How To Build A Tech Startup With No Technical Skills

Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Coming Up 00:17 - Why Business Folks Need Great Technical Co-Founders 00:32 - Technical Founders 01:52 - The Intersection: Great Business Founders and Hiring Amazing Technical Co-Founders 03:32 - Making The Point Explicit 04:44 - Advice From Personal Experience At Twitch 05:06 - Great Software Companies Are Built By Great Software Engineers 06:54 - Equivalent In NBA 09:18 - Where Do I Find Technical Co-Founders? 10:31 - Thought Experiment: Ask The Best Person You Know 11:28 - How Not to Pitch: Come Up with the Idea Together 12:18 - Being An Amazing Recruiter 13:26 - Offering An Adventure: Building A Company Together 14:17 - Pattern: Successful Non-Technical Founders Are Great Recruiters 14:59 - Outro

My 2 cents if you're a non tech founder looking for a tech founder - learn to code. Even if you just get a surface level understanding, it'll be easier to evaluate potential cofounders, discuss technical challenges, and tech people will respect you more when you can truly appreciate their trials and tribulations mastering the craft.

I was making $110 hourly as a software engineer and I dropped my full time job when my co-founder proposed 50/50 equity in our partnership building the product from his idea. 2 years later we are making 1M in ARR (bootstrapping) and it’s was worth it the entire sacrifice in this journey

Started out as a non-technical founder. I made the decision to become technical a couple years back. I have learned an incredible amount and feel fully comfortable developing our product, outsourcing pieces when I get stuck. GPT has been an incredible learning tool, which has accelerated my learning immensely. Waiting for the magical technical co-founder to appear that shares your vision/passion will likely not happen. The best advice I can give to a non-technical founder is to make the mental switch and become technical. The sooner you do it, the better off you’ll be.

I started my tech company as a single mom, with hardly any money and no backround in business or in tech, but I had a vision. Finally after six years of perseverance and learning much along the way in both business and tech, we were discovered by one of the biggest names in Technology. Trust me, if I can do it starting from less than nothing... it can happen for anyone who puts their heart and action into it.

I was a non-technical founder. Learned how to code, it's been the biggest asset. It unlocks agility + opportunities to explore more things. I would always recommend knowing how to bake the cake if you're starting a cake shop. But if you're funded well, know someone close, it's always of course better to let someone else do it - regardless, knowing how tech works will still go a long way.

There are tech founders who are looking for business/operations co-founders. I was in this position personally and I am sure many startups out there are in a similar situation. Would be cool if you guys can dedicate an episode for this topic. Thanks

Gentlemen, this conversation was timely and needed. In addition, your channel is one of the avenues that made me improve my tech. obsession. Respect to Y-Combinator.

Yet another good episode from YC! I have two thoughts listening to this: (1) as a non-technical founder, it would be useful to have deep domain knowledge and network in certain area where you want to tap into with your startup - this is what makes you non-fungible as a business developer. (2) technical co-founder needs to also be a good leader. So many great software engineers out there struggle when it comes to hiring a technical team and managing people... Programming skills are simply not enough.

I'm not technical but I'm very passionate by solving my problem. I've already talked to potential customers and discovered they also have this problem. So I'm learning code by doing the MVP. Great video! Now let’s back to work

thank you so much for this video! I found a co-founder thanks to it. your podcasts are amazing and so useful for rookie entrepreneurs like me!

Hey Dalton and Michael, Hey YC, thats one of the best videos I have ever seen from you guys. It ranks right up on the top. Spot on! :)

I've been waiting for this video for so long!!! Please make more on how business cofounders can provide value in a startup

Finally a mature convo on the topic. Thank you for your honesty

Love this ! So happy to hear this, thank you for this ! Great advice will persevere to get the best CTO

I think the key to Justin Kan's success in recruiting is that he did something, he had proof of concept, he didn't just have an idea.

One of the most inspiring non tech founder is Tope Awotona, the CEO of Calendly. There are countless videos on youtube explaining how he did it.

Great technical cofounders are very important. Even if the other person is also a technical cofounder. The point that they mentioned which is big is if you believe what’s your building is something big then you’ll do the necessary stuff to make it happen. If that means it’s time to get a great technical cofounder to part of the journey then that will be done. Just like a million of other critical things that’s needed to be done throughout the journey of the company. In my opinion if it’s a worthwhile problem to solve then getting a cofounder, learning to code or understanding a new technology will be among a long list of important things that must be done and will get done. If not then the issue is not even wether or not someone is a technical founder but rather they’re not committed in their own company. However there are stories of non-technical founders finding great technical founders which is difficult.It’s still important to understand the coding part of it. Basically the people with no technical skills that managed to get great technical founders have a big advantage (even over a single technical founder) and it’s the biggest way to validate the company early on.

I started as a sales person, got technical skills and can now build (and have started a company in the process). I’ll say this: the hardest part is selling / marketing. If you can sell, you’re likely a good listener. This is the most important part of building a great product. Find a technically strong co-founder who not only can code but can interpret and understand. Then, go and setup as many conversations with people who have the problem you’ve theorized on & work together with your founder to build the solution. If you both execute on your respective roles; you finding the people with problems / co-founder building to solve the problems. You’ll find some form of success. Side note: if you’re coming with the idea you better have deep understanding of the problems & people associated with it.

It's always a pleasure to watch your videos, I deeply love it and I 😁😁😁get a lot of knowledge out of them. Your best fan from CAMEROON