4 ms·

> you need a technical cofounder to be able to distinguish between pile 2, which is very small, and pile 3, which is enormous Huh? A technical cofounder doesn'

by 23B1 3y ago

> you need a technical cofounder to be able to distinguish between pile 2, which is very small, and pile 3, which is enormous Huh? A technical cofounder doesn't have any sort of monopoly on feasibility, and there's dozens of ways to understand opportunity space, PMF, and all the many other key considerations early-on. As a nontechnical cofounder, what I bring to the table is enough wisdom and experience to get to a stage where I do need a CTO and technical team.

kragen 3y ago
> technical cofounder doesn't have any sort of monopoly on feasibility, it's hard to tell what you're trying to say here, but people with the technical understanding of a field do in fact have a 'monopoly' on understanding what is and isn't technically feasible in that field, to the extent that anyone understands it at all for some products they also have a 'monopoly' on understanding what products there's a market for in the field. if you're developing a new kind of swiss lathe, your customers are going to buy it, or not, in large part based on technical features like mrr, repeatability, and cycle time. if you don't understand the technical field, not only won't you understand what is technically feasible, you won't understand your product's value proposition. this obviously doesn't apply to mass-market products in a gold rush, though, selling shovels to gold miners is more reliably profitable than mining gold
- 23B1 3y ago
  Nothing you just described requires an entanglement with full-time technical cofounder. I could get a ROM estimate on, say, your lathe from a product design/engineering firm for a few thousand bucks, use that as PRD + go/no-go, then take it to prototype/evt/dvt/pvt with any number of experienced partners on contract. Don't know why we're having this argument. Outsourcing is a very common thing.

4 ms·

> you need a technical cofounder to be able to distinguish between pile 2, which is very small, and pile 3, which is enormous Huh? A technical cofounder doesn'

by 23B1 3y ago

kragen 3y ago
> technical cofounder doesn't have any sort of monopoly on feasibility, it's hard to tell what you're trying to say here, but people with the technical understanding of a field do in fact have a 'monopoly' on understanding what is and isn't technically feasible in that field, to the extent that anyone understands it at all for some products they also have a 'monopoly' on understanding what products there's a market for in the field. if you're developing a new kind of swiss lathe, your customers are going to buy it, or not, in large part based on technical features like mrr, repeatability, and cycle time. if you don't understand the technical field, not only won't you understand what is technically feasible, you won't understand your product's value proposition. this obviously doesn't apply to mass-market products in a gold rush, though, selling shovels to gold miners is more reliably profitable than mining gold
- 23B1 3y ago
  Nothing you just described requires an entanglement with full-time technical cofounder. I could get a ROM estimate on, say, your lathe from a product design/engineering firm for a few thousand bucks, use that as PRD + go/no-go, then take it to prototype/evt/dvt/pvt with any number of experienced partners on contract. Don't know why we're having this argument. Outsourcing is a very common thing.