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
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.