You Don’t Need a Tech Co-Founder for a Tech Startup

Well, maybe you do… eventually. But you definitely don’t need to look for one as the first step to your startup.

If you aren’t a tech nerd, you probably heard that you need to find a tech co-founder — someone to help you define the product from a technical perspective.

It even makes sense — companies that sell development services won’t tell you that you can make some feature less complex at first, to develop it at a fraction of the cost. They will give you a high quote and send you looking for investors to fund it.

A tech co-founder (read: someone who owns part of the business potential) would know to offer the cheaper option for the MVP features. Probably. They would know how to speak with developers in their jargon and justify tech decisions to potential investors. Or something.

That makes sense for deep-tech startups, where the product is tech for techies or the tech is actually innovative.

Most apps and Service-as-a-Software (SaaS) products are smart combinations of simple features with some under-the-hood logic that makes them a good solution for a very specific problem.

Do you need extensive tech knowledge to make smart tech-related decisions and prioritize the features so building the MVP would be efficient? Very much yes.

Do you need to partner with a techie just to get those answers and start building? Nope.

If you read my book, you know that choosing co-founders is a bit like choosing a life partner and a co-parent to your child. It’s far from easy and the mistakes have grave consequences.

I also don’t recommend diving head-first into learning anything and everything tech. I mean, definitely do it if it’s your thing! But don’t do it as a first step of building your startup. The amount of knowledge and experience that you need is huge and it’s too easy to rely on AI-hallucinations and make a costly mistake.

What I do recommend is this:

Rent a tech-brain for thinking together about a product definition that:
1- is the minimal version of original idea that solves the problem
2- is the fastest and easiest to develop tech-wise
3- both the non-techie founder and the potential developers understand well

Want my help deciding if you need a tech co-founder, a tech-brain for rent, or a secret third option?

Click here to schedule a short chat:

Cheers,

Ela Shapira
Startup Doula