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Disagree, and I say this as a technical founder with no cofounder. Once things start to take off, a majority of the things you deal with are non-technical. Ther
by gkoberger 3y ago
Disagree, and I say this as a technical founder with no cofounder. Once things start to take off, a majority of the things you deal with are non-technical. There’s so much that goes into building a company, and you really need someone who understands how businesses work and can run G2M.
Sure, you can hire for it… but you’ll almost never find someone as invested in it as the founder, and it’s just as important as the product.
- kragen 3y agoyou need a cofounder but there's no benefit in them being nontechnical
- gkoberger 3y agoDo you really think there’s no skills or archetypes that are valuable on a founding team that doesn’t involve writing code?
- oulu2006 3y agoI disagree. I'm the technical co-founder and my co-founder non-technical; he's brought in so many soft skills around process, finance, sales, recruiting, etc.. that I would have (and would still) struggle at to replace. He's also a domain expert in our field so for me it was definitely the right choice to make.
- kragen 3y agohe doesn't sound nontechnical if he's a domain expert in your field, but presumably he would be even better if he also had whatever technical skills you're saying he lacks, not worse
- alephnan 3y agoYou’re presuming technical problem people have superset of skills of nontechnical people, or you that a company only needs technical skills. There are very little businesses where the latter is true. For the former, no one can be good at everything.
- kragen 3y agowhat i was saying wasn't either of those, but it's closer to the former: some technical people have a proper superset of the skills of some nontechnical people, because that's kind of the definition of “technical people” while it is true that nobody is both as good at soccer as lionel messi and as good at programming as jeff dean, you can definitely be good enough at everything to start a company. and lots of people are bad at everything. everyone starts out bad at everything being bad at programming or biology or whatever the relevant technical field is doesn't make someone good at management or bizdev so don't look for nontechnical cofounders just look for cofounders who don't have to be technical