"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."
"* 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."
I've always been confused by how this is meant to help - could you explain further? I've always been a technical founder, but I've never had any idea how to find a technical co-founder - as you correctly say, good technical people will have their idea they're excited about! So I'm always skeptical that "make a prototype" would work to convince anyone, but perhaps it would - is there some hidden pool of good engineers who exist in some weird fugue state of "show me a cool semi-working website and I'm on-board", outside of, like, 1st year CS?
I can talk about something completely different– I'm a writer, and I work with visual designers. They much, much prefer it when I can give them a terrible sketch of an idea rather than a lengthy diatribe about what I want. Because it's far easier for them to apply their design sensibilities to a crappy sketch than to a cloud of words.
Similarly- I don't think it's "show me a cool semi-working website and I'm on-board", but more of- "Show me something that I recognize immediately as a really good idea, even though it's kind of crappy in execution."
Pixar uses a structure known as a braintrust to delicately examine works-in-progress. The braintrust is composed of some of the best storytellers of our generation who take a supreme effort in understanding the director's intent before offering suggestions.
What's most incredible is that this feedback from the world-class cabal is merely suggestive and the director has the power to reject changes. The braintrust is aware of the danger of heavy-handed feedback squashing the soul of the product.
New ideas are delicate and brittle. What starts off as a ugly, tangential feature later grows up to become a fundamental part of the final product.
They're all reasonable points, however the big idea in the article is that cofounders are grown from relationships rather than found via a search analogous to hiring. They're more akin to high-school sweethearts than mail-order brides.
The second big idea of the article is that a technical cofounder may be unnecessary in some technology enabled companies because technical employees or freelancers can build the system in exchange for cash.
Finally, and perhaps most usefully, the article suggests that when the resources for a particular business model are unavailable, the business model is not viable despite its feasibility. Technical talent within a business model should be considered a resource. Find a business model based on available resources.
I think Drew's advice is a sort of last-ditch, "you shouldn't have to be asking this, but if you're asking... these are probably your best shots..." sorta POV. Cofounders should have deep friendships and a lot of common understanding, etc.
I'm not qualified to talk about technical cofounders or freelancers, but as a writer/marketer I can tell you that a freelance marketer, however good, will never CARE about your product the way a founding team member will. And I'm guessing building a product is even more complex (it is to my eyes, at least) and hard to do justice to with freelancers.
It could work for say, gimmicky little games that make a surprising amount of money on the side (I have a friend who commissioned freelancers to build him a sort of spot-the-difference game, and he continues to make residual income on it), but it definitely won't work if you're trying to build a "Big Serious Product". In my opinion!
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I can't seem to load the page...
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."
"* 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."
I've always been confused by how this is meant to help - could you explain further? I've always been a technical founder, but I've never had any idea how to find a technical co-founder - as you correctly say, good technical people will have their idea they're excited about! So I'm always skeptical that "make a prototype" would work to convince anyone, but perhaps it would - is there some hidden pool of good engineers who exist in some weird fugue state of "show me a cool semi-working website and I'm on-board", outside of, like, 1st year CS?
I can talk about something completely different– I'm a writer, and I work with visual designers. They much, much prefer it when I can give them a terrible sketch of an idea rather than a lengthy diatribe about what I want. Because it's far easier for them to apply their design sensibilities to a crappy sketch than to a cloud of words.
Similarly- I don't think it's "show me a cool semi-working website and I'm on-board", but more of- "Show me something that I recognize immediately as a really good idea, even though it's kind of crappy in execution."
I'm reminded of what Jong-Moon Kim wrote about Pixar movies: http://jiggity.com/kitchen.html
That way you can demonstrate that you at least know what you want a finished product to roughly look like and do.
They're all reasonable points, however the big idea in the article is that cofounders are grown from relationships rather than found via a search analogous to hiring. They're more akin to high-school sweethearts than mail-order brides.
The second big idea of the article is that a technical cofounder may be unnecessary in some technology enabled companies because technical employees or freelancers can build the system in exchange for cash.
Finally, and perhaps most usefully, the article suggests that when the resources for a particular business model are unavailable, the business model is not viable despite its feasibility. Technical talent within a business model should be considered a resource. Find a business model based on available resources.
Yup, agreed completely on all counts.
I think Drew's advice is a sort of last-ditch, "you shouldn't have to be asking this, but if you're asking... these are probably your best shots..." sorta POV. Cofounders should have deep friendships and a lot of common understanding, etc.
I'm not qualified to talk about technical cofounders or freelancers, but as a writer/marketer I can tell you that a freelance marketer, however good, will never CARE about your product the way a founding team member will. And I'm guessing building a product is even more complex (it is to my eyes, at least) and hard to do justice to with freelancers.
It could work for say, gimmicky little games that make a surprising amount of money on the side (I have a friend who commissioned freelancers to build him a sort of spot-the-difference game, and he continues to make residual income on it), but it definitely won't work if you're trying to build a "Big Serious Product". In my opinion!
Sorry about the page timeout, I'm sorting about that out now.
Which could explain why they're looking for a technical cofounder..