Ask HN: should we stop telling biz people to be their own technical co-founders? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: should we stop telling biz people to be their own technical co-founders?

4 pointsthelarry4 comments

I know a lot of people have been saying recently that anyone can be their own tech co-founder. Business folks can load up codeacademy or similar site, learn development, and build an MVP. That doesn't feel like a great move to me. Remember the first time you learned how to develop (or do calculus for that matter) back in college? You were slow, stumbled through things, made a load of mistakes, and didn't get things exactly correct. You had weeks to do problem sets. Now imagine that you had to build a functioning product at that point in your life. It would be a super slow process and the end product would leave a lot to be desired. Now, imagine a business person doing this. While he or she is stumbling around writing code, who is networking, hustling, and doing all those important things that business people do? And in that slow development process, someone else can swoop in and build the same product a lot quicker. I understand that people are frustrated that they cannot find developers, but I am not sure if this new movement is the best bet. Thoughts? Maybe I am taking crazy pills.

I tend to agree. Theres so much to do at the beginning of a startup for someone to focus on something they are not productive in, is a formula for failure. If they want to learn while someone more knowledgeable either outsourced, or contracting, then thats fine. If they don't have the money to do something and can't convince someone to work with them, then thats really their only option.

If the business type is just in it for the money, in my opinion, they will fail. If it is an intelligent business person who has a passion for learning, and they want to create things, I see no reason why they would not succeed. Yes, they will need more help/advice from other technical people, but I say let them go for it!

Maybe I am thinking of it from my perspective where on projects I have worked on alone as a technical person I wished there was someone who had time to hustle the product. Since I was trying to innovate 24/7 I did not have much time for that but it is super important. There is never enough time...

Depends on the situation. If the "business person" is really just "some guy with an idea" then maybe it's fine to suggest they learn to code enough to code up an MVP or prototype or whatever. It's not like there are many other value generating activities they are going to be undertaking otherwise.

OTOH, if the "business guy" is a great hustler, sales guy, marketing whiz or whatever, who has good domain knowledge, can do (or has done) customer development and/or market research, has connections to funding sources, etc., then it makes more sense for them to go out and find a techie to partner with. Now you're talking about a true partnership where each side is bringing something valuable to the table, and where the whole is - hopefully - greater than the sum of its parts.

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