[bherms]

When it comes down to it, despite how you feel you're good at "business", if you find a good technical co-founder, you're going to actually be close to worthless (considering you get a really good tech co-founder, not just a programmer). Business is easy for smart people. It's mostly common sense, personality, and drive. Once you find a really good technical co-founder, chances are the answer to "Could this business survive without him?" will be "No" and "Could this business survive without me?" will be "Yes". Keep that in mind when you think about a ridiculous share like 15%. Start at 50/50. His shares can go up if he brings more to the table. Yours can go up if you learn to code.

[mindcrime]

if you find a good technical co-founder, you're going to actually be close to worthless (considering you get a really good tech co-founder, not just a programmer). Business is easy for smart people.

I'm sorry, but I have to "call bullshit" on this (as a generalization anyway. I don't think we know enough about the specifics here to really say if the OP - specifically - is going to "be close to worthless" or not).

There are particular skills and talents that good people on the "business side of the house" have, and they're not necessarily things that come easily to just any smart person. I mean, sure, most reasonably smart people could probably teach themselves to make cold calls, generate leads, go on sales calls and close sales... but not to any greater degree than you could say "any reasonably smart person can learn to write code."

In the end, specialization and division of labor are a good thing, and a solid business needs people who have chosen to focus on, and develop skills in, different things... and the business side is no less important than the product side.

And if you really don't believe me, go round up 10 random engineers with no selling experience, give them a list of phone numbers and a stack of data-sheets and tell them to go sell a product, and see how that turns out.

[bherms]

I'll give you that... It certainly depends on the person and past experience and I did generalize a bit based on my experience with technical co-founders I've known and worked with. When I said a "really good" tech co-founder, I kind of implicitly meant someone easily capable of or already possessing some of the skills necessary. I look at myself or some of my successful friends and all of them are tech co-founders who learned the business stuff pretty easily and have been successful. In cases like that, if some mba grad tried to sell them on "oh, i'm a business guy" (which has happened quite often), they'd always get told to fuck off.

[mindcrime]

I look at myself or some of my successful friends and all of them are tech co-founders who learned the business stuff pretty easily and have been successful. In cases like that, if some mba grad tried to sell them on "oh, i'm a business guy" (which has happened quite often), they'd always get told to fuck off.

Sure, just having an MBA doesn't mean one is a good "business guy." And, to be fair, different types of businesses do have different needs. For example, it's implicit in my diatribe above that I'm referring to the kind of business that sales to other big businesses, using a direct sales model. And maybe in some other kinds of businesses it's easier for somebody who's a techie by trade to just step in and learn the business side of what they're trying to do.

Of course, once you go down that path, one could ask if you're still "a techie" or if you're now some kind of weird hybrid thing... ;-)

Anyway, in either case, I also agree that the kind of person who has nothing but "an idea" and no ability to execute in some regard (whether it be the business "side" or the techie "side") is of pretty limited value.