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> As an aside, the best co-founder relationships are formed on complimentary skill sets. You can do what they can't (or struggle with), and vice versa. As such,

> As an aside, the best co-founder relationships are formed on complimentary skill sets. You can do what they can't (or struggle with), and vice versa. As such, I would encourage you to find a sales person/designer/hustler, as opposed to another developer. On the face of it, this advice seems reasonable. But this advice will result in precisely the asymmetry to OP is worried about. If you have a technology product, I strongly discourage you from taking on a non-technical cofounder. I made a huge mistake co-founding a company with someone whom I thought had a skill set that would compliment mine. He was, of course, a non-technical. While I coded for 90 hours a week trying to build an MVP, he did thought experiments, worried about competitors, and fretted about the color of our logo. In short, he did very little to move the product forward other than arbitrarily tweaking design specifications (before we had MVP and were even able to A/B test or validate with users). It was an extremely counterproductive and demoralizing experience. This may sound like an edge case, but I meet people all the time whose startups failed because the team couldn't get along. This is usually caused by one person feeling like they're doing all the work. And that's usually because one person IS doing all the work - the other person is a non-technical cofounder, and can't do much meaningful work, only look busy by trying to get twitter followers, having lunch meetings with reporters, and doing competitor analysis - all work that is meaningless if you don't have an MVP you can use to validate and iterate toward product-market fit. My advice is simple: find a technical cofounder who also has the confidence to pitch. Find a technical cofounder who can help validate an MVP and iterate it to product-market fit. Find a technical cofounder who isn't daunted by needing to pick up new skills. This is a startup. You're looking for generalists, not specialists. Whether someone can code is a good litmus test for whether they are serious about doing tech startups, or merely dabbling.

jason_tko 12y ago
My advice still holds, and yes, it is also completely reasonable. You found a terrible co-founder. A terrible co-founder, business or otherwise, will generate terrible outcomes. One thing that is very important to understand is that a great business co-founder is as rare (if not rarer) than a great technical co-founder. If you happen to find someone like that, having an attitude that they won't do any work, and they won't "do much meaningful work", will not endear them to you. If they're a great business co-founder, they will have nearly unlimited options, much like great technical co-founders. They might also have great market knowledge, plenty of inside connections, and experience on what to do, and how to do it. And as you brought it up, experience on how to get to product market fit. All of which is invaluable. Further, and please don't take this the wrong way, but their experience in connecting with and evaluating people might have prevented you from choosing the clearly incompetent person that you ended up selecting.
- michaelq 12y ago
  Rather than dismissing my cofounder as terrible, I encourage you to consider the possibility that advice like yours, which we followed in cofounding the company, set him up for failure. Having specialization early on was a mistake. It was a difficult situation, and it wasn't entirely his fault that there was, for long stretches of time, little for him to do. A startup cycle goes something like this: initial theory -> MVP -> validation of theory using MVP -> iterating to product-market fit -> scale Even in that highly oversimplified flow, there are a lot of shifts from "product mode" to "development mode". Most of these steps must happen sequentially. If only half of the team is fully engaged in any given step, you get a lot of slack. There's a joke that first startups should hire a bunch of developers to build the product. Then they should fire the developers and hire a bunch of salespeople to sell the product. Which begs the question - why not just hire developers who can sell, and avoid paying all that unemployment? Larger organizations can get away with having specialists onboard. Smaller organizations (2-3 people) can't afford this luxury. Your advice would hold for a later stage startup, but it is unreasonable advice for an early stage startup.
  - jason_tko 12y ago
    It seems as though you're coming at this with a very different world view and set of experiences than me, which is fine. Maybe we can learn something from each other. To give two sentences of background, I've been running businesses for 13 years, and running a startup for 4 years. The first business I built by myself from nothing, and the second I built alongside my technical co-founder. Firstly I'm concerned that you seem to think that I'm suggesting finding a 'specialist' business co-founder. Being a co-founder is the exact opposite of specialisation. If you're a co-founder period, you do ANYTHING it takes to move things forward, no exceptions, ifs, ands or buts. Also, without meaning to be picky, I believed you identified your co-founder as terrible. Someone who, as you described, believes that doing 'thought experiments' and trying to get twitter followers is the appropriate thing that a business co-founder should be doing in an early stage startup, is objectively a terrible business co-founder. If your business co-founder is doing his job properly, there should never be any slack. Exactly the same as a technical co-founder. Companies, especially early stage companies, can and must be doing product mode and develop mode simultaneously. I've never heard that joke, but as you grow your company and get more customers on board, who have more requirements, it's pretty important to have both salespeople and developers working in tandem to build out a company. I agree with you that larger organisations can afford having specialists and smaller organisations cannot.
Envec83 12y ago
I agree Michael. That is, in fact, why I said I believe that the business aspect is much less demanding than the development one, at least in the early days of a tech startup. Very interesting topic in my opinion.
- jason_tko 12y ago
  Argh - I'm going to give this one more comment and I promise myself I'll stop. The idea that the business aspect is in any way 'much less demanding' is like chalk on the blackboard of my brain. This is not an idea or attitude that will serve you either in life, or in trying to find a great co-founder. You could make the exact opposite argument about the technical aspect, since in startup land there's no point building something until you've validated the customer requirement for the solution you're working on, and then ideally talked to 20-50-100 potential customers.
  - Envec83 12y ago
    I am still not convinced. As Michael pointed out, the first months of a startup will be dedicated to developing the MVP, and then validating it and making the necessary changes to fit it to market. Sure, a business person can help a lot in this process, but the developer will be paramount. So it's 'can help a lot' vs. 'paramount'.
gamerDude 12y ago
> Find a technical cofounder who can help validate an MVP and iterate it to product-market fit. Have a non-technical co-founder source real customers to validate the MVP. Non-technical cofounders can be in constant contact with the market generating your alpha and beta users so that when you launch you are generating cashflows to help sustain your business. You don't even need to have an MVP to get a potential customer waiting to try the first version of the product. All you need is an idea and to get in front of customers with the idea. That way you can get feedback from them the entire time you are developing, not just when you have a product. Non-technical cofounders could also be establishing relationships with investors and partners that could accelerate your business. It sounds like your co-founder just didn't have a good idea of how they could really contribute to getting a sustainable business.
meowface 12y ago
I know almost nothing of startups, but I feel like a non-technical (business) cofounder could still put in a lot of useful necessary work, especially if the company is just you and the other cofounders. Marketing, promoting, sales, accounting, law, networking, researching... These are all things that I as a developer wouldn't want to deal with, even if I had the time to deal with them.

jason_tko 12y ago

My advice still holds, and yes, it is also completely reasonable. You found a terrible co-founder. A terrible co-founder, business or otherwise, will generate terrible outcomes. One thing that is very important to understand is that a great business co-founder is as rare (if not rarer) than a great technical co-founder. If you happen to find someone like that, having an attitude that they won't do any work, and they won't "do much meaningful work", will not endear them to you. If they're a great business co-founder, they will have nearly unlimited options, much like great technical co-founders. They might also have great market knowledge, plenty of inside connections, and experience on what to do, and how to do it. And as you brought it up, experience on how to get to product market fit. All of which is invaluable. Further, and please don't take this the wrong way, but their experience in connecting with and evaluating people might have prevented you from choosing the clearly incompetent person that you ended up selecting.

michaelq 12y ago
Rather than dismissing my cofounder as terrible, I encourage you to consider the possibility that advice like yours, which we followed in cofounding the company, set him up for failure. Having specialization early on was a mistake. It was a difficult situation, and it wasn't entirely his fault that there was, for long stretches of time, little for him to do. A startup cycle goes something like this: initial theory -> MVP -> validation of theory using MVP -> iterating to product-market fit -> scale Even in that highly oversimplified flow, there are a lot of shifts from "product mode" to "development mode". Most of these steps must happen sequentially. If only half of the team is fully engaged in any given step, you get a lot of slack. There's a joke that first startups should hire a bunch of developers to build the product. Then they should fire the developers and hire a bunch of salespeople to sell the product. Which begs the question - why not just hire developers who can sell, and avoid paying all that unemployment? Larger organizations can get away with having specialists onboard. Smaller organizations (2-3 people) can't afford this luxury. Your advice would hold for a later stage startup, but it is unreasonable advice for an early stage startup.
- jason_tko 12y ago
  It seems as though you're coming at this with a very different world view and set of experiences than me, which is fine. Maybe we can learn something from each other. To give two sentences of background, I've been running businesses for 13 years, and running a startup for 4 years. The first business I built by myself from nothing, and the second I built alongside my technical co-founder. Firstly I'm concerned that you seem to think that I'm suggesting finding a 'specialist' business co-founder. Being a co-founder is the exact opposite of specialisation. If you're a co-founder period, you do ANYTHING it takes to move things forward, no exceptions, ifs, ands or buts. Also, without meaning to be picky, I believed you identified your co-founder as terrible. Someone who, as you described, believes that doing 'thought experiments' and trying to get twitter followers is the appropriate thing that a business co-founder should be doing in an early stage startup, is objectively a terrible business co-founder. If your business co-founder is doing his job properly, there should never be any slack. Exactly the same as a technical co-founder. Companies, especially early stage companies, can and must be doing product mode and develop mode simultaneously. I've never heard that joke, but as you grow your company and get more customers on board, who have more requirements, it's pretty important to have both salespeople and developers working in tandem to build out a company. I agree with you that larger organisations can afford having specialists and smaller organisations cannot.

Envec83 12y ago

I agree Michael. That is, in fact, why I said I believe that the business aspect is much less demanding than the development one, at least in the early days of a tech startup. Very interesting topic in my opinion.

jason_tko 12y ago
Argh - I'm going to give this one more comment and I promise myself I'll stop. The idea that the business aspect is in any way 'much less demanding' is like chalk on the blackboard of my brain. This is not an idea or attitude that will serve you either in life, or in trying to find a great co-founder. You could make the exact opposite argument about the technical aspect, since in startup land there's no point building something until you've validated the customer requirement for the solution you're working on, and then ideally talked to 20-50-100 potential customers.
- Envec83 12y ago
  I am still not convinced. As Michael pointed out, the first months of a startup will be dedicated to developing the MVP, and then validating it and making the necessary changes to fit it to market. Sure, a business person can help a lot in this process, but the developer will be paramount. So it's 'can help a lot' vs. 'paramount'.

gamerDude 12y ago

> Find a technical cofounder who can help validate an MVP and iterate it to product-market fit. Have a non-technical co-founder source real customers to validate the MVP. Non-technical cofounders can be in constant contact with the market generating your alpha and beta users so that when you launch you are generating cashflows to help sustain your business. You don't even need to have an MVP to get a potential customer waiting to try the first version of the product. All you need is an idea and to get in front of customers with the idea. That way you can get feedback from them the entire time you are developing, not just when you have a product. Non-technical cofounders could also be establishing relationships with investors and partners that could accelerate your business. It sounds like your co-founder just didn't have a good idea of how they could really contribute to getting a sustainable business.

meowface 12y ago

I know almost nothing of startups, but I feel like a non-technical (business) cofounder could still put in a lot of useful necessary work, especially if the company is just you and the other cofounders. Marketing, promoting, sales, accounting, law, networking, researching... These are all things that I as a developer wouldn't want to deal with, even if I had the time to deal with them.