[techbelle]

Thanks for posting this. As a entrepreneur I couldn't agree more with your opinion. Previously although I work in a technology field, I was pretty functional. That is, my knowledge of coding began and ended at SQL and HTML. But on the same note, years of doing custom applications with developer teams educated me on the 'lingo' and what could and could not be done (at least, not easily).

Over the past year, we had many 'business' persons who offered to help out, and while that was awesome, what we really needed was qualified technical people. For a 'business' person, one can usually get an unpaid college intern and not have to sacrifice any shares in the company.

Also, I think as functional person you are somewhat "over the barrel" if your developers dont perform, and can do nothing except complain. I do believe it's better overall if you can build your own product. At the end of the day, we decided to educate our own team in Ruby/Rails rather than bring in outside developers. I think this was a smart decision, and also a more cost effective solution.

I definitely suggest other start ups do the same.