I get pitched a lot to be a technical cofounder, and I put a lot of thought into assessing the biz skills of a potential sales/marketing/bizdev cofounder.
As you said, some ideas may be better suited to having someone with a sales background as a co-founder while others for someone with killer marketing skills.
And I've also found in the past that I have a different working dynamic with sales vs. marketing people as they often complement/overlap my skillset in different ways.
Another random thing to add regarding founder dating from the techie side is an awareness if someone is giving off the vibe that they're really looking for their first engineer even though they say they're looking for a true cofounder.
Finally, I try to distance the individual from the idea and ask myself, "Would I want to still co-found something with this person if things don't work out and we have to do a hard pivot from the original idea?" I would rather team up with someone great on a marginal idea that may evolve into more than someone just because I think the idea is killer. Most people I know in Silicon Valley have a million ideas on the backburner anyway, so it's a red flag to me if the idea interests me more than the person.
>I've never used Android, unfortunately—can't find people with the phone to irritate/mug
unalone, will you be at Startup School this Saturday? If so, you're welcome to borrow my Android Dev Phone for the day to play around with. I rotate between that phone, an iPhone, and a Nokia E75 depending on what I'm working on.
(back on topic) Considering the amount of attention that jwz gets, someone on the Android team should send him a free phone to tinker with asap.
I'm glad to see that they move away from the 3d app icons with the angled shadows and use larger, flat icons in 2.0.
The older-style icons are a pain to make and the Android icon design guidelines are way more complicated than the iPhone icon guidelines, so no one bothers to follow them.
I've been going to a lot of Symbian events in the Valley and have been watching closely how they're trying to reinvent themselves.
They've got some great people involved, but it's hard to shake the feeling about how the Nokia mindset is always lurking in the background.
Nokia's involvement is both a boon and a curse to Symbian, but this author articulates two points that are always on my mind when thinking about Symbian:
1. "but that can't be achieved in three months. 'In three years time,' is what I wrote in my notes. That is simultaneously very honest and a little scary."
2. "Nokia could decommit from the OS (or just waver long enough that developers lose faith)"
Nokia moves like a battleship with course corrections spanning years, and while Symbian tries to be nimble, I keep wondering if Nokia will pull the plug on Symbian before anything worthwhile materializes.
I get pitched a lot to be a technical cofounder, and I put a lot of thought into assessing the biz skills of a potential sales/marketing/bizdev cofounder.
As you said, some ideas may be better suited to having someone with a sales background as a co-founder while others for someone with killer marketing skills.
And I've also found in the past that I have a different working dynamic with sales vs. marketing people as they often complement/overlap my skillset in different ways.
Another random thing to add regarding founder dating from the techie side is an awareness if someone is giving off the vibe that they're really looking for their first engineer even though they say they're looking for a true cofounder.
Finally, I try to distance the individual from the idea and ask myself, "Would I want to still co-found something with this person if things don't work out and we have to do a hard pivot from the original idea?" I would rather team up with someone great on a marginal idea that may evolve into more than someone just because I think the idea is killer. Most people I know in Silicon Valley have a million ideas on the backburner anyway, so it's a red flag to me if the idea interests me more than the person.