Developer risk profiles: why you won’t find a technical co-founder

In addition to the points that this author makes connecting risk profiles to work options available to potential technical co-founders, let me add an orthogonal issue that impedes people from signing on to the high risk proposition of building the 'great idea' that someone else has generated.

For someone with a technical background it feels really hard to judge whether the other person, the one with the business vision has the combination of sales, marketing skills together with hustle and perseverance to really pull off the customer acquisition side of the equation.

This is the technical co-founder's fear that he/she will build something really great that meets the vision but the whole business development side of the equation will suffer. In various corporate settings I have met too many sales people who talked a good game but ultimately had more excuses than results. In a start-up I don't have the luxury of a sales team that is big enough to take up the slack and gradually weed out the people who cannot deliver.