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.
From the founder’s perspective this is a very sweet deal. “All the hard work is done,” they proclaim, “All the tech person has to do is build it.” Ultimately, the sole founder becomes increasingly frustrated when every potential tech lead they speak with says “no thanks”.
I can't tell you how many times I've said "no thanks"--though it was probably more along the lines of "hell no!" I love it when a "business" person approaches me with their Great Idea™ and they're like, "I have the program all figured out, all I need is someone to code it." My response: "Then learn how to code."
Right now I'm working on a project with a non-programmer co-founder and the only reasons I agreed to it was 1) he's a longtime friend and I trust him, 2) he has expertise that I lack in the domain space (chemistry), 3) it was my idea in the first place and I have control over the development/vision. It still doesn't feel nice to have the weight of ALL THE PROGRAMMING on your shoulders.
Lately I've been getting lots of people who ARE learning how to code, and they come to me to describe their project and get advice. Their explanation always ends with "So it doesn't seem like that's very complicated, it's really simple software I need, right? Even though I'm just learning, I should be able to do it in a few weeks?"
I have begun to hear it, and try to explain it as:
"Okay, so I want to build a house, but it's just a SMALL house, we're talking just one room on the first floor and one on the second, and it only needs ONE toilet and ONE electrical outlet. And I've already spent a few weeks learning how to use a hammer and am pretty damn comfortable with hammers now -- and getting there with a drill too! So this should be pretty straightforward right? I just have one question that maybe you can help me with, something I've been confused about: Do electrical outlets and toilets use the same kind of tubing to connect them, or different kinds of tubing?"
I usually don't even know where to begin. I can give advice on how to learn how to write software, but they're gonna have to start from the basics, it's gonna take em a while (months at least, of constant work) until they get to the point where they know enough to build what they want, they may not get there at all if they find they don't actually enjoy programming or have no aptitude for it, and once they DO get there, THEN they can start actually building what they want to build -- which will take 3x as long as predicted even by someone who knows what they're talking about (which they don't yet), because that's how it is. They don't want to hear that and think I'm being 'elitist'.
Your story reminds me as a freelancer telling the customer: you are "basically" asking me to hit your finger with a hammer.. that said, it is your finger an your hammer.. say the word and I'll hit !
I commented below, but personally every time someone comes to me with an idea I ask for 75% equity. Usually people scoff and walk away, but sometimes people are willing to negotiate.
To me it's always amazing how little equity some technical cofounders obtain. Ideas, like talk, is pretty cheap. Coding for years is pretty damn expensive.
Maybe I'm being naive, but there can be something else that the non-technical founder brings that is equally valuable to the tech stuff: paying customers. If they have actual customers that are ready to pay, then the deal may be worth it even for less than equal share of equity. Another is cash investment (not relationships with investors, real cash of their own that they are willing to invest).
I think most of these non-technical founders just have a fantasy about a product idea and it really is worthless. But if they have a good network of contacts and people ringing their phone for whatever they want you to build then that is some value.
If these idea people are so sure of their ideas, they can finance development using freelancers and they don't need a technical cofounder. If technical cofounder is just doublespeak for programmer willing to work for free + equity, only someone very naive will take it.
If you think that you realistically would require more than 50% of the equity to make it worth your time then you are better off politely declining and walking away.
Eh, it's the start of a negotiation. It "gets the mule's attention", and if they were thinking of giving you single digits of equity as I gather is not uncommon you've saved yourself time.
It also demands respect. They may not give it to you, but if something actually happens you'll be starting on the right foot, and the author claims this does not turn everyone who approaches him off.
It also gets the big issues right out there: how much is an idea and anything else they're bringing to the table worth vs. how much is the technical effort to make it live.
My point was that if you feel like your value as a technical person is worth more than the business person who has approached you (>50%) then you shouldn't bother. Between their experience, their idea, their connections, their money, etc. they should at least equal your value or you are in trouble regardless of how the equity breaks down. Negotiations are a different topic.
Because once they've been one once, they don't want to be one again.
Well crap, I'm in my second go-around as startup CTO (and I definitely want to do more), so I guess I'm doing something wrong because I've loved every minute of each startup.
I think the big thing that makes all the work and stress worth it for me is that these are projects I would volunteer for with or without pay. Last time it was a fitness network that helped people develop a sustainable healthy lifestyle. This time it is shaving 10-20% off the installed price of distributed solar. Got way past the MVP stage last time (over a million users), and close to getting there this time (more business LOIs coming in every day).
I love being a technical cofounder. My skills are technical, so I can contribute the most in that role. But the startup has to be something I would volunteer for. So I guess you're right, startups don't find me. I find them.
Volunteering for a volunteer project is noble. Volunteering so that someone else can take your fair share of profit is not so much. If you are taking a hit in salary for society at large then I would compliment you on your generosity. If you are taking a hit so that someone else in your company can take more money I would suggest you reevaluate your decision
Heh, oh don't worry. I get a very large equity stake and take my fair share of the profit. The great thing about doing these sorts of projects over straight volunteering is that the positive impact on society comes with a business model and large financial incentives.
Also because if you have to ask, you aren't going to make it. The only way to pull your weight as a non-technical co-founder is to already have lots of connections with money, and if you have that, engineers will already be beating a path to your door. If you don't, you're going to fail anyway, and your inability to find an engineer to co-found your company is the least of your problems.
There are really only two jobs in an early-stage startup: engineer and money man. If you're not building the product, and you're not bringing money in the door either, you're not helping. "Idea guy" is not a job.
This idea that only the tech matters and you can't pull weight without being on the tech side irks me to no end. Sales, marketing, product positioning, feedback gathering, and investor relations are all often more valuable than whatever the tech team is up to. That programmers so often shrug this off is simple arrogance.
Sales, marketing, product positioning, feedback gathering, and investor relations are all often more valuable
I think you're absolutely right. But so is the person you were replying to. Becuase you know what _isn't_ as valuable as any of those things? "Having a really good idea that I think could make a lot of money."
And that's what a lot of people think, I have a great idea, all I need is someone who knows how to program to implement it (shouldn't take very long), and we're gonna make lots of money!
(Actually, I'd challenge the 'product positioning' as a useful thing to bring, because it is too easily confused with "Having a great idea." But sales, marketting, investor relations, actual market research, actual evidence-based feedback gathering -- sure.)
I'm not saying that only the tech matters. I'm saying that in an early-stage startup, only the product and the money matter. The tech only matters to the extent that it enables building the product. Sales, marketing, product positioning, feedback gathering, and investor relations can all be separate jobs later, after you have enough money coming in to support that specialization. In an early stage startup, if you're not building the product, you need to be the money person, so you should be doing all of that, and you need connections to do it well.
If you're a non-technical co-founder, the primary value you bring to the business is the people you already know, who have money. It's not your ideas and it's also not your visual design taste.
The only way to pull your weight as a non-technical co-founder is to already have lots of connections with money,
Is this really true? Hustling is a valuable skill, too. If you're bootstrapping, you don't need endless connections to people with money, you just need customers. So a non-technical business guy, in theory, just needs to be willing to hustle in order to contribute to certain kinds of enterprise.
How would you even bootstrap without a product to sell? If you have actual paying customers, that means you at least have an MVP built. A list of leads doesn't count, you have to convert them to bootstrap, and to convert them you need an MVP. If you're a non-technical bootstrapper you should probably be looking at an employee or freelancer rather than a co-founder to build your MVP.
In other words, "it's the money, stupid." If you're a non-technical founder with just an idea and no existing funding or paying customers yet, that is why you can't find a technical co-founder. No good tech talent is going to work for equity in a bootstrapped business, because equity is worthless without the
"hockey stick" growth trajectory you're shooting for when you take funding.
Groupon was started with a one - page wordpress blog. Now they have around a thousand engineers. You don't HAVE to have a tech co - founder to build a startup.
You don't have to have a tech co-founder to build a startup if you can build the MVP yourself. I'd go as far as to say that if the technology component of your MVP is just a Wordpress site, then you probably shouldn't have a tech co-founder.
Comments
You don't. They find you.
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.
I agree.
I can't tell you how many times I've said "no thanks"--though it was probably more along the lines of "hell no!" I love it when a "business" person approaches me with their Great Idea™ and they're like, "I have the program all figured out, all I need is someone to code it." My response: "Then learn how to code."
Right now I'm working on a project with a non-programmer co-founder and the only reasons I agreed to it was 1) he's a longtime friend and I trust him, 2) he has expertise that I lack in the domain space (chemistry), 3) it was my idea in the first place and I have control over the development/vision. It still doesn't feel nice to have the weight of ALL THE PROGRAMMING on your shoulders.
Lately I've been getting lots of people who ARE learning how to code, and they come to me to describe their project and get advice. Their explanation always ends with "So it doesn't seem like that's very complicated, it's really simple software I need, right? Even though I'm just learning, I should be able to do it in a few weeks?"
I have begun to hear it, and try to explain it as:
"Okay, so I want to build a house, but it's just a SMALL house, we're talking just one room on the first floor and one on the second, and it only needs ONE toilet and ONE electrical outlet. And I've already spent a few weeks learning how to use a hammer and am pretty damn comfortable with hammers now -- and getting there with a drill too! So this should be pretty straightforward right? I just have one question that maybe you can help me with, something I've been confused about: Do electrical outlets and toilets use the same kind of tubing to connect them, or different kinds of tubing?"
I usually don't even know where to begin. I can give advice on how to learn how to write software, but they're gonna have to start from the basics, it's gonna take em a while (months at least, of constant work) until they get to the point where they know enough to build what they want, they may not get there at all if they find they don't actually enjoy programming or have no aptitude for it, and once they DO get there, THEN they can start actually building what they want to build -- which will take 3x as long as predicted even by someone who knows what they're talking about (which they don't yet), because that's how it is. They don't want to hear that and think I'm being 'elitist'.
Your story reminds me as a freelancer telling the customer: you are "basically" asking me to hit your finger with a hammer.. that said, it is your finger an your hammer.. say the word and I'll hit !
I love the house metaphor. I'm going to use it. Thanks.
That metaphor just made me cry.
I commented below, but personally every time someone comes to me with an idea I ask for 75% equity. Usually people scoff and walk away, but sometimes people are willing to negotiate.
To me it's always amazing how little equity some technical cofounders obtain. Ideas, like talk, is pretty cheap. Coding for years is pretty damn expensive.
Maybe I'm being naive, but there can be something else that the non-technical founder brings that is equally valuable to the tech stuff: paying customers. If they have actual customers that are ready to pay, then the deal may be worth it even for less than equal share of equity. Another is cash investment (not relationships with investors, real cash of their own that they are willing to invest).
I think most of these non-technical founders just have a fantasy about a product idea and it really is worthless. But if they have a good network of contacts and people ringing their phone for whatever they want you to build then that is some value.
If these idea people are so sure of their ideas, they can finance development using freelancers and they don't need a technical cofounder. If technical cofounder is just doublespeak for programmer willing to work for free + equity, only someone very naive will take it.
Yes, people with money or people who already sold their (non-existing) product are indeed a good match and as scarce as good co-founders.
If you think that you realistically would require more than 50% of the equity to make it worth your time then you are better off politely declining and walking away.
Eh, it's the start of a negotiation. It "gets the mule's attention", and if they were thinking of giving you single digits of equity as I gather is not uncommon you've saved yourself time.
It also demands respect. They may not give it to you, but if something actually happens you'll be starting on the right foot, and the author claims this does not turn everyone who approaches him off.
It also gets the big issues right out there: how much is an idea and anything else they're bringing to the table worth vs. how much is the technical effort to make it live.
My point was that if you feel like your value as a technical person is worth more than the business person who has approached you (>50%) then you shouldn't bother. Between their experience, their idea, their connections, their money, etc. they should at least equal your value or you are in trouble regardless of how the equity breaks down. Negotiations are a different topic.
The negotiation only started when one party said "no".
Well crap, I'm in my second go-around as startup CTO (and I definitely want to do more), so I guess I'm doing something wrong because I've loved every minute of each startup.
I think the big thing that makes all the work and stress worth it for me is that these are projects I would volunteer for with or without pay. Last time it was a fitness network that helped people develop a sustainable healthy lifestyle. This time it is shaving 10-20% off the installed price of distributed solar. Got way past the MVP stage last time (over a million users), and close to getting there this time (more business LOIs coming in every day).
I love being a technical cofounder. My skills are technical, so I can contribute the most in that role. But the startup has to be something I would volunteer for. So I guess you're right, startups don't find me. I find them.
Volunteering for a volunteer project is noble. Volunteering so that someone else can take your fair share of profit is not so much. If you are taking a hit in salary for society at large then I would compliment you on your generosity. If you are taking a hit so that someone else in your company can take more money I would suggest you reevaluate your decision
Heh, oh don't worry. I get a very large equity stake and take my fair share of the profit. The great thing about doing these sorts of projects over straight volunteering is that the positive impact on society comes with a business model and large financial incentives.
Also because if you have to ask, you aren't going to make it. The only way to pull your weight as a non-technical co-founder is to already have lots of connections with money, and if you have that, engineers will already be beating a path to your door. If you don't, you're going to fail anyway, and your inability to find an engineer to co-found your company is the least of your problems.
There are really only two jobs in an early-stage startup: engineer and money man. If you're not building the product, and you're not bringing money in the door either, you're not helping. "Idea guy" is not a job.
This idea that only the tech matters and you can't pull weight without being on the tech side irks me to no end. Sales, marketing, product positioning, feedback gathering, and investor relations are all often more valuable than whatever the tech team is up to. That programmers so often shrug this off is simple arrogance.
I think you're absolutely right. But so is the person you were replying to. Becuase you know what _isn't_ as valuable as any of those things? "Having a really good idea that I think could make a lot of money."
And that's what a lot of people think, I have a great idea, all I need is someone who knows how to program to implement it (shouldn't take very long), and we're gonna make lots of money!
(Actually, I'd challenge the 'product positioning' as a useful thing to bring, because it is too easily confused with "Having a great idea." But sales, marketting, investor relations, actual market research, actual evidence-based feedback gathering -- sure.)
I'm not saying that only the tech matters. I'm saying that in an early-stage startup, only the product and the money matter. The tech only matters to the extent that it enables building the product. Sales, marketing, product positioning, feedback gathering, and investor relations can all be separate jobs later, after you have enough money coming in to support that specialization. In an early stage startup, if you're not building the product, you need to be the money person, so you should be doing all of that, and you need connections to do it well.
If you're a non-technical co-founder, the primary value you bring to the business is the people you already know, who have money. It's not your ideas and it's also not your visual design taste.
Is this really true? Hustling is a valuable skill, too. If you're bootstrapping, you don't need endless connections to people with money, you just need customers. So a non-technical business guy, in theory, just needs to be willing to hustle in order to contribute to certain kinds of enterprise.
How would you even bootstrap without a product to sell? If you have actual paying customers, that means you at least have an MVP built. A list of leads doesn't count, you have to convert them to bootstrap, and to convert them you need an MVP. If you're a non-technical bootstrapper you should probably be looking at an employee or freelancer rather than a co-founder to build your MVP.
In other words, "it's the money, stupid." If you're a non-technical founder with just an idea and no existing funding or paying customers yet, that is why you can't find a technical co-founder. No good tech talent is going to work for equity in a bootstrapped business, because equity is worthless without the "hockey stick" growth trajectory you're shooting for when you take funding.
Groupon was started with a one - page wordpress blog. Now they have around a thousand engineers. You don't HAVE to have a tech co - founder to build a startup.
You don't have to have a tech co-founder to build a startup if you can build the MVP yourself. I'd go as far as to say that if the technology component of your MVP is just a Wordpress site, then you probably shouldn't have a tech co-founder.