Had a very sad conversation yesterday with some people who are in the high tech and investments industries. I expressed my disappointment at the lack of technical-able people who want to join a startup. The reply was “apparently all startups that are meant to happen are to be started by technical founders”. And then “startups should always be about technology”.
This is a way reflects the traditional perception of VC investments in Israel.
As someone who comes from the marketing and business into the high tech world, and who has consulted quite a few technical founders of startups about their marketing and business strategies, I find this a sad conclusion.
A good startup team should have a great balance between the technical and marketing perceptions. A good startup idea will often come out of a great understanding of a market, its needs or problems and the way to reach back with a solution. Right there, in between understanding the problem and supplying the market with a solution – right there comes the technical answer to the problem.
I am not saying it’s impossible for technical people to see or understand the market. As it is not unthinkable that a marketing person will learn how to code or come up with a technical idea without any technical background. What I am saying is that each is best at their own specialty, and I don’t believe that “I’m best at everything” is a real thing. This is where ego replaces clear reasonable thinking. These are the replaceable CEOs.
What can be done to attract more technology people, software engineers and computer science graduates to entrepreneurship? It’s a big question. It seems like of all place, here in the Startup Nation, the concept is that programmers can get a great paying job so easily – that there’s no incentive in the world that would convince them to jump on some brand new startup wagon. Why take a risk when you can easily just enjoy life?
My guess is the economic situation in Israel today contributes to this state of mind. But then I am thinking about my parents. Both clearly with entrepreneurial traits. Only when they started their career it was all about job security. Not about hope or big plans or daring. I would think that as a country we’ve grown up and proved that taking those risks is often worth it. Didn’t we?
But above all, is it at all possible to convey to non-entrepreneurs that superb feeling you get when you are creating your own thing?? When you are making a dream come true? When creating a dent in the world we live in?
Now, if you still prefer to go back to safety, and never think you’re an entrepreneur, I urge you to dedicate a few minutes to watching this fantastic TEDx talk by a fellow entrepreneur, Cameron Herold, about raising kids to be entrepreneurs. Spoiler and disclosure: I never got an allowance.
Or-Tal's Writings 
February 15, 2015 at 17:03
I know of instances where the founder was not of technical nature (biz-dev / marketing personality) but I think there was always a balance of “objective value” between the founders. How to measure “objective value”? Non entrepreneurial salary is a decent guess.
If someone quits their day job to start a business, they are investing their monthly salary into the new business. If two people don’t have the same salary potential, they are not investing the same amount of money into the business, and the one who could be making more will feel screwed.
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February 15, 2015 at 18:57
Dear Anonymous, are you assuming that a marketing professional / BizDev / C level executive have lower salary potential than programmers? This strikes me as an odd calculation at best. In fact, Sales and Marketing people often earn more than the CTO, more than the CEO.
I also believe this is a wrong way of looking at the whole business setup.
I know plenty of startups who presented a great balance of team right from the beginning, and made it a point to take equal salaries between the founders. The logic is simple: this venture won’t exist without the programmer, the graphic designer, the marketing person, and that strange person who started with the idea and is managing the whole operation and fund raising. Each is a necessary link in the chain.
But if you’re getting into a calculation that “a programmer’s hour is worth more” – it is clear that you are not in the business of entrepreneurship.
Setting up a startup is first and foremost about making a dream come true. Creating something together and delivering it to the market.
Yes, we’re all hoping to make it big some day, and to be able to afford our kids’ tuition or housing at some point. But you can’t start by calculating how much you are missing every hour that you spend on your startup. You should start by feeling how much you are gaining from doing WHAT you want. Assuming you do want it.
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February 16, 2015 at 00:23
No, that is not what I am assuming.
I am dividing startup founder groups into two categories :
1 – Those with a previous major success under their belt. They are often the executives that you refer to, whose salaries are indeed balanced with their tech executive peers.
2 – Those without such a success. They are in the “working class” of the startup food chain. In this class, tech people earn more according to today’s salary surveys.
If you look at group 2 then I think you will find a stronger bias towards tech founders than group 1, because you need a tech founder to do the prototype implementation early on (unless you can raise money without a prototype), and in that scenario there will be the asymmetry of earning potential.
Bottom line – most non-tech professional startup co-founders are usually executives. For a tech professional, not as necessary. This means there are more tech founders in the pool, and they will be more common.
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