[knwang]

I would say this is not only for non-technical co-founders, but even for people with technical skills, starting with service, but the type of service whose value is not measured by hours. Then just come up with the engineering to automate said service. This approach has several advantages:

1. You will be working with real, money paying customers from day 1 - right there you are ahead of 90% of startup projects.

2. You get to work your customers to understand their pain points, needs directly, without annoying them - they will actually be delighted that you are trying to understand them better!

3. You have revenue coming from day 1.

4. When you launch your product, you already have a group of people in your target audience, with whom you hopefully have already eared trust.