Welcome to Dalton + Michael. Today we're going to talk about whether you need a business co-founder. Many of you have seen our video, "Do you need a tech co-founder?" I think we can summarize that as yes. Now for a more complicated question: do you need a business co-founder? It might seem like a one-on-one comparison — so why are we making this video? Why is this an interesting question?

I think the shorter answer is yes — asterisks. This comes down to definitions. What does it mean to be a non-technical founder? If we define this as: does every startup need one person who can't code, full stop? The answer is, of course, no. Why would you even ask that question?

I think we think that.

We'll explain. We'll bring this down. Let's talk about the asterisks. Basically, every company has stuff that needs to happen. To enumerate some of the tasks that need to happen that are not related to writing code: incorporation, bank, payroll — bureaucratic form-filling, paying taxes every year.

Back office. The back office.

Whatever you want to call it. Someone's got to do that. If not, you are breaking the law.

Yep, that's a problem.

So someone has to do that. Talking to customers.

Someone has to talk to the customer.

You don't need to know how to write code to talk to a customer. You do not. So someone needs to do that. Hiring people — that's not writing code, but you have to interview people.

People won't just show up.

Sales is a really important one. We talk about this a lot. If no one on the team considers it their job to do sales, we have a problem.

No sales will happen.

Someone who doesn't know how to code could do sales. Fundraising is another one. Do you need to know how to code to fundraise?

No.

Negative.

Customer support as well.

Replying to customers — amen. The point is, as we're enumerating all these: anyone who is a founder could be doing these and is qualified to do it. But a technical co-founder is just as qualified to do these tasks as a non-technical co-founder.

These are smart human tasks. Smart generalist tasks.

We have seen lots of cases where everyone on the team may have a technical degree, but there's still a clear sense that someone knows they have to do this stuff.

What I think is so interesting is that it's much easier for a technical person to do things that just require general intelligence than it is for a business person to learn how to code. As a business person, I can attest to this. But you've brought up a really good point: having the ability to do these tasks is different from having the appetite to do these tasks — and to do them well.

Let's triple underline that word: appetite. It's not "Oh yeah, Michael, I can do sales — that's not hard."

I can definitely reply to emails.

Yes. "Well, Dalton, are you going to do that?" Long pause. I think you should look into that.

I think this is extremely important. When we're looking into this question, we have to ask ourselves: who is going to adopt these tasks and responsibilities? It can be a technical person; it can be a non-technical person. You need someone on your founding team who's willing to adopt these tasks and do them well.

With vigor, with excitement — as if they want to be the best in the world at those tasks — and not begrudgingly, full of excuses why they don't want to do it, or that the work is beneath them.

Yes — bringing toxicity into the company. Not that. I also think what's interesting is that if you are a technical person and you happen to be solving your own problem, the idea that you would need a business co-founder is not only confusing — let's say you're building a dev tool — your business co-founder probably is not the right person to sell or fundraise or hire or talk to customers. The idea that you couldn't do those tasks is actually silly. A technical person should be doing those tasks. If you're solving your own problem, it's a technical problem. It's kind of a no-brainer that you don't need a business co-founder. Maybe you need another co-founder.

This is an example; we'll talk about examples a little bit later. But if you look at something like NVIDIA — all of the founders are technical. All of them were electrical engineers with master's degrees or something in electrical engineering. When you think about it, how could a business person with no technical background even come up with the idea for an NVIDIA or be in a position to execute on it versus an electrical engineer? The CEO of NVIDIA — I don't think he spends a lot of time coding, to be honest — but the fact that he was a trained electrical engineer with a history of doing electrical engineering, with a specific vision of how to build a new GPU company: that seems important.

Seems important.

I don't know if a non-tech founder would have helped at NVIDIA way back in the day.

No. And certainly if they would have helped, it's not obvious they would have been essential. So I think this idea — "the business person, the MBA, is essential" — that's not it. It's possible that the technical person is essential and the business person is not essential.

I think the other thing we think about a lot is: let's say you don't want to believe our theory.

I don't like this because this is not flattering to me, Michael. "I don't like what you guys are saying because it doesn't help me."

You could just look at big companies and ask yourself: do there exist big companies that have only technical founders? What would you say to that question?

Let's look at the most valuable companies on the stock market. Google — obviously two technical founders.

Yes.

NVIDIA we just talked about — all technical founders. Microsoft was two technical founders when they started.

Pretty valuable company.

Pretty valuable company. So wait — that's three of the most valuable companies in the world so far. Facebook is complicated in terms of who's counted as a co-founder or not — Zuckerberg was a technical founder, Moskovitz and all that. And then if you look in the YC portfolio: Stripe? Dropbox?

There's a theme here. So sometimes I like to say: even if you don't want to believe these theories, you could just look it up. If this is your question — do I need a business co-founder? — you could just look it up and think: well, Google didn't need one.

People will be able to point to other examples. And that's fair.

We're not saying that you shouldn't have one. We're just saying you don't need it.

Yes. We're not arguing this is the exhaustive truth. We're just saying it is not absolutely necessary, and we are providing proof of said argument.

And furthermore, if you're using this as an excuse to not make forward progress, that's kind of bullshit.

Here's a corollary: sometimes we see that when you're selling into an industry where a non-technical founder does have industry expertise and knows the language of their customer, that can be very helpful. Again, I'm not arguing necessary — smart people can learn anything, in my opinion. But imagine you wanted to sell legal software. If you had one of the founders who, instead of learning how to code in college, went to law school and was a practicing attorney and knew how to sell to attorneys...

That could help.

That sounds pretty legit.

Let's say you're selling software to doctors in hospitals. It might help that there's someone who's a doctor. Or maybe you're making a prescription drug, or maybe you're making a drug distribution company — might help. What I will say though: don't let yourself be held back by these fake limitations. These are fake.

I think that's such a great way to close off this thinking. I think the reason we got a lot of requests for this video — I think it was from technical founders who had been told by investors that you need a business founder — and they're kind of looking for our advice about that. They're not really sure. I think a lot of times when investors give a founder that feedback — "you need a business co-founder" — they're actually giving you direct feedback on what they see as a deficiency in your appetite to do the work. In a polite way.

Or the quality of the work. Or the quality of how you set up your company. But it doesn't mean you don't have the skills to do it.

If you meet with someone and they're like, "I don't want to do sales. I hate doing sales. Sales is bad" — a lot of advice would be: maybe we should get a non-tech founder.

That's why I hate that advice — because that advice is suggesting the solution versus telling you the problem, which is: hey, you might have to talk to your customer. You don't seem like you like that. That's going to screw you. There are many ways of solving that. You could learn to like it. You could hire someone who does. You could hire an engineer who does. But don't believe this idea that there's some magic with one business person plus one tech person equals startup win. No.

Along these lines, sometimes people have a lot of pushback on our advice about why you need a co-founder, full stop. But our argument is not that you need a business co-founder to teach you business because they went to business school. It's just that this is so hard — you need another person to go through this experience with. It's not that there's any one particular bit of experience that is necessary.

Like 100% — you need someone to offer emotional support, because this thing is going to be hard.