I think there's a fine balance with teams and team personalities. Sometimes a non-tech cofounder can bring good expertise in something you're not very good at.
I'm not a developer, but I am doing a high-tech startup. My cofounder is extremely good at the overall backend work of our product. He's also very good at talking (sometimes I can't get him to stop) and understanding the overall UX the product should have. How have I helped? Well, for starters we established what he's good at and figured out where the gap is. He hates frontend work, so I have designed the site and learned some HTML/CSS to expedite the frontend development. We're also both taking on 500 hats a minute. There are things he's good at (the technical speak) and things I'm good at (the non-technical speak) and things we're both good at (client meetings, processing feedback, making sure the product is working quickly). We're working on a security problem. As it is, we have completely different ideas; he's always been somewhat more of a blackhat, whereas I'm more of a whitehat, so our complementary ideals have been helping us get great publicity and great customers lined up.
I don't think a non-technical cofounder is necessary, but if you can find someone who can or is willing to do what you don't want to deal with (the books, the legal work, the frontend; everyone has something they aren't good at/don't like), who is also someone who can balance your ideals and personality you can get a great working team going.
I'm not a developer, but I am doing a high-tech startup. My cofounder is extremely good at the overall backend work of our product. He's also very good at talking (sometimes I can't get him to stop) and understanding the overall UX the product should have. How have I helped? Well, for starters we established what he's good at and figured out where the gap is. He hates frontend work, so I have designed the site and learned some HTML/CSS to expedite the frontend development. We're also both taking on 500 hats a minute. There are things he's good at (the technical speak) and things I'm good at (the non-technical speak) and things we're both good at (client meetings, processing feedback, making sure the product is working quickly). We're working on a security problem. As it is, we have completely different ideas; he's always been somewhat more of a blackhat, whereas I'm more of a whitehat, so our complementary ideals have been helping us get great publicity and great customers lined up.
I don't think a non-technical cofounder is necessary, but if you can find someone who can or is willing to do what you don't want to deal with (the books, the legal work, the frontend; everyone has something they aren't good at/don't like), who is also someone who can balance your ideals and personality you can get a great working team going.