Technical founders create the initial actual value by building any MVP. Ideas are worthless, execution is everything, more so with founders who have solved successfully in a particular area before.
It was striking how often a founder with an idea had not much more beyond that. It would scare me when the tech guy who has learned business may know more than the non-tech founder, simply from working with so many other founders with only an idea.
I would offer to build free, or a steep discount to retain 100% of the IP. The non-technical founder would earn back their stake by delivering on marketing, sales, and revenue.
It taught me that:
- tech people can learn business easier than the other way around, even though I strongly believe non-technical founders should learn the tooling enough like they might know enough about their cars.
- 90% of the MVP had nothing to do with solving a problem. Logins, billing, security.
- Most MVPs would waste their innovation points, too soon, by building entirely too much from scratch, leaving it inflexible to modify as you learn through the lean startup process. Simply avoiding this pitfall would allow enough iterations quickly to uncover the valuable problems.
- Boring and quickest techs for MVPs reign supreme because MVPs are supposed to be temporary and disposable, right? Just like a startup is supposed to be a temporary organization to find a repeatable and scalable business model
If a non-technical cofounder cannot market or sell (establish distribution), the greater loss occurs to the Technical founder.
Technical founders create the initial actual value by building any MVP. Ideas are worthless, execution is everything, more so with founders who have solved successfully in a particular area before.
It was striking how often a founder with an idea had not much more beyond that. It would scare me when the tech guy who has learned business may know more than the non-tech founder, simply from working with so many other founders with only an idea.
I would offer to build free, or a steep discount to retain 100% of the IP. The non-technical founder would earn back their stake by delivering on marketing, sales, and revenue.
It taught me that:
- tech people can learn business easier than the other way around, even though I strongly believe non-technical founders should learn the tooling enough like they might know enough about their cars.
- 90% of the MVP had nothing to do with solving a problem. Logins, billing, security.
- Most MVPs would waste their innovation points, too soon, by building entirely too much from scratch, leaving it inflexible to modify as you learn through the lean startup process. Simply avoiding this pitfall would allow enough iterations quickly to uncover the valuable problems.
- Boring and quickest techs for MVPs reign supreme because MVPs are supposed to be temporary and disposable, right? Just like a startup is supposed to be a temporary organization to find a repeatable and scalable business model
If a non-technical cofounder cannot market or sell (establish distribution), the greater loss occurs to the Technical founder.