♞Do you need a technical co-founder?

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Do you need a technical co-founder?

For a long time, the “ideal” startup founding team consisted of a hustler, hacker and designer. Today, that has largely been reduced to just the hustler and hacker but the reality is that there are many incredible hustlers with great ideas struggling to raise because they don’t have a technical co-founder who can help them get their business off the ground and VCs won’t invest just so that they can hire a CTO.

Let’s look at why investors want a technical co-founder and how you can raise without one.

There are two primary reasons why having a technical co-founder is often a requirement for raising venture capital.

1. Reduces technological risk - If you don’t have a technical co-founder then your company will always be dependent upon hired talent to build its core product/service (assuming you are a software/tech company). This is a major risk for VCs because whoever builds your tech could always hold the company hostage down the line. The truth is that with nobody to “supervise” them its’s hard to ensure that they are building the tech correctly and that they are doing so in a way that would allow anyone to take over their position. Complex or poorly written code can be perfectly functional but nearly impossible for someone else to decipher, learn and build off. In short, investors in tech companies don’t want the tech itself to be a significant risk to the company.

2. Lack of product - Often those raising without a technical co-founder don’t have any evidence of product market fit. They can’t build an MVP because they don’t have the technical ability; this means that investors have less data and evidence to make investment decisions than they often do when speaking to teams with technical and non-technical co-founders.

Despite this, a lack of a technical co-founder shouldn’t deter you. The #1 objective you should have if you find yourself in this position is to build an MVP that proves your core thesis. This MVP might not be what you’d hope to build, but if it can prove that there is consumer demand for your company, then you can overcome a significant challenge others in your position have. Simultaneously, it would help if you were looking at both potential co-founders and hires. In either case, if you have a list that you can act on once you have the incentives to attract the right technical person, you can lower the perceived risk for investors.

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Onwards and Upwards,

Liam Gill