[michaelbuckbee]

I think idea guys (or non technical cofounders) would do much better finding a programmer to work with if they approached developers more collaboratively.

Most of the pitches I get from 'idea guys' are very specific technical solutions that flatly will not work as designed because (lacking knowledge) they made some poor assumptions.

Much better would be an idea guy that came and said: "I've found X problem in the market, solving it would be worth Y dollars annually, what approach would you take to solve that?"

In my current startup (with a non-technical cofounder) we delineate this as the 'what' and the 'how'. He has much greater domain knowledge than I do, he describes what the problem is, how painful it is to the customers, etc. I figure out how to best implement solutions to those issues. Obviously it isn't quite that cut and dried, but in general the approach has been working.

Calling my current co-founder 'non-technical' or 'the idea guy' does him a great disservice as he is incredibly capable and the very definition of the kickass get off the ground business guy (wrangling VC, making sales, talking to customers)