How To Build A Tech Startup With No Technical Skills

You're offering adventure. You're offering the unknown. And adventure isn't, here's my idea for a social network for dogs. Will you build my website? No. Let's build a company together. Welcome to Dalton Plus Michael. Today, we're going to talk about why business folks need great technical co-founders. So who's this video for? Let's talk about the business folks we're talking to. Yeah. I think to set this up, Michael and I both talk to a lot of aspiring founders in any number of different venues, on the street, at conferences, in interviews, wherever. Like they find us. They find us. And one of the more common opening lines is something like, well, I'm a really good business person. With a great idea. I have the best ideas. Yes. You know, do I need a technical founder? Or how do I find a technical co-founder? Or I can't find any good technical co-founders. Like this is one of the number one opening questions we get when we meet people in the real world. Yes. And so this video is aimed at all of those people that ask all of these questions that we have met. Yes. And all the people that haven't met us. Yes. That might be thinking these questions. And what we want to do is give you the key secret to actually being the best business co-founder. And we're not going to hide it. We're going to put it right up front. The best business founders recruit amazing technical co-founders. And that is how they distinguish themselves. That is the number one distinction. So it's not what's on your resume, where you worked, the fact that you were some fancy executive, that you're tall, people like to go and have drinks with you. You've got amazing ideas. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks like that. Yes. Imagine the set of people. Imagine the intersection. There's the set of people that are great business founders. Yes. And there's the set of people that can recruit amazing technical co-founders. Yes. You want to be in the intersection of those two sets. And there's not many people. No. That puts you in a very special class. Well, and I would argue it is so distinguishing that you're given amazing opportunities. But what's tricky is not only do people not see this, or do people try and not get a technical founder. Or they just dismiss it out of hand. It's too hard. They'll just shut this line of thinking down. That's what's even more common. It's just like, well, I can't find this person, so I'm just going to move along. Yes, I don't know anyone. And this is the crazy thing, because a lot of people will pitch this to me. It's like, but this is the true spirit of an entrepreneur. No barrier can prevent me from getting my product to market. I couldn't find a technical founder, so I just moved to the next challenge. I hired some engineers, or I got a dev shop, and nothing will hold me back. And what's so sad about that way of thinking about it is that one, the percentage chances of death just went through the roof. Like you've just completely reduced your chances of success. But two, I bet if you would put the same amount of effort you put into getting a product to market without a great technical founder into finding a great technical founder, at least half people would be able to do it. And so it's just like, it's a shame because it's so much wasted talent. Yeah, I like to think about it this way. Again, what we're talking about implicitly, let's make it explicit. We're talking about a company that uses software as a deep part of it. So if we're talking about a software startup and you somehow don't have a technical co-founder, this would be like, I'm going to build a rocket to the moon, but no one here knows anything about physics. I have such a big heart. We can just be like, I have such hustle. I'm Johnny Hustle. I'm going to the moon, Michael. Do you see how absurd that is? And the asterisk is, okay, if you want to start a new clothing brand or a liquor brand, okay, you don't need to do it. This doesn't apply. But if you're saying, yeah, I'm going to build a software company and you don't have a software co-founder, you're not even in the ballgame. You're not even in the stadium. One, what's so sad for me is like, when I say that to people, sometimes they think I'm trying to discourage them. But if you go back to that, I'm going to prove you wrong, Michael. Yeah. I'm going to learn physics. Yeah. And I'm like, I am not trying to, like, I am trying to tell you the number, or like, I came to you for advice about my product, but you're telling me I need a co-founder. You're insulting me, Michael. Yeah, yeah. And it's just like, no, I'm trying to give you the most important thing I can tell you. And what was interesting is that like, this is advice is informed by my personal experience, right? I was the single non-technical person on a four-person co-founding team at Justin.TV and Twitch. And like, I'll just make it plain, without my three other co-founders, none of that shit happens. Like, ideas are a dime a dozen. And so I think that more business people need to embrace the idea that great software companies are built by great software engineers. Yep. A common retort out here is like, Dalton, we're not building a software business. Software is in there, but it's not that. It's a tech-enabled. Yeah. We're just building a simple marketplace, right? Like, we can just use da-da-da-da marketplace software. It's just a copy of DoorDash with a little twist. Why do we need a great software engineer? What's your response? You know, it's hard to win that debate in theory. Like, it's hard to convince someone just in the debate. They'll be like, well, we're just going to agree to disagree. Yes. But I think if you just look at the facts of the companies we funded, like literally DoorDash, or literally Airbnb, or any of these folks. Yes. They lived and died by their speed of shipping software. Yes. And if what they did was buy white label software or have some dev shop in a foreign country making edits to the website, there's a 0% chance those companies would have worked. Yeah. And so again, who am I to say there won't be some future company that maybe uses one of these things? Yes. But the more that we're exposed to seeing what these companies look like at the earliest stages, even if they don't look like strictly tech businesses, man, there's no way these things would have gotten off the ground without having a really great person who cared as much as a co-founder cares. Yes. Building this thing day in and day out versus someone ripping you off, charging you $500 an hour to change some words on the website. And you don't even know. You're not even like ball game. Like it's not even. Well, what pisses me off is that like, I think in other areas that are equally as hard as being a successful tech founder, let's say athletics, I think more people are realistic about it, strangely. Like the equivalent is, you know, a five foot four person who doesn't jump. I can't shoot. Yeah. I can't run. Yeah. I got a lot of heart mangle. Yeah. They're not that many of those people who are saying that the world, do I want to be in the NBA, right? Whereas we see the equivalent of that in startups all the time. And it's like, it's one thing if you're 6'6 and like you're like a great high school basketball player, you probably won't make the NBA, but like, all right, at least you. You're in the stadium. In the stadium. You're amongst the million people who could. Yeah. And I think that people are not honest with themselves. And I think what we're trying to do is give you the secret, which is that like, you can almost get a ticket to being in the game and it requires recruiting one person. How cool is that? Like, this shouldn't be seen as a negative. It seems like an extreme positive. It's like a golden, what is it? Willy Wonka ticket. And even if you are technical yourself, or sometimes people are medium technical, like, so I was a technical CEO, but I still tremendously benefited by having an additional technical co-founder. Yes. And so this is also a thing where you're not like, okay, well, I, you know. I can kind of. Okay, that doesn't count. There's actually tremendous benefits from having someone, again, who cares as much as a founder. Yes. Who's committed as much as a founder. Yes. And who's, you know, at the top of the game, like a 10X engineer on a founder level, you're unstoppable. And what's weird is sometimes we had competitors in my startups whose teams were constructed this way, horrible tech talent. And it was funny in hindsight because we never had to be worried. They could raise more money. They could have nicer office. They could have more employees. They could have cooler people using their product. It didn't matter. Like having better engineering is the gift that gives you more shots every day. Even if you need to pivot, no matter what, no matter what happens, good or bad. You're in a better position. You're in a better position to react to these changes. Yes. And I think the even scarier thing about this is that like when you start with a team of business people assessing engineers and they are naturally going to start by hiring worse engineers, all of your future engineers are hired by those people. Exactly. It compounds. Okay. So, all right, Michael. All right. You guys convinced me, I guess, whatever, but I don't, you know, sure. I guess that's a point you could make. I don't know. But Michael, I don't know anyone. Where do I find these people? Yeah. Again, that's what they always say in these conversations. That's what they always say. So, what is your response when they tell you that? So, the first thing is that like, who are you disqualifying and why? I can't tell you how many business people told me, well, I obviously need a CTO with 10 years of experience and who've managed teams of at least 50 to 100. And I'm like, you're 23 years old with no years of experience. Why do you need that? And they're like, well, because, you know, when we launch, this thing's going to get big. I'm just like, come on. So, first, you might be disqualifying great people. Don't do that. And so, let's say you don't know them. Sometimes the number one thing to do if you're in this position is to not start the company right now, is to go get a job at a startup, is to go change the people you know. And what's so interesting is that like, sometimes taking that step sideways is the easiest and best path to starting sort of journey with the highest likelihood of success. Well, here's the thought experiment I encourage people to do. Visualize the best person you have ever worked with, either in school or in your job, the best engineer that everyone knows is the best person. Can you visualize someone? Okay, can you get that person to be your co-founder? And often people are like, oh yeah, no, they would never work with me. What do you mean, man? Or like, they're making lots of money. And again, I would just stop right there and be like, well, why? Have you talked to them? And they're like, no, they would just, like basically folks put up the barriers to negotiate against themselves right out of the gate. And again, if we zoom all the way out, so you want to start a company, you want to do something big, but you won't actually even bother to try to recruit the most obvious person that's a candidate that you know. But what if they say no? Or you talk to them and they're like, no, I don't think so. What often happens, again, to go deep on this, is that the way they'll pitch the person is they'll pitch them their idea. They'll be like, I'm an idea guy. I've got a great idea. Do you want to be my like worker bee to go do all my ideas? And of course the person that's the best person you've ever worked with does not want to sit in a cage and do all of the work that you give them. And instead I'm like, well, have you asked them what if they have startup ideas and then you sell yourself where you can come together come up with the idea together as co-owners. And it's shocking how often that appears to have never occurred to someone. Like they think the idea of finding a technical co-founder is to find someone who will basically submit to their whims and be like their like assistant. To find an employee. Yeah, and that's not the move, man. Try to find a partner. You know, it's funny because my dad would say this to me about my co-founder, Justin Khan. He was like, you know, Michael, Justin's an amazing recruiter. And I always thought, I was like, what's weird is like I think if you're recruited by a good recruiter you don't even realize they're a good recruiter, right? But like in hindsight, I'm like, all right so we got me, Emmett and Kyle to work for him. Well, not work for him, but to be his co-founders in a startup where he was wearing a camera on his head streaming his life 24 seven. Named after him. Yes, named after Justin. Named Justin.tv. Do you wanna work at my startup? Yes. It's me. And he had raised $50,000. Seems like a great deal, Michael. Yeah, right. And so it's like, okay, well like how did he build that team? Like, you know, it comes back to like you wanna distinguish yourself as a business person. Go do that. Like people should be impressed. You're a great businessman. And hey, they're working on your idea. I have no idea. Well, you know, I'll tell you what he promised me. It wasn't that the idea was gonna work. Like it was the adventure. Okay. It was the adventure. And like, I think what's so interesting when people like don't ask their friend and they assume, oh, but they work at this company. They're never gonna do it. It's like, they don't realize you're offering adventure. You're offering the unknown. And adventure isn't, here's my idea for a social network for dogs. Will you build my website? No. Let's build a company together. Yes. That's adventure. Yes. And what's crazy is like when you're pitching adventure there aren't a lot of alternatives. Most people don't have six adventures on the play. How often does any one person get pitched adventure? Yeah, no. It's usually adventure or like. So, you know, it's a good pitch. It's a good pitch. So anyways, right. I think that we're trying, you know I think that there's like, I'll say this. I'm a business guy, right? I think YC has a lot of messaging. That's like, yeah, our business guy is important. Like you don't need them. I agree. You don't need them. But I will say this. There are a lot of very successful non-technical people on our network that do amazing work. And I think one of the things that if you want to learn from them we're trying to give you one of the most important patterns we see from those folks. Yeah, they're great recruiters. And they do this thought experiment of who's the best person in the world. Yes. And they find a way to get that person to work with them. That's bending the universe to your will is what that is. So you should hold yourself to their standard and maybe you'll get their success. All right. Thanks Dalton. Thanks.