ASK: How much input should a tech co-founder have on the business

[mzbridget]

This is directed to tech co-founders. How much activity do you put into your business outside of coding? Do you actively recruit users? Do you take part in the pitch decks? Do you network to find employees? Do you conduct market research? Do you help with product roadmaps and business roadmaps? To me, a tech co-founder should be much more than a coder but I'd like to have some input on this.

[CGherb858]

Shore answer, yes.

Are you a co-founder or an employee? Everyone's first job is to sell. So yes to recruiting, yes to pitching, yes to recruiting, yes to researching the market, yes to roadmaps. And in reverse, your biz co-founder should be helping you get the correct development tool licenses, supply you with photoshop designs, get hosting deals, etc. Think about deciding what cloud hosting you're going to use? This isn't about just technology because this decision shapes your COGS.

Quick Anecdote: When Google was hiring their first vp of marketing, the interviews were attended by their original vp of engineering. When the vp of marketing was hired the vp of engineering insisted that he split an office with marketing. This allowed for frequent communications between the two and gave them an advantage when creating products. Google's products were always a combo of engineering and marketing.

[tonyarkles]

There's two sides to this, from my point of view.

The first answer is: yes. Absolutely. Every "founder" really needs to be deep in the nitty gritty of the business. There's absolutely no point in investing a pile of time into technology that isn't going to be driving the business goals forward. A technical co-founder who has no interest in the direction that the business is going really is more of an employee than a co-founder.

The second answer is: yes, but with a balance. Here's a situation that's pretty easy to imagine: together, you have a fantastic idea for a product that will require a PILE of technical work. You're working away on getting an MVP ready to demo to investors or to beta users. In that case, how much effort should the tech co-founder be putting into the pitch deck, compared to effort that could be going into developing the product? That's a balance that you'll have to figure out together.

[mzbridget]

Yeah, nailed it. Its a tough trade-off and a really good reason why there should be 3 co-founders.

[hkarthik]

Of the things you listed, they are all reasonable for a tech founder to do.

The key difference is that a tech founder should timebox all of these activities to make sure the majority of their time early on is spent building the tech that powers the business.

[davidhansen]

My role as an employee is technical leadership and architecture. I also write code and deal with some low-level administration tasks, just by virtue of the fact that it's still a relatively small company.

But as a board seat and shareholder, it is my responsibility to concern myself with the overall direction of the company. This means I work with the other founder and executives to formulate strategy and make decisions on matters that have nothing at all to do technology.

These are two separate roles, as far as corporate governance is concerned. There is the possibility for conflict, but this is unlikely.

[mzbridget]

Very well put. I needed this explanation.