdha 4y ago
xwdv 4y ago
Fair enough, but my level of skepticism for non-technical founders WITH deep pockets isn’t much better: 1. Deep pockets can mean a non-viable business model can survive longer before going completely bust, simply because the founder can afford to continue shoveling money into the furnace, and build the illusion of success. 2. If the deep pockets are the results of inherited wealth of some sort, many of these founders are just engaging in success laundering where the startup is really a shitty business but its existence implies an alternative story for how their wealth was obtained and gives the prestige of appearing “self made”. Or the founder doesn’t care about the business at all and just wants the title of “entrepreneur”. 3. Often a deep pocketed non-tech founder’s only tool for solving tech problems is money, which doesn’t lead to truly innovative solutions.
spamizbad 4y ago
I think the reality is Startups are hard enough as-is and non-technical solo founders are doing something already difficult with one hand tied behind their back. The successful ones I’ve seen almost always operate in a domain where they’re subject-matter experts so while they’re not technical they have a deep understanding of the problem and can communicate it clearly to a developer. It’s also more difficult these days to be a non-technical founder because hiring technical staff is still challenging despite all the layoffs. I’ve seen them make some really bad hires.
boredumb 4y ago
And from experience, a technical person still needs some deep pockets to really take an idea to it's potential. Personally I forget that selling and marketing is a massive overhead that is generally not solvable by some clever code and long/hard work.
Aromasin 4y ago
I can't help but agree. Technology is hard to grasp without study. Study takes time, which founders don't have. People with technical expertise are expensive. If you don't have the expertise yourself, you have to hire it. He's got 200k and he's bled 125k of that just to make his MVP. That's utterly insane to me.
- luckylion 4y ago
  App studios are often quoting high prices though. I have no idea about app development, but I regularly hear about quotes for relatively simple apps (i.e. you could do it with Wordpress and a custom theme as a web app) that are 30-50k euros. I don't know if these agencies just make insane profits or if they really make everything super complicated and need three developers working for a month to produce a simple crud app.
  - pcthrowaway 4y ago
    They probably need to factor in some percentage of people not paying or suing them in their pricing, which is a shame, because it increases the cost for customers who pay on time, know what they want, and accept responsibility if the thing doesn't work out.
  - ekidd 4y ago
    The basic pitch that I've heard a (competent) app development shop make was, "Look, we have a reputation for doing this right. And it's cheaper to pay us to develop an app than it is to open up a coin laundromat." I'm not sure if it's actually a good idea for a solo, non-technical founder to hire an app shop like that. Too many founders are deluding themselves, and will just lose all their money no matter what they do. But if you're the sort of founder who can get several B2B customers to sign non-binding letters of intent saying, "Yes, we would totally buy X if it actually existed", then those app development costs would be totally reasonable.
  - adunsulag 4y ago
    There's always a nuance, and I laugh when people tell me 'this is relatively simple'. It often seems like it can be done with wordpress but if the client is fixed that the app MUST function in a way that wordpress doesn't accommodate... well then the costs go up dramatically to rebuild some form of wordpress but not using wordpress... I often like to present things in terms of costs alternatives to my clients. IF it MUST be done with that feature it will cost X dollars to build it that way. If we remove that feature or do this alternative approach we can bring the cost down to Y where Y is much cheaper. It takes a good technical person who is business minded to be able to see these win/win scenarios though. 99% of the time people choose the cheaper option when they find out it can be done for 10K instead of 50K. Its one of the reasons why you need a good technical cofounder who is ALSO familiar with business strategy to be able to choose from alternatives instead of doing whatever the business guy insists has to be done.
amelius 4y ago
> I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: Even if you're a technical founder you should be sceptical about your own idea and putting all your eggs in one basket, and being played by VCs who spread all their eggs over different baskets.
- nicbou 4y ago
  What do you mean by that last sentence? I'm not familiar with startups.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    VCs (venture capitalists) tend to invest in many different companies that stand a very small chance of success. Because they spread out their risk, they can make quite a lot of money from the rare success. Founders who go all in on a single idea, on the other hand, will most likely fail.
jrochkind1 4y ago
So, if it's very hard to start a software company based on paying contractors for software development -- which seems true to me -- there's another warning here for software contractors/consultants. If someone is paying you, as contracting engineering talent for hire on a consulting/hourly/iteration basis, to develop an app or product they hope will be the foundation of a new business -- chances are high this won't actually work out for them (despite your competence and best efforts), and chances are high they will end up angry at you for taking so much of their money to develop something that didn't end up developing the business they wanted, with possibly legal action to try to claw back some of those funds. I have some personal observation of this. Even doing work agilely with review every two weeks and the client only paying once they've reviewed and approved the work in that two week period, and approved your work plan for the next two week period, even with all that -- after a year or two they can still threaten or carry out legal action to try to claw back of some or all of the money they've paid you. So, these can be very dangerous clients. And that you are trying to do your best and give them a quality product -- you aren't trying to exploit them or take advantage of them, you think you were delivering what they asked for (if they asked for the wrong things is that on you? turns out, they may think it is) -- will not necessarily keep you out of these difficulties.
- rwallace 4y ago
  In general of course you're right, and this is a very good point. > Even doing work agilely with review every two weeks and the client only paying once they've reviewed and approved the work in that two week period, and approved your work plan for the next two week period, even with all that -- after a year or two they can still threaten or carry out legal action to try to claw back of some or all of the money they've paid you. But I would've thought that way of doing things, sounded pretty ironclad. If in every fortnightly review of progress so far, they thought things were going well, how did they end up retroactively changing their mind after a year? Can you go into a little more detail about how things went wrong? Was it a case of 'they were a startup selling waterproof teabags, you built them an online store, turns out there is no market for waterproof teabags, and they were looking for someone to blame'?
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
ekidd 4y ago
> I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: I've seen two types of non-technical founders that stood a chance: - The industry insider who knows exactly what problem to solve, and who can sell the solution effectively. For example, I saw a woman who had closed $500k of revenue by month 3. She knew everyone in her niche. That kind of product/market fit will gloss over a lot of other problems. - The hustler who learns enough Rails (or whatever) to glue together a prototype. Here, you're looking at a non-technical founder with basically "boot camp" coding skills. This works best in markets where the basic tech is easy, but the business depends on (say) deal-making abilities. For example, two-sided marketplaces are technically easy, but you need to get two different groups of people to the table. There are a lot of "non-technical" founders out there who aren't especially good at the non-technical part of their business, either. But non-technical founders who really understand their market and who can act their company's first salesperson? They have options, especially in smaller B2B niches where outsiders don't even know where to start.
- jcadam 4y ago
  I'd gladly be a technical co-founder for the first type, but they aren't exactly common, and hard to distinguish from the BS artists.
- lolinder 4y ago
  You've still got to be careful working for the industry insider. You don't know the industry, and so you don't know how realistic their expectations are until it's too late. I just finished a stint with a bootstrapped startup whose co-founder had decades of experience in the industry and a lot of connections. He has a pre-existing software business in the same industry with modest revenue (<$1mil) that he is trying to use to fund the next giant breakthrough. His problem is that he completely failed at market research and sincerely believes there are no solutions already in the market, because there weren't when he first had the idea a decade ago. I believed him at first, but the better I came to know the industry the more venture-backed startups I found that were solving the same problem and already had substantial market penetration. Any time I would show him one of these he would insist that our product was so much better that we would blow them away when we reached market. The same founder also struggles with the concept of an MVP (which seems common for grand-vision CEOs), so nearly three years after I joined they still haven't released the new product. In the meantime, the largest venture-backed alternative has become the standard in the industry. The founder is still convinced that his idea will win out, but I'm glad to be out of there.
intrasight 4y ago
It really depends. And there are some huge advantages to being a non-technical founder. Two are that a) you are a domain expert, and that expertise is more valuable than technical expertise, and b) you are less susceptible to analysis-paralysis (generalizing I know as that's more a personality trait) My friend and colleague is non-technical and launched a very successful app. I acted as a virtual CTO and recruiter contract developers. My total hours on the project is <100. While non-technical, my colleague is a professional designer and has domain expertise.
sjm-lbm 4y ago
All of those are true, but there's another important reason I think is worth adding: the only way go get truly better at something is to do it over and over again, and most technically adapt people have a long string of side projects, experiments, etc. A lot of them are not great, but the act of attempting to create them and seeing them in real life gradually helps one to have a practiced feeling about what ideas are worth pursuing and what ideas are not worth pursuing. If someone has never gone though that idea->attempted implementation->post mortem loop, it's very likely that they haven't developed a good muscle for coming up with good ideas. They just sit around babying whatever idea is currently in their head, never really challenging it. (for what it's worth, this idea is something I first encountered in one of interviews in Founders at Work - I just really like the idea)
saos 4y ago
but but no-code movement
gowld 4y ago
#2 is highly suspect. Technical people create all tech debt.
- pnut 4y ago
  Hard disagree. Nontechnical micromanaging founder demands feature goes live by end of day, find another job if you reply with impotent nerd excuses. Tomorrow will be the same, you will not be circling back to clean anything up. It may be strategically or tactically acquired, but tech debt is fundamentally a business decision.
georgeecollins 4y ago
>> high level of skepticism towards non-technical founders For web app / software businesses for sure. It's worth noting that most entrepreneurs don't sell software. I'm talking by # of businesses, not market cap.
nluken 4y ago
The best way to become a tech entrepreneur is either to start incredibly wealthy, or build a product yourself. I wince at the number of non-technical folks that have deluded themselves into thinking that they can "do the business side of things" when in reality that means bringing nothing to the table, save their money. OP's case is a warning to these folks. He actually brought negative, not zero, value to his startup because he grossly misread the market he was trying to enter. I worked at TripAdvisor for a while on their tours product, and even years ago we were already doing what OP was talking about.
- lolinder 4y ago
  > when in reality that means bringing nothing to the table, save their money. The big problem is that founders have a really hard time understanding just how cheap ideas are, so they sincerely believe that they are bringing 90% of the company's value. They look at the big successes and assume that the process went something like this: * Founder has an idea * Founder recruits a bunch of people to build the idea * Customers come because the idea is so great * Founder walks away incredibly wealthy What they never see is the dozens of companies that attempted and failed to execute the exact same idea in the decade before the big success.
iancmceachern 4y ago
#3 exactly. You need to know enough about the work to be able to grade their work.
ren_engineer 4y ago
I think the fact that somebody wants to start a tech company without the fundamental skills itself is a red flag. Screams to me that they can't be that serious about the company or they would at least dedicate the time to either networking to get a technical cofounder or learn rudimentary programming skills themselves
didgetmaster 4y ago
I am coming at this from the opposite end (tech founder looking for a partner to handle the business side). As a technical person, I can build all the features; fix all the bugs; and work on performance issues. But I lack the skills needed to find the right market fit and convince customers to jump on board. I think the best startups are co-founded by a bright technical person and a savvy business partner. The pattern of Apple which was started by the 'Two Steves' (Jobs and Wozniak) can be a really successful one and one that I would like to follow (https://didgets.substack.com/p/looking-for-another-steve-jobs https://didgets.substack.com/p/looking-for-another-steve-job...)
la64710 4y ago
This is why AI assisted app development will help tremendously in reducing the cost for startup founders. It will certainly reduce the number of hours required to develop an app and businesses should not run out of money trying to develop one.
wstuartcl 4y ago
This or that non-technical person finding a technical co-founder while not being realistic about the stake each provides to the company. Ideas are worthless (infinite numbers of them are forgotten every day), executing ideas is what has the potential for realizing value. I have seen so many people who do realize they need a technical partner, but arrive at the table thinking the valuable asset is the idea.
fatnoah 4y ago
> I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: A relative of a friend is a Dr. that had a good idea for a useful product and hired a consultant to build it. After about 18 months and a little over $1M had been invested, the consultant wanted more money and I got pulled in to review everything. What I found was: 1. Work was farmed to an offshore team that made terrible technical decisions and were unable to produce working software 2. Consultant and the offshore team took many detours to increase scope and add lots of new, useful features. Of course, they did this before completing existing ones, so the result was a bloated application with about 20 features at the 80% state. Only logging in actually worked. 3. Too much infrastructure too early. High availability, redundant infrastructure up and running at AWS for a cool $10-15k/month. Keep in mind the product hadn't even gotten to MVP and that's also close to the $20k/month my own startup was spending at AWS for a messaging app for full geo-redundancy w/over 2M active users and capable of handling 1B messages/month. In short, the Dr. got taken for a huge ride. My advice was to make sure that they were able to get their hands on all of the source code and other IP and then wind it all down.

by blagie 4y ago

francisofascii 4y ago

Yep, and to his credit. This is listed as Lesson 4. "Don't make everything reliant on code if you can't code."

ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago

Those 126K spent on "App development". Plenty of money in CRUD APIs apparently.

jrochkind1 4y ago
Software development is much more expensive than people predict, including software developers. Let's say you're paying $200/hour to a software consultancy -- which isn't as much as it sounds, the engineers doing the work will not be making anything close to HN-bragging-level of take-home at that rate, although they'll be doing okay. 120,000 is 600 hours of work at $200/hour billed. So that might be two engineers working about 8 weeks. Does two engineers working 8 weeks seem so crazy for developing a novel app, full-stack from back-end to design? Not at all. Software is expensive. Which means, sure, there's plenty of money in developing it!
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
  Sure. Nevertheless, the "App development" budget for a startup with no users/clients should be $0, otherwise it's not a start-up, but more of a start-middle.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    For sure you don't want to spend that kind of money without customers/clients yet. The problem with a software-based startup is... software development is expensive. Not that contractors will rip you off charging too much for shoddy work -- although that happens, software is expensive even when it doesn't. If you are paying a consultancy for the software development, you should probably plan on spending six figures in consultancy invoices to even get an MVP -- if you mean an actually working app by "MVP". That's not a lot at all. So... up to you to figure out how to verify your business model before you do that (with an "MVP" that isn't actually a working app yet perhaps), or have a business plan that accommodates it.
pc86 4y ago
At least 70K spent on development before a penny in bookings - and probably closer to 100K given the relative 2020 vs. 2021 bookings. Absolutely insane, and it's no wonder this guy lost almost a quarter million.

lnsru 4y ago

I do the dirty tasks for a non-technical founder. Everybody he hires for a task does heavy corner cutting. Technical debt is enormous. Details are not taken care of. I like the guy, so I help him ignoring cost of opportunity. I do all the plumbing and fixing the tiny details and changes at 2 am. But that’s not sustainable. That’s not the way to build a business with prosperous future.

j2bax 4y ago
Do you have a stake in the business?
- lnsru 4y ago
  No. I don’t. Just helping. Because I like this elder gentleman. And he has growing revenue stream from his project.
TuringNYC 4y ago
Totally empathize with you and I've been there. At some point, it does make sense to exit amicably in these situations. My experience has been that the non-technical founder will see things as they truly are, eventually. At that point, you can re-establish another engagement where things are budgeted for a balance of speed and longevity. To be fair, there is a purpose for Technical Debt and for cutting corners, esp for MVPs or demos. But it has to be a balance and the cost of the debt carry has to be appreciated.

TuringNYC 4y ago

+10 on point 3. Even as a highly technical CTO, it is shocking what outsourced dev agencies will try to do. I've seen dev agencies try to conclude engagements with a "successfully working app" but havent delivered any source code, or when source code is delivered it cannot actually be compiled into the successfully working app. As a technical CTO I can smell this a mile away and work it into SoWs, but I wonder how many non-technical co-founders fall into this trap. When you need updates or Phase II, now the rates go up massively. No one else can change it and the outsourced dev agency now has a monopoly. Usually the non-technical CEO/founder will now have to find a new agency, who might pull the same trick or some variation of it. It can be subtle: - You have no code - You have code, but it wont compile - You have code, it will compile, but not into the version you're declared success with - You have code to the client/app, but not to the backend

yolo3000 4y ago
I've consulted in this sort of role for a startup which hired a dev agency. A few months in, we were behind schedule. I've asked them access to their git repo and built some graphs with the commits and LOC changes of every dev we paid for. It became clear that these devs were working on multiple other assignments and were not really dedicated to us. Without these sort of insights, it's hard to judge if they are honest or not.
- TuringNYC 4y ago
  I'll make suggestions to anyone doing this: - For slightly more legal protection, the code should be in YOUR OWN git repo, not the dev agency's repo - If you are giving some upfront $ or milestone payment, you should also contractually now own the code up to that point in time - You should not declare a milestone success (and should not pay) until you can independently compile the app straight from git (front end and backend) (Also, watch out for hard-coded domains where you are secretly pointing to their backend and not to your independently compiled one) - App QA should ONLY be on the version of the app where you compiled/deployed the full stack yourself - You should deploy the app into your own cloud to ensure you actually have all the pieces. Super extra credit: Build Terraform/Ansible/Chef into the SoW and final payment should depend on deployment into your own environment by YOU (not the agency) - You should learn how to build/compile/deploy yourself or hire an independent person (not the devs) who can do this for you

twawaaay 4y ago

I don't think they necessarily need to be technical. But there is a huge advantage to being a person that can just roll up their sleeves and do pretty much anything that needs to be done, whatever it is. It does not have to be technical. It is a mindset of being open to researching stuff, trying to figure things out, accepting and learning from failures and doing 20% to get 80% of benefit. A person with this kind of mindset will IMO almost inevitably become at least a little bit technical. Just enough to be dangerous and look silly a bit when they are out of their depth. I have enormous respect for people like that when they dive in into application development with no prior coding experience or can understand complex development ideas because they are truly open and willing and working to understand rather than put artificial barriers before them.

acdha 4y ago
Someone needs to be technical or they’ll get hit by a number of problems which are almost always fatal: consulting companies (especially the large ones) will take them for a ride, burning budget and likely failing to deliver something viable; they are likely to make bad hires because it’s hard to tell people who can’t deliver or, more commonly, who aren’t capable of building what the business needs right now; and the more general version of that last point, someone needs to be making sure that you’re building something secure, reliable, etc. which is compatible with both your budget and the kind of app you’re building. That doesn’t strictly have to be a technical cofounder but if not that’s a significant degree of trust placed on an early hire.
- twawaaay 4y ago
  Which is to say there are upsides to being expert in the field. The question is whether every company requires technical people to run the company just because they need an app to sell their services. One theory is that in future every company will be a technical company -- because merciless competition will favour companies driven by technical, scientific mindset. But I don't think we are there yet.
  - acdha 4y ago

xwdv 4y ago

Fair enough, but my level of skepticism for non-technical founders WITH deep pockets isn’t much better: 1. Deep pockets can mean a non-viable business model can survive longer before going completely bust, simply because the founder can afford to continue shoveling money into the furnace, and build the illusion of success. 2. If the deep pockets are the results of inherited wealth of some sort, many of these founders are just engaging in success laundering where the startup is really a shitty business but its existence implies an alternative story for how their wealth was obtained and gives the prestige of appearing “self made”. Or the founder doesn’t care about the business at all and just wants the title of “entrepreneur”. 3. Often a deep pocketed non-tech founder’s only tool for solving tech problems is money, which doesn’t lead to truly innovative solutions.

spamizbad 4y ago

I think the reality is Startups are hard enough as-is and non-technical solo founders are doing something already difficult with one hand tied behind their back. The successful ones I’ve seen almost always operate in a domain where they’re subject-matter experts so while they’re not technical they have a deep understanding of the problem and can communicate it clearly to a developer. It’s also more difficult these days to be a non-technical founder because hiring technical staff is still challenging despite all the layoffs. I’ve seen them make some really bad hires.

boredumb 4y ago

And from experience, a technical person still needs some deep pockets to really take an idea to it's potential. Personally I forget that selling and marketing is a massive overhead that is generally not solvable by some clever code and long/hard work.

Aromasin 4y ago

I can't help but agree. Technology is hard to grasp without study. Study takes time, which founders don't have. People with technical expertise are expensive. If you don't have the expertise yourself, you have to hire it. He's got 200k and he's bled 125k of that just to make his MVP. That's utterly insane to me.

luckylion 4y ago
App studios are often quoting high prices though. I have no idea about app development, but I regularly hear about quotes for relatively simple apps (i.e. you could do it with Wordpress and a custom theme as a web app) that are 30-50k euros. I don't know if these agencies just make insane profits or if they really make everything super complicated and need three developers working for a month to produce a simple crud app.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  They probably need to factor in some percentage of people not paying or suing them in their pricing, which is a shame, because it increases the cost for customers who pay on time, know what they want, and accept responsibility if the thing doesn't work out.
- ekidd 4y ago
  The basic pitch that I've heard a (competent) app development shop make was, "Look, we have a reputation for doing this right. And it's cheaper to pay us to develop an app than it is to open up a coin laundromat." I'm not sure if it's actually a good idea for a solo, non-technical founder to hire an app shop like that. Too many founders are deluding themselves, and will just lose all their money no matter what they do. But if you're the sort of founder who can get several B2B customers to sign non-binding letters of intent saying, "Yes, we would totally buy X if it actually existed", then those app development costs would be totally reasonable.
- adunsulag 4y ago
  There's always a nuance, and I laugh when people tell me 'this is relatively simple'. It often seems like it can be done with wordpress but if the client is fixed that the app MUST function in a way that wordpress doesn't accommodate... well then the costs go up dramatically to rebuild some form of wordpress but not using wordpress... I often like to present things in terms of costs alternatives to my clients. IF it MUST be done with that feature it will cost X dollars to build it that way. If we remove that feature or do this alternative approach we can bring the cost down to Y where Y is much cheaper. It takes a good technical person who is business minded to be able to see these win/win scenarios though. 99% of the time people choose the cheaper option when they find out it can be done for 10K instead of 50K. Its one of the reasons why you need a good technical cofounder who is ALSO familiar with business strategy to be able to choose from alternatives instead of doing whatever the business guy insists has to be done.

amelius 4y ago

> I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: Even if you're a technical founder you should be sceptical about your own idea and putting all your eggs in one basket, and being played by VCs who spread all their eggs over different baskets.

nicbou 4y ago
What do you mean by that last sentence? I'm not familiar with startups.
- lolinder 4y ago
  VCs (venture capitalists) tend to invest in many different companies that stand a very small chance of success. Because they spread out their risk, they can make quite a lot of money from the rare success. Founders who go all in on a single idea, on the other hand, will most likely fail.

jrochkind1 4y ago

So, if it's very hard to start a software company based on paying contractors for software development -- which seems true to me -- there's another warning here for software contractors/consultants. If someone is paying you, as contracting engineering talent for hire on a consulting/hourly/iteration basis, to develop an app or product they hope will be the foundation of a new business -- chances are high this won't actually work out for them (despite your competence and best efforts), and chances are high they will end up angry at you for taking so much of their money to develop something that didn't end up developing the business they wanted, with possibly legal action to try to claw back some of those funds. I have some personal observation of this. Even doing work agilely with review every two weeks and the client only paying once they've reviewed and approved the work in that two week period, and approved your work plan for the next two week period, even with all that -- after a year or two they can still threaten or carry out legal action to try to claw back of some or all of the money they've paid you. So, these can be very dangerous clients. And that you are trying to do your best and give them a quality product -- you aren't trying to exploit them or take advantage of them, you think you were delivering what they asked for (if they asked for the wrong things is that on you? turns out, they may think it is) -- will not necessarily keep you out of these difficulties.

rwallace 4y ago
In general of course you're right, and this is a very good point. > Even doing work agilely with review every two weeks and the client only paying once they've reviewed and approved the work in that two week period, and approved your work plan for the next two week period, even with all that -- after a year or two they can still threaten or carry out legal action to try to claw back of some or all of the money they've paid you. But I would've thought that way of doing things, sounded pretty ironclad. If in every fortnightly review of progress so far, they thought things were going well, how did they end up retroactively changing their mind after a year? Can you go into a little more detail about how things went wrong? Was it a case of 'they were a startup selling waterproof teabags, you built them an online store, turns out there is no market for waterproof teabags, and they were looking for someone to blame'?
wing-_-nuts 4y ago

ekidd 4y ago

> I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: I've seen two types of non-technical founders that stood a chance: - The industry insider who knows exactly what problem to solve, and who can sell the solution effectively. For example, I saw a woman who had closed $500k of revenue by month 3. She knew everyone in her niche. That kind of product/market fit will gloss over a lot of other problems. - The hustler who learns enough Rails (or whatever) to glue together a prototype. Here, you're looking at a non-technical founder with basically "boot camp" coding skills. This works best in markets where the basic tech is easy, but the business depends on (say) deal-making abilities. For example, two-sided marketplaces are technically easy, but you need to get two different groups of people to the table. There are a lot of "non-technical" founders out there who aren't especially good at the non-technical part of their business, either. But non-technical founders who really understand their market and who can act their company's first salesperson? They have options, especially in smaller B2B niches where outsiders don't even know where to start.

jcadam 4y ago
I'd gladly be a technical co-founder for the first type, but they aren't exactly common, and hard to distinguish from the BS artists.
lolinder 4y ago
You've still got to be careful working for the industry insider. You don't know the industry, and so you don't know how realistic their expectations are until it's too late. I just finished a stint with a bootstrapped startup whose co-founder had decades of experience in the industry and a lot of connections. He has a pre-existing software business in the same industry with modest revenue (<$1mil) that he is trying to use to fund the next giant breakthrough. His problem is that he completely failed at market research and sincerely believes there are no solutions already in the market, because there weren't when he first had the idea a decade ago. I believed him at first, but the better I came to know the industry the more venture-backed startups I found that were solving the same problem and already had substantial market penetration. Any time I would show him one of these he would insist that our product was so much better that we would blow them away when we reached market. The same founder also struggles with the concept of an MVP (which seems common for grand-vision CEOs), so nearly three years after I joined they still haven't released the new product. In the meantime, the largest venture-backed alternative has become the standard in the industry. The founder is still convinced that his idea will win out, but I'm glad to be out of there.

intrasight 4y ago

It really depends. And there are some huge advantages to being a non-technical founder. Two are that a) you are a domain expert, and that expertise is more valuable than technical expertise, and b) you are less susceptible to analysis-paralysis (generalizing I know as that's more a personality trait) My friend and colleague is non-technical and launched a very successful app. I acted as a virtual CTO and recruiter contract developers. My total hours on the project is <100. While non-technical, my colleague is a professional designer and has domain expertise.

sjm-lbm 4y ago

All of those are true, but there's another important reason I think is worth adding: the only way go get truly better at something is to do it over and over again, and most technically adapt people have a long string of side projects, experiments, etc. A lot of them are not great, but the act of attempting to create them and seeing them in real life gradually helps one to have a practiced feeling about what ideas are worth pursuing and what ideas are not worth pursuing. If someone has never gone though that idea->attempted implementation->post mortem loop, it's very likely that they haven't developed a good muscle for coming up with good ideas. They just sit around babying whatever idea is currently in their head, never really challenging it. (for what it's worth, this idea is something I first encountered in one of interviews in Founders at Work - I just really like the idea)

saos 4y ago

but but no-code movement

gowld 4y ago

#2 is highly suspect. Technical people create all tech debt.

pnut 4y ago
Hard disagree. Nontechnical micromanaging founder demands feature goes live by end of day, find another job if you reply with impotent nerd excuses. Tomorrow will be the same, you will not be circling back to clean anything up. It may be strategically or tactically acquired, but tech debt is fundamentally a business decision.

georgeecollins 4y ago

>> high level of skepticism towards non-technical founders For web app / software businesses for sure. It's worth noting that most entrepreneurs don't sell software. I'm talking by # of businesses, not market cap.

nluken 4y ago

The best way to become a tech entrepreneur is either to start incredibly wealthy, or build a product yourself. I wince at the number of non-technical folks that have deluded themselves into thinking that they can "do the business side of things" when in reality that means bringing nothing to the table, save their money. OP's case is a warning to these folks. He actually brought negative, not zero, value to his startup because he grossly misread the market he was trying to enter. I worked at TripAdvisor for a while on their tours product, and even years ago we were already doing what OP was talking about.

lolinder 4y ago
> when in reality that means bringing nothing to the table, save their money. The big problem is that founders have a really hard time understanding just how cheap ideas are, so they sincerely believe that they are bringing 90% of the company's value. They look at the big successes and assume that the process went something like this: * Founder has an idea * Founder recruits a bunch of people to build the idea * Customers come because the idea is so great * Founder walks away incredibly wealthy What they never see is the dozens of companies that attempted and failed to execute the exact same idea in the decade before the big success.

iancmceachern 4y ago

#3 exactly. You need to know enough about the work to be able to grade their work.

ren_engineer 4y ago

I think the fact that somebody wants to start a tech company without the fundamental skills itself is a red flag. Screams to me that they can't be that serious about the company or they would at least dedicate the time to either networking to get a technical cofounder or learn rudimentary programming skills themselves

didgetmaster 4y ago

I am coming at this from the opposite end (tech founder looking for a partner to handle the business side). As a technical person, I can build all the features; fix all the bugs; and work on performance issues. But I lack the skills needed to find the right market fit and convince customers to jump on board. I think the best startups are co-founded by a bright technical person and a savvy business partner. The pattern of Apple which was started by the 'Two Steves' (Jobs and Wozniak) can be a really successful one and one that I would like to follow (https://didgets.substack.com/p/looking-for-another-steve-jobs https://didgets.substack.com/p/looking-for-another-steve-job...)

la64710 4y ago

This is why AI assisted app development will help tremendously in reducing the cost for startup founders. It will certainly reduce the number of hours required to develop an app and businesses should not run out of money trying to develop one.

wstuartcl 4y ago

This or that non-technical person finding a technical co-founder while not being realistic about the stake each provides to the company. Ideas are worthless (infinite numbers of them are forgotten every day), executing ideas is what has the potential for realizing value. I have seen so many people who do realize they need a technical partner, but arrive at the table thinking the valuable asset is the idea.

fatnoah 4y ago

> I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: A relative of a friend is a Dr. that had a good idea for a useful product and hired a consultant to build it. After about 18 months and a little over $1M had been invested, the consultant wanted more money and I got pulled in to review everything. What I found was: 1. Work was farmed to an offshore team that made terrible technical decisions and were unable to produce working software 2. Consultant and the offshore team took many detours to increase scope and add lots of new, useful features. Of course, they did this before completing existing ones, so the result was a bloated application with about 20 features at the 80% state. Only logging in actually worked. 3. Too much infrastructure too early. High availability, redundant infrastructure up and running at AWS for a cool $10-15k/month. Keep in mind the product hadn't even gotten to MVP and that's also close to the $20k/month my own startup was spending at AWS for a messaging app for full geo-redundancy w/over 2M active users and capable of handling 1B messages/month. In short, the Dr. got taken for a huge ride. My advice was to make sure that they were able to get their hands on all of the source code and other IP and then wind it all down.