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by ntmartin 5188 days ago
Good piece. I've talked with numerous people looking to start a startup with the assumption that implementation is just a case of hiring a few devs or outsourcing to n freelancers.

I especially liked the wake up call to developers at the end. Would be very interested to read any reciprocal articles on why technical founders need a business co-founder.

1 comments

Totally agree, I'd love to read a reciprocal piece. I think programmers (myself included) often feel that a non-technical person can't write a single line of code* whereas a technical person can figure out enough of the business and product side of things and make up the rest as he goes along. A lot of times this works out, but I'm sure there have been many cases where a failed startup might have succeeded if they'd had a good non-tech cofounder and made better strategy decisions.

* unless he/she decides to learn to code well enough to hack together an MVP, but that's not what the article is talking about

A smart programmer can B.S. his way through business. However you can't B.S. your way though programming and still make it work. The worst possible idea I could think of is for a non technical founder to try and "hire" someone unless it is a really simple app. Implimentation > Idea