I've got a different question: "Where do I find a non-technical cofounder?"
It seems people that understand tech but also have sales/management skills are a rare scarcity.
They're like unicorns, and the only way you usually end up with these folks is by having them start in tech, and then end up doing business.
I'm a technologist (developer), but over the years have morphed into doing sales and strategic direction for our platform. Sales and technology are a seriously winning combination that most folks seem to shun - but if you look at successful startups, again and again, you'll see that the "technical co-founder" does as much sales and speaky-speak as his non-technical counterparts.
Having someone that actually knows what they're talking about sell a product can be a boon.
It can also be a boondoggle, as unfortunately the words "yes, that is in theory possible", which you will hear from technologists frequently, are taken by pure business folks as "yes, this is possible and can be done yesterday, at no cost". Bitten me in the ass more times than I care to admit, and I'm now very careful with how I state things, but it's still a winning combo.
100% agree. So many of the great tech success stories have started with someone deeply technical who knows how to sell. And not just to customers -- also to talent. Ventures with that kind of person at the helm are the ones worth joining.
Networking is important. IMO it's very hard to identify those people without a sufficiently large sample size.
what are you going to do with a non-technical cofounder that has "sales/management" skills? That implies that you already have a product built.
A truly valuable non-technical cofounder will be a product developer, not a sales/management guy. The most valuable type of marketing is baked into product development.
A truly valuable sales leader is contributing to the product development, not by committing actual code, but by identifying what needs to be built to bring in revenue
(and more importantly, what doesn't need to be developed any time soon despite all those superficially positive feedback meetings, and which possible markets to develop into are a total waste of time)
And there's no shortage of B2B markets where the tech takes as long to sell into enterprise as to build.
All the non-technical cofounders told me, they didn't build a product but the product idea, business plan and marketing strategy are already done. Now they just need a dev to implement the software and they are good to go.
product idea, business plan and marketing strategy are already done
If they say this, their failure probability is too damn high. What many first time founders don't understand is that startup is a search process in the outlandishly uncertain world. You can't "do" the product idea and strategy before you iterated on your initial hypothesis and verified/discarded/revised it.
This is like startups 101, explained in the basic level entrepreneurship courses on edx/coursera and founder must read books like "lean marketing for startups" and "startup's owner manual".
If a business-side guy or girl doesn't know that, disregard them.
A sales/management type can work on developing and qualifying leads; communicating with legal, accounting, and insurance consultants; and raising outside investment to the extent these are appropriate to the business model.
Even more importantly they add slack. This means there's someone to take out the trash and stock the refrigerator with Diet Coke, Caffeine Free Coke, and almond milk.
The idea of slack entails the possibility that a programming ninja can wash the coffee mugs while the sales/administrative person is head down in payables for last month.
Above jumping into the dumpster to retrieve a dollar isn't limited to one skill set.
Also "slack" might be a useful concept here. E.g. I frequently ended up doing the backups at the startups I worked for, because it's one of my specialties and I really care about avoiding data loss. And after doing the setup, "turning the crank" each day was some non-intense work to do, a welcome break from the 7 hours of heads down programming that's always been my max of "real work".
I had the same problem. This must happen all the time. It just isn't complained about as prominently. It's always a bad idea to found alone. I knew that going in...
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I've got a different question: "Where do I find a non-technical cofounder?" It seems people that understand tech but also have sales/management skills are a rare scarcity.
They're like unicorns, and the only way you usually end up with these folks is by having them start in tech, and then end up doing business.
I'm a technologist (developer), but over the years have morphed into doing sales and strategic direction for our platform. Sales and technology are a seriously winning combination that most folks seem to shun - but if you look at successful startups, again and again, you'll see that the "technical co-founder" does as much sales and speaky-speak as his non-technical counterparts.
Having someone that actually knows what they're talking about sell a product can be a boon.
It can also be a boondoggle, as unfortunately the words "yes, that is in theory possible", which you will hear from technologists frequently, are taken by pure business folks as "yes, this is possible and can be done yesterday, at no cost". Bitten me in the ass more times than I care to admit, and I'm now very careful with how I state things, but it's still a winning combo.
100% agree. So many of the great tech success stories have started with someone deeply technical who knows how to sell. And not just to customers -- also to talent. Ventures with that kind of person at the helm are the ones worth joining.
Networking is important. IMO it's very hard to identify those people without a sufficiently large sample size.
what are you going to do with a non-technical cofounder that has "sales/management" skills? That implies that you already have a product built.
A truly valuable non-technical cofounder will be a product developer, not a sales/management guy. The most valuable type of marketing is baked into product development.
A truly valuable sales leader is contributing to the product development, not by committing actual code, but by identifying what needs to be built to bring in revenue (and more importantly, what doesn't need to be developed any time soon despite all those superficially positive feedback meetings, and which possible markets to develop into are a total waste of time)
And there's no shortage of B2B markets where the tech takes as long to sell into enterprise as to build.
Funny you say this.
All the non-technical cofounders told me, they didn't build a product but the product idea, business plan and marketing strategy are already done. Now they just need a dev to implement the software and they are good to go.
If they say this, their failure probability is too damn high. What many first time founders don't understand is that startup is a search process in the outlandishly uncertain world. You can't "do" the product idea and strategy before you iterated on your initial hypothesis and verified/discarded/revised it.
This is like startups 101, explained in the basic level entrepreneurship courses on edx/coursera and founder must read books like "lean marketing for startups" and "startup's owner manual".
If a business-side guy or girl doesn't know that, disregard them.
Oh, I do :)
Most of them tell me, they did marked research as a proof for their idea.
A sales/management type can work on developing and qualifying leads; communicating with legal, accounting, and insurance consultants; and raising outside investment to the extent these are appropriate to the business model.
Even more importantly they add slack. This means there's someone to take out the trash and stock the refrigerator with Diet Coke, Caffeine Free Coke, and almond milk.
Of course a large fraction of these types are too proud to do that.
One thing I always look for, in every member of a startup, is that they aren't too proud "to sweep the floors" if needed.
The idea of slack entails the possibility that a programming ninja can wash the coffee mugs while the sales/administrative person is head down in payables for last month.
Above jumping into the dumpster to retrieve a dollar isn't limited to one skill set.
Absolutely.
Also "slack" might be a useful concept here. E.g. I frequently ended up doing the backups at the startups I worked for, because it's one of my specialties and I really care about avoiding data loss. And after doing the setup, "turning the crank" each day was some non-intense work to do, a welcome break from the 7 hours of heads down programming that's always been my max of "real work".
I had the same problem. This must happen all the time. It just isn't complained about as prominently. It's always a bad idea to found alone. I knew that going in...