How to Earn a Technical Co-Founder

http://humbledmba.com/please-please-please-stop-asking-how-to-find

by choult • 10 years ago

73 64 10 years ago

chowes2• 10 years ago

Go spend some money on offshore coders and get a prototype built.

But please, PLEASE know that that is a prototype and that your technical cofounder will likely want to throw it out the door on day 1.

Nothing is a worse conversation than "okay, so I have the v0 built offshore, but it just needs X, Y, and Z". Great start, but let me pick the stack, framework, etc. so I can do my job quickly. I'm here to make decisions WITH you, not be your code monkey.

ones_and_zeros• 10 years ago

If you are a cofounder and your #1 priority is to rewrite the application then you are their code monkey.

If the offshore team works just stick with it so you can focus on technology strategy.

eric_h• 10 years ago

If the offshore team works just stick with it

That is a big "if". A good technical cofounder will identify the latent technical debt that exists in an outsourced prototype and if that number is too high, a rewrite can be justified.

gremy0• 10 years ago

Surely he just means he wants a green field to work with. I mean do you really want to start as a Technical Co-founder at a new startup and have legacy systems already.

ihsw• 10 years ago

It's more than rewriting the application -- it's ensuring the foundation is sound.

It would be irresponsible to not be very skeptical of the code as it's usually trash, and trash code will scare away any and all future tech employees. The annual turnover will be >100%, guaranteed. No company can sustain that level of turnover.

tedmiston2• 10 years ago

But usually what happens is the offshore prototype is junk, _but_ the (non-technical) founders ship it because it's "good enough". Then they want it to be iterated on even though it was supposed to be a prototype.

Every time I have to use an iPhone app with broken non-standard UI components and UX it makes me sad.

abstractbeliefs• 10 years ago

I think probably a better middle ground would be "have the authority to rewrite it all from scratch". If you're the technical cofounder, you need to drive the technology, and part of the technical side is knowing and being able to throw out junk at the expense of time and money lost if needed, while your cofounder side should be carefully balancing up the value of doing so.

If the offshore stuff works, great, build on it. If it doesn't rewrite it.

If the architecture is good, but not the implementation, incrementally swap out what you can, as you need.

melvinmt2• 10 years ago

Nothing is a worse conversation than an engineer trying to rewrite all the code for no business critical reason. I definitely understand that working with crappy offshore code is a pain in the ass (doing that now!), but if it works, it works. I've worked on enough crappy code bases for successful companies (as in $100M/yoy revenue on "prototype" code) to realize that these worries we have as an engineer really don't matter. The only thing that ultimately matters for the business is having something that people want to use.

rcarrigan872• 10 years ago

I used to think "Learn to Code" was the best advice out there to find a technical co-founder. That's what I did and it worked great.

But honestly, if I went back I wouldn't have learned to code. I would have learned enough to put up a basic lead capture page using unbounce or leadpages or some other landing page out-the-box product and started marketing.

Most good businesses can get some traction without any code. And people are always willing to talk if you have a product that already has some traction - even if it's very minimal.

The key is to figure out some super scaled down version of your product and use it to get some initial traction.

chowes2• 10 years ago

I think this is a great response. There are so many ways to validate your idea via low-"tech" solutions without building out an app.

Your value proposition is not "an app that provides X". It should be the X. Technology is just the vessel.

michaelfeathers• 10 years ago

You don't "Learn to Code" so you can do it yourself. You do it to understand your business. Code will affect what your business can do, and when, more than you realize.

rcarrigan872• 10 years ago

For sure, I still think there are definite benefits from learning to code. Especially, if your company is heavily tech focused. But, in the context of finding a tech co-founder, I think there are more optimal things you can do with limited time and resources.

mkoble11• 10 years ago

completely agree on learning to code. i have this conversation all the time with non technical entrepreneurs. it's about controlling your destiny. you have more of that when you can at least build an MVP. these days, its easier than ever - you just have to be naturally curious.

sanderjd2• 10 years ago

If your goal is to be able to build something without needing a technical cofounder, then definitely, being able to do both sides of the business is invaluable. But if your goal is to focus on the business side and find someone you can trust to lead technology, then I think you're better off spending that learning-to-code time sharpening your business tools.

VLM2• 10 years ago

Make sure your partner knows it up front.

This will sound like a goofy analogy but my wife and I have been together for twenty years and its more important that we agree on the theory of boundaries than on the actual boundaries themselves. Although when we cooperate by having at least a minimal understanding of each other, things do go much better than working separately. Thinking back on observations of divorced people, the signals started very early with arguments about the very concept of boys night out or the only correct way (LOL) to organize household finances. May have been a divorce immediately after someone slept with someone else, or whatever, but the problem didn't initiate when the third party magically appeared in bed one night.

Anyway the analogy is obviously two founders will go further the more they can productively cooperate, but disaster is absolutely certain if they can't even agree on what level to cooperate at. And inflexibility there is going to limit the possible matching talent pool.

sanderjd2• 10 years ago

I don't see how there could be anything wrong with asking around. Sure, it's all on you to solve the problem, and nobody can figure it out for you, but asking other people for advice is one of about two or three ways to work toward a solution to a problem you don't yet know how to solve, and it would be foolish not to do it.

Speaking as a technical person, what I'm interested in is your or your team's ability to excel at the things I am not good at doing, or don't enjoy doing. Mainly what I would care to see is the ability to do market and business model validation, marketing (in its many forms), sales, and fundraising. That stuff can be demonstrated with the sort of legwork discussed in this article, or (preferably) with past success in those areas.

I don't care if you know how to code, and I might even worry that you'll have learned enough to be in a Dunning-Kruger zone where I'll have to worry about you meddling.

Just my two cents!

gmarx2• 10 years ago

I'm in the opposite situation, technical have solved problem looking for business/sales oriented cofounder. Guess what, that's extremely difficult too.

daveguy2• 10 years ago

Do you have a product associated with the technical solution? If so, then you are much farther toward attracting a business/sales co-founder. If not, then you need one. Just like business co-founders need something presentable to show the technical co-founder the technical co-founder needs the same to show the business side. If you say "oh I have solved problem X, but I can't show you the solution", then it is not much closer to attracting a partner than "I have a great idea for X, but I have no idea how to implement it."

tl;dr - the advice is the same regardless of whether you are on the business or technical side : you need a presentable proof of concept.

gmarx2• 10 years ago

Yep have product which was successfully used by a (arguably) customer at a high profile institution years ago . I think most people think they are very good, most people aren't, and most of the tiny minority of people who actually are good at starting business have their own things to work on.

nomnombunty3• 10 years ago

I feel like I have the opposite problem. Most of the people I know are technical. What is the best way in SF to meet non-technical business minded people?

sillypog• 10 years ago

I don't know if it's the best way, but having young children and joining a day care co-op worked for me.

realdlee• 10 years ago

Friends of friends, meetups, apps like Weave or FounderDating...

dudul4• 10 years ago

Thanks for the suggestions, but damn, I just headed to FounderDating to try it out. The linkedin permissions they demand for sign up are ridiculous. Access to 1st and 2nd degree connections, read/write on your timeline, etc. And of course, it's the only way to join.

nedwin3• 10 years ago

+1 to Weave. Have been going on Weaves for last few months and met a bunch of incredibly talented / accomplished people.

dudul4• 10 years ago

Nothing I hate more than the "I'm an idea guy" meme. I spend a few weeks trying to meet with potential co-founders who were looking for a tech co-founders. They all gave me this "I'm the idea guy" shit. And the idea was just "Let's do X for Y".

They didn't put any thoughts into how to monetize, what is the short term goal, which customers they would target first, how to gain traction, how to validate the idea, what was the advantage over the competition, etc etc

And when I started pointing out all these things to think about they got either panicked or angry, "why are you not excited?" "Why are you trying to destroy the idea?"

For me, it's actually really hard to do the opposite and find a true non-technical co-founder. Someone who would actually produce something, bring something to the table other than their "idea" of "Uber for puppies" or "An awesome merge of Facebook and AirBnB".

intellegacy2• 10 years ago

Yea as an Idea guy who knows how to code but isn't the best at it, let me apologize for taking things too sensitively. Those are def. questions every idea guy should have already thought of. And you bringing them up should not be taken as an attack. I think those are really constructive questions that would help a business succeed.

PS if you want to discuss startup ideas let me know

dudul4• 10 years ago

The thing is these people are not idea guys. Throwing a tagline is not an idea, an idea should include the whole plan, or at least a first version to be refined, augmented and improved.

Unfortunately, it seems like calling yourself "an idea guy" is a sign that you actually have no clue. I can't imagine a real idea guy calling himself like that :)

If you know how to code you're already so far ahead :) I remember talking to a guy who told me "and then we'll add the API", I asked "why an API? What is it gonna do?", his answer: "Everybody has an API, we need it if we're serious", he had no clue what an API even was.

In a way, it makes me sad. Most of these people I "interviewed" (for lack of better words) were working full time on their project (or so they claimed) but still had no clue what they were really trying to accomplish.

mgreg• 10 years ago

Completely agree on both side. I'm amazed at how little folks (technical and non-technical) looking to start a business ignore basic strategy questions or seek to understand their market, the competition, and a model for profitability.

Personally I think some of the most enjoyable parts of starting are debating these points, creating inexpensive tests to validate (or invalidate) them, and evolve the idea.

VLM2• 10 years ago

Half should be below median, just like any other field. Your claim of all implies either exaggeration or not being in a target rich environment.

A change of scenery might clarify the problem. If you go to a star trek convention you will likely not find any tech founders. It is true that many tech people are trekkies. Superficially that makes it sound like a great idea to recruit for a tech position at a trek convention. It is simultaneously true that only a microscopic fraction of trekkies are programmers. Most will be postman, bartenders, truck drivers, a true cross section of the country. That's why no body recruits programmers at a star trek convention.

On the other hand, if you went to strangeloop or Clojure/West and claimed you can't find any lisp programmers, that sounds way more mysterious. "I went to BSDCan and didn't meet any sysadmins" what?

So where is this businessperson-free location you went fishing at? Where is a good place to fish is a valid question for both sides.

dudul4• 10 years ago

I don't disagree. I met most "candidates" at meetups on the East Coast, and via cofounderslab. Maybe these are not the best ways to find serious co-founders.

codingdave2• 10 years ago

The author recommends 99designs to get your site designed... but in looking at it, it looks like a site that lets you run a design contest for your site, with only one designer actually getting paid for their work at the end. While I can see some benefit to the occasional contest, for special sites where just having their work exposed helps the designers... I do not think this sounds ethical as a standard practice for initial startup site designs.

smt88• 10 years ago

I do not think this sounds ethical as a standard practice for initial startup site designs

Why is it unethical? No one is forcing designers to go onto 99designs. They only do it if they think it's worth it.

beat3• 10 years ago

As a flip side to this, I wish programmers who want to be founders would stop trying to come up with ideas on their own, and instead start looking for non-technical co-founders who have practical experience with a specific type of customer and a specific problem to solve for those customers. There are so, so many people out there who deeply understand a valuable real-world problem, but lack the skill to bring it to life.

The worst part of going to any sort of pitch events is hearing just how bad so many of the startup ideas are.

nomnombunty3• 10 years ago

I totally agree with you. I would love to meet some non-technical people who have practical experience. However, most of my friends are technical and I don't even know where to start looking.

beat3• 10 years ago

That's where the networking comes into play. Going to business meetups. You can meet seasoned entrepreneurs in the local business community who would love to cross into something more technical, but don't know how.

melvinmt2• 10 years ago

Go to any Hackers/Founders meetup, and you'll be swamped with non-technical people trying to meet you.

ThomPete3• 10 years ago

Couldn't agree more.

There is a very big difference between understanding the technological problem of something and then the business opportunity of that problem.

Latest Episode of Silicon Valley kind of touches on that.

beeboop• 10 years ago

I would love it if I could find even a single person who deeply understands a real-world problem and knows of a way to fix it that two can people can bootstrap together. I have never met one.

I have met endless people who have a mediocre understanding of something and have a solution to a problem no one has. Or they have a problem and try to solve it with something that creates an equally annoying problem or the solution requires millions of dollars for any hope of working.

I welcome anyone who has a real solution for a real problem that needs building - send me a message via reddit and I will be more than happy to build it for you: https://www.reddit.com/user/beeboopp/ (since I don't have an email I want to tie to this account)

danieltillett• 10 years ago

What skills do you have? I know you are trying to make a point (and I agree with you to a certain extent), but there are people out there with real skills that need help. If you are serious get in contact with me - my details are in my profile.

zem• 10 years ago

the flip side to that is that such people think the idea is the overwhelmingly valuable part, and that all they need to do is find an interchangeable technical person to build it for them.

wheaties• 10 years ago

I don't understand why developers put themselves on such a pedestal here. I have very few real world problems which require deep non-technical knowledge. That deep non-technical knowledge is worth something far more than, perhaps, the ability to scale out an app to 300k users. I'd say it's right on par with the ability to quickly iterate a solution for product match. Knowing the domain reduces market fit risks faster than figuring out the domain while searching for fit.

What I think the real underlying issue is all the "I need a technical founder who is willing to build my idea but only share in 1% of the upside" people. They're equivalent to the spam mail recruiters which plague our industry.

x0x0• 10 years ago

You forgot eg the person I just met, the "willing to pay $75k/year [proposed pay cut] to build my idea but only share in a tiny percent of the upside".

mpswardle• 10 years ago

This is such a one sided article. I'm sure that technical co-founders make the exact same mistakes when looking for a co-founder, and the solution would not be "learn to be a business guy, and appreciate the business guy more"

Co-founders are a team and should have complimentary skills. There are far more roles in building a startup that just "idea guy" and "tech guy", so if you are a non tech founder certain that you need a tech founder i would strongly suggest learning other skills that as a team you think you might not possess.

Also asking someone if they know anyhow is not a bad solution to a problem. Maybe it doesn't always work and you have to explore other avenues, but it rarely hurts to ask people as a first move.

calcsam• 10 years ago

I disagree. If you're a technical co-founder, go sell customers on your vision and get them to buy.

Then you have a lot more leverage when going to "business guys" and saying: "Hey, look, I've sold 30k of ARR in the last few months, but I don't see myself as amazing on the business side and I'm curious how you think you'd be able to accelerate this growth."

nsxwolf2• 10 years ago

Are there a lot of non-technical founders that do this? It would seem to me there'd be no shortage of engineers who would raise their hand and say "me, me! I'll do it!" Is that not the case? Or are these non-technical founders filtering those people out?

If I were still young, single, and childless, I'd happily give that a shot if someone approached me with a halfway interesting idea.

jonwachob91• 10 years ago

I'm slightly curious as to your geographic location, as I suspect this is hugely influential in attitude.

Here is Orlando the mantra seems to be "I need to pay my bills, do that and I'll help you".

nsxwolf2• 10 years ago

Chicago. It would be easier to live on peanuts here than in SV for sure.

curun1r• 10 years ago

There is a shortage, or this wouldn't be getting talked about. The reality is that despite how well engineers are compensated, most aren't in a position to go 6-12 months without a paycheck while they try a startup. A large number of a mortgage or kids and can't take on that level of risk. On top of that you have to have to be willing to put in a ton of hours...much more than a lucrative 9-5 would require. On top of that, you have to be willing to work on someone else's idea. I don't know about you but, for me, ideas have never been the hard part. The hard part is finding the time to explore those ideas. If I found that time, I'd want to spend it on one of my own ideas rather than someone else's mostly unexplored idea.

I'd happily give that a shot if someone approached me with a halfway interesting idea.

That's really what's being talked about here. The reality is that many, if not most, non-technical founders have really crappy ideas. And then they complain about not being able to find a technical co-founder. What this article is saying is that they need to earn it. They need to validate their idea in some way that doesn't need technical skills beyond what they can learn themselves. Do the work or put in the money necessary to earn your technical co-founder's participation. Because that person has put in thousands of hours learning how to build what you need built. Just expecting to bring an idea to the table and have a technical person jump at working together is unrealistic. An non-technical founder needs to put in the effort to make their offer attractive.

DeonPenny• 10 years ago

How about getting a BD founder that doesn't just want to shove a new idea down your throat.

ThomPete3• 10 years ago

The best way IMHO is have a good/interesting problem for them to solve. Something they could potentially care about from a developer/tech perspective.

I "earned" my technical co-founder exactly by finding a smaller problem to solve from the really big one I had in mind.

Paid him to do it and made him realize that this was an interesting problem to solve while still a good business to be in.

The smaller problem he helped me solve has turned out to a pretty good business so I can't wait for what the bigger problem will do for it.

Now we are building some really great stuff.

nedwin3• 10 years ago

"You get the cofounder that you deserve". Time to get to work.

dsego• 10 years ago

Posted almost 5 years go, please add 2011 to the title.

Original HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714304

hyuuu• 10 years ago

I have to say as technical person, it goes the other way around as well. We, the technical people, earn a good business side co founder, as it can make or break the business.

How to Earn a Technical Co-Founder

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