The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?(futurephilanthropreneur.wordpress.com)
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The Age Old Question: Can A Non-Technical Founder Run A Startup?
http://futurephilanthropreneur.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/the-age-old-question-can-a-non-technical-founder-run-a-startup/
29 comments
I know someone who is non-technical and does startup Internet businesses. His lack of knowledge concerning software development is a real problem, but he guts through it. The biggest problem is one of trust: if you are not yourself a developer you don't appreciate why on rare occasion it can take a while to track down a bug, and other normal software development scenarios. A friend of mine has a way of explaining this to non-techs: "You are going fishing. Tell me exactly when you will catch a fish." :-)
Hi Mark,
First of all, I must say, your website is very impressive. I would love to chat with you about AI at some point. You are correct about the non-techs understanding and empathizing with the developers. I am a non-technical founder myself, that's why I wrote the post. I try my best to understand the processes and problems that the tech team goes through. I try and learn as much as possible in order to not be in the dark.
I also like the fish analogy :D
First of all, I must say, your website is very impressive. I would love to chat with you about AI at some point. You are correct about the non-techs understanding and empathizing with the developers. I am a non-technical founder myself, that's why I wrote the post. I try my best to understand the processes and problems that the tech team goes through. I try and learn as much as possible in order to not be in the dark.
I also like the fish analogy :D
Thanks. BTW, my telephone number is on my web site - I'm available to talk, preferably in the morning (Arizona time)
Damn, I really like the fish analogy as well (as I should, since I'm poor at it and find it deathly boring ... which is interesting in a family where everyone else isn't (well, there's a conservation of boredom principle in play, I'm the only one in my family who likes rifle paper target shooting, which to many is as interesting as watching paint dry)).
Damn, as in I wish I'd though of it way back when. Then again, I'm pretty sure almost all my superiors were city slickers who wouldn't have really gotten it....
Damn, as in I wish I'd though of it way back when. Then again, I'm pretty sure almost all my superiors were city slickers who wouldn't have really gotten it....
I think a domain expert can be a stronger founder than a programmer, if it's the right kind of domain. You either need to know what needs to be built, or how to build it, to have a chance (ideally, you'd know both)
I'll bet with 99% certainty a non-programmer cannot run a successful programming tool startup, though :)
I'll bet with 99% certainty a non-programmer cannot run a successful programming tool startup, though :)
Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Peter Thiel (Paypal), Mark Pincus (Zynga)
I mean is this even a serious question?
I mean is this even a serious question?
These guys can't. They're over 40 and we all know that unless you're 20-something you cannot do anything startup-related.
Hmmm, Reid Hoffman is a very interesting example. LinkedIn is technically not easy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Voldemort#SNA_LinkedIn), and he and it have been quite successful. (From my viewpoint it is by far the most useful social network.)
Skimming his resume and recommendations (on LinkedIn :-), it's clear he's very good with people and social stuff (surprise!) ... and I would suspect that transferred to dealing with the technical people who built LinkedIn. His history prior to it would have also given him a chance to learn about them, learn to respect them, etc.
Skimming his resume and recommendations (on LinkedIn :-), it's clear he's very good with people and social stuff (surprise!) ... and I would suspect that transferred to dealing with the technical people who built LinkedIn. His history prior to it would have also given him a chance to learn about them, learn to respect them, etc.
Exactly, that's the point. You are extremely correct. Of course a non-technical founder can run a startup. However, there is this stigma that business guys have no place in a startup,and I wanted to show that depending on the type, of course they do.
I think non-technical founders have a harder time building a profit-based company (like 37signals or Plenty of Fish, his examples) because how do you get a programmer on board to build the thing if you can't pay them?
Imagine the job ad: "Wanted: Engineering Bitch."
http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/02/startup-lessons-for-the...
Imagine the job ad: "Wanted: Engineering Bitch."
http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/02/startup-lessons-for-the...
In my harsh experience in trying to recruit programmers for companies or units run by a non-technical types, the pay is a trivial detail. Most of the really good people just don't want that scene, most especially if he's their direct report.
There also tends to be a really big issue with finding the first techie for the company, in most cases in my experience it was done through networking or the good type of nepotism (e.g. a brilliant younger brother who was just graduating from EECS at MIT and who turned down a good offer (IE when it was the very best browser, something he'd worked on in summer internships) to work for the startup).
There also tends to be a really big issue with finding the first techie for the company, in most cases in my experience it was done through networking or the good type of nepotism (e.g. a brilliant younger brother who was just graduating from EECS at MIT and who turned down a good offer (IE when it was the very best browser, something he'd worked on in summer internships) to work for the startup).
That's a good post for a technical founder. If you cant do all of the stuff in the post, you need a partner who can. And just like a non-technical founder picking a technical founder, picking a non-technical founder is difficult. A salesman once told me that even a lousy salesman can sell himself to an engineer.
That's a good post, and I agree with you. However, I never said anything about not paying them. Pre-seed funding for non-technical founders should go towards that in order to get an alpha built.
Here's a better test: if you listen to people who tell you what you can't do you probably won't be a good founder.
What do you do when a programmer tells you "this can't be done" (perhaps "... with these resources", including time)?
You're sure to find many others who say "no big problem!"
Which do you believe? The wrong answer can be very expensive either way.
There's a reason why very few '7-80s superminicomputer companies survived the advent of multiprocessors and trying to get their operating system(s) to work reliably with them.
In that case, it was "this will be hard" vs. "not too hard". In most cases, the B team got the nod, and all was well ... until customers with machines in the field started complaining how their shiny new systems would sporadically crash. And the B team couldn't find the problems (or at least very quickly), since among other things they hadn't invested enough in instrumentation and so on. Some companies were lucky enough to get a chance to hire third team who could do it, but I think in most if not all of those cases the company was too injured and too late with a good solution to survive.
ADDED: I should probably qualify this with "it depends a lot on how hard the problem is". I'm used to the domain of hard technical problems because that's mostly how I made my living before retiring. And one advantage of them is the barrier to entry they pose to competitors.
After all, we're here because the problem of developing a really good (easy to use and so on) web shop development system is hard, something where using secret alien technology (http://lispers.org/) can make a big difference, and did.
You're sure to find many others who say "no big problem!"
Which do you believe? The wrong answer can be very expensive either way.
There's a reason why very few '7-80s superminicomputer companies survived the advent of multiprocessors and trying to get their operating system(s) to work reliably with them.
In that case, it was "this will be hard" vs. "not too hard". In most cases, the B team got the nod, and all was well ... until customers with machines in the field started complaining how their shiny new systems would sporadically crash. And the B team couldn't find the problems (or at least very quickly), since among other things they hadn't invested enough in instrumentation and so on. Some companies were lucky enough to get a chance to hire third team who could do it, but I think in most if not all of those cases the company was too injured and too late with a good solution to survive.
ADDED: I should probably qualify this with "it depends a lot on how hard the problem is". I'm used to the domain of hard technical problems because that's mostly how I made my living before retiring. And one advantage of them is the barrier to entry they pose to competitors.
After all, we're here because the problem of developing a really good (easy to use and so on) web shop development system is hard, something where using secret alien technology (http://lispers.org/) can make a big difference, and did.
There's a difference between asking someone else to do something and doing it yourself. Don't listen to people who tell you what you can't do.
Do you mean what "you can't do" as "you are not capable of this but others are/might be"?
Yeah, that has much less weight, although you might want to drill down and see why they have that opinion. E.g. Edison could not do in a practical way electronic distribution because he didn't have the math (calculus) needed for polyphase AC, which is why we're all using Tesla's inventions (with a modern special case exception of very high voltage DC interconnect lines).
I.e. a "you can't do this unless and until you master X" is worth listening to. On the other hand, the founder of Motorola didn't know or pay attention to the conventional wisdom that coils? (inductors) had to be big, so he went ahead and made the first really practical car radios.
Yeah, that has much less weight, although you might want to drill down and see why they have that opinion. E.g. Edison could not do in a practical way electronic distribution because he didn't have the math (calculus) needed for polyphase AC, which is why we're all using Tesla's inventions (with a modern special case exception of very high voltage DC interconnect lines).
I.e. a "you can't do this unless and until you master X" is worth listening to. On the other hand, the founder of Motorola didn't know or pay attention to the conventional wisdom that coils? (inductors) had to be big, so he went ahead and made the first really practical car radios.
true.
If it's an "age old question", then it must mean no one has come up with a satisfactory answer despite a lot of data? That would seem to indicate that if the answer is not a firm yes or no, then it is possible. The post, however, says "no".
It seems as if there is always a debate as to whether this is a yes or no question. In the post, I say "no" to startups and yes to scalable startups. I think that this topic is subjective and hard to define as yes or no.
Why was Plenty of Fish used as the sole example in this article? It makes $10 million in profits a year and would take 100 years to make the $1 billion in profits that he require for a startup to be considered as a "scalable startup."
+ PoF is no longer adsense based, he is running his own advertising and selling premium accounts.
Actually I've recently read an article that basically questions PoFs claims. It was a few years old, from when he was still running adsense...but basically it raised one question..."if plenty of fish is as successful as the guy claims(still had that 10mm/yr number back then)...why isn't he an adsense premium publisher?"
Basically it implied that the only reason Plenty of Fish took off, was because the guy lied his ass off early on when he was making a few grand a month, saying that he was making millions, which got him a ton of coverage which in turn eventually got him more users, which in turn led to the $1mm/yr number.
And that even now the numbers he is putting out for consumption are nowhere close to reality, and is just a way for him to get more free marketing.
Actually I've recently read an article that basically questions PoFs claims. It was a few years old, from when he was still running adsense...but basically it raised one question..."if plenty of fish is as successful as the guy claims(still had that 10mm/yr number back then)...why isn't he an adsense premium publisher?"
Basically it implied that the only reason Plenty of Fish took off, was because the guy lied his ass off early on when he was making a few grand a month, saying that he was making millions, which got him a ton of coverage which in turn eventually got him more users, which in turn led to the $1mm/yr number.
And that even now the numbers he is putting out for consumption are nowhere close to reality, and is just a way for him to get more free marketing.
You never know, that is a distinct possibility. If the numbers are relatively correct, then it is a different way of doing business. If not, then it is another case of trying to get marketing any way he can.
Of course a non-technical founder can run a startup. Just look at Richard Branson. Or some of the many startups in greentech, biotech or anything else not directly related to the internets.
However, I don't recall any startups without a founder that has some flair for sales and marketing succeed.
However, I don't recall any startups without a founder that has some flair for sales and marketing succeed.
Thank you. I agree 100%, that is why I wrote the post. I didn't reveal it too much in there, but as a non-technical founder, there are ways to make it work.
Absolutely.
The way I see it is that there are a number of ingredients involved in successfully doing a startup: Marketing, sales, finance, people, luck, ambition, domain knowledge, etc. You can be weak in one area but then you'll have to compensate in other areas to make it up.
I know a very successful founder of a tech company (yearly turnover 8 figures), and he has no idea how to hack. But he does have acute people skills, and he's brilliant at sales. He was also lucky that he got into a domain that had a lot of possibility.
I also know a guy that's a brilliant programmer, but his projects never go anywhere. He doesn't know how to sell his product, and he's afraid of giving up control. The inevitable result is that noone has ever heard of him or his company.
The way I see it is that there are a number of ingredients involved in successfully doing a startup: Marketing, sales, finance, people, luck, ambition, domain knowledge, etc. You can be weak in one area but then you'll have to compensate in other areas to make it up.
I know a very successful founder of a tech company (yearly turnover 8 figures), and he has no idea how to hack. But he does have acute people skills, and he's brilliant at sales. He was also lucky that he got into a domain that had a lot of possibility.
I also know a guy that's a brilliant programmer, but his projects never go anywhere. He doesn't know how to sell his product, and he's afraid of giving up control. The inevitable result is that noone has ever heard of him or his company.
In the '80s I read one of the Digital Press books on the history of minicomputers (from the DEC perspective, e.g. Gordon Bell was one of the authors as I recall), and one of the observations was that the successful ones did an adequate job of everything that was essential.
No one ever bought DEC because they offered great mass storage solutions (and let's not even go into the early RA81; CPUs, on the other hand...). But they did at least an adequate job of every essential thing (documentation, build quality, then the softer stuff) that they succeeded when the vast majority of their peers failed.
No one ever bought DEC because they offered great mass storage solutions (and let's not even go into the early RA81; CPUs, on the other hand...). But they did at least an adequate job of every essential thing (documentation, build quality, then the softer stuff) that they succeeded when the vast majority of their peers failed.