Do you really need a tech co-founder?

Recently I’ve been to a number of events where I’ve had conversations with non-technical founders about their need for a tech co-founder.?

The conversation usually centres around them either having built some tech and wanting someone to lead the charge going forwards or them not having built any tech and wanting a co-founder that can do the build.

The key phrase I always hear, no matter what the context is: “For equity”

Now, my cynical old self usually translates that phrase to “For free” but I’m grey haired enough to recognise that my initial reaction shouldn’t be the final one.

The tech co-founder Griffin

During these conversations I always ask: “What do you want this person to do?” because in my mind bringing onboard a co-founder (regardless of whether they are technical or not) is a big deal.? You are essentially giving away a portion of your business, which at the early stages is a significant thing.

The laundry list of tasks expected of a technical co-founder generally goes like this:

• Be able to code
• Be able to build, grow and lead a tech team
• Be able to set the tech strategy and roadmap
• Be able to help raise funds by being the face of tech to investors
• Be able to go out to events and launch and promote the business
• Fully believe in the mission of the business and be 100% on board with the strategy / trajectory already set

Any one of these tasks is a lot of work in an early stage business, doing all of these together is fairly heroic and what is more heroic is doing this all for equity - which until you’ve made some money and look like a viable, sellable business means that person is essentially doing this for free.

So what does this mean for the tech co-founder?? To me, it sounds like you’re doing a lot of work for someone else’s vision. If you had that kind of talent as a tech co-founder, wouldn’t you just work on? your own vision?

And this is where we get to the crux of the matter….for any one person to do all of those tasks very well is amazing, I’d invest in you now.? The reality is that most people can do one or two of those things very well and are probably OK at the others.? However, you’d have to do those things well and believe in the vision of the original founder(s) and follow their lead.? This is a tough pill to swallow and it becomes tougher with the fact that there’s no money on the table.

Less myth, More reality

Generally the conversation then flows into how hard it is to find a technical co-founder and this is where I try to point out that what they are searching for is a Tech Griffin (the term unicorn is overused) and that mythical beasts are just that. Mythical.

To me, such founders are driven by the fact that they have no money to offer the tech expert? and that’s fair enough.? Times are hard and getting early stage investment has never been easy.? But if you break down the tasks and assign them to different people, you may actually find people that are willing to back you for a small portion of the business if you are demanding less of them.??

There are students or young graduates out there that would love to work in an early stage start-up even if it is to gain experience, there are also companies out there that will do development for sweat equity or some sort of match funding.? You can lean on advisors to help you with the investor pitching and when it comes to events, you are always the best person to be out front promoting your business.

How much tech do you really need?

But Bhairav, you say, you run a business that sells fractional CTO services and has recently launched a tech co-founder service along with Siya.? Aren’t you going to be biased against this question of hiring technical co-founders?

Well, it may sound strange but many times when non-technical start-up founders come to me for advice the first thing I ask them is: do you really need to build tech?

Of course if you have a deep tech business or you are in a sector that is reliant on digitizing manual processes then yes, you will need tech. But the world of low code / no code has moved on a lot these past few years. There are companies that can get you off the ground quickly to validate your idea.

If you are a more mature business that has already got some tech and needs someone to lead it then why not give the work to a fractional CTO who won’t take your shares.? Shares are finite, you can only give so many away so hold on to them until you really need to give them up.

Often you can start your business with tools that exist out there already.? There are a plethora of vendors that allow you to create commercial applications that will take payments for very little cost. I’ve even known entrepreneurs that have run 6 figure businesses using WhatsApp! The key is to take it as far as you can? yourself, build tech when you need to scale the idea and then continue to build strategically i.e. make sure you are building in order to grow, retain customers, increase your offering, reduce your costs etc.

Take the tech out of tech co-founder

You will need a CTO or a technical person on your team at some point.? Whether they are a co-founder or not shouldn’t depend on whether they are technical or not.? First and foremost, whoever you bring on as a co-founder should share your vision and believe in your cause.? They should then bring something special? to the table if you are going to offer them a significant share of your business.

If you are like one founder who I know of? who offered 0.5% to their tech co-founder in return for them coding the entire platform, then don’t bother looking for anyone technical, no one will take you seriously.? If you are asking the person to do serious work, they will want serious compensation.

However, think hard about whether you will treat this person coming on board as your equal or as your employee.? If it’s the latter then you are not looking for a co-founder, you are looking for someone to provide you services and there are plenty of people out there that can do that.

At the end of the day, when you are looking for someone to come on board and run your tech, you need to be realistic about all that they can achieve. Building technology is not a small task, neither is raising funds or exhibiting at events. If you look at all of the things you truly need in order for the tech side of your business to be successful, you will be best served by breaking down those tasks and finding the right people at the right time to fulfil them.

About Atom CTO

If you'd like to learn more about me or Atom CTO then please visit our website. We have our own tech co-founder offering which we run with our partners Siya Tech Ventures, which you can contact us about here.

If you are currently facing a tech challenge or just want to have a chat then just contact us or enrol in one of our free tech clinics:

• Atom Tech Clinic
• Project Delivery Clinic