A Simple Filter to Weed Out Non-technical Co-founders

http://blog.waxman.me/a-simple-filter-for-weeding-out-non-technical

by waxman • 15 years ago

40 30 15 years ago

blog.waxman.me

kirpekar3• 15 years ago

You want to qualify your relationship with a founder based solely on the answer to a single question about a popular Hollywood flick?

waxman2• 15 years ago

For these types of decisions (picking co-founders, hiring, etc.) you want no false positives, which means that any legitimate red flag should be a deal-breaker.

The cost of passing on the right person is far less than the cost of saying yes to the wrong one (e.g. passing over a good biz dev guy who goes on to succeed at another start-up vs. hiring a jerk who ruins your business then sues you)

kirpekar3• 15 years ago

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

"passing on the right person" = is often the difference between success and failure.

"the cost of saying yes to the wrong one" = A few weeks wasted, and start over.

Whatever you do, please don't write people off with one question. Engage with them, build relationships and draw out their best. Has worked for me. Zuck or Winkle, really does not matter.

blogimus• 15 years ago

I think what the blogger is saying indirectly that is a test that is necessary but not sufficient to qualify a non-technical co-founder. If you ask this as the first question, then it will save you the time for the rest of the questions.

apike• 15 years ago

It's the same as weeding out programmers by starting with the FizzBuzz question. For it to be worthwhile, you need to be interviewing a lot of potential candidates.

StavrosK• 15 years ago

I don't think it's the same, FizzBuzz is so trivial that it's ludicrous not to be able to write it if you're even slightly technical.

russorat• 15 years ago

Thanks! I'm going to use this as a way to determine if the person I'm interviewing with is an uppity douchebag.

michaelpinto2• 15 years ago

I think a better question would be based on having watched Pirates of Silicon Valley (but then again I'm old school)

brunoc• 15 years ago

Or read The Soul of a New Machine.

sskates• 15 years ago

Who's the equivalent of the Winklevoss brothers in Pirates of Silicon Valley? I thought everyone looked fairly good there.

michaelpinto2• 15 years ago

The point of the Winklevoss twins is that they aren't techies which may be why I liked that silly made for TV movie so damn much!

dwrowe• 15 years ago

It seems like another indicator would be requiring anyone you want to share the idea with to sign an NDA. Unless you're sharing an already developed algorithm, or something as special sauce, the NDA just comes across as "My idea the important part here".

jbooth• 15 years ago

Hang on, there are people who watched that movie and sympathized with the Winkelvii? They were a cartoon character playing up every negative stereotype of old money that exists.

That's like someone sympathizing with the villain from Die Hard or something.

randall• 15 years ago

Or the Monopoly guy.

anamax• 15 years ago

> That's like someone sympathizing with the villain from Die Hard or something.

Hey - I sympathize with the villain from Die Hard.

He had style, a good plan, including contingencies, and was doing a reasonable job executing it. He even did an okay job adapting to the unexpected.

He was just overmatched. There's no shame in that.

michaeldhopkins• 15 years ago

Great idea. I actually weed out potential co-founders by asking if they side with the Imperial base commander or the Ewoks. If that doesn't work, I ask them if they're more of a Thelma or a Louise.

Edit: let's not forget Alien vs. Predator. I don't want a guy who takes forever stalking an idea. Execution is everything, and nothing executes like a chestbursting alien.

trevelyan• 15 years ago

Does anyone side with the Ewoks?

raghava• 15 years ago

> Alien vs. Predator.

Few might prefer predator over alien for making efficient use of tools and gadgets than resorting to sheer brute strength.

Confirmation bias at work?

Am wondering how it works the other way. Non-technical founders looking out for technical co-founders asking similar questions. Or, maybe the banksters asking apprentice traders on what they felt about Gordon Gekko?

krisrak• 15 years ago

Here are somethings to watch out to weed out non-technical people in my experience:

- he says I just need someone to finish the coding part and thinks 90% is done without it

- he wants you to sign NDA before telling anything about the product (remember if someone can steal your idea by just talking about it then its probably not a good idea, tell him that)

- he does not know enough about common stuff that a startup guy should be aware of, like sxsw, techmeme, hacker news, names of top influencers/bloggers in the industries (scoble, arrington, mg, laporte, dhh.... throw these names out and watch his reaction)

ramy_d• 15 years ago

Do you honestly feel that your idea is far more valuable than my ability to build it (which I could do in about 4 hours)?

is the shortcut you are talking about?

also, as a lot of people are talking about here, a pop culture question (ultimatum?) isn't really appropriate for filtering out anything (except maybe pop culture).

E: comma and spelling, geez

jhuckestein• 15 years ago

Let's not forget that the twins made at least 60 million dollars from NOTHING but an idea and very little effort. That seems like an incredible business model.

bigiain• 15 years ago

Hmmm, I wonder if there's already people out there working this angle? Maybe I should get a team of shuckster-nontech-cofounder-wannabes together, create a big list of relatively obvious ideas, propose the ideas to every up and coming programmer/founder I can swindle a meeting with (and very carefully document the meeting), then just sit back and wait for one of them to get wildly successful with their variation on one of the obvious ideas and point some no-win-no-fee lawyer at them...

delineal• 15 years ago

Based on the movie, Zuckerberg didn't have the decency to inform the people he was working with that he'd moved on. The moment he stopped communicating with them, a red flag should have gone up and they should have parted ways and hired someone else. Both sides contributed to the end result. The Winkelvii should have been more closely involved with the execution of the project. They should have also formalized the relationship legally before allowing him to work on it.

tomkarlo2• 15 years ago

I think he undercuts his own argument.

If the idea only takes four hours to build, and the result is a commercially value product, then how can he argue the idea isn't the uniquely valuable component, and his labor is really the commodity? Does he really believe that _nobody_else_ can build it in 4 hours or so?

Obviously, execution is important. But if someone has an idea that's great and doesn't require a lot of execution, then the majority of the value of the end product should probably be assigned to the idea.

phlux• 15 years ago

Maybe he has the experience of 1000 hackers and 1000 project managers!

Or maybe hes just 21.

hoosh• 15 years ago

seems like in this case coming up with the idea is easy, building a prototype is easy, and building a solid, profitable company with stable management and growth prospects is hard and time consuming. So it's the same as every other business scenario ever.

tomkarlo2• 15 years ago

Well, as far as I can tell, he has no idea if coming up with the idea was easy. And anyway, I'm not sure ideas are valued based on how hard they are to come up with. Work can be based on replacement value, but I don't think you can do that with ideas.

waxman2• 15 years ago

Most consumer web apps require many and frequent iterations before striking a chord with users. Therefore, the ultimate great "idea" is usually arrived at through a process of engineering and design tinkering, and not through a singular, initial spark of genius.

The main differentiators in consumer web startups tend to be: the speed and creativity with which the team can iterate, the quality of the user experience and design, and, if all goes well, the ability of the architecture to scale. The capacity to do these 3 things well is relatively rare. Finding a person or a team with these skills is exceedingly difficult (especially in this talent market).

So yeah, I do stand by my assertion that the starting-point idea is the commodity, and the ability to build and design a decently scalable web-app in 4 hours (and then get user feedback and push another version later that same day) is a rare skill---especially on the open market, since most such individuals are either well-employed at companies or working on their own.

goombastic• 15 years ago

This line of thinking is immature. If you walk in with mentalities like that or dumb filters like the one described, all you will get is strife. We already have enough of these silly dip-stick questions floating around in companies, and HR teams trying these tricks.

My advice, take time, talk, and don't work with programmers or people who make their judgements based on a movie plot. It only shows they might be emotional and very difficult to work with.

A Simple Filter to Weed Out Non-technical Co-founders

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