[swatow]

To me it's strange that I see so many comments on HN about how technical skill isn't the most important thing: business sense, life experience, communications skills, etc. count for more.

But when someone with no technical skill creates a product by outsourcing the technical side, suddenly the comments are all negative.

[vicbrooker]

My critique of the model is more that outsourcing will get expensive quickly. The founder of this product 120+ schools to support with 30k. Many of these schools are expecting lifetime support: they paid a one time $250 fee. It's not clear what the legal relationship is between the service provider and the schools either, which may be a problem.

So my critique has nothing to do with technical skill, it's more that getting 'profitable' quickly without any consideration of the potential long term debt can be a bad business decision.

In my view, these were shaky business decisions (to outsource development, cutting legal corners w schools, one time fees), rather than technical ones, if that makes sense. There are times when outsourcing is the right call, in the context of this particular business I'm not convinced.

Ps. The adequate technical skill to execute is kinda assumed if you're founding a tech startup. If it's just building a product without the expectation of scaling it you can maybe get with outsourcing. This might be why there's more of a discussion on HN about the business side - this is the area that most of the audience here need to develop.

I remember reading that YC was founded in the first place with a hypothesis that teaching tech founders the nontech skills (eg. business/communication skills) is far, far more effective than vice versa. Seems it was right.

[mrrobbo]

Hi - you've assumed this is not being done by s full legal entity that my company is - the software also has a global base with customers all over the planet - 120 schools is really not the case. You've also assumed I don't have full time staff now to manage the project