[lsoenke]

1. I don't think finding a qualified "business" person will be excessively difficult. From my experience, there is an under-supply of engineers and an over-supply of business people wanting to found. Thus, if you are an engineer from a FAANG company, there should be large demand for your skillset by business people looking to found. That being said, the main ways to find non-technical co-founders is via network (your FAANG friends are bound to know someone, ask them for an introduction) and events. Also, don't be afraid to cold reachout to someone who might be interesting. 2. Be sure you want a "business" person in your founding team. Many great companies made it without one. If you need very deep domain knowledge then yes, it can be beneficial to have such a person. However, that being said, if you don't have knowledge in that domain you should also not really be looking to found in that domain. However, that is besides the point. Many "business" skills like sales, marketing and fundraising can be learned to a good enough standard by most technical cofounders. I have always has bad experience taking on non-techincal co-founders to handle the "business" part.

Just to make this clear, I do not think "business" co-founders are useless. There are a lot of very good ones that bring a lot of value. All I am saying is that I have made bad experiences taking in "business" people to handle the "business" part of the startup. Most of the time you can (and should) learn the necessary skills yourself. Every startup needs technical co-founders, however most startups don't NEED non-technical co-founders.

[hazz99]

I think there is a huge difference between the “business” taught at university and the “business” skills you need to launch a new venture.

In my experience, formal education tends to be very corporate-operations focused because that’s where most grads go. Most courses presuppose that the company has already found product-market fit - using these same behaviours in a new venture context could be dangerous.

Ideally, you’d find someone who recognises this difference and works to learn the differences between the environments, and brings the best of both worlds to the venture.