by hailpixel on 1/28/15, 12:22 PM with 89 comments
by madaxe_again on 1/28/15, 1:53 PM
Technical co-founders are necessarily naïve.
Why?
Because once they've been one once, they don't want to be one again. The only "serial" technical co-founders I've encountered have usually failed to get to the MVP stage of any of the companies they've founded, and thus don't know the hell their path leads to.
I speak from first-hand experience. I would sooner chew my own legs off than do this again. Not because I dislike my company, or don't like what I do today, but because it's traumatic, and I've no desire to go through it again.
It costs you years of your life, you don't get sleep, or friends, and at the end of it all, nobody will thank you, they'll just resent you, as those that were there from the start never realised just how much the technical co-founder did to make things work in the early days (not so fond memories of not leaving my desk for 9 grim, sticky days), and those that started later don't see the technical co-founder getting as involved in the technology as much, and thus view them as disconnected.
Damned either way.
If you get someone in with experience, they'll tell you to get bent, won't do the death-marches that you often need to get the ball rolling, and will want to be paid their worth, rather than nothing.
So yeah - your only hope is to get to know technical folks while they're still learning, and get them in then - otherwise they'll know better and will refuse your poisoned chalice.
by lordnacho on 1/28/15, 1:57 PM
- Tech guys can just sit back once the website is built and cash in forever, while the marketing and business guys have to keep on the ball. - You can rent an army of developers in Eastern Europe for no money at all. He had 30 guys doing his one-pager color split testing for him. - All the value is in the marketing and supply chain. He's 80% of the value and feels screwed giving the tech people 25%.
Funnily enough we never got that one launched.
by kcorbitt on 1/28/15, 3:45 PM
Last year I was in my final year of university. The school I graduated from, BYU, has a strong business program and a culture of entrepreneurship. A number of my friends and acquaintances contacted me with ideas for tech-empowered businesses they wanted to form, but I had the sense to stay away from anything that sounded like "I had this great idea for a business last week, why don't you build it for me and we'll see what happens."
When my now-cofounder Sam approached me, it was a very different experience. It was obvious that he had put months of work into developing his idea on his own time, with mockups and tons of user testing of various ideas, and literally had gone as far as he could without actually building the product. Even after we decided to start working together, we spent several months contracting together for a 3rd party, before we finally decided to strike out on our own. When we eventually did form a startup, we split the equity 50-50 and we've both been working 110% since day 1.
In retrospect, I didn't end up joining with Sam because the idea was much better than the other ones I'd heard about, or because he had access to connections or capital that I couldn't easily find myself. It was because he demonstrated clearly that he didn't consider the idea alone to be 80% of the value, respected what I brought to the table, and worked hard enough to bring his half to the table too.
I guess my best advice to the non-technical looking for a cofounder (beyond learning as much as you can about the tech side of the business on your own) would be to try to find ways to demonstrate, through your actions, that you have what it takes to push a new company forward. The actions Sam took on his own, and when we first started working together, demonstrated that to my satisfaction, which is why I was more than happy to sign on as a cofounder.
by bitL on 1/28/15, 2:37 PM
What I noticed from some bad examples of business guys I tried something with is that some of them 1) don't have a clue nor willingness to improve 2) are very frustrated they don't own the additional 1% to be completely in charge 3) try to restrict the flow of business information towards me 4) treat tech as an easy thing that must work 100% on autopilot while they don't do much at all.
Whenever this happens I give those persons an out; we can shut the business down immediately (for me it's just another business test that didn't go well and it needs to be resolved ASAP as I don't like to waste time) or those things must change.
It's difficult to find a business person that doesn't want to become super rich in like one year and that really wants to treat the business as an equal partnership and have fun growing it. If you find one, stick with them, it's pure gold.
by leroy_masochist on 1/28/15, 3:27 PM
1. Non-technical people (myself included) often have a bit of a complex about being non-technical. They are well-steeped in the YC/Stanford/Valley zeitgeist and believe their project won't be taken seriously if it doesn't have legitimate engineering talent on the founding team. Depending on the product and the team's growth strategy, this may or may not actually be true.
2. I would posit that fear of not finding a technical cofounder (FONFATC, I just coined an acronym) is really three related, but distinct fears: a. Fear of not being able to get the MVP / beta / 1.0 versions built. b. Fear of not being able to raise money to grow because VC's won't take your team seriously if you don't have a technical cofounder. c. Fear of not being able to recruit good engineers as you scale from, say, 3 people to 15 people. (The reasoning being, good engineers are going to have doubts about working for an organization that doesn't have a technical cofounder; both in terms of not wanting to be supervised by people who don't understand the technical fundamentals and in terms of working in a non-engineer-centric culture).
3. Non-technical people in some cases spend more time trying to find/recruit a technical cofounder than they would have to spend to learn the necessary technical skills to build a basic MVP. Not 1.0, ready-to-ship-to-paying-customers product, but MVP. Getting technical people to join your project is a less painful proposition once you have a product, even a crappy one.
4. Technical friends might not be willing to join your project as a cofounder, for reasons including: you can't pay them the salary they want/need; they're working on their own thing; they don't want to quit their sweet job; they think your idea is dumb. Even in these cases, you can get a lot of help from them if they are in fact your friends. They may not be interested in getting on your cap table, but they'll probably do a monthly code review with you if you ask nicely.
by rkwasny on 1/28/15, 1:19 PM
by mvonthron on 1/28/15, 1:38 PM
by lettergram on 1/28/15, 1:59 PM
Something I would add though, if you are a non-technical cofounder it needs to be either equal equity footing (if you are bringing a fair amount of sales/marketing). Otherwise, forget it, I would want 60 - 70% equity. Without my ability to code, you've got nothing. It seems a lot of technical founders sell themselves short in this regard.
Finally, for me, it's always been hell finding a decent designer. The two I talk with regularly are outrageously busy, but usually they can help out. It took me a year or two to find these guys and now we have some synergy, but finding a designer is hell.
by k__ on 1/28/15, 1:53 PM
Most of the time they are teams of a few business people who do marketing and biz-dev.
When they tell me about their idea, I often think that the only bad thing about their idea is the part, where the company has to supply 4 people, where only one of them can build something.
Also they often see a technical cofounder as a work-horse and not a partner...
by visakanv on 1/28/15, 1:02 PM
That said while we're on this topic, I've always enjoyed Drew Houston's take on it:http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-find-good-technical-co-founder...
"Unfortunately this is a classic problem. "How do I find a really hot single girl to go out with?"
* Good technical people will have ideas of their own that they're excited about, and working for a non-technical founder who, by the way, doesn't know or appreciate the difficulty or time it takes to make something well-engineered and undervalues you from an ownership standpoint, gets old quickly.
* People who are not hands-on building the product at the very early stage of the startup are usually not terribly useful until later, because building the product is most of the real work early on.
* Good engineers have a wealth of compelling opportunities at any given time, so it gets even worse if the non-technical founder is inexperienced, or hasn't already brought a lot to the table (funding, etc.) See, for example, http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2010-1... one view of how technical people perceive "idea guys" who "just need a programmer."
So, what can you do?
* One is look for a technical cofounder, not just an early employee, and give commensurate equity. Again, bear in mind that frankly he or she will be more valuable than you at this phase.
* Two is learn to code enough to bang out a prototype -- this will also make you a better engineering manager if you can appreciate the technical craft and can empathize with engineers. And there are tools like Balsamiq that can help create reasonable mockups that can convey your idea without writing code.
* Three, search the far corners of the earth for talent -- maybe you'll get lucky and find a CS student who hasn't been jaded by bad experiences with arrangements like this. Or, if the technology you need developed isn't rocket science, you can try outsourcing, which is its own Pandora's box. Derek Sivers has a good post on managing that: http://sivers.org/how2hire
Good times, but this is what business cofounders bring to the table, right? They figure shit out, and it's hard work. Hiring the early team is just the beginning."
by volent on 1/28/15, 1:03 PM
by eldude on 1/28/15, 6:24 PM
Prioritizing cofounders over spouses surrenders Silicon Valley's moral authority and undermines its cultural leadership.[1]
I've always found prioritizing cofounder over spouse a sad depressing commentary on priority of money over change by bad actors. Innumerable colleagues and VCs have quoted me unprompted, "You can divorce a wife, but you can't divorce a cofounder," leading me to doubt their integrity; It's only true if you prioritize your business over your vows.
It is far more difficult to succeed when prioritizing family, but such is the burden of leadership. Moral authority, a prerequisite of true leadership, derives from such commitments.
[1] Power derived when a leader embodies the values of their followers.
by veb on 1/28/15, 2:21 PM
It is the startup world, there's risks everywhere. Find someone, and if you kick off well with them, then go ahead and try.
If you spend too much time bothering about details like the perfect technical cofounder or non-technical cofounder... chances are you're not putting your time and effort into your actual startup.
In my experience, it's simply been the potential of something that attracts people who actually have a passionate interest. They're the best people. Technical or not.
by graycat on 1/28/15, 11:26 PM
First, for non-technical founders, get technical yourself or at least get started: Get a computer, settle on Linux or Windows, get documentation, read, type in code, get it to work, and then build at least something simple.
Second, for technical people considering being a technical co-founder, here are is a threat you should watch for: Basically, the people in the start up, especially the non-technical people, may believe that it is in their interest to block your entering the company or, if you enter, throttle or block your contributions and push you out of the company.
Here those people may understand that what they are doing is bad for the company but believe that it is, still, good for them in the company. In the B-school subject organizational behavior, such behavior is called goal subordination because the person places the good of the company lower (subordinates it) to what they see as their own good.
In particular, a non-technical person, might work hard to hire a technical person with the intention that the technical person will fail so that, then, the non-technical person can have an excuse for not being more technical themselves.
Can such wacko things actually happen? Heck yes.
by bsdpython on 1/28/15, 2:13 PM
by aidos on 1/28/15, 1:46 PM
I'm in the fortunate position of being on the technical side and, I suspect like a lot of technical people, I've turned down plenty of 'opportunities' from ideas people. If you were coming to me hoping to get me on board with your idea, offering anything other than equal footing on the equity side would be a total non-starter. In the majority of cases even that would probably be a crappy deal.
One thing with this:
"If you just need someone who can understand your vision and create the software which allows it to function, you are searching for an employee."
I guess it depends on how technical your product is but I think in the beginning you need to have serious commitment from the technical team. They really need to care about getting the product right or dropping what they're doing on the weekend to deal with a support request. It could mean the difference between life and death for your company.
by rhapsodyv on 1/28/15, 1:09 PM
by tkiley on 1/28/15, 6:03 PM
In the two years after we started working together, we grew our customer base about 40x.
I'm not sure if this is a scaleable answer to the "where do I find a technical co-founder" question, but it has worked at least once. :) If you're a non-technical person looking for a startup opportunity, I'd recommend it.
by puppetmaster3 on 1/28/15, 1:54 PM
Also, how do I get someone to work for me for free, and I'll mange the cap table?
And last: is it possible in non fantasy world to be gainfully employed, but not even know HTML?
by xchaotic on 1/28/15, 3:14 PM
by mrfusion on 1/28/15, 2:50 PM
by plehoux on 1/28/15, 2:05 PM
by hiou on 1/31/15, 4:09 AM
by michaelochurch on 1/28/15, 5:30 PM
Right now, business co-founders trade 2-4 points higher on a 10-point scale. I'm a Tech 8, and a Biz 8 wouldn't, realistically speaking, mix with me. A Biz 6 would try to push me down to 5-10% equity, with the cliff and vesting that would make me more of an employee than co-founder anyway, and take the CEO job.
A Biz 6 can deliver Sequoia on an idea, and a Biz 8 is turning away executive-level offers and board positions and 11-to-3, 7-figure jobs at VC funds. A Tech 8 is happy to break $140k and get interesting projects. I've written at length about this skew: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/an-insight-o... . Biz 8 have other, very lucrative, options. A Tech 8 who is objectively just as good at his job (and a harder job) doesn't have the same.
The Tech 8+ drop out of the co-founder market around age 30 (and it's rare that someone even gets to Tech 8 before that age) because they get used to Biz 5's offering 2.5% equity to work on someone else's idea (as opposed to a shared idea with hard technical problems at the core).
See, too many business co-founders want to charge so much for the investor-level contacts, like they're Marlo fucking Stanfield charging $10 million for "a connect", that people usually trickle out before they even get to the Tech 6+ (much less Tech 8+) level. Jeff Dean stays in-house at Google for a reason.
Technical co-founders wouldn't be hard to find if the market could clear. They're hard to find because, while early-stage startups can't pay market salaries for understandable reasons, sociological factors keep equity amounts at shortage prices for good tech talent.
by biomimic on 1/28/15, 7:48 PM
by rasz_pl on 1/28/15, 2:24 PM
by skyboxone on 1/28/15, 1:54 PM
If it's anything more than zero, they are a poser and fake.