Becoming a tech co-founder

Sharon·Oct 25, 2023

Posted in:Tech

I have been involved in a number of tech start-ups, even as the first employee, but I have never been a co-founder. My skills are accross essentially everything right now except tech - and this seems to be an issue when looking to join an incubator or get seed funding, as to date I have not been able to find a tech co-founder.

So one logical solution is to upskill myself to be the tech-cofounder. But how practical is this and what would be the basics? Yes, I agree that there could be a million ways to boil the ocean here, but advice is welcome. I feel like I want to set myself a goal of 3-6 months to be able to put together a basic working MVP of my product idea. (Which is an AI/ML healthcare app).

Has anyone else been in this situation? What did you resport to?

sarahing·Oct 25, 2023

HI Sharon! I don't think you need to be a technical co-founder! And that's coming from someone who has been a technical co-founder and worked in engineering for 10 years. Now, it's easier than ever to build a MVP.What I would say is important - figure out the tools to help you build your hackiest prototype and know how to iterate on them. There are a ton of no-code tools out there (Glide lets you build a mobile app in a day, for instance!), Webflow, Bubble, to name a few.What can you test out now? The smallest bit? It could be a landing page, people's desirability of an AI solution - something that demonstrates traction.I've also been a part of two VCs and one (zinc.vc, which is located in London), invested in a number of teams (about 70% of them) without a technical co-founder.Hope that helps! I spent the last 6 months building out a prototype and spent 1 day coding, max (which was a day wasted, heh).SarahMy background: coach for women in tech, founder, and engineer for reference (sarahingcoaching.com)

Tamiko164·Oct 26, 2023

Agree with what Sharon said, and also by doing this, you would actually be more likely to find a technical co-founder if you still wanted one. Also, there are some places that really emphasize heavily on the technical co-founder, like YC, so I would avoid those and go with other VCs, like the one Sharon mentioned.