[ryanlchan]

Let's clarify the implicit assumption you put in there: Why is it so hard finding a good technical co-founder? It's the same reason it's hard finding a good non-technical co-founder.

With a technical co-founder you're looking for proof of skill - they've done an app on no budget, limited time, and little sleep. Twice. They scaled it singlehandedly to 20m users. They not only know Node, they're on the core team.

What a technical co-founder is looking for is the exact same proof of skill. Can you sell ice cubes to Eskimos at 50% mark up? Can you get investment just by walking down Market? Do you have customers begging you to give them the privilege of sending you their money?

I wrote a blog post about this a few days ago [1]. The tl;dr: If you want a co-founder, earn one.

[1]: http://ryanlchan.com/post/32483578213/non-technical-founders...

[samstave]

>they've done an app on no budget, limited time, and little sleep. Twice. They scaled it singlehandedly to 20m users.

This is not true. You do not need to have such credentials for a technical co-founder.

I think your entire response is full of regurgitated garbage designed to serve the valleys current paradigm: devs are worth money - ideas are free.

This has been argued ad nausea here - but the fact is that ideas are NOT worth nothing. VCs are in a position to PAY developers til the cows come home - finding an idea in a market that is sizable, people are passionate about their support and willing to pay for, and can scale etc etc etc is HARD.

This is where YC has found the sweet spot - they have a model to vet the dev skill + idea-ability of the team.

Your claim that you need to have a hacker + hustler that can singlehandledly scale to 20M users and raise funding whilst walking down market street is retarded.

I agree with your TL;DR - but not on the same level you claim it.

The real problem is that finding a technical co-founder is hard because typically the skills to be the technical side are SOLELY what support the technical person, whereas the skills that are required to be the idea/business guy are NOT the SOLE means of supporting the idea guy - so it is intrinsically easier to be in the idea position, FINANCIALLY - but it is NOT easy/free to come up with the next $X billion dollar idea.

so - I would rebut that it is important to focus on how quickly your idea can be a revenue positive business. If you have an idea - make sure you can convince a tech co-founder that your amazing idea can sustain the OP-EX as early as possible then you will have a better chance of attracting a tech co-founder.

---

Anecdote: ahve a guy that I am working with who is really smart and is an idea guy with degrees in foreign language and international business. He worked with Mayor Newsom, the De Rothschilds and others...

His ideas typically revolve around disrupting institutions, non-profits and social behavior.

These are all great ideas that he is proposing but NONE of them have any clear way to 1) make money quickly 2) have any easy/cheap adoption path 3) not require significant upfront capital to even get to a pilot...

It is critical that you have an idea that is rock-solid in its ability to actually be "something people want to use" (and pay money for).

If you cant A) pay your tech co-founder then you damn well better be able to B) come up with an idea that is so enticing that people will pay for it out of the gate.

[ryanlchan]

I never said that these credentials are required (in fact I don't think they are), but that the OP implicitly believes them to be true. If you complain about the "lack of good technical cofounders" when there are 14,000 CS graduates every year and a flood of 'Ask HN: Smart developer needs job' posts springing up, you must either not be looking very hard or have ridiculously high expectations. The post is meant to highlight the ridiculousness of what many people expect of a "good" technical cofounder.

> I think your entire response is full of regurgitated garbage designed to serve the valleys current paradigm: devs are worth money - ideas are free.

Well that'd be quite ironic, as I'm on the non-technical side myself. In fact my argument is that neither of these are true. If you want to go start a start up, just go goddamn start it. Don't wait for your magic non-technical cofound to come around and solve all your problems.

[jkaykin]

Yeah you are right, I am probably not looking hard enough. I am not looking for someone who has done the aforementioned rather someone who can build good products. Nevertheless, I will go goddamn start it without a technical cofounder. Thank you.

[ryanlchan]

Excellent! Two quick clarifications on what I mean by "just go goddamn start it".

1. For a majority of contemporary companies, the primary risk is not technical, but market driven. In other words, your biggest problem isn't figuring out how to build the solution; it's figuring out what the solution should be in the first place. A ton of progress can be made on this front without a single line of code. 2. A startup is beset with an unceasing torrent of problems. You need a programmer for your MVP, true; but what happens when you need to start marketing? Do you go out and try to recruit an all star marketer? But wait we need sales as well - how many people do you want to go out and find? I don't mean to say that you need to be able to do everything, but figuring it out is a crucial skill to have as a founder, and this is one of the times you'll be practicing it.

Good luck!

[waveman2]

While it's true that really really good ideas are not free, you seem to be understating the importance of execution.

There is a huge difference between "Let's start an online bookshop", which was an idea many people had, and Amazon.com.

Or between "let's use links like academic citations as a measure of quality of web pages" and google.com.